Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 14, 1990 TAG: 9004140294
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
What Oldenburg wants at this hectic, harried, go-for-it point in our history is a scaling back, a cutting down, a reduction in the force of our inner-directedness. He wants us to withdraw regularly from our warlike business philosophies, to shake off the lethargy rampant in our cookie-cutter neighborhoods where nary a tavern can be found, and to think and do the unthinkable - to get to know each other.
He wants us to kick back and talk to each other regardless of age, class, income, neighborhood and education.
Poor fool! In a country where hardly a subdivision is raised without EXCLUSIVE blaring throughout its marketing campaigns, where the Mercedes and Cherokee give way to the Acura and the Lexus as indicators of human worth, he thinks we'll find happiness rubbing shoulders with people different from us - auto mechanics, school teachers and shoe salesmen, as well as corporate executives and high-flying entrepreneurs.
He wants us to spend our evenings in pubs - pubs, he says, as if America has more than 20 to its name - just getting to know each other. Not talking about business, specifically. Not cutting deals or plotting strategies or seeking any particular gain.
Just . . . talking. Just . . . getting to know each other.
As in trading good-natured insults. As in spiritedly debating the world's problems. As in letting down our guards and being human, for once, instead of some media-influenced product that we think we ought to be.
Poor fool! To believe such a thing possible in this world of hungry competitors! To think that people will embrace this paean to mindless chitchat!
"It is naive," he writes, "to believe that one's well-being or contentment in life is independent of that of one's neighbors or co-workers."
Neighbors? You mean those people with the rusting motorcycle in the back yard who moved here from up 8 1 PLACE Place north? Co-workers? Do you honestly imagine that those dweebs actually have lives outside the office?
Only a professor could conceive of such a thing.
Oldenburg has put his idealistic notions into a book called "The Great Good Place" (Paragon House, $19.95). It is nothing less than a call to meaninglessness, but one based upon impressive research and dazzling iconoclasm.
Others may look at shining subdivision homes in areas zoned for residential purity and see America at its best. They may view our crowded highways as testimony to the nation's wealth and mobility, and they may want a future filled with more of the same.
The bearded professor from Florida looks at these things and sees "the mess that is man-made America."
He blames the pre- and post-World War II surge into single-family dwellings in homogenized neighborhoods for our social stagnation.
"Historically speaking," he says by telephone from his office at the University of West Florida, "we screwed up the human habitat in the United States in the blink of an eye."
Thus we have "nothing neighborhoods" - neighborhoods without neighborliness, filled with stifling domestic bunkers whose occupants view the world through their television screens.
Houses and cars. That's what's in them. A house to live in and a car to drive to the convenience store, a misnomer so wild as to set the fervent author fairly guffawing.
"One of the most laughably erroneous characterizations of contemporary American society is that it is a `convenience culture,' " he writes, his chortle all but audible on the page. "Convenience is a persistent theme in our lives and in advertising media only because there is such a crying need for it.
"But only by confusing trivial conveniences with essential ones could we delude ourselves. In a genuinely convenient culture, the necessities of life are close by one's dwelling."
Maybe your kitchen has a food processor. But how far must you drive to buy food? Or stamps? Or to stand at a bar and get a beer?
Aha! Bars! Beer! Here is the author's Achilles heel, for he goes on at length about bars and beer and taverns where, he says, people mix democratically. He praises them as "Third Places," havens away from work and home.
Yankee that he is, he touts the taverns of Wisconsin, but complains about his current station in Pensacola, Fla., which he dubs "The Old South."
"We don't have friendly taverns," he says. "There's a rule of thumb down here: If you don't know a place, don't go into it."
He goes on for pages about the history of British pubs, the unparalleled sanguineness of German beer gardens in the old Midwest. He floridly describes the pleasures to be had in European cafes.
Then he turns his reproachful gaze toward their contemporary American equivalents.
"A room full of individuals intent upon video games is not a Third Place," he writes, raspingly, "nor is a subdued lounge in which couples are quietly staring at backgammon boards."
He even summarizes rules of conversation as promoted by author Henry Sedgwick in his book "The Art of Happiness."
They are: "Remain silent your share of the time (more rather than less). Be attentive while others are talking. Say what you think but be careful not to hurt others' feelings. Avoid topics not of general interest. Say little or nothing about yourself personally, but talk about others there assembled. Avoid trying to instruct. Speak in as low as voice as will allow others to hear."
The rules, he tells you, apply wherever your Third Place may be. His happens to be at a coffee shop, to which he drives, of course, every morning at 6.
He also has joined fraternal organizations "because those memberships give me an opportunity to go into a bar, shoot some pool and spend the afternoon with somebody. I know that's a safe place."
Other people may be "regulars" at beauty parlors, country stores and senior citizens' centers - anyplace where they can shrug off their contemporary restraints and be as irreverent, as skeptical, as witty as they want to be.
"What's basic to all of this," Oldenburg says, "is that in this culture, we don't value what our friends call `worthless conversation.' It's the kind of talk that you always find in Third Places, and it gets us to mutually understand people and appreciate them. . . . They gain in value to us as we hang around with them and get to know them.
"Nowadays we put less value on it. We tell ourselves basically that that kind of talk is worthless. There's no point to it."
Economist Tibor Scitovsky drew a Big Three of American leisure time pursuits, Oldenburg says. "They involve, number one, getting in the car; number two, shopping; and number three, watching television."
Each is a low-skill activity.
"Europeans seek more stimulation from their environment than we do. Part of it is just getting out among one another and talking. Talking is unlike shopping, watching TV and getting out in the car. It does take skill."
by CNB