Dec. 12: Keeping up with the Jones

The above strip, which was called the Lighter Side of and was penned by the late artist David Berg, was a regular feature for years in Mad Magazine. The common thread of the Lighter Side seemed to be the everyday challenges of navigating life in middle class white American suburbia. 

The Lighter Side was different from the rest of Mad, which was often biting, acerbic, and sometimes downright nasty. The Lighter Side was gentler. It would never offend you but it would never make you bust a gut either.

So it's odd that I remember The Lighter Side so fondly. It was, by far, my least favourite part of the magazine, but I always read it and I think I'd be disappointed if it was left out. Years later, I realized why it left such an indelible mark. Berg wasn't just interested in silly gags, he wanted to talk about the human condition. The Lighter Side did that. It showed human beings as greedy, selfish jerks with priorities way out of whack, yet somehow still argued that we are worthy of some sort of love. Take the strip above, for example. Its protagonist, the father, is trying to teach her daughter that (a) she doesn't need the latest technology to be happy and (b) that said technology is stopping her from being a part of the family. When the daughter, the antagonist, persists in her argument, the dad solves the problem with a pair of scissors.

The Joneses may have a cordless phone. Thanks to dear old dad, she can now keep up with them.

-

"Keeping up with the Joneses" is simply a metaphor for jealousy. TV sitcoms, The Simpsons included, have long shown suffering dads expressing envy over the things their neighbours had. "The Joneses just got a new RV," dad would say and you knew that the whole episode was going to be about someone trying to get an RV.

It's just an endless spiral, man. Gathering things is never going to make anyone happy. Instead of keeping up with the Joneses, we might be better off if we compared ourselves to the people living in the black hole of Calcutta or some particularly impoverished village in Africa. You may not have a new RV or the latest iPhone, but I bet you don't have to walk a mile everyday to get your drinking water and I bet that you and your entire family aren't forced to sleep in the same room either.

On the radio today, I heard a preacher say that we're all rich. If you have an apartment, you likely have more money than most of the world's population. Sobering thoughts indeed.

And I close with another bit from the Lighter Side, which shows we may never ever be able to be completely like Jesus. The speaker is a hippie dude who's lecturing us all on how our materialism is destroying the Earth.

I paraphrase:

Hey all you cool cats out there, you gotta stop being so selfish and live off the land, man.

I see all you joes driving up the street in a brand new Cadillac. Who you trying to impress? When you die, you can't take it with you. You're using gas and that's making smog and that contributes to pollution.

As for me, all I need is this here guitar...

...and an outlet so I can plug it in.