During my travels throughout north America I've come to a rather depressing conclusion. Before I share it with you, a disclaimer; I lay no claim to being a well seasoned traveller or any such nonsense, nor have I visited every single state or lived for a prolonged period in any of the places I have visited. So you are well within your rights to call me an uninformed know-it-all gasbag and I won't take offense. So what is this dastardly scheme I have stumbled across?

Everywhere I've gone in north America is the same. I'm not talking about pretty scenery or terrain. Of course that differs from place to place. Nor am I talking about cultural issues. Of course different cities will have different compositions of cultures and various issues that they face. And no matter where you go you'll find nice people (if you're willing to look for them) and weird little one-of oddities. And yes, every town has some claim to fame as "world's greatest (whatever)"

What I'm talking about is our style of life which is largely based around economic and technological constructs, reinforced by same mass-media that's pumped into our homes 24/7. This lifestyle has been standardized, commoditized and reproduced everywhere across the continent. So what's the big deal? It didn't use to be this way.

I've travelled to lots of places in the U.S and Canada that have these amazing claims to fame as to their originality and awesomeness. It's all the same thing. Big box strip-malls selling the same products, lots of roads and lots of traffic. Going somewhere now for the "unique experience that is (insert state, city or province name here)" has largely been reduced to spending a lot of money at some hokey restaurant or shelling out bucks to see a hokey show depicting an unrealistic and glorified interpretation of the past. Want to go see an exciting civil war re-enactment? Or maybe see how the swashbuckling pirates of the Caribbean lived loose and free in the days of the British Empire? It's all the same thing, and that is the monetization of everything for profit. And for the record, I don't really see the excitement in the re-enactment of some historical event. I'm sure that as with most things in life, the reality behind all these touristy events was much less upbeat and far more scary for those actually living through it, but that's another story. As an aside, I'm not taking potshots at civil war re-enacters, in fact that was probably a poor example. Anywho.

The point I'm trying to make here (if this ramble even has a point) is that before cheap and abundant transit, mass production and the standardization and conformity of mass media, different places actually were different. Now you see the same stores selling the same products pretty much wherever you go. We've created a hologram illusion that is the modern lifestyle fed by a constant diet of mass-media junk pumped directly into our brains everynight. Don't like the city you're living in now? About the only real difference you'll find anywhere else will be the weather.

Every city has it's cocoon downtown of health-nuts and hippies that live off a steady diet of granola, with massive unsustainable suburbs on the outskirts filled with families that never walk anywhere because car is the only means to get around.

Every small town has kids who've given up on life and believe they live in a dead-end backwater who turn to drugs and alcohol, while holding down some dead end job at the rubbermaid factory down the road. From hamlets in the arctic circle to coastal towns in Canada and the U.S I've seen the exact same mentality in folks. Most towns, determined to fight back and prove they're original have 'remodeled' downtown mainstreets made to look authentic to some time period, full of boutiques full of kitschy stuff that will probably go under within a year, unless it's owned by someone who already has money and is running it as a hobby.

What's the commonality behind all this nonsense? It's all fake.

We'd be better off admitting that we've become a completely homogenous society of phonies and just give in. Let's tear down the ridiculous facade that we've created to try and illustrate our uniqueness and just go from our homes, to work, then to Walmart or other such big box store at the end of the day for our food and material goods. Why have we turned into this? Because originality is something that we now have to purchase or gain through material means. Nonsense you cry? Our entire civilization is built on it. The entire concept of 'brand' names which sell a lifestyle illustrate this quite well. And when our unsustainable lifestyle becomes threatened by dwindling energy resources, we can glady join the military to fight resource wars, thanks to the constant propaganda drilled into us that we're the best people in the world, just 'cause.

I think a lot of folks, deep down, realize this but don't want to openly acknowledge it. The most dangerous thing that can happen at any office or workplace is when folks gather around the water-cooler and say "why the hell am I working here at Joe's Carpetland selling carpet? Is my contribution to the widget industry in any way enriching my life, or merely providing me with sustenance while I strive for an unrealistic materialist dream that is in actuality an illusion?" An even more dangerous question is when the same folks start wondering if the American dream has been replaced with an illusion meant to keep us complacent and unquestioning of the big picture, that at the end of the day it may just be the biggest swindle of the modern age meant to keep us in the dark from the cold truth that as human beings we don't really matter. We've become profit centers and little else, and our real value is only determined by how much 'wealth' we can attain or be derived from us.

If you work really hard at something will you succeed? Sure you probably will, and you will then be rewarded with a nice big house in a fake suburb somewhere called "oak glen" (even though you swear you cannot see any such glens filled with oaks around other than a few plastic trees amidst all the paved roads) and you can then fill that house with all kinds of stuff! You can even take the family for an authentic vacation to some beach, where the only different or unique thing you will experience will be different weather and scenery. And of course you can experience the 'authentic' and 'colourful' tapestry of culture that belongs to the impoverished people employed at the fake resort there for very little money. And if you ever start to wonder if maybe there could ever be something more to life than the material fueled hologram we've created for ourselves, don't sweat it! We've got a wonderful pharmaceutical industry that will have you convinced in no time all your problems are just chemical imbalances in that stressed out, overworked brain of yours.