THE OLD SAW MILL
Society is commonly cheap. We meet at very short
intervals not having had time to acquire any new
value for each other.
—Henry David Thoreau (Walden)

If you ever visit Pennsylvania Amish country you might happen upon a little town called Lititz, a place where old men like to sit and talk about the weather, and old women like to sit and talk about old men.1 At first glance, the town appears to be a simple place with not much to see or do. But once you find your way around, you realize the town is a hidden gem. A quaint main street with some local merchants and more coffee shops than coffee drinkers presents the
quintessential spirit of Americana.

On the outskirts of the town, past the shops of Main Street, you’ll find what appears to be a wood junkyard—piles of old lumber stacked everywhere in no obvious pattern. From the entrance, the wood looks like stuff to be thrown away, wood that has lost its purpose. But a survey of the property reveals hundred-year-old barn timber going through the brutal process of finding new life. This junkyard turns out to be a working sawmill.

Dean Brandt runs this wood salvage operation. He collects antique wood, selling it as some of the most beautiful hardwood flooring you can buy. His father, Sylvan, who began the business decades earlier, coined the business’s motto: “We don’t offer perfection but, rather, the beauty of imperfection.”

Dean scours the country looking for wood that comes from dilapidated barns and old farmhouses, weathered wood that most people send to the scrap pile. The wood’s patina tells  the story of the mature tree that produced it, as well as the story of how the wood was used. Dean calls the weathered blemishes the memory of the wood, beauty marks that contribute to the wood’s uniqueness. The older and more weathered the wood, the more beautiful it will be when Dean finishes with it. “The beauty of imperfection.”

Contrast this antique wood with the kind commonly found at Home Depot. The wood there looks real and feels real but does real wood come in the same colors as a J. Crew sweater? The flooring that fills this aisle of Home Depot is engineered. It has a veneer; a thin covering that hides the real material underneath. Manufacturers do this to make the wood look expensive without the consumer having to pay for the real thing. They inflate the perceived value of the product by hiding inferior wood under a veneer.

But the flooring at Home Depot isn’t the only thing that uses a veneer to give itself value. Like engineered flooring, we all have a veneer. We cover over who we really are so others will find us more attractive. We add to ourselves so others will perceive us as having greater worth. Most of the time, we aren’t aware that we’re doing it; our culture is so glossed over with the sheen of fake perfection that we unknowingly comply.

And, the more we veneer, the more comfortable our lives seem. When a whole society craves superficial beauty, instant gratification, and comfortable living, it’s difficult not to play along in the charade. We are a people who, at the click of a mouse, can have everything we could possibly want but nothing we need. Philosopher and author Peter Kreeft observes, “There is something radically wrong with a civilization in which millions devote their lives to pointless luxuries that do not even make them happy.”2 We look to these luxuries to make life livable and to make ourselves feel as if we belong. But if we survey our society—the wealthiest in the world—we will find it rife with people who are struggling with depression and despair, hopelessness and lack of purpose, void of true identity.

THE HISTORY OF THE LOSS OF MEANING  (LONG LIVE THE QUEEN)
Oh, has the world changed, or have I changed?
—The Smiths (“The Queen Is Dead”

Veneer has been used for hundreds of years to inflate one’s self and is a by-product of a much deeper problem that began with the birth of consumerism. The proliferation of this mind-set began in the sixteenth century during the reign
of Queen Elizabeth when cultural elites gorged themselves on consumer goods in order to achieve a perceived status in culture.

Queen Elizabeth is known as the most consumerhappy monarch in the Tudor Dynasty. The pomp and regalia of her court were so overblown and audacious, it forced the noblemen to “spend with a new enthusiasm, on a new scale.”3 In order to keep up with the Queen (and to meet expectations of what it meant to serve in the court), the nobles retooled their county seats (their little kingdoms) with consumer goods and posh wardrobes.

Prior to the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the noble families reserved the consumption of goods for items that would benefit the family’s name and legacy. New goods were not considered valuable per se, only old ones that stood the test of time. The shift to enthusiastic spending by the nobles sparked a change in history—and in mentality. Items began to be purchased for personal status instead of family heritage.

Here we see the mind-set of veneer take hold, as the “true self” of the noblemen became secondary to their perceived value in the court. In other words, the nobles began to consume goods in order to gain value. Elizabeth’s ability to govern by way of manipulation marks what some sociologists believe to be the birth of consumption. If the nobles wanted to have influence in her court, they needed to keep pace with her lavishness. Elizabeth’s style of governing had lasting effects on the broader culture as consumption eventually became a dynamic part of society.

As time went on, the flagrant consumption that took place in Elizabethan England was mimicked by mainstream culture, and, eventually, the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries made consumerism—the action—a massive group dynamic. That is to say, everyone began to purchase “goods” more for fashion than for utility. The modern world adopted a new method of acquiring personal meaning: consuming products and goods. Sociologist Chandra Mukerji observes of that time period, “goods become a medium for the expression, transformation, and even the innovation of existing cultural ideas.”4

Consumption then is more than an action; it is an underlying belief system—a belief that personal value is associated with things. This of course leads to a specific action, like making a purchase, but the action itself is a manifestation of the view that there is greater value in our possessions than in our true selves.

Status. Pressure. Competition. Consumption. It was alive in Elizabeth’s court and it continues

THE COMMODITY OF BEING
Now the air I tasted and breathed
has taken a turn.
—Pearl Jam (”Black“)

Many of us love social networking. What a brilliant idea: find an old friend from elementary school, or stay in touch with cousins you normally see only at Christmas, or keep your family up to date on the thrills of college life. Most of us love connectivity. On some level, we feel that we are staying in touch with all 892 of our friends.

But as great as this seems, a downside emerges. Like the rest of the Internet, social networking allows us to browse. But instead of browsing news reports and football scores, we’re browsing people. We read snippets about their days or their thoughts. We look up a friend, see what they are doing, and move on. We search through our friends, choosing which ones to check on and interact with, much like we would a Google search. And no matter how we try to spin it, commenting on someone’s wall is not the same as interacting with them in person. We could call it social consumption.

Perhaps, however, the greatest achievement of technology is its ability to produce invisible people. Our computer screens allow us to hide under a veil of anonymity, separating us from the real world. Our real names are replaced with screen names, our real actions glossed over with pithier status updates.

As human products, we fade into the invisible, people devoid of real interaction. We miss the nuance, the intricacy, and the beauty of real, in-person social interaction. In the end, the Web offers only feel-good shots of experience. More than ever, we feel connected with each other. But browsing life data does not produce relationships. In the New York Times, Sherry Turkle, a psychologist and the director of the M.I.T. Initiative on Technology and Self, says that when we’re on the computer, on our networks in Facebook, “we are no longer able to distinguish when we are together and nurtured and when we are alone and isolated. I can be in intimate contact with 300 people on email, but when I look up from my computer I feel bereft. I haven’t heard a voice, touched a hand, for hours or days. I think people are no longer certain where the self resides.”5

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