This Is What We Do Now
In the US our lives have been designed to serving the interests of business, in Europe, life is dedicated to serving the self.
The primary difference between the American way of life and the European way of life is the amount of time spent on working. In America, our culture is very much centered around the idea of hard work and long hours, with many people putting in 50 or even 60 hours a week at their jobs just to make ends meet.
This lifestyle is not an accident. It’s by design.
Corporations have designed a living environment that’s making us fat and lonely so we can sell you a new air-fryer for your oily dinner and a supplement for those love handles that are an inevitable consequence.
In contrast, Europeans tend to place more emphasis on work-life balance, with shorter work weeks and longer vacations being the norm. In fact, many European countries have laws mandating a certain number of vacation days per year, whereas American workers often do not have any mandated paid time off.
When you visit European cities you’re struck by the pace of life. Coffee is served to be enjoyed in the coffee shop amongst the other patrons. Americans never have time to just sit around with friends enjoying an espresso so we’ve made to-go coffee the norm.
We’re too busy trying to fit in our gym workout with our jobs and kids sports activities. Note, that’s activities plural. American parents have been convinced that playing outside with random kids in the neighborhood is dangerous. Instead, they have to send their children to formalized soccer practice, piano lessons, computer club, and ridiculously expensive summer camp. It’s like it’s the law to enroll your kids in more than one activity.
We’re training our children to be overwhelmed. And we wonder why 1 in 3 American teenagers are on anti-depressants.
This is what we do now.
As adults we’re told we have only one option. Go to college and get into massive student debt so we can graduate into a job we’re going to hate so we can live in a suburban house we can’t afford and share our misery with a spouse and kids that never see us because we’re always at that shitty job.
American people are stressed, overworked, overweight, and lonely. But just look at what we’ve designed…
- Save time by eating fast food.
- Have it delivered so you never have to leave your unaffordable house.
- If you’re feeling lonely while you eat, we have a billion new shows streamed to your living room.
- Oh, now that you’re fat from the food we sold you, we’ve got supplements and a gym membership you’ll never use too.
- Still feeling like crap? We’ve got a therapy app, an anti-depressant and a self-help course for that too. Just $29/month.
This is what we do now.
We’re encouraged to eat crappy food by businesses, and then fat-shamed into taking supplements and hitting the gym buy the same corporations. This isn’t a conspiracy, it’s just a slow march towards selling the American public more of the things they don’t need.
What started as the American Dream has deteriorated into a nightmare for the public.
Take a look around at how we’ve designed our cities and suburbs. In the average US suburban center you have half a dozen fast food restaurants, supplement stores, a CrossFit gym, an anti-CrossFit gym, a family law or injury law office, car dealerships and cheap clothing stores.
So while the American people struggle to stay physically, mentally and financially healthy our American businesses post record profits.
On a recent work visit to Lisbon I was spending a lot of time with friends and clients that live there. We ate out for every meal and with one exception we walked everywhere. Because the city is designed for walking, and not for cars, I averaged 20K steps per day during my five days in the city. Small portions and frequent movement is the basis of good living.
The way in which people approach health and fitness is a huge difference between the two cultures. While Americans tend to view exercise as something that should be squeezed into a busy schedule, Europeans often incorporate physical activity into their daily routines through activities such as cycling to work, walking (to everything), or hiking in the green spaces in and around the cities.
This is reflected in my experience in Lisbon, where I was able to walk everywhere and still eat like royalty without gaining weight.
The artwork above is a reminder that the American Dream of owning a house with a two car garage is an ideas whose time has passed. We need to grow up and look to Europe for examples of how to live.
The art is available at www.richardbanfieldart.com
