If you really sit and consider the nature of the times we live in, the oddly disparate state of loveliness and vulgarity, euphoria and despair, that informs our day-to-day life, it should come as no surprise that the Kardashians qualify as 'celebrities'. But these poster children for opulence and entitlement, famous merely for being famous, better hope the bottom doesn't fall out of the economy in one cataclysmic lurch. If it's true what my dad has been telling me since I was seven, that money is only 'worth' something because the government tells us it is (and all that that implies), the Kardashian clan better hope our money isn't suddenly rendered worthless in a chain of events that others much more in the know than my father have repeatedly suggested we are only one or two major bank runs away from at any given moment.
Is it likely? Probably not. At least being throttled into some Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome scenario isn't all that likely. Or so I choose to believe, anyway. While every once in a while I take a peek out the window and am left not a little relieved to see another quiet, uneventful day passing - people going about their business, birds in the trees, clouds in the sky - I try not to be overly cynical about the stability of our culture and our government, or about people in general. I have found when bad things happen, people tend to act better, not worse. They step up. They come together.
Here's hoping...
But what if it happened, and in a worst case way? What if by 2030, this tightly-woven grid of finance, infrastructure, food supply, electrical power and land ownership, which more and more lately seems held together and/or acknowledged by just one thing - the Internet - suddenly collapsed? Those of wealth and privilege, who know only wealth and privilege, might find themselves in dire circumstances, 'with no direction home', as Bob Dylan sang.
The truth is, we're all a little too comfortable in our American way of life, too quick to assume that the way we've known things to be in our lifetime is not only how they've always been, but will always be. The only ones who might actually survive an attitude adjustment on a national or global scale are the ones taking it really seriously now, the Doomsday Preppers crowd gathering nuts for winter, and I'll be the first to admit I'm simply not that. I think about this stuff sometimes; everyone does. But I am by no means an outdoorsman or survivalist. If I got a summer afternoon to spare, it's gonna be spent on the couch watching a Braves game if at all possible, not digging an underground bunker and stockpiling bulk cans of navy beans.
That being said, I'm confident I possess the basic skills to at least make a go at surviving a post-Apocalyptic world. Merely by virtue of the life I've led, I'm conditioned to adapt, accustomed to acquiring and interpreting knowledge as a tool for improving my circumstances, and thus believe I would respond reliably. I would immediately prioritize my needs, pare them down to a short list of must-haves and must-dos. I would loot a gun shop, library and grocery store/pharmacy, in that order. I'd head north along a waterway, avoiding cities and making use of what I know already - about weather, about the night sky, about wild edible plants. I'd learn to accept spartan conditions, cope with an existence that would never again be anything more than uncomfortable, but probably have a new appreciation for what will have become the privilege of seeing each new sunrise.
No revelation in any of this, surely; all very basic stuff for people having lived ordinary lives.
But the Kardashian children have not lived ordinary lives. They and others like them came out of the womb straight into a womb, and their only defense against anything, really, is their wealth and privilege, which they did not have to work or sacrifice for. If that were taken away in one fell swoop, I get the sense they would be absolutely lost, totally helpless. I could be wrong, certainly. I don't know them personally, and I never will. I only know how they come across on television, occasionally catching an episode on E!, but mostly bits that wind up on the Soup, or interviews, particularly the one a few years back where Barbara Walters, with her mouth twisted up in a 'what are we doing here, ladies...seriously?' sneer, told them to their faces that they have no talent.
Babs took a little heat for that, but it's painfully true (painfully obvious) and she's to be admired for her candor. While various incarnations of their shows - namely Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami and Kourtney and Kim Take New York - try to pass them off as shrewd businesswomen...er, something...I'm not buying it. They're not 'taking' anything, a section of it is merely being given to them, in a carefully managed prescription, and what they do with it is always kind of boring and bored. At best, their accomplishments, the businesses they purportedly establish and run, can only hope to survive under the vacuously sterile conditions of celebrity. And judging from how they are portrayed (or allow themselves to be...keeping up with, indeed...), I am left taking Walters' assertion a step further: the Kardashians are not only talentless, they are so tiredly one-dimensional in their thinking, so intellectually lazy and isolated from reality, they'd struggle terribly were the crap to hit the fan, really hit the fan. Worse, they'd fight the sudden disintegration of their entitlement with every fiber of their being, rather than trying to (or being able to) adapt.
If I could ask Kim Kardashian just one question, it would be: how do you find the north star?
I'd be willing to bet she couldn't.
Does she need to know how to find the north star? Well, let's take a peek out the window ... ... as of right now, no. Neighbor's got his motorcycle out for the year. School bus just cruised passed. Lilacs are starting to bloom. Birds in the trees...all's copacetic.
For now.
Maybe I shouldn't pick on the Kardashians. They're hardly the first to achieve fame merely on looks and/or wealth, and (truly) shouldn't be maligned merely because they were fortunate enough to be born into the family they were. I guess it's not really the Kardashians themselves, so much as the fandom, the superstardom, the influence we as a society award them for not really being of much use for anything or to anyone, for (indeed) having no talent, that is the real reason to seek out a nebulous life.
Or at the very least disconnect the cable.
