In late May through early June, the tourists descend on Boston like locusts. I work across the street from City Hall in the Old Town, just a couple minutes' walk from the visitor Meccas of Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market. Many of my co-workers despise going down to this area during the heavy tourist season, but I just can't stay away. I walk through this area as many times as I can during the week, because if you're interested in issues like the American lifestyle and overconsumption, there's no better place to be. You get the entire panoply of America in one place, in full effect. And while Boston attracts visitors year round, this time of year is especially fruitful. It's Class Trip season, so you get to see endless gaggles of hyperactive teenagers and their hypertensed chaperons. And pound for pound, you cannot get a better window into the current condition of American ridiculousness than a class trip.

First, the obvious. America is full of rubes. Everywhere you look, schlock culture is absolutely triumphant. In one of my many unfulfilled dreams for a bestseller, I had an idea for a book called "Ghetto-Redneck: The Cheesification and Schlockification of American Culture." Great concept, never got around to writing it. But the general idea is that our country is gradually converging down into two basic cultural pathways, which happen to be mirror images of each other: Ghetto and Redneck. These two cultural nodes may look diametrically opposed on the surface, but they both thrive on the same basic themes: shitty music, awful fashion, intellectual ignorance, sexual backwardness, and the general ascendancy of image over substance. In a word, the Ghetto-Redneck trend in American is about schlock -- just good old-fashioned crappiness. And this epic mediocrity is on full display in Quincy Market during Class Trip season.

Now, teenagers can be forgiven for being ridiculous. That's what being a kid all about. They are supposed to be obsessed with their appearance, and the newest trends, and fitting in. These are the basic developmental tasks of adolescence: forming the personality and embedding the emerging individual's psyche in the community at large (to see how modern civilization halts this development, see here). Since teenagers are drinking in every external stimulus possible to accomplish these acculturating tasks, they can be forgiven for yielding wholeheartedly to advertisers and peers. You will never see a fuller manifestation of this orgiastic consumption and desperate desire to fit-in-but-stand-out than when you watch a group of Mid-Western teenagers romp around the food stations and loot kiosks of Boston. The chaperons try desperately to bring the kids' attention to the spot where Samuel Adams railed against British taxation, but there is far more interest in getting the junior class hottie to notice your new "I Got Tea-Bagged in Boston" sweatshirt.

The problem is, American consumer culture never emerges from this adolescent over-indulgence in fitting in by buying shit. In my estimation, after seeing thousands and thousands of teens and adults together, they are virtually indistinguishable in their appearance and behavior. Clearly, what is happening is that the mature security in one's self and one's community that is supposed to emerge out of adolescence never actually happens in America any more. At some point, adults are supposed to say, "you know what, I don't need to buy new clothes just to keep up with seasonal changes." Or, "I'm going to take a class in repairing old devices or garments, instead of just throwing everything out and buying new stuff." Or, "I'm not going to waste hundreds of dollars a year on makeup and hair-styling to make myself look two years younger." Essentially, adults are supposed to be done with the competitive drive to emulate peers at all costs. They are supposed to gain calm perspective and a sedate self-assurance that the fitting-in part of their lives is over. But consumer culture assaults that adult project with impunity.

I highly recommend the online short movie, "The Story of Stuff" (www.storyofstuff.com). This is a great primer on the horrible ramifications of operating our economies on linear models of production, when we in fact live on a finite planet. There are great sections on the insane hamster-wheel of American work, advertising intake, and hyperconsumption. Check it out.