Blubberland: The Dangers of Happiness

By Elizabeth Farrelly

Book Overview

A leading critic examines the connections between obesity and architecture, unchecked sprawl and unchecked appetites, and other forms of insatiability that are hurting our planet and bodies.

Welcome to Blubberland--a world of quadruple-garaged mansions, vast malls, gated communities, stretch limos, and posh resorts. Blubberland is a place, but it is also a state of mind: we expect to be happy (trophy house, SUV in the driveway, home entertainment system, pension fund, cosmetic surgery), but in fact we've grown increasingly bloated, bored, and miserable. In Blubberland, award-winning critic Elizabeth Farrelly looks at our "superfluous superfluity," our huge eco-footprint, and asks why we find it so hard to abandon habits we know to be destructive. Why can't we build human-scale cities, design meaningful public spaces, eat reasonable meals, and stop assaulting nature? Farrelly, trained as an architect, begins this story with architecture, urban sprawl, and housing, but she does not end there. She also looks at "affluenza," childhood asthma, diabetes, addiction, beauty, ugliness, narcissism, climate change, mega-churches, big box retailers, sustainability, depression, anorexia, and the links that collect all of these issues under the same roof--the roof, as it were, of the McMansion. As "big" becomes more and more pervasive, and success is seen in increasingly measurable and material terms, the goal of happiness jeopardizes our survival. Blubberland is a smart, thoughtful, and stylish argument for turning things around.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0262562367
• ISBN13: 9780262562362
• Release Date: February 2008
• Publisher: MIT Press
• Length: 219 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.3" x 9.1"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

this book is genius

this book is genius. materialism is what is killing us. has been for so long. she so succinctly put into words what i have so often felt is wrong with the world. this book is so necessary and screams THE TRUTH. Better than a gazillion self-help books on how to be happy. like the music from Tommy, these pricey deals don't teach us, their freedom doesn't reach us, enlightenment escapes us. this book is a treasure. thank you so much for writing this down in your intelligent and witty way. Clancy OHaraSeamus and Emer

Down in Blubberland

This is the first book by an architect that I've enjoyed reading. There are two reasons Blubberland is so good: One, it's about the philosophy of excess as much as biology and psychology. The second reason the book is fascinating are the examples taken from Farrelly's society (Australia, both white and Aboriginal). Stories and examples that are so culture-specific emphasize the universality of the problems the book deals with. Farrelly quotes thinkers from Immanuel Kant ("the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good") to Lily Tomlin ("the thing about the rat race is, even if you win, you're still a rat"). The book is very funny and very serious. Probably more than anything else, Farrelly talks about the concepts of Truth and Beauty. I think Truth and Beauty (along with Love) should be synonyms. We shouldn't try to define these things so precisely that it's even POSSIBLE to distinguish them from each other. A lot of our problems come from our primate nature, which evolved to put us on a " 'hedonic treadmill,' a constant round of wanting and getting, fuelled by dissatisfaction and disappointment." Farrelly agrees with economist Fred Hirsch, that we suffer from "the 'tyranny of small decisions.' " Too much choice. Perhaps our main fault is our self-absorption. (But are we biologically capable of being any other way?) Farrelly points out that "extreme fear of death, and the longing for it, are generally regarded as classic narcissistic traits." Maybe that's why (at least in the U.S) we have both color-coded terror alerts and apocalyptic fantasies on TV and in the movies. We want to live AND we want to die. And we're doing a good job of ensuring the later on a planetary scale. So, can we climb out of the narcissistic pit we've dug for ourselves? Farrelly quotes Iris Murdoch: "Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real." Back to those three ideas again - - Truth, Beauty, and Love. I also found what Farrelly said about art thought-provoking. She mentions the subject of the documentary film Who the #$ & % Is Jackson Pollock? (Documentary), and discusses how art has changed since conceptual (as opposed to realistic or descriptive) art became the dominant form in the West. Warhol vs. Carravagio, to use two painters Farrelly mentions. Finally, Farrelly can't avoid the conclusion that Beauty doesn't necessarily come from Freedom. "The sad and prickly truth is that cities cannot be effectively planned, much less made beautiful, by democratic government." "From Mykonos to Paris, beautiful, traditional towns . . . were produced under condtions that we would consider intolerably oppressive, with little or no personal choice . . . as to material, style, colour or decoration." At the conclusion of Blubberland, Elizabeth Farrelly writes her own apocalyptic scenario, leaving the ending open. It all depends on whether we can learn "to transcend our primate selves and find some more altruistic mode" of be