As the trendy band comes out with its new, difficult third album, the urban reality of Glasvegas – as you encounter it, while being an everyday, middle-aged pedestrian – is sometimes quite the overwhelming spectacle.
Best place to begin is Charing Cross, advancing east down Sauchiehall Street: a bacchanal of casinos, a scatter of Asian takeaways, every size and shape and theme of bar and club and venue, populated by a nervy mix of students and office workers.
You make a brief, non-commodified genuflection to the CCA (Centre for Contemporary Arts) and the GFT (Glasgow Film Theatre), then it's down the hill to the glassier and glossier halls of Buchanan Galleries – like a claustrophobic theme-park ride of the world's biggest brands. And then, if you have the energy, Princes Square and the Merchant City: where the city's plutocracy (or otherwise credit-worthy) cavort and preen, availing themselves of outer- and underwear shops of Oscar-ceremony standard, with the elephantine Corinthian Club their most available catwalk.
Deep in the labyrinths of eco-thinking at the moment, I've been making these regular journeys with my Martian head on. What is all this? Why is it all remotely necessary? You have to push a little further towards the Trongate before things get any less mercantile and fashion-obsessed. Then it's all struggling galleries, strange comix shops, and the indie-schmindie oasis of the Mono bar and the vintage clothes shop Mr Ben.
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They're still selling, sure, but at least they're tapping into waves of history, or corners of quirkiness or obsession – none of the lock-step cuts or patterns that sometimes make Glasgow crowds seem like an army of marketing-programmed clones. And then, if you really keep going, Glasgow Green opens up for you: swathes of green grass, park benches not trying to sell you a damn thing, holding back the towers of the Tennent's brewery (though not its stench) at the other side. I sat there the other day, looking back on this brawling, greedy, hyper-retailed city centre, and allowed the most regular thought in my head these days to slowly emerge. How do we ever get from this huge collective investment in conspicuous consumption, to anything remotely resembling a materially sustainable society? In Glasgow at least, shopping is clearly the main ritual (apart from the fitba') of inclusion, status and belonging for so many – from the determined families with their fistfuls of Primark and sports-shop bags, to the leggy apparitions slipping into people-carriers with wispy, expensive things dangling from their fingers. The writer and film-maker Ewan Morrison has been charting this territory with his Tales From The Mall, well worth a visit. But his hipster's disdain, though eloquent and witty, isn't enough of a response to the sheer momentum of Glasgow's (or anywhere else's) consumer frenzy. The brilliant Tim Jackson, recently deposed head of the Sustainable Development Commission, has a concise one-liner about the unacknowledged dissatisfactions of consumer living. “We spend money we don’t have, on things we don’t need, to make impressions that don’t last, on people we don’t care about.” Jackson's explanation for this grammar of frustrated unhappiness is that human nature is strung across two axes: one goes from novelty-seeking to love of tradition; the other goes from selfish behaviour to altruistic behaviour (and Jackson amasses much evidence to show how credible the whole picture is). The problem is that our institutions are encouraging us to operate on only half of this picture, the selfish, novelty-seeking quadrants – those institutions being consumer-driven capitalism, aided and abetted by massively sophisticated advertising and unfettered financial flows perpetually looking for a return. We can change these institutions to cover the whole spectrum, says Jackson. We have to, given how much heedless consumption is contributing to trends in global warming and other environmental indicators. The most interesting part of his argument, from a Scottish political perspective, are the nature of the institutions he proposes as part of the solution. For Jackson, it lies in the provision of strong public services and goods – in particular, well-constructed spaces and environments in which people can come together to enjoy each others company, exchange small trades and enthusiasms, express care and attention to others without pressure of time or money. For the sake of living lightly enough on the planet – at least to be able to survive its Gaian revenge strategies – we must re-engineer a style of existence that places as much value on tradition and altruism as it does on novelty and me-first-ism. Now surely Glasgow, from memories of Jimmy Reid to the furthest-flung credit union in Easterhouse, has more than enough of the first two to go around. Gerry Hassan's much-underrated project of social dreaming, Glasgow 2020, attempted to give voice to a future of Glasgow that was rich with dreams of self-empowerment and collective improvement, vaulting beyond the lights of the latest city-centre mall. And beyond Glasgow, Scotland surely has a deep attitudinal well to draw on for a new public realm. I attended the tenth anniversary meeting of the International Futures Forum last weekend. The IFF is a curious but powerful mix: a selection of major international policy and business gurus, who come regularly to benchmark their grand theories against places such as Falkirk and Dundee, and the schools, prisons, council offices and arts centres therein. What they register in places like Falkirk is a desire for social innovation that doesn't get caught up in false ideological battlegrounds, like Westminster's current "big-state Good Society versus small-state Big Society". From San Francisco to Mumbai, these experts marvel at the ability of Scots to start conversations about public improvements that gather up individuals and local groups, businessmen and councillors, to achieve solid and persistent results. Shouldn't councils such as Glasgow begin to recognise the contradiction between their espoused socialist history, and the consciousness-fragmenting consumerism that overpowers what should be a great convivial space for its citizens? Can they shift the needle of civic priorities in the city centre away from the chip-and-pin device? And in defiance of Andrew Neil and his abuse of "Scotland's cloud-cuckoo land", and with the beginnings of a low-carbon reset for Scottish society in place, can't we begin to recognise who we actually are, and what we actually want in Scotland? It means not being cynical about the tears shed by a first minister when recalling how his father used to toil into the night, preparing insurance claims for miners with injuries or poor health. Is our much derided centre-left policy consensus between the parties a sign of complacency and mediocrity – or it is actually an authentic, robust platform from which even more ambitious policies for a flourishing future might rise? As ever, from me, independence is the indispensable operating system that will get us there. Still, as Jim Sillars said, we need to take sides in Scotland, as well as take Scotland's side. Glasvegas – or at least that tinseltown-in-the-rain version of Scotland's most energetic city – is mostly on the wrong side of the Scottish future. But it needn't be so. – For more from Pat Kane on Scottish affairs, read his ideas-blog Thoughtland.Donate to us: support independent, intelligent, in-depth Scottish journalism from just 3p a day
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