Suburban Paradise Lost
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost
I am going to direct this at a hypothetical disenchanted suburbanite in the first-person, so try not to take it personally if it does not describe you, and even if it does, learn from it. Or bitch in the comments and I will be happy to laugh at or ignore you until I find it necessary to block you.
No, your suburban home is not a dystopia. You are a lazy crybaby attempting to make excuses for your personal failings. You are not oppressed by pleasant and clean neighborhoods with large houses lined with seasonally blooming flowers, or modern conveniences like plumbing and central air. You are not held back by urban development, zoning, or so-called "food deserts." There is no such thing as a food desert. You are just a whinging loser who doesn't have the capacity to understand how good you actually have it from the constant pampering you have experienced since birth. Your attempt to gain victim credits is pathetic and normal people don't want your opinions to change their happy lives.
You hate the grass and lack of trees? Simple solution to that: Landscaping. Grow vegetables and fruits in your backyard, if that is what you want to do. Tear out your grass and replace it with native plants that use less water or a rock garden, if you would like. Have some shitty HOA that tries to stop you, then join it and change the rules. Want more recycling, then begin with yourself, then start a community pickup program.
You need to walk 2 miles to the store? Guess what? That is not that far. You can do it on a bike in minutes and have a network of sidewalks and streets that provide you the most mobility of anyone in your geographic location in human history. People in more primitive societies, and those living off grid with no irrigation or municipal water connections, sometimes need to travel 10 miles just to get the water they need for the day, most of them by foot and carrying it on their heads. Even if you grow your own veggies and fruits, you still will have all that open yard in front to play games. What a waking nightmare to have a personal park, I know!
What is a food desert? Thomas Sowell explained that frequently criticized food deserts are simply places where large grocery stores cannot operate profitably due to the rampant crime caused by the inhabitants of those hilariously deemed "communities." He also showed that the poor in the US are more likely to be obese, the exact opposite of malnourishment. The problem is not a lack of access to food, the problem is a lack of proper personal choices and self-control. Perhaps the education to exercise free will has been effectively lost with generations of latchkey kids pawned off on the open-air prison camps called public schools, but with all the learning one could ever need basically free online, seems like a fairly unreasonable excuse.
We do not live in food deserts. We live in Edenic gardens of excessive abundance. You live like a king and yet you spend all your time complaining about urban planning, as if you have a degree or even passing interest in anything other than being bad at XBox and smoking weed. Get up, get a life, and make the world better with your hard work, and without trying to tear down everything that already functions perfectly well in the process.
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