Comments by "Jeremy Firth" (@jeremyfirth) on "Kilts Khalfan - Vending Machine Culture" video.

  1. 50:00 John was asking "What is the American Spirit?" I want to make an attempt to answer that, drawing from my pioneer heritage. My ancestors five and six generations ago converted to Mormonism in England. At that time, the Mormon church was encouraging new converts to come to Zion (their name for what is now "Utah") and help build Zion. It was a utopic vision to come into the desert and build a separate civilization here. They faced ridiculous odds, gave up everything, and came to the desert. They were homesick and confused, so our street system is a strict grid. We have an enormous and intricate irrigation system of reservoirs, artificial canals, and piping to bring water to the whole valley. And we have lawns, because my British ancestors missed their homeland. They missed the grass. We have fruit trees and asparagus still grows along the old irrigation ditches because it was planted there by the pioneers. They threw everything they owned in a small cart and pushed it by hand across the Great Plains and across half of the Rocky Mountains to be a part of the Zion the Mormons were trying to build here. It didn't hold. Political ambitions set in, and the railroad connecting at the Golden Spike, connecting the two coasts with this new utopia ripped the dream to shreds. It was corrupted and colonized and infused with materialism and worldliness. This decline can be traced by the architectural history of the tallest building in Utah over time. At first, the tallest building in Salt Lake Valley was the Mormon Temple. The whole grid system of roads uses the southeast corner of the temple as the center of the grid: 0, 0. It was the center of the community. The railroad was completed, and Utah wanted to join the United States. Utah got political ambitions, and they applied for statehood with a goal of becoming nationally relevant. They built a Capitol building that is a direct replica of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., and that was the tallest building in Utah. Then, the Mormons got more and more acquainted with the modern world and all its charms, and slowly turned from a peculiar religion into a mainstream church, and became a full-on bureaucracy. They built the Church Office Building, which became the tallest (and still is, by law) the tallest building in Utah. When I was a child, the Mormon Church taught adamantly that the members should avoid shopping on Sunday. Now, the Church owns the largest shopping mall in Utah, and this mall is open on Sunday. This is a microcosm of the story of America.
    5
  2. With regard to America becoming an empire: as an identity leaves its center (we still call it the "Heartland" until the "Heartland of America" became a registered trademark of Chevrolet, that is), the identity loses its essence. It gets diluted. When you leave a fruit tree unpruned for several years, it spreads out and gets much bigger, and many more leaves, but the fruit gets smaller and more bitter. It goes wild, feral. America has expanded the empire, absorbed too many cultures, and sacrificed what made her different on the altar of consumerism and apathetic agnosticism. We've lost our heart.
    1