Suburbia

Subdivisions. Suburbs. Dried-up wastelands of brown grass and tiny trees surviving on the life support of daily sprinklers. Sprinklers that keep the grass green and soft, grass that the children don’t play on because they are inside, eyes fixed on the television or computer. There is nothing interesting left for them outside; it has all been cut down and banished in the name of ‘lawn care’ or ‘construction.’


I fail to understand why anyone would want to live in a place like that. Yet people flock there by the dozens, hundreds, and thousands. Each decade, the houses become bigger, the yards smaller, and the trees more shriveled. Each time the fields shrink, the unending mediocrity and stifled content of the middle-class ideal grows. It engulfs more people, more freedom, more land and more life.


There is no doubt that the houses are nice, palatial in some cases. But they can’t be lived in without fear of scratching the pristine varnish. Children must take their shoes off at the door. Dirt must be banished, as if it were not the stuff we are all made of and therefore essential for life. Fingerprints must be expunged and heaven forbid anyone step on the grass. A picture perfect life is one in which no one has a chance to move.
Picture-perfect is static, unchanging, stifling. It will fade and whither to the pale brownish yellow of old photographs, the flat, dull expression growing more serious with every passing generation.


Three car garages to hold one car and enough junk to keep the homeless happy for months. Heating costs that would keep a single mother with three children warm for five winters. All this just to fight the draft from costly windows that don’t fit right.


As suburbia grows, another phenomenon takes place within the heart of the city. It grows black and stony, turns sour and bitter.


When the affluent seek the shelter of their secluded suburbs, they no longer see the poverty, the hunger, the fear that haunts the streets of their once-nice cities. They take their wealth with them, and leave nothing behind for the millions who cannot afford their small apartments, or to drive an hour just to get to a job. What was a bad situation becomes worse, crime rises while city funds and social programs decrease.


When this happened in Rome, the result was the Middle Ages. Now it’s happening again, which doesn’t make the future look very bright. The rich are abandoning the poor, the economic divide is growing. And what do we do? We hide behind privacy fences so we can’t see the results.


Suburbia, the middle class American dream, is a danger to the entire fabric of society. An insulated life leaves the next generation blind to the troubles of the world outside. A life of luxury only adds to the growing hardships of the poor. When the rich ignore the state of the world around them, bloody chaos like the French Revolution happens.


Gated communities need to rip down their security fences and leave their ideal idea behind, because an ideal can never be real. The real world needs suburban people to leave their artificial landscapes and climate controlled houses, before it is too late.