The fairy tale emperor in Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes functions as an apt icon of modern consumer life, especially when paired with the slogan “Hanging Out in Hubris”. In Andersen’s tale, the vain emperor gets exposed before his subjects for what he is, when he parades himself around buck naked in his birthday suit, delusionally convinced he’s sporting the latest Fashion. In doing so, he lets his bum (and everything else, even The Full Monty) hang out in hubris.
In other words, the emperor proceeds in making a literal ass out of himself, which is quite accurate and realistic an image of humanity in Modern Times. His portly appearance is not so much indicative of gluttony, as of material greed where enough is never enough, something intentionally inculcated in modern society by the Advertising industry.
The emperor is symbolic of the imperialistic industry of Modernity, while his new clothes specifically implicate the Fashion industry. His imperial delusion of superior finery spawns similar foolishness in his subjects who go along to get along, to fit in and not make waves that might upset the apple cart of the whole sham, bringing public humiliation and shame on themselves.
High fashion, otherwise known as “haute couture” (French for “high sewing”) or simply “couture”, has never been available to anyone but the likes of imperial emperors, royalty, aristocracy, and the super rich. Such elites have always arrogated to themselves the absolute finest of everything, the very best that money can buy and that Earth can provide, while the majority of their subjects, countrymen, or humanity make do on inferior to the elite superior, many on next to nothing.
Couture is the hubris from which most, if not all, modern clothing derives, as represented in The Devil Wears Prada pretentious blue sweater scene. High fashion couture design is paraded on private, invitation only runways of the Big Four fashion capitals (Paris, Milan, London, and New York City), after which the press publicizes the events. Then, the fashion (or clothing) industry gets busy creating knockoff imitations at various market price points for the forthcoming fashion selling season, or couture inspired designs loosely based on the originals. At the very least, couture color schemes for the current fashion season are copied and applied to seasonal readywear, off-the-rack clothing.
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Advertising firms with their Mad Men are hired to deviously devise greater and greater heights of psychological manipulation with which to tempt consumers to buy the knockoff clothing, or should I say “fool” them into parting with their money over such nonsense. The inferior imitations are the practical, utilitarian bread and butter of the clothing industry which generate far more revenue than couture revenue ever could (despite its exhorbitant prices) from its miniscule clientele — the select few who can afford to purchase original Fashion.
Clothing which was once a basic necessity of life, and handmade or homemade, has become in urban, industrial Modernity yet another industry, the Fashion industry. And what is an industry in modern context but an imperialistic scheme by which a few enrich themselves under the mad, unreal, lying guise that they are providing some great service to humanity, when all they are really doing is corrupting the common people with vanity and vices that historically could only be indulged by the rich.
Absurd, unreal madness of the Fashion industry is readily visible at the annual Met Gala in NYC and in issues of Vogue Magazine. As with so much of American industry, the Fashion industry operates by way of Planned Obsolescence, a scheme that originated in the automobile industry as early as the 1920s and ’30s. Planned Obsolescence is essentially nothing but an “out with the old, in with the new” ploy, a scheming scam by which to sell ever more product that isn’t actually needed, generating huge amounts of waste (as does imperialistic warfare), which has become a hallmark of Modernity.
Wastefulness of industrial peacetime (as in wartime) puts more and more added pressure on the Earth, causing increased extraction of natural resouces, pollution, devastation, and untold suffering. Waste is especially apparent in the latest fashion trend, or fad, known as “fast fashion”, which is Planned Obsolescence on steriods, an attempt to induce yet more and staggering heights of turnover in clothing sales. The steroidal approach to Planned Obsolescence was initiated, not by the Fashion, but by the high tech industry, to help satisfy (but never satiate) Love of Money of the tech giants, and to fund techie lust for research and development (R&D). From earliest days of the tech industry, computer hardware and software were rendered obsolete within a matter of a few years. Apple especially became notorious for that, having eventually come to regularly release new hardware models and software operating systems on an annual basis, just as pioneered by the automobile industry.
