Being Bobo

Sermon

Real Simple is a magazine – a magazine about simplifying your life. The subheading under the name of the magazine says "life/home/body/soul."

Their subscription card frequently falls out of my Pottery Barn catalogue. The arrival of the latest Pottery Barn catalogue (every thirty-two hours or so) is always a highlight of my day, for every sad reason you can think of, but more on that in a bit. A lot of the stuff in the images on the Real Simple card look like it comes right out of Pottery Barn. Because you know why? (I bet) it does come right out of Pottery Barn. They’re partners in a new subsection of the military-industrial multi-national corporation complex: the lifestyle industry, an intricate behemoth all about inner peace, feng shui and how your individuality can be nurtured and celebrated with the right set of textiles and paint chips. And lest you think I’m kidding about the military-industrial multi-national corporation complex, if you follow the path from my Pottery Barn catalogue to the Real Simple magazine site online and hit the button to subscribe on line, you end up at a website called: subs.timeinc.net.

Last February’s Real Simple theme was New Year Makeovers: how to eat better, look better, live better. March was Maximizing Your Space – Solutions for Every Room. It also included: How to Make Any Decision Faster, Easier and Better; 8 Recipes That Cook Themselves; Click and Wear: the Best Wardrobe Websites and When to Throw Things Out. April was How to Save $5,000 This Year: 17 Fast, Easy Strategies. May: The Ultimate Cleaning system: an Easy Top-to-Bottom Guide. June/July was Time for Yourself: Where to Find it, How to Keep It.

Well, thank goodness for June/July. I was so worn out just looking at all the themes and standards and priorities and the idea of time to myself was awfully appealing by then. But when I looked in detail at the issue I didn’t see much about time for myself; all the subheads were: 7 quick, easy salad suppers; tips for tipping: who, when, how much?; the perfect gift for every summer occasion; the best sandals, deck chairs, sunscreens. Somehow, though the magazine is all about saving me: saving me time, saving me money, saving me space, and I guess this life/home/body advice is meant to save, or at least ease, my soul, it didn’t come across as anything but a bizarrely mundane challenge to measure up.

That is not simple living – no one needs a magazine for that. The Dalai Lama and Pennsylvania Amish are not high on their marketing list. Real Simple magazine is an oxymoron. No one who really has space problems, serious space problems: 2 adults and 2 kids living in a one-bedroom apartment, or a studio apartment, or a van or a yurt or a stilt house in Benin, Africa – those folks don’t need a magazine to tell them how to maximize their space.

It reminds me of Sue Bender’s book, Plain and Simple, about living among the Amish – wherein she finds that they’re not all about simplicity and health – for breakfast they eat not oatmeal but Sugar Frosted Flakes, with many spoonfuls of sugar piled on the top. The most significant surprise in that book for me was that in the end, having lived with the Amish, she is unchanged, though she doesn’t know it. She goes back to her LA lifestyle and talks about how changed she is, how she’s all about simplicity, and her new devotion to simplicity is immediately manifest in her priority upon her return home: gutting her kitchen and renovating it completely, top to bottom, all in stark white: floor, cabinets, counters…with just one splash of color in the form of a bright figurine sitting on one shelf. Wow – anyone who’s ever done even the most modest home renovation, let alone the complete remodeling of a kitchen knows there’s nothing simple, or plain, about it. And a stark-white kitchen, while certainly striking, is not compelling as a deep, or confirming, or even practical choice of someone truly motivated by simplicity.

You know who else tells me a lot about maximizing space? Pottery Barn, in this book on bedrooms, which yes, I bought recently for a friend in advance of redecorating a bedroom. I love this book. I love the interiors. I love the different ways you can go with your fabulous bedroom. I love the idea that a bedroom should reflect your individuality, and be your sanctuary, and meet all your aesthetic and practical bedroom needs.

"A perfect bedroom is both stylishly practical and seductively comfortable. Create a room that’s a great canvas for the things that you love.” “Find a style that’s just right, whether for lounging or working on a laptop. Add abundant (or clever) storage, flexible lighting that allows you to read, relax, or dream, and plenty of pillows. As with any room, well-made furnishings offer the best promise of success. The right foundation pieces not only are timeless, they also give you the freedom to add personal effects or stylish accessories and change the room’s style over time. Then, the space can be as pared-down or luxuriously layered as suits you at any given moment."

