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Life Incorporated: The Dissolution of the American Community

Chapter three of Douglas Rushkoff's Life Incorporated is one that hits solidly home for me. Back in September I moved from the overcrowded state of New Jersey to the Western side of Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley - out to the country. Now I'm not that far from a metro-area. Harrisonburg (home to James Madison University) is 25 minutes away (with all it's strip malls and corporate stores). If I'm feeling especially adventurous, I can head over the mountain towards Charlottesville (home of Monticello and the University of Virginia), which would only take 45 minutes to an hour, depending on weather and traffic into the city. Both of these places are considered cities, but in reality they're well developed metro areas - smaller than Richmond and Roanoke. I get to enjoy these centers of commerce, but by living out farther in the valley I get to taste what traditional American life was like.

The biggest impact my move had on me dealt with the mythological feel of rural American towns. There are large stretches of country between these towns, and even larger stretches between metro areas. You can travel 10-15 minutes (sometimes longer) without seeing much civilization. When you do, it's like traveling back in time. Random small buildings have nothing of note outside except old style Coca-Cola or RC Cola signs. Each town seemed to have a Tastee Freez (made famous by John Mellencamp) at some point. Downtown areas looked like miniature cities with maybe 5, 10 or perhaps 15 two story buildings tightly packed together. It was like I journeyed away from a corporately run and soulless New Jersey to finally find the heart of America - in all its myth and legend.

Unfortunately, the visual escape was nothing more than visual. Many of the franchised Tastee Freezs are gone with their buildings sold to other businesses. Those Coca-Cola and RC Cola signs are antiques attached to closed buildings that don't sell much of anything anymore. Meanwhile much of these towns downtown areas lack any real business - just empty stores.

In Elkton, Virginia an old movie theater sits abandoned not far from an empty grocery store that used to be locally owned. Although businesses exist in its downtown square, the area isn't nearly as bustling as it used to be. Locals tell me that 10-15 years ago, it would take you nearly 20 minutes to drive through downtown and loop back around - too many people out walking and carrying on. Today is a different story.

The community feel still exists in these small towns, but much of it is peppered with trips to Harrisonburg, or the Walmart twenty minutes away. But these aren't communities that have given up on their personal touch. These are places that have been beaten down by corporatism. These are local, family-owned and community-supporting businesses that get crushed under corporate prices, eventually leaving a formerly self-sufficient town dependent of corporations to feed, clothe and entertain them.

In the third chapter of Life Incorporated, Rushkoff talks about the destruction of these American communities that effectively desocialize individuals in an almost divide and conquer way to make us slaves to a corporate run society. The community and social feel of the American culture - still slightly evident in the Virginia towns that I travel - has been replaced by a "New Urbanism" warped by corporations in an attempt to usurp that American myth and turn it into a commodity, an environment that can be used for marketing purposes. He uses Birkdale, North Carolina as an example - a corporate built and sustained town that on the surface looks like Old Town America, but beneath is nothing more than a corporate sponsored experiment.

The American dream is being replaced with the corporate motto. Corporations have declared war on the American community and are destroying that which they cannot receive an ROI from. This will result in American towns being dependent more and more on corporations for their needs and sustainability - an entire American populace at the mercy of a corporate greed that is just looking for more cogs to keep the wheels spinning.

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