Let's Go to the Oasis
By Peter Block
If you are
interested in knowing where our culture will be headed in the new
millennium, one vision can be found in Las Vegas. It may not be a
preferred vision, but it is too real to ignore. Las Vegas is the fastest
growing, large city in America. It has sunbelt climate, low taxes, low
unemployment and it is a step saving, labor saving, at your service,
drink at your elbow spectator’s dream. A glimpse of the future or an
anomaly among cities? You decide.
A few of its
features:
---
The hotel elevators have found their voice. No quiet, bland background
music. They broadcast the latest hotel products, new slot machines and
other entertainment delights. They operate efficiently, quickly, often
stopping at your floor before you press the button. But once you are on
them they become floating commercials to a captive audience. After four
days of ups and downs, I had involuntarily memorized two messages and
was working on a third.
---The
ATM cash machines start at a $100 minimum. If you don’t want at least a
hundred dollars, they are not interested. In my hometown it is the
opposite. They want you to take out $20 and $50 each time. I guess so
you will make more trips to the ATM machine. Not so in the city of the
future. They want you to walk away wealthy so you can spend it more
quickly.
---
It is a 24 hours a day town and a shopper’s paradise. The finest stores
in the world all have outlets in Las Vegas. And the pharmacies,
restaurants, stores and bars never close. What is particularly customer
minded is a jewelry store that never closes. You never know when you
will wake up in the middle of the night and get a gemstone attack. They
take the promise of anything, anywhere, anytime very seriously.
---
The weather is perfect and under control. You go to a restaurant and you
get a choice of indoor or outdoor dining. Outdoor please. You sit on the
terrace, watch the shoppers stroll by and then you notice that you are
still inside. The whole shopping center is domed and the ceiling is
painted like the sky. The lights dim as the day ends and a starlit night
is always on schedule. Perfect. No rain, no wind, no bugs, no heat.
Outdoor dining with indoor amenities. Most of the city exists indoors
and under thermostat control.
---
You can visit the wonders of the world and get there by walking. Want to
go to New York, Venice, London, walk through a botanical garden or see
the largest Picasso art collection outside of Paris? Just look in your
hotel. The major cities of the world and their attractions have either
been replicated or are under construction. All clean, orderly, safe and
courteous. Virtual globalization.
Reality, What a
Concept
In fact it is a virtual city, with the dirt, stress, decay and other
inconveniences of modern life, including nature, rendered obsolete—the
logical extension of virtual intelligence, virtual reality technology
which puts the world at your fingertips. It has made the conversion to a
service economy and done it well. And it is a city where entertainment
rules. You are never bored in this place, never have to amuse yourself
or be distracted by silence or quiet reflection.
--What
is interesting about the city is that it is simply a more complete
example of what is happening to our culture on a wider scale—perhaps the
first ultramodern city. And if you watch for awhile, you begin to
realize that the essential feature of the city is that every square inch
has been commercialized. Every square inch is planned for its market
value. Land has no value for its own sake, it only has value as selling
space.
Entertainment
Tonight
--The
major product, of course, is the gambling experience. This offers us the
possibility of earning money not by working but by having fun. They
achieve a merger between entertainment and work—the ultimate in quality
of work life. This is made possible by a kind of economic amnesia. I
forget the money I lost and only remember my occasional winnings. A form
of letting go of the past and engaging in positive thinking that so many
authors write about but Las Vegas achieves.
--The
quality of life becomes measured by the quality of entertainment and
purchasing power. Life becomes a spectator sport and a complete shopping
experience. Extreme perhaps in this desert city, but not so far from the
way we spend our time watching TV, surfing the internet, walking the
mall or waiting for the new sports stadium to be built.
Where Do You Want to
Go Today?
If you want to see the world, the city offers a kind of dyslexic
globalization, where foreign lands are condensed, sanitized and brought
to you without the inconvenience of lost luggage, broken schedules,
currency conversion and strange languages. Where do you want to go
today? Go two blocks down until you get to London, take a right turn, go
past Venice and you will be in New York. The trip is the ultimate in
reduced transaction time, lower cost, ease of information and seamless
service. The journey isn’t real, but very consumer friendly.
--There
is a cost to this attraction, however. If you are not careful, the soul
can become anesthetized, and the heart becomes a pump, waiting to be
bypassed. Your pocketbook becomes your purpose and the number one
fashion accessory. The quality of life is defined by the quality of
service or product. And this shift in values is not achieved by force
but by seduction. After a while we realize that it is not just the land,
but us, that has become commercialized and it is not a question of
whether we are for sale, but only a negotiation over price.
Please Step Back
While the Elevator is Closing
--We
can look with disdain at this fastest growing Mecca, but is it so far
from the lives we now lead? Aren’t we already immersed in the language
of a market economy, value added activities, in the application of
commerce and economic principles to government, education, social
services and household management? What does it mean when attention
deficit disorder is a growing concern and if a meeting or program is not
instantly entertaining, we start surfing? You can blame Steve Wynn, the
entrepreneurial icon of Las Vegas, but we secretly know that it is
ourselves that is buying the program. And maybe hearing commercials in
the elevator was not so bad. It made the descent seem swift and
painless.
This
article appeared in
News for a Change published by AQP in May 1999
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