Yes, yes, yes! Never mind that my own bedroom is furnished with hand-me-down furniture from my parents and old grad school roommates and friends of friends, and that it has no flexible lighting, nor lots of storage, few "foundation pieces." I did have lots of pillows and yes, yes, yes!

Not until reading Bobos in Paradise, David Brooks’ book (where he identifies the educated elite as a dominant force in society; the new class that unites the traditionally conflicting bourgeois and bohemian societal types in one: the Bourgeois Bohemian or 'Bobo') whereupon I realized I was a Bobo, that lots of us are Bobos, and that though he says a lot of palliative things about being a Bobo, I was embarrassed to recognize myself and us in the book, not until all this, did I realize that part of what makes me Bobo are things like my deep spiritual affinity for Pottery Barn, and free-range eggs, and a bunch of other stuff I’d never put together or really thought critically about.

Brooks is a conservative columnist and commentator that you may have encountered in the New York Times or on PBS. He is the kind of thoughtful conservative that brings real substance, whether or not you agree with it, to conversations that are too often in mainstream medium about spin and only spin. I hadn’t known he also wrote about issues beyond politics until the UU ministerial study group I meet with twice a year in Massachusetts took this book on as part of our topic last October. I read it and began to feel a sense both of recognition and consternation, as I made my way through it.
"Marx once wrote that the bourgeois takes all that is sacred and makes it profane. The Bobos take everything that is profane, and make it sacred. We have taken something that might have been grubby and materialistic and turned it into something elevated. We take it the quintessential bourgeois activity, shopping, and turn it into quintessential bohemian activities: art, philosophy, social action. Bobos possess the Midas touch in reverse. Everything we handle turns into soul."

When he writes this, he’s talking about Pottery Barn-like marketing and attitudes, but he’s also talking about food co-ops and whole foods and clothing lines and socially-responsible investment funds. He writes:

"Nor is it only our own selfish interests that we care about on our shopping forays. We want our material things to be bridges that will allow us to effect positive social change. We select our items from catalogues that have plain models in free-flowing dresses. It is by choosing just the right organic fiber shirt in the perfect tone of earth brown (the production of which involved no animal testing) that we use our consumption power to altruistically improve the world. We dine at restaurants that support endive cooperatives, and browse through department stores that have been endorsed by size-rights activists. We have put our Visa cards at the service of environmental concerns and so created a cleansing consumerism. And we put them away for the same reason. Some members of the educated elite can categorize their friends on the basis of which reason they give for boycotting tuna. We members of the educated elite attach more spiritual weight to the purity of our food than to five of the Ten Commandments. And so we insist upon natural ingredients made by pesticide-averse farmers who think globally and act locally."

But Brooks is not just talking about this new kind of consumerism, " conspicuously concerned consumption," though that has a lot to do with his premise. He’s talking about a societal attitude that influences all walks of life. He writes about how the educated elite work and view their work and choose their work;

"So this isn’t a crass and vulgar selfishness (there’s that word again)…this is about higher selfishness. Its about making sure you get the most out of yourself, which means pitting yourself in a job that is spiritually fulfilling, socially constructive, experientially diverse, emotionally enriching, self-esteem boosting, perpetually challenging, and eternally edifying."

Oh my gosh – he’s talking about ministry!

In fact, he never mentions ministry in the book, nor Unitarian Universalists, though he does touch on transcendentalism as part of the religious history that has led America’s educated elite to their current spiritual and social state. So that’s a relief. And his income standard for being part of the elite is high – way higher than my actual income or lifestyle, which is kind of a relief too, as far as the book goes. But its not higher than my aspirations. I like slate as a building material. I like socially responsible investment and spending – I like making the choice to pay more for something I believe in and thus making a statement with my pocketbook, even if it’s a smaller statement. I buy, literally, into the ethos he is describing as a higher selfishness, and I’m sure its that latter word that made me look critically as my Pottery Barn dreams and see them differently than I had until now.

