ENG 2150 Gimme Shelter: the spaces we live in

After reading George Simmel’s “The Metropolis and Mental Life,” I realized that as urban residents, our lives are completely and utterly controlled by time and money. Of  course I had this notion beforehand, but reading Simmel’s piece let it really sink it. Simmel said that without time being used, monitored and controlled down to the fractions of a second, the metropolitan cities would fall into ruin and chaos. Time is everywhere, especially in the city. It’s in our phones, in our buildings, classrooms, on our wrists, and especially in the train stations. In such a busy, hectic city, time is a necessity in order to maintain a schedule and some form of uniformity and organization. The population is just too dense for people to walk around aimlessly without having a schedule or routine to keep. It would be absolute chaos. Not having to rely on time so much is easier in a rural life because you only really have to worry about how much sunlight there’s going to be in the day. The fractions of a second don’t account for much of anything.

Another interesting thing that I got from the reading is that we as city dwellers have come to evaluate people with quantitative value more than qualitative value. One of the first things you come to notice is how much money a person has, whether it’s by how they dress, what they buy, or what they do. In a city that is so engrossed  with financial value, the people are seen as just dollars amounts. So many people strive to become richer, to hoard more and more money, using whoever and whatever means necessary to gain more value. Punctuality gives value to people as well, showing that they care, that they are organized. GPA’s control a large portion of our scholarly lives as well. It’s intriguing yet disturbing to see how much quantitative values are growing to grip our lives.

The American’T Dream

This lengthy, but overall very powerful spoken word speech represents the ‘stream of consciousness’ of Americans across the country. It is a satire on the rags to riches notion that is commonly associated with the American Dream and effectively persuades the listeners into thinking on the speaker’s train of thought. His clever use of word association and word play create an easily understandable speech which listeners can tune into with little difficulty. He accurately dissects the mindset of many Americans and immigrants who come to America seeking the various opportunities available. This speech could be an example of James’ idea of substantive and transitive states of mind; the word play building as a transition to the punchlines, the substantive state. He establishes his individual thoughts and proceeds to bring the listeners into his ‘stream of consciousness’. He breaks the idea of my thought is mine and your thought is yours, combining the two into a single flow. Just like thought, his speech is logically continuous and rational in its entirety.