Today we went to a beautiful beach - Robert Moses State Beach on Fire Island. It is a place of long white sand, deep blue Atlantic, sand dunes in the breeze, lighthouse in the back and bright-white sunlight everywhere. It's like inside a Ralph Lauren ad.
The sand was pristine. The beach was well-cared for with life guards and police on sand buggies. There was a shower facility, cafeteria and large car park. I was content to pay the $10 per car to be there.
The route there was across a really long bridge and causeway. It is mind boggling to compare the cost of building the bridge with the benefit of reaching the beaches and a few beach front communities.
But back then, in the 50s/60s when those infrastructure - the freeways and bridges - were first built, America was loaded and people then felt great civic works like that was the future.
Elsewhere on Long Island was the typical habitat of the American dream. There were the malls and the big boxes retailers (enormous out of town stores). There were the corporate parks with squat and glassed-over offices. From the air (as I happen to be having flying experience on a small plane), I saw thousands of suburban homes most with swimming pools glistening in the back yard; and a few with waterfront and boats tied up alongside. There were boats and yachts. And gleaming cars and car show rooms. Everything was flat and take up a lot of space - enormous flat freeways with huge center dividers, flat buildings, flat strip malls, multiplexes and parking lots. The whole place groaned with the image of the consumer lifestyle.
For a very long time, when people think of modernity and the future that is what they see. First, the fruits of science and modern industry; and then the good life of comfort and ease - with the Americans showing the way.
2 hours later, after returning the rental car in Queens, I decided to walk the last few blocks to the subway down Jackson Heights. Walking along the bustling streets felt really different from being on the bus. All along the way, I could smell all kinds of cooking from the Hispanic restaurants and read the menus. I walked pass and hear the salsa music coming out of the dance clubs. Afternoons are not too early for dance clubs apparently.
So happen there was a gay parade or street party, so there were many colorful characters everywhere. Just around the corner and on the next parallel street is Little India - with sari shops, Bollywood DVD shops, the Indian supermarket (named, what else but, Patel Brothers) and a plethora of halal meat shops. Women in hijab sashayed passed by lesbian couples. Nobody even blinked twice. Everyone co-exist and mingled a few hundred feet apart.
I reflected on the meaning of future, modern and civilization.
People around the world wish for the comfort and lifestyle of ease and plenty - and see that as the epitome of modern lifestyle and socio-economic progress. In many places now, one can find much that are newer, faster and more technologically advanced than anything in America.
But after finding a clean public beach amidst an open (largely) unspoiled coast an hour from the city, well-cared for by lifeguards, opened equally to all members of public (not just the few) and enjoyed with civility and respect ... And then finding the spirit of tolerance and diversity among immigrants who originate from cultures half-the-world apart; I realized those simple things are something that cannot be bought, or measured by per capita GDP, or judged by statistics, or the shown-off like a gleaming downtown or lapped up like the latest hip-and-happening hang-out.
Indeed, I would speculate that what is truly - boldly and wonderfully - futuristic in today’s global world are whatever the values that honors the environment; that connects different people with each other and with their true spirit and with nature; and that meets the differences amongst peoples only with tolerance.