All this lifestyle that requires books and catalogues and magazines and thought and money is not spiritual and not simple and not about being simple: this is power living; it’s about maxing everything out – the most style, the most you, the best everything, the easiest, fastest, cleanest, coolest, comfiest, loveliest, healthiest, tastiest, sexiest, most aware, most-just, most-spiritual, most-centered, most-alive life/home/body/soul all in 22.6 simple steps.

Here’s the thing: there's an up side and a down side to being Bobo. The down side is that his incisive commentary reveals the selfishness at the core of this kind of existence – call it higher, call it enlightened – selfish is still not a word anyone seeks to apply to themselves or their life. And the Bobo kind of selfishness is particular. It’s not that we think we’re the best, or that we matter more than others. Concern for others that is a big part of being Bobo. Rather the kind of selfishness Brooks is talking about is that we want it all. We don’t just want it all for ourselves: ideally we want it all for everyone – but that includes us, and it plays out in a sense of desire, or even entitlement, that gets out of hand and is downright embarrassing. It’s also, needless to say, eventually superficial.

Even spiritually superficial. Brooks could be writing a critique of Unitarian Universalism when he writes:
"The question for the educated class is, can you have your cake and eat it too? Can you have freedom as well as roots? Because the members of the educated class show little evidence of renouncing freedom and personal choice. They are not returning to the world of deference and obedience. They are not about to roll back the cultural and political revolutions of the past decades, which have done so much to enhance individual freedom. They are going to find new reconciliations. The challenges they face are these: Can you still worship god even if you take it upon yourself to decide that many of the Bible’s teachings are wrong? Can you still feel at home in your community even if you know that you’ll probably move if a better job opportunity comes along? Can you establish ritual and order in your life if you are driven by an inner imperative to experiment constantly with new things?…these spiritual reconciliations are the most problematic. The Bobos are trying to build a house of obligation on a foundation of choice."

This is, in fact, a common criticism of Unitarian Universalism and a relevant one. That is the challenge of Unitarian Universalism, but we don’t take that challenge lightly, nor treat it lightly. We cleave to it, and dedicate and raise our children to it, because we believe and hopefully experience that, practiced well, Unitarian Universalism is layered with meaning, intention, care and structure that does offer us freedom while honoring our roots, as we often sing in Spirit of Life. And any religion, practiced ill, is superficial, whether that superficiality takes the form of hypocritical traditionalism or self-centered radicalism. But ideally we only need to have our flaws pointed out to give us the opportunity to work on them. I may not be able to eradicate all my selfishness, nor lead a constantly meaningful and higher life, nor even to ban Pottery Barn catalogues from my mailbox and consciousness, but I can see those issues for what they are and work to get better on them. Unitarian Universalism tells us the work of living mindfully and in accordance with our beliefs is never done, so a reminder that I’ve got work to do is helpful but not shocking. And there is help: our community and our own and each others’ lives remind us all the time that there is a lot more - or maybe a lot less - to living meaningfully than individual style and inspiration channeled into interior design. Life and community recall us to what really matters: safety, health, love, care, justice, hope.

And there is that up side I mentioned. If we have to be Bobo – and to some degree many of us do – living in an enlightened, intentional way, and backing that up with our credit cards, is in fact a good thing. Organic is good. Fair trade coffee is good. Diminishing frivolous animal testing is good. Supporting micro-industries that employ women in turn supporting their families or that free children from forced labor is very good. Investing in companies that are responsible toward the environment and the land and poor people far and near is very good. Meeting the extra expense of building an environmentally-sensitive and resource-conserving house is good.

And aesthetics are good. Why shouldn’t a welcoming, attractive, interesting environment matter, in our workplaces, in our schools, in our homes. As long as we don’t go over the top…those are values that are human, ingrained and evident in what we leave behind us from the age of caves decorated with paintings onward.

We know we can be deeper than our shelving choices, smarter than our storage options, that the canvas for the things we love is not really our bedroom but our lives. The canvas of our lives is not our possessions – they have some role, perhaps they are the frame – but our living. And it is what is within the frame that matters. We know it. Let us remember it. Let us use Brooks’ theory of Bobos as another injunction to grow, to prune, to refocus, to clarify – and go on. Roots hold us close, wings set us free. Brooks is right and we know it; it’s a challenge. We UU’s, we love the challenge. That’s why we’re here.

Amen.

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