I am excited to be posting on the new PJ Lifestyle blog. As a psychologist, I really feel that culture drives politics and that if you can change the culture, you can change politics. Right now, it feels to me that our culture is driven by left-leaning memes in relationships, gender issues, academics, and even food. For example, why is it that when I go to get some snacks at Whole Foods, I am bombarded with Obama stickers, articles on global warming, and old hippies who have little tolerance for libertarians or conservatives? As my former graduate school dean said when an organization tried to start imposing rules on her program, “who died and made them God?”
Lifestyle blogs often have a PC bent; it will be refreshing to have one for the rest of us. To you readers out there, what lifestyle issues are of interest to you? Food, relationships, marriage, exercise and fitness? Let me know in the comments so I can address them in further posts.
Sometimes when my friends are in town we go to a wholefoods store which for me is like watching Monty Python. Staring at candy bars with dolphins on them and unintentionally funny cereal boxes with two women on the front called “Just Friends” is a laugh riot.
What is not a laugh riot is the old couple that got thrown out of their home which was torn down in order to make room for the expansion of that whole foods store under eminent domain.
I know for a fact that happened because my girlfriend was half owner in a garden store in between who was also forced to move; not as traumatic as losing your home of many years. I love the Left, ever the hypocrites.
I know what you mean, James. What does it say about our society when visiting a grocery store becomes an act fraught with political choices? I was shopping at a local Whole Foods type market(only because there was a sale on items I needed, not because I’m devoted to organic food, which I usually try to avoid). The girl bagging my groceries gave me a tragic look and said “I’m so sorry, we’re out of paper and I can only give you plastic”. I truthfully and enthusiastically replied “That’s ok, I just LOVE plastic”. I’m not proud to admit it, but I took secret pleasure at the shocked confusion on her face. I can only imagine what she thought of me.
I’m oblivious I guess–never GOT it that when my Publix grocery checker says–every time I go there–”Plastic O.K.?” there’s an environmental edge to it.
I answer, “It’s all I ever use!”
I want plastic for practical reasons. I assumed alternative was a paper bag and because I’m old, and carrying bags in my arm are destablizing, at the end of each hand I can carry quite a few in plastic.
Excellent idea, this blog. I’ve got loads of suggestions, but no time for polished response as I am taking a break from moving house. Apologies for fragments.
Organic obsessions
Extreme health and exercise and impact as we age–for instance Paltrow and praise for sleek body, but a year ago she reported she had bone problems due to poor diet.
Anything about the Hurried Child
Balance of when to introduce difficult issues to children, war, violence, good and evil, etc.
Ironies in coarsening of culture and wimpifying of culture. Things like beautiful movies being about violence and destruction while other movies are so PC they are unwatchable
Modern culture treatment of children as mini-grownups when it comes to education, but treatment of even teens and twenties as children when it comes to responsibility and big life issues
Blanket man bashing
Marital sex, specifically things disparaged in the current culture, such as maintenance sex
Influence of pornography on boys
Fashion including who to dress for (men, husband, other women, yourself, society?), different perceptions of high fashion for men and women
Reasons for divorce
Anything about therapy culture
Charitable works, not donations, but why and how people donate blood, sweat, and tears
Results and trends now that open adoptions have been the norm for about 20 years.
AHLondon,
There are great ideas. Thanks!
It would be interesting to see the fine arts addressed in the blog. A young friend who is just finishing up his fine arts degree says the newest most radical movement among young artists is technical skill and beauty over propoganda! He’s part of the technical skill / beauty crowd and has had a hell of a time with his professors.
Technical skill and beauty in fine arts….
Who’d'a thunk?
Something similar is happening in the world of creative writing studies; a small but vocal minority is insisting that, yes, a story really should be comprehensible, and writing to simply entertain isn’t a *gasp* betrayal of your art. A good rule of thumb is to ask a student writer or not they agree with the rules laid out in “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses.” (As a bonus, this can also help detect the most irritating ones right away. I have fond memories of a fellow student who, when asked, loudly proclaimed that Mark Twain didn’t know anything about writing and the ‘offenses’ were literary elitism.)
-How about the small house movement, only sans the sanctimonious gaia worshiping malarky?
-Diet and exercise, particularly low carb dieting/health.
-Work/life balance, again, without the new agey crap.
-How to use social networks.
-Cool computer tools and tricks.
-How to deal with people at work (especially how to deal with liberals at work who can’t shut up about their politics and assume everyone around them holds the same views).
I heartily second the small house movement and using social networks ideas, especially using social networks for younger kids. I’m researching that myself as I am moving my family back across the Pond and want the kids to be able to keep up with their London mates.
I’d prefer that well over half your posts are just quick blurbs with links to outside articles/blogs/commentaries (1) written about lifestyle (like Instapundit) from the conservative angle or (2) aren’t written about lifestyle per se, but illustrate your point-of-view about lifestyle issues. Like the “unexpectedly” links Instapundit uses on economic news.
