It began innocent enough a few months ago. I was trying to find a long lost friend who I believe still lives in New Hampshire. My daughter Jennifer suggested I try going on "Face book" and look. Only trouble was you had to join. We'll I'm a real private person who does not want to be in the spotlight. So I reluctantly was dragged kicking and screaming into this new age of connectivity. So into the digital age I dove! "Let's Reach Out and Touch Someone?"
I know in the past few months I've reached out and touched more people from my past than all the years in between. The nice thing about this is I can do this now when I find the time, between bus runs, and in the evening, now that I'm slowing my daily pursuits