It wasn’t long before the Fashion industry caught on to high tech’s steroidal approach to Planned Obsolescence, and started implementing the same to serve itself, not its customers who foot the bill. A simple image search on Google for “fast fashion” returns as many, if not more, images of garbage, of trashed clothing rather than of fast fashion clothes for sale. The landfill (a euphemism for what was otherwise known as “the dump”) is where fast fashion typically ends up, as eventually do most all consumer “products”. Hyper turnover of “fast fashion” yields as much if not more product surplus as does product actually sold, adding substantially to waste, which must be disposed of somehow, the easiest way being to just dump it in a landfill. The Economist reported that “[F]ast fashion creates its own problems as consumers clear out their wardrobes more regularly. Americans threw away 11.1 million tonnes of clothes and shoes in 2013. That amounts to over 4% of the country's rubbish - more than double the level in 1990.”
The Fashion industry and its latest fad, “fast fashion”, are emblematic of the hubris of imperialistic modern mentality rooted in the profit motive of Capitalism, which is nothing more than buck naked materialism, materialistic Love of Money. Such hubris has been, and still is viewed uncritically from the unreal standpoint of modern madness as “progress”, “development”, or “economic growth”.
Currently, Texas is the US state leading the pack in such “growth”. The state Republican Party, which came to power promoting that growth for decade upon decade, and remains in power, is proud of its political record, and not giving up anytime soon. Texas Republican political officials operate from the standpoint of the Transportation pro-roadbuilding myth (with its mantra “if you build it they will come”), that proclaims highways to be the engine powering “economic growth”. Of course, that comes with the kickback perk of Republican campaign “contributions” from the Associated General Contractors of Texas (AGC), which represents the special interest of 85 percent of the state’s highway contractors, and unsurprisingly traffics in the same Propaganda growth engine political talking points. In July 2021, it was reported that “State law requires roughly 97 percent of TxDOT'’s [Texas Department of Transportation’s] roughly $15 billion annual budget to be spent on roadways”, which leaves virtually nothing for mass transportation (that is sorely lacking and virtually nonexistent in the state), much less for pedestrian oriented amenities. In all fairness, it must be noted that the Democratic Party offers no corrective to this situation either, but that doesn’t excuse either political party. As Wendell Berry has pointed out, both parties are part of the modern problem, because they both want nothing better than to put a shopping mall in everyone’s backyard.
No wonder then, that Texas roadways have become ever more congested over the decades, and are now terminally doomed to ongoing cancer of an “economic growth” vicious cycle. No sooner are highways expanded (existing highways widened and more roadways built), than they become congested and therefore obsolete, which according to growth mentality requires even further expansion. This is tantamount to the definition of stupidity, of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, except TX Republican officials don’t expect different results, only the same lining of their campaign pockets with contributions. Consequently, Texas future population projections are astronomical, of course, because the “economic growth” model perpetually holds forth the proverbial carrot stick of potential riches that entices and attracts thousands upon thousands of migrants to Texas intranationally, and internationally to the southern Texas border.
The internationals are derogated by the Republican Party as “illegals” as if somehow a great risk to “economic growth”. But only a fool would fail to see that no one risks life and limb to migrate somewhere where people live modestly hand to mouth, praying for no more than “our daily bread” (manna from heaven), without desire for more constantly being inflamed. Only those without enough to eat like Oliver Twist are justified in wanting more. Migrants, attracted by riches, have been coming to the shores of the North American continental US since long before its founding, as historically attested in American Foundations. Alexis de Tocqueville is witness to the fact that money has been the main preoccupation of Americans for a long, long time.
