What is Real?

Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between that which is real and that which is made to look real. Those things that are made to look real are clever imitations that are actually designed to sell things.

When entering a grocery store you are often shown departments that mimic their counterparts in the real world where the flower shop and the bakery look like they are sitting in a bizarre replica of a main street scene. They have fake wooden barrels. They have divided glass windows in the back ground like a prop on a stage. The lighting is different in these fake shops as well.

Marketers will call this value added shopping, but I think of it as unnecessary value or value reversal, or even misguided value. It inspires me to take a little extra time and visit that stand alone bakery, florist, card shop.

It’s like visiting Disney Land. They make it look real, and you want it to be real, but in the end they have your money and you have some plastic crap that will one day end up in a land fill.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if Disney or someone created a theme park based on the suburbs where the rides would all look like commuter and school buses and the shops were in strip malls? There would be a 7-Eleven at every other intersection. Let’s not forget the graffiti and the smell of fried fast food. The actors would all wear their hats backwards and cruise the park on skate boards. There would be homeless actors. There would be things out there that are no longer hidden in the urban landscape. Our “present” is the nostalgia of the future.

Isn’t it sad to think that the children today will look fondly and romantically at the town in the paragraph above.