Enough time has passed I can tell this story without fear of people being identified or finding out.
This summer I went to a buddy of mine's wedding. He's a eclectic character, doing his own thing, so it was only natural he would get married later in life. His wife was from San Francisco, was a teacher, as were all of her friends. It was inevitable it was a hippie wedding, most people were liberal, but since it wasn't my wedding I knew enough just to be quiet and shut up.
However in being quiet and shutting up, it was interesting to see the wedding unfold, especially the bridesmaids.
The majority of the bridesmaids and female friends of the bride we in their 30's and not married. They all had very important careers (assistant art director, teacher, teacher, teacher, teacher, special ed teacher, teacher, teacher, drama director, etc.) and they were all noticeably vocal about "finding a man." But there was another thing I noticed.
They were RABIDLY econ-friendly.
Not a la "environmental terrorist" or "ELF" sort of rabid, but the first thing you picked up on was when you walked up to the facility there was one of these 30 something girls telling you how everything was laid out, where all the food was, but (most importantly) this was a "green wedding" and nobody would "have to worry" because everything was going to be recycled or composted. I remember the look in the girl's eyes when she hurriedly rushed to the part about it being a green wedding. A little blank, but this spark in her eye showed when she showed us the labelled bins (trash, compost, plastic recycle, paper recycle).
As the wedding progressed and the wedding party had to be herded from one function or room to another, sure enough there was always some 30 something friend of the bride highlighting the green aspects of the wedding. The confetti was biodegradable. Compost over here, oh "here, here is the recycle bin!" You can eat your chairs. And finally, when we all had dinner and it was apparent people would be disposing of their trash, a cadre of women got up and started orchestrating the disposal of the food. "Plastic recyclables go here, food for composting goes here!" They JUMPED from their seats and were eager to do this.
While this show within a show was going on, there was a guy I got to know a little bit. Foreign guy from a very poor country. We'll leave it at that. He started his own company here in the US and was very much a capitalist. He was also a very handsome fellow and knew it. He was alpha. And in sitting at our table I silently watched him just run circles around the plethora of 30 something single ladies. He talked about his little boy which melted their hearts (though he never produced a photo). He said all the right things. And smiling, constantly smiling. Sure enough when it came time to make sure people disposed of their waste properly, all the women at our table left, and I looked over to him and said,
"You know precisely what you're doing."
He responded, "they're all the same."
It was true. They were all the same. But in more ways than one.
Sure, they were women. They liked good looking confident men. They were also the same in their professions (liberal arts, touchy feely, no real economic production type jobs). They were also all single. But what really united them was how zealously religious they were about the whole green thing. Because with nothing else in their lives, flashing their "green credentials" was about the only thing they had left in life.
With no husbands, no boyfriends, no family, boring hobbies (oh, wow, organic wine tasting, who saw that coming!?), and jobs nobody really cared about (because they weren't interesting), these girls unconsciously knew on some level they weren't interesting people and didn't lead interesting lives. Teachers? A dime a dozen. Single? All people have been that before. You like to travel? Well who in the Patron's Saint Name of Frick doesn't? The foreign man was the most interesting fellow at the table, and thus he took up most of the attention. No one asked anything buy the basic courtesy questions about them. But once an opportunity for these girls to "do their thing" and show everybody just how good greenies they were popped up, blamo! They were performing like caffeinated monkeys in a circus.
NOw I don't know if they did that because they had nothing else in their lives. I don't know if they did that to impress the 2 or 3 alpha males in the wedding party. I don't know if they did it because they actually believe it. But whatever reason they did it, it was sad. For it was proof that K-16 (18 for some) education system merely indoctrinated them about "going green" and other leftist claptrap to the point they were damaged goods. 30 something, yearning to find a man, and instead of being an interesting person, or having an interesting career, or having a skill (say, ballroom dancing, or playing chess well), ALL they could do was puff their chests with their ability to compost and recycle.
Sadly, it's like hipsters or your average college liberal. They try so hard to "rebel" but lack the intellect to genuinely do so, all they merely achieve in the end is conformity and commonness. And there is no value in commonness and conformity. Alas, there's no shortage of 30 something liberal art-educated-and-employed-women who lack what men want, but hey, at least they can tell you where to get some mean organic wine from the Napa Valley!
Enjoy the decline!
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