the rise of fast food and those who indulge it
The great allure of the fast food enterprise today is no longer the old-fashioned quality and family-friendly environment that once prevailed. The demographic who remember the good times of post-war America and the pleasurable McDonald’s atmosphere of the day are thinning out in numbers, primarily due to heart disease associated with a diet high in fast food. Even if they tried to pass along that nostalgia to their children, heart disease is striking younger and younger people today. Fast food needs a back-up plan.
Luckily, they already had one which, in a most subversive manner, became the dominant attraction to fast food franchises. With thousands and tens of thousands of stores plopped the world over, players like McDonald’s and KFC discovered that its not the high-fructose food that brings people back, but rather the regularity. People don’t want surprises in their daily routine, and walking into a McDonald’s should be an experience easily replicated, whether in midtown Manhattan, Moscow, or Mosul. In fact, Starbucks has been overt about this for years. Either way, normalcy paid off - people know what they are getting and as your company increases in size, you can lower prices as further incentive.
Unfortunately, this leads to a sterile life for the consumer (perhaps even literally, if enough faux-meat wreaks havoc to your southern hemisphere). You inherit a dependence on conformity; once-pleasant changes in routine are now perceived like DEFCON 1 threat levels to your otherwise stagnant way of life.
It follows, then, that the element we lack most today is not happiness - a symptom to this disease - but rather spontaneity and the willingness to simply do something different. Ze Frank put it best when he encouraged people to bust their cycle but it can be elaborated further. Busting a cycle still encourages you to maintain one, for the most part (not explicitly, mind you), and occasionally (weekly for the weak-hearted) prompts you to radically modify an aspect of it.
Each week this summer, I have made a new dish for myself. This is some real effort, too; when I am exhausted after work, it’s very tempting to slap a Boca burger on whatever fresh bread I just picked up, slice some cheddar, and microwave it for purification purposes. I actually used curry for the first time last week, a genuine attempt.
Also, once per week, I demand that I take an evening walk with my camera. The summer evenings in Blacksburg are to-die-for and I cannot allow myself to simply sit them out in the semi-comfort of a spacious apartment. These are just simple steps, almost tip-toeing towards the deep end, but nevertheless the budding promises that I am moving away from the cancerous stages of regularity and into the rehabilitation corridor of spontaneity.
Fast food promises expected results. It’s the antithesis of lab work, actually, where you always, always pray for something unusual to happen because A) surprising results can perpetuate funding and B) because an experiment repeated for solely the purpose of repetition is a waste of time and the aforementioned funding. A fast food lifestyle digs yourself into a gully - size and shape of your own choosing, but nevertheless an open grave.
The Rip-Mix-Burn mentality of the Y2K years is fading out. Now, it’s Rip-Burn, Rip-Burn, ad nauseam. Variation to our days is vital for both physical and mental health reasons. I try to vary my days as much as possible; I do what I can. Maybe the attitude is enough, but some results must back your enthusiasm. Whatever your plan, the summer is prime time for action.
For an entirely different alternative to this portrait, check out Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael, then The Story of B, and then Beyond Civilization.