Bobos in Paradise

A while back, I read an interesting book by David Brooks entitled ‘Bobos in Paradise.’ This book and others like it heralded an oftentimes unrecognized group of individuals outside of the normal lifestyle. Brooks defined this new experimental lifestyle or culture as a blending of bourgeois and bohemian values. To my mind, he could have been talking about the Sixties and my own experiences there as much as he was about the end of the decade.

Brooks went on to explain: ‘Because we identify ourselves as creative people, we increasingly demand a lifestyle build around creative experiences. We are impatient with the strict separations that previously demarcated work, home and leisure. Whereas the lifestyle of the previous organizational age emphasized conformity, the new lifestyle favors individuality, self-statement, acceptance of difference and the desire for rich multidimensional experiences.’

About the same time ‘Bobos in Paradise’ hit the book shelves, Richard Florida came out with his own well-researched book entitled: ‘The Rise of the Creative Class.’ The book’s jacket notes explained that: ‘Just as William Whyte’s 1956 classic The Organization Man showed how the organizational ethos of that age permeated every aspect of life, Florida describes a society in which the creative ethos is increasingly dominant.’

‘Millions of us are beginning to work and live much as creative types like artists and scientists always have – with the result that our values and tastes, our personal relationships, our choices of where to live, and even our sense and use of time are changing.’

To bring it into the present, I came across an article in the Mpls-St. Paul Magazine about just this very trend. A vacant building named (The Kickernick) on the edge of downtown Minneapolis was recently purchased with the intent of filling it with artists and other creative types. The goal was to generate interest and excitement for that development and similar ones around it.

With the clarity and conclusions of my own past experiences in public and commercial television, I realized both Brooks and Florida were really talking about a side life hustle that can go by many monikers. Bohemian, beat and hippie were just some of the labels hung on my lifestyle and that of my friends back in the Sixties.

Through my latest reincarnation as a writer, I’ve begun revisiting past people, places and events that, when stitched together, form a quilted tapestry of my life. My own collection of orphaned books and magazines carefully shelved away years ago have opened a new pandora’s box of life experiences and (then) current events that captured my imagination. It confirms two truths of life. One, there have always been those who went down a different pathway in life than that followed by the crowd and, two, nothing lasts forever.

Taking the broader view, we have always had those enclaves of creativity. Paris in the Thirties, San Francisco in the Fifties, Greenwich Village in the Sixties are just a few examples. Closer to home, I missed Dinkytown in the Fifties but caught the wave on the West Bank in the Sixties and now Northeast Minneapolis and the West Side.

Yet even those hotbeds of creativity crumble and dissipate over time and are replaced by some long-forgotten neighborhood that begins to attract the creative types. It is yet another reminder that nothing lasts forever and even the industrial greats among us aren’t always destined for longevity.

Think Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Wards. IBM and Computer land Computers. Woolworths, K Mart and Spartans. The list goes on and on of once top-tier giants in their respective industries who somehow found a way to stumble, lose direction and end up in the dustbin of history.

Imagine if just a few years ago, someone suggested that the venerable Yellow Taxi Cab company would be crushed by individual drivers offering up their own cars for taxi service. Mr. Hilton would have laughed if you thought perhaps in the future individual home owners would offer up their own bedroom or entire homes out for rent to strangers.

Who would have guessed that electronic books might replace some printed ones? Digital would replace analog. Newspapers and magazines would be crowded out by social media posts and web sites. Each of these seismic shifts in our culture were game-changing, often radical concepts that few saw coming.

The common thread through all of these ground-breaking changes was born in the creative minds of groups and individuals. Now AI (artificial intelligence) promises to, once again, radically disrupt the food chain of progress as we’ve come to know and understand it.

Creativity still matters. Even with the assistance and hinderance of AI, the creative mind is the engine that drives it all.