You could put your original, meatier PJ-contributed posts in a separate column.
Otherwise, I wonder if you will have enough flow of updated material to keep the blog interesting? Not trying to take the wind out of your sails (I support your idea!), but the PJ Lifestyle page seemed PJ Lifeless when I landed on it. It is “webified” magazine format.
Secondly, lifestyle too easily becomes a claustrophobic, overly self-involved topic (for conservatives). A focus on looking and linking outward might help.
Ignore the confusing “(like Instapundit).” It was supposed to go after “quick blurbs.”
“Recession” gardens; self-reliance; bad effects of regulations on the same (like the woman arrested for having a front yard garden in Oak Park, MI); home-based businesses; libertarianism on the very small, local scale (like freedom from ridiculous restrictions on small home businesses), stuff like that.
How about Retro 50s? Martinis did come back (although they’ve been bastardized and corrupted with chocolate and such), as did steaks. My bucket list cause is the comeback of that 50s icon, SOCIABLE bridge playing (the serious silent competitive kind has the ACBL to see that it survives; sociable bridge has only me, a book and a blog). For conservatives surely a game with aristocratic roots back to the 1700s, Edmund (According to) Hoyle, Jane Austen novels, evolving from whist, to bridge whist to auction bridge and finally contract bridge. A mad fad in the 20s and 30s. It is a classic, classy game that deserves revival. Green too in terms of environment. One deck of cards–endless non-repeating hands to play.
Not sure I belong, politically, on this website. I don’t belong ANYWHERE these days. But, culturally and pop culturally, I’m a traditionalist.
I don’t know you so don’t know where you belong either, but I’ll play bridge with you.
It would be nice to see positive stories about ‘evil capitalism’. We need to counter ideas like Walmart is a destructive and evil force in our world that rapes the world of resources and destroys communities. Therefore you should buy your cornflakes at Target… or better yet, organic ones at whole foods…or better yet, grow your own corn in your hobby farm and make your own corn flakes….
I’m tired of people just assuming that ‘local’ and ‘self sufficient’ is a morally superior way to live. The truth is that Walmart runs a fantastically efficient way of using the world’s division of labor to raise the general wealth through specialization. Just because they are winning the efficiency game doesn’t make them evil, it makes them pioneers.
Therefore, I’d like to see stories about examples of better living through advancement in technology and modern distribution. Like how a guy could spend 1/3 as much money on food at Walmart vs Whole Foods and use THAT savings to donate time and money to something that actually helps the community in a MODERN way…. Not the ‘lets all become self sufficient villages again like in the 1840′s’ way.
Or at least, expose the hypocrisy of things like:
Target good but Walmart bad (same general business model, different names)
IKEA good but…um, Walmart bad (both huge, but one is trendy and European!)
Toyota (prius good, ignore the sequoia) but anything GM is bad.
Unions good (GM), market labor (toyota) bad…contradicting the last one.
Basically, I want to see the success story of some guy who started at the bottom at Walmart in his little town of little opportunity instead of working at dad’s tire store…and therefore was able to move up in management and get education assistance to do something else with his life…. Instead of the same story of the family business being ruined by better competition and how that isn’t progress.
A great story could be one about how much it would cost to live like they did in the 50′s by working PART TIME at (insert evil corporation name here). All thanks to the magic of international trade and specialization.
Think of the millions of man/woman hours spent each day by our legislators and regulators, ably assisted by the progressive blogosphere, in helping to keep us focused on our health and safety, and enabling us to make responsible and informed choices. Now here you come with your snarky blog, promoting pollution (plastic bags!) and self-destruction (cigars!), snidely suggesting that those who labor for the common weal deserve our scorn rather than our gratitude — well, it just makes me so mad!
Go ahead and destroy our planet, saddle the conscientious with your health care costs from your arteriosclerosis and lung cancer, mortgage our children’s future with your unsustainable consumption and lampoon those who strive to educate us on living a less-self-centered, less indulgent and more progressive life. Our leaders are trying to help us move forward, and you want to take us backward.
Of course, that’s not what you are doing at all, but the bluenosed chatterboxes of the “progessive” blogs will attack you like a pack of rabid bats, so we thought we’d see if we could suck them in.
We look forward to your efforts.
I’m doing my part. I recently started a website about classical music, popular culture and aesthetics. The two most recent posts were about beauty in music and the function of arts manifestos and how they connect with the leftist long march through the institutions. Go have a look! Here’s the URL:
http://themusicsalon.blogspot.com/
I’m really looking forward to seeing more of this. I just graduated college a couple of years ago, and everything aimed at my age group seemed to be relentlessly, hysterically left-wing; a PJ lifestyle blog will be a great change.
Dr. Helen,
Outstanding! I’m a few months behind (obviously). I haven’t been to this website in a bit. It’s nice to have a Lifestyle website that isn’t explicitly Left-Wing. Finally, one for us! Awesome.
Onto a comment: will you do something on nutrition? Thanks.