The extent to which Republican Party “economic growth” has gone in Texas can be seen in Katy on the far west side of Houston. Interstate-10 has been widened there to no less than 26 lanes, over twice that of 12 lanes which had been the most common largest number of lanes in US urban highways as documented on the US DOT’s (Department of Transportation’s) webpage, Urban Highways with the Most Lanes. Twenty-six lanes is even well beyond what had been the national maximum record of 13, 14 and 15 lane highways.
The effectiveness of the highway building engine of “economic growth” can be seen in the chart below of Houston population growth. Note that the percent increase on the left is based on the preceeding population decade, not on the initial population in 1900, so I’ve done the math to illustrate how many times over Houston has “grown” from its initial 1900 size.
Houston Metro Area Population 1950-2023
1837 — founded
1900 — 63,786 —
1910 — 15,693 — 81.4% — 181.4% — 1.8x
1920 — 186,667 — 61.3% — 292.7% — 2.9x
1930 — 359,328 — 92.5% — 563.3% — 5.6x
1940 — 528,961 — 47.2% — 829.3% — 8.3x
1950 — 806,701 — 52.5% — 1,264.7% — 12.7x
1960 — 1,243,158 — 54.1% — 1,949.0% — 19.5x
1970 — 1,985,031 — 59.7% — 3,112.0% — 31.1x
1980 — 2,905,353 — 46.4% — 4,554.8% — 45.5x
1990 — 3,301,937 — 13.7% — 5,176.6% — 51.8x
2000 — 4,177,646 — 26.5% — 6,549.5% — 65.5x
2010 — 5,920,416 — 41.7% — 9,281.7% — 92.8x
2020 — 7,122,240 — 20.3% — 11,165.8% — 111.7x
My calculations show that in 2020 Houston had grown in 120 years to nearly 112 times the size it was in 1900. Today, the Greater Houston metropolitan area is over 8 times the size it was when I was born Mid-century Modern. It more than doubled in size in the 17 years from the time I was born until I graduated from high school. On the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, the Houston METRO population was 31 times its 1900 size at just under 2 million, at which time the hubris of Modernity was already becoming known. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring had previously been published, and the US Environmental Protecion Agency (EPA) was established that same year.
A few years before that, I remember listening to late night Houston talk radio after I got a transistor radio for my 13th birthday. One caller broke down, relating how his family had farmed rice in the Katy area for generations, but could no longer do so. Air pollution was causing too many cloudy days, and land prices and property taxes had escalated. Rice is only grown in 6 out of the 50 states in the U.S. The rice grain elevators still stand in Katy, albeit empty, as a solemn memorial to a saner, real past, and reminder of the ongoing mad, unreal loss of preciously scarce arable land to the hubris of urban sprawl, to “economic growth”.
Over half a century after the initial Earth Day, little has changed, and the modern world remains merrily “Hanging Out in Hubris”. Modern hubris persists, no doubt expanding at equal exponential rate to the cancerous hubris of “economic growth”. The delusional emperor in his new clothes keeps on trucking to the imperial tune, stepping rhythmically in time to the March of Progress. The unreal madness of “economic growth” of Modernity becomes more starkly apparent when associated with the iconic image of the emperor in new clothes, with his bum “Hanging Out in Hubris”. Comic hubris of the emperor in his new clothes is a wake up call to stop fashionably taking Modernity for granted, to instead fall out of love with the modern world and its “economic growth” after finally seeing it for what it really is — mad unreality, the hubris of Love of Money, hiding beneath the political ploy of modern technological dominion over all of life.
If you can control a people’s economy, you don’t need to worry about its politics; its politics have become irrelevant. If you control people’s choices as to… what they will eat and wear, and the genetic makeup of their crops and animals, and what they will do for amusement, then why should you worry about freedom of speech? In a totalitarian economy, any “political liberties” … cease to matter. If, as is often the case already, nobody can be elected who is not wealthy, and if nobody can be wealthy without dependence on the corporate economy, then what is your vote worth?
— Wendell Berry, “Another Turn of the Crank” (1996)