Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Blogging from A to Z: J is for the Joneses

During the month of April last year, I participated in the A to Z Blogging Challenge - one alphabet-themed post per day (except Sundays).  I had such a good time with it that I'm doing it again this year.  I'm loosely organized on the theme of downsizing, minimalism, and small-home living that I've learned in 14 years of living on a small boat.  I'm starting with A is for Anchoring Out, Anger-ing Out, and ending with Z is for Zout and Zwarte Peper (Dutch for salt and black pepper). Click on the A to Z logo on the lower left sidebar for links to many other bloggers participating in the challenge.



Who are the Joneses, and why are we trying so hard to keep up with them? The phrase "keeping up with the Joneses" refers to comparison with your neighbor as a benchmark for social status.  And the way it leads to a materialistic arms race of conspicuous consumption -- big house, shiny car, designer clothing, exotic vacations, on and on and on -- as people confuse cause and effect.  It's a great advertising scam -- if I buy the fancy things, that will give me the higher status.  As Will Rogers put it back in the 1960s, "Too many people spend money they haven't earned to buy things they don't want to impress people they don't like."  There's a corollary, too, that you don't know if the Joneses' life, that looks so glamorous from the outside, is actually happy on the inside. They could be broke.  But when we lived in suburbia, it was definitely a thing, that nearly inescapable competition.

When we first moved onto the boat, we hoped we were done with that.  But we found that "keeping up with the Joneses," or at least, making assumptions about peoples' status based on outward appearances must be a human nature, because the maritime variation of that theme is all around us.  Its neither better nor worse than the suburban version, just ... different.  To a certain extent, people group themselves by boat type -- although we all are doing this because we love the sea, people in small fishing boats meant for day use or maybe a weekender are not going to have that much in common with the goals of people who are in the process of traveling around the world by sailboat, and someone in a 100-foot shiny megayacht is probably not going to talk to the likes of us. Unlike the hypothetical Jones family in suburbia, where outward appearances don't necessarily give a true picture of the real condition of their quality of life, the different boat types in the marina give a pretty good indication of the owners' priorities and plans -- and the size and age of the boat is a good proxy for finances.

In some ways, in a marina the Joneses comparison is even more in-your-face than it is in suburbia.  Neighborhoods tend to be at least somewhat homogeneous and houses within them are similar in cost; it's rare to find an old cottage or bungalow next to a McMansion. In a marina, the boat docked in the slip next to you may be new and glossy or one step away from sinking, fast or slow, power or sail ... and may be sailing away again tomorrow.

Where we finally did escape the keeping up with the Joneses, was when we started cruising, actually traveling around by boat. In an anchorage, no one ever asks you what do (or did) for a living.  Many of our boat friends, we don't even know their last names, they are just first name, boat name: "Joe and Sandy on Windswept." There is almost a reverse status thing going on: the only "keeping up with the Joneses" we encounter is how far you've traveled, and often the older, sea weary boats earn more prestige than the new shiny ones with wealthy but inexperienced owners.






19 comments:

  1. Another insightful read!

    http://www.svcambria.com/2016/04/j-is-for-jacklines-and-other-safety.html

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    1. Thanx! Coming from an experienced cruiser like you, that means a lot. This piece was fun to write.

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  2. I like the Will Rogers quote - so perfect. I guess life is always full of comparisons. Everyone ranks and judges a bit. You just have to take it with a grain of (sea) salt.

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    1. LOL! Sometimes, ranking and judging makes sense or is necessary -- you just don't have time to start from a completely blank slate with every single person you meet in every chance encounter. But sometimes, we do get trapped in it, too!

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  3. Interesting to think about it from the perspective of our marina. I suspect that many of the boat owners here are more similar than different, probably because we don't really get any of the big fancy boats passing through this way. Most of the people are snowbirds, who are living comfortably on their retirement/pensions, take their boat out for the season, store it back up on the hard during h-season and maintain a home back up north. Of course, there are younger people here as well living on a shoestring and a few people like us living on a budget who everyone looks at suspiciously because we're too young to be officially retired. It will be interesting to get your take on it when you visit. For someone who was struggling to wrap this post up earlier today, it's another winner :-)

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    1. Thanx! I think I was indeed speaking from the perspective of our marina, which is on a major popular crossroads. We get a huge cross section, and probably greater than half our slips are transients.

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  4. My parents stalwartly refused to keep up with the Jones's, and I inherited the streak. In fact, I wish more people would keep up with me, since I have a decidedly self-sufficient approach and hate consumerism (except of books, which I devour. Oh, and cheese, and chocolate...)
    Nice post!
    Jemima Pett

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    1. I was probably in third or fourth grade when I realized that some of my friends lived in a LOT nicer houses than we did. We didn't necessarily have less money, my family just spent it in different ways.

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  5. That is a useful English term to know :) And a very bad philosophy to live by. Great post!

    @TarkabarkaHolgy from
    The Multicolored Diary
    MopDog

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    1. Ha! Ironically this article appeared in BBC News this morning, about the surprising benefits of living above your means: http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20160406-there-are-surprising-benefits-of-living-above-your-means According to the article, there are circumstances where we should all be trying not just to keep up with the Joneses, but to outpace them!

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  6. Since my last name is Jones, I feel like I should have some immunity to this tendency (it's easy to keep up with one's self), but it's hard to resist making comparisons. I always enjoy your posts!

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    1. (*giggles*) When I was searching for images for this post, I found a picture of a race car with the name "Jones" on its license plate -- try keeping up with that! But your comment is especially amusing since it could be argued that old-style printing such as yours is the very definition of living slow.

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  7. Nice post. It's a hard thing to escape the desire to keep up with others but when you find out how, life is so much better.

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    1. I think a certain amount of benchmarking is healthy; it's important to keep yourself in perspective. It's the trying to artificially inflate that place that seems so damaging ultimately to your happiness.

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  8. Hello Sailing Sista. Finally got some internet strong enough to allow me to catch up on your blog. Good stuff. "materialistic arms race of conspicuous consumption" - love this line. I may borrow it.

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    1. You are welcome to it! Happy late anniversary to Honey Rider!

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  9. I had to laugh at "to impress people you don't even like" - how funny and how true! - Lucy

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    1. Isn't it, though! And that's why we love cruising...

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  10. You hit the nail on the head again! I love that atmosphere of just being who you are and doing what you want without social status, while cruising. Not that I really cared about all this on land, either! :-)

    Liesbet @ Roaming About – A Life Less Ordinary

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