THINGS THAT FALL!

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Americans love destruction. Since September 11, 2001, it has become increasingly apparent that “things that fall” present unrivaled opportunities for emotional manipulation, economic profit, and political gain. Even the phrase itself—“Since 9/11”—has become a reliable preamble to any situation that is ripe for exploitation. Whether world leaders, stock prices, the World Trade Center, or Martha Stewart, each thing that falls marks a downward motion that inspires widespread speculation about its eventual rise. It is a kind of blood lust. Not for the destructive event itself, but for the profits to be made after the event has taken place.

Economist Joseph Schumpeter called this cyclical drive “creative destruction.” By his definition, capitalism cannot advance without perpetually destroying itself in order to profit from its own regeneration. This reflex has become so innate to American culture that its media, its citizens, its politicians and its stockbrokers all crave things that fall solely for the gains that are certain to follow, and the reaffirmation of capitalism’s ruthless success that accompanies them.Even Robert Smithson, the conscience of American Art, understood that organizing rocks in metal bins for distribution and sale was not only a way to make the concept of entropy visible, but a way to profit from it as well. Just before he died, Smithson said as much when he told Moira Roth it was time for artists to stop trying to transcend the corruption of commercialism, and industry, and bourgeois attitudes. Lost in the glow of his current hagiography is the fact that when Smithson drew a comparison between the rosy escapism of art and the cruddy workings of commerce, he sided with commerce.

Thus a great shift is occurring in the American psyche. Where for the past forty years we have been obsessed with the upward potential of Warholian celebrity—the belief that riches and fame can happen to anyone, and everyone will get their fifteen minutes’ worth—we are now obsessed with the downward potential of Smithsonian entropy, and the belief that everyone and everything will have its fall. Which means that not only has America’s mood changed, but its profit motive has as well. That’s where we come in. Death! Destruction! Hurricanes! Snowflakes! Empires! Forsythia! Entropy! They’re all here, all organized into nice simple categories that are pleasing to look at and easy to understand.

http://www.thingsthatfall.com.