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September 11, 2005
IKEA and Katrina: thoughts on a certain cultural mentality
I went to IKEA in Atlanta yesterday and got a lot of good stuff. While I was raking in the various bowls/utensils/etc. for which I was there, I was struck by how many kinds of products they offer for organizing your stuff. Endless wooden shelves, plastic drawers and bins, magazine racks, hat stands, shoe hangers, and even large wine racks that went from floor to ceiling. Wow, I thought, IKEA really wants me to be organized. Then it occurred to me that perhaps IKEA is simply reflecting current cultural trends. Of course, it is a Swedish store, so I would apply this to Western culture in general, not just America. We need to have things in order and organized. If we don't then we need to shape up and get it together, right now. Just watch all those home makeover shows that spin off of each other and you'll see what I mean.
As I was thinking about this today, it further occurred to me that our culture is also one that has to have all the answers. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, we all wanted to know why this happened, and quickly moved into the blame game. We can't seem to acknowledge that not everything is preventable, or that we are not as powerful and organized as we think. Bill McClay does a much better job of expounding on this idea than I can. Perhaps we ought to reflect on the fact that we cannot put everything rationally into order- while there are some things about Katrina that we can point to clearly as causes, we also ought to see that we don't have an answer for everything, and thus do not have it all together.
I know it's a strange connection between IKEA and Katrina, but hey, my brain feels like making strange connections today.
| By heiders | 03:24 PM
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