How does modern culture escape ‘little boxes made of ticky tacky’?

By David McElroy · January 9, 2012

Life is full of tradeoffs. If we choose one thing that we want, we tend to be forced to give up a degree of something else we also value. Being happy isn’t a matter of getting everything we want. It’s a matter of finding the right tradeoffs — deciding what matters most.

It seems as though most modern people have chosen — perhaps unconsciously — the path of accumulating material things over emotional connections with other people. So millions of them sit in their suburban “boxes” and wonder why they’re miserable, even though they’ve achieved what they thought they wanted.

I’m thinking about this because of an old song that someone introduced me to over the weekend. (Listen to the song at the end of the article.) Malvina Reynolds was a singer/songwriter and political activist in the ’60s. I doubt I would have agreed with many of her political positions, but I found myself strongly identifying with her song, “Little Boxes,” which satirizes the antiseptic and meaningless lives that she saw people living in suburban tract homes.

I’m of two minds about people who protest against this “little plastic life.” There’s a part of me that appreciates the standard of living we’ve come to have because of the standardization and mass production of our lives. A world in which everything was custom-built individually is a world where not nearly as many people can afford nice houses and other material things.

On the other hand, there’s a huge part of me that’s repulsed by the world those things have created.

I don’t want to take away people’s ability to pursue that life. If people are foolish enough to value those “Little Boxes” and the kinds of empty lives that frequently come with them, that’s their choice. But I don’t want to be part of a world where we all look the same, act the same and raise our children the same. And I don’t think you can be part of that plastic life and still live a life with the values I believe are important.

Today’s little suburban boxes are nicer than the tract homes of the ’60s. Homebuilders know to vary the designs in a subdivision enough to give people the illusion of something that’s just for them. But the life it represents is still just as sterile to me as what Reynolds sang about. The life it leads to — the whole package deal — is the sort of life that doesn’t seem worth living. Not to me.

If that’s the life you want, I truly want you to have that choice. But if you live in a nice house with all the material things that life can offer — yet you’re still unhappy — you have to consider whether the tradeoffs you’ve made are worth it.

I know what I want. I know what I need. At the top of my list are real connections — emotional, intellectual and spiritual. I’d like loads of money and some nicer things — in a few areas — than I have now. (And we all want the illusion of security that more money brings, don’t we?) I wrote recently about how I believe I’ve undervalued the drive to accumulate wealth, and I do think that’s true. But I’ll never accumulate wealth if it means giving up the things that truly matter.

As a society, I believe we’ve collectively jumped off a cliff in pursuit of “the American Dream.” If we lose the things that matter most — real emotional and intellectual connections with others — it will be a very lousy tradeoff, no matter how good our Little Boxes look from the outside.

Our Little Boxes might be full of nice “stuff,” but they’re worth nothing if the hearts of the people inside are relatively cold and empty as a part of the deal.

Little Boxes
Malvina Reynolds

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there’s doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

Little Boxes Malvina Reynolds

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Little Boxes
Malvina Reynolds