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03/15/2008: "Homogenization destroying the West"
All the things that make our cities, towns and villages different and special are being eroded. Homogenisation — the same chains in every high street, the same bricks in every new housing estate, the same menu in every pub — is the story of our age.
The distinctive is replaced by the bland, the organic by the manufactured, the human by the impersonal. The ancient and the quirky are being bulldozed to make way for the clean, the progressive, the corporate. Everywhere is becoming the same as everywhere else.
I take this personally. The meaning is being sucked from the places I care for or feel I belong to. A complex web of intimate relationships between people and places is being dismantled. And no one's permission is being sought, not yours or mine.
The world is being cleaned up and flattened out without a by-your-leave. Giant multinational companies dominate almost every area of national life, from finance to farming, down to the beer you drink and the apple you eat. They do so with the full and enthusiastic encouragement of the state.
[ Just wait until they turn you into grey, cultureless, religionless, valueless, brainless drones. Ever read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World? It's the book Orwell cloned, but done much better. ]
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=534291&in_page_id=1770&ito=newsnow