Paradigms

Henry Miller, the avant-garde, bohemian writer and activist said it best:

“If at eighty you’re not a cripple or an invalid, if you have your health, if you still enjoy a good walk, a good meal (with all the trimmings), if you can sleep without first taking a pill, if birds and flowers, mountains and sea still inspire you, you are a most fortunate individual and you should get down on your knees morning and night and thank the good Lord for his savin’ and keepin’ power.”

Henry Miller probably didn’t know at the time that he could have been talking about the paradigm of growing older today when he made that statement back in the sixties.

In science and philosophy, a paradigm is a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitutes legitimate contributions to a field. And the fields are endless.

Paradigms are happening all around us and now at a faster pace than ever before. Even the idea of the aging process has evolved. The old paradigm that defined the last phase in a person’s life has changed how we look at old age.

Becoming a senior isn’t what it used to be. The old ideas of retiring and waiting for the inevitable are now a thing of the past for many older folks. It also means they’re old enough to see the power of paradigms happening all around them…all of the time, but especially now in the time of the pandemic.

Back in the eighties, Joel Baker, a local author out of Burnsville, Minnesota made quite a name for himself writing several books about the phenomena of paradigms. I was reminded of that recently when I watched a fascinating documentary on comic books.

Marvel and DC Comics ruled the world of comic books for decades. Their stable of cartoon characters hadn’t changed much over the years. It wasn’t until the early 1990s, when radical change came knocking on their corporate doors. From their talent pool arose a group of very unhappy artists who were chaffing at the bit to create new action figures and colorful characters to match their fertile imaginations. The group broke away from Marvel and DC Comics and formed their own organization under the banner of Image books. They totally upended the world of comic books.

Other examples of shifting paradigms abound all around us:

In the past, if a person wanted to stay overnight someplace, they had the choice of hotels, motels, and resorts. The lodgings came in all shapes and sizes but the premise was pretty much the same. They had rooms to rent; with or without amenities and the competition was limited.

Then two guys got this crazy idea that perhaps there were people who were willing to rent their rooms out to perfect strangers and a whole new lodging industry sprang up seemingly overnight. Now any world traveler can couch surf anyplace on the planet and never step into a hotel ever again. Now Airbnb, VRBO, and other facsimiles crowd the short-term lodging market.

Then there was Yellow cab, Super Shuttle and local, regional, and national cab companies that dominated the shuttle business. They had the market sewn up since the advent of the automobile. Once again, a couple of folks thought that private transportation might be an attractive alternative to the fixed high rates charged by most cab companies and shuttle services. Hence, Uber and Lyft came about and changed the industry forever.

At one time, there were six major publishing houses; each with many smaller imprints for specialized subject matter. Many of these publishing titans had been around for more than a hundred years. Their business model hadn’t changed since the mid-to-late-1800s.

Those six houses have now shrunk to three or four with more consolidation taking place every day. Electronic publishing and the new world of Print-on-Demand has turned the old publishing model on its head. Minimum print runs are a thing of the past and the internet has broadened the marketplace to include the entire planet.

Broadcast television made its debut in the United States in the late 1940s and gained a strong foothold in American consciousness in the early 1950s. That broadcast model/formula remained stable until the advent of cable television in the mid-1980s. Then, just as television had usurped much of the power of the movies, cable television disrupted the power of the major networks.

From there it was off to the races with the advent of DVDs and home entertainment crowding into the movie/ television business. CDs replaced LPs. Eventually computer technology allowed streaming content on multiple platforms to replace much of the DVD business model and the broadcast influence of the networks and cable channels.

The examples of paradigms disrupting the ‘tried and true’ procedures and processes continue at an ever-quickening pace. It’ll be up to my children and grandchildren to embrace and adjust to the changes swirling around us. For me, it’s an excuse to reflect, smile, and mostly watch from the sidelines. On a more personal level, it means the old adage that I grew up with of ‘retire and wait to die’ has now been replaced by ‘retire and now what?’

Following Henry Miller’s advice, I’d like to reach my eighties in good shape and still writing. It’s been one heck of a wonderful run thus far. I can only imagine what is in store for my grandchildren as they maneuver their way through life in the future. I’d like to stick around for a while to watch them do just that.