Of affluence...

Somebody asked me the last week, what I thought in the western society created a proportional over-representation of striving artists compared to other less affluent societies?First, I had to make her repeat the question to get it right, and then secondly, my best answer came out short: "Time," I said, "but, I can`t say, it`s one of those big questions..."

It stuck with me, the question, because, I thought she was right, though I havn`t read or heard of any research confirming the thought, it`s more a gut-feeling. I know she is right.

Then over the week, what could be p a r t of an answer started taking shape. Each morning, cycling my young Carl to his kindergarten I pass another kindergarten. This particular kindergarten is a "forest-kindergarten", which means that the siblings each morning, by bus, are being transported to a recreational area outside the capital. In it self a good idea, though saddening as it is that the capital can not supply sufficient green and the blue for future workers...or what not.

Saying goodbye is never easy, but saying goodbye, each and every day should certainly make things easier, which however in the case of the forest-kindergarden doesn't seem to be the case. Parents, and many of them, waving at their children sitting in the buss awating departure, is understandable. But waving at their kids for up to 30 minutes is...sick.

Passing the kindergarten, and leaving young Carl the professional care at his kindergarten and driving the same way back, takes me a good 20 minutes. And there they are, the parents, still waving. I stopped my bike one day, to observe:

I checked the time to the before mentioned 30 minutes. 30 minutes, come on. 30 minutes and then of to the nearest latte-joint and flash the lap-top and palm-pilot and discuss how incredible stressed (the double-connotation: stress is annoying, but has also become a quality in it self: to be busy, to be needed, to be anything than expendable) they are as modern-day parents, and jeeeesus-the-sushi-they-had-last night-from-next-door-was-crap-and-I-gotta-make-it-to-the-hairdresser-before-1500-today.

Then it hit me: Shower them in attention and they will forever demand attention: They will become artists! Maybe their parents are artist, and never got attention, and didn't become good artists either, so now, believing their own psychological development to be a do-able parameter, they turn the table, and shower the kids, not with love, but attention. Everything they do is "gorgeous", "great" and "fantastic", gets framed and they stick it on the wall, mail it to their grandparents, sign the kids up for impressionistic art-classes at the age of 3, and thus:

we have a lot of artist in the affluent society.

I think. Is partly why. Affluence. Be that good or bad.