Isn’t ‘urban exploration’ a bit ruin-pornish?
The individual travels along with small groups, trespassing through cityscapes and abandoned buildings as though they were archeological ruins. Breaking the law or possibly breaking the law is part of the appeal.
Perhaps such folks are traveling as well through their own imaginations, romanticizing themselves as transgressive outsiders, taking the idea of archeology as fixed knowledge and applying it to their own present as though it were a mythic, imaginative quest, where some camaraderie, historical meaning and beauty are to be found.
A video explanation:
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Naturally, one impulse expressed here is the desire for group membership and meaning. Like kids who’ve found something new and cool to do, some recognition is desired from others or from society at large, even if it’s negative. There’s a vagabond-hipster feel to much of this, and it’s easy to imagine listening to an indie-music-montage with the latest stop-motion technology or documentarianism when one looks at the photos.
Readers will know I tend to think some of this is a sign of a newer, more anarchic/nihilistic individualism and subsequent collectivism in our culture that is partially, but not wholly, a product of the 1960’s.
One theme of this blog is how this process of increased nihilistic individualism merges with a search for meaning, group membership and identity in our culture, as in the above. This can increase the desire for collective solutions to problems, which can cast increased upward pressure on old boomer/nationalistic liberalism and liberalism in general.
At the very least, we end-up rehashing the battles of the 60’s in perpetuity. Liberalism follows the logic and incentives it’s helped to create.
James Fallows at the Atlantic, former speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, is now exploring the wonders of post-hippie settlers in Vermont to stay relevant to a new generation of readers: Vermont Report: Shaping The Soul Of A School.
I didn’t know schools had souls.
Don’t you want to live in Austin, or Boulder, or Portland, or Williamsburg (not colonial, addition: yes, there’s sarcasm here )?
NPR looks at hipsterism while their guiding ideals have helped create hipsters through all that boomer’s 60’s activism. One challenge is mixing the Lawrence Welk crowd while staying relevant with the hipsters they’ve helped create.
Related On This Site:What about the victims of crime, not all this romanticization of criminals?: Heather MacDonald At The City Journal: ‘Radical Graffiti Chic’.
Two ways around postmodernism, nihilism?: One is Allan Bloom Update And Repost: ‘A Few Thoughts On Allan Bloom–The Nietzsche / Strauss Connection’… Here’s a suggestion to keep aesthetic and political judgements apart-Roger Scruton In The American Spectator Via A & L Daily: Farewell To Judgment…
Institutionalized Leftism in the Arts: From ReasonTV Via Youtube: ‘Ken Burns on PBS Funding, Being a “Yellow-Dog Democrat,” & Missing Walter Cronkite’…Repost-From NPR: Grants To The NEA To Stimulate The Economy?
Repost-Via Reason: ‘Salvador Allende’s Cybersocialist Command Center’
Great video. Not sure why you call it nihilistic individualism. It looks like they only visited public buildings so, as citizens, they were just exercising their ownership rights.
They ‘sneak’ into places, sometimes against the law and without permission. There’s a higher regard for their own ‘urban exploration’ and their mission rather than the other interests involved. That doesn’t show too much respect for the public nor the laws in my opinion, and it encourages a similar type of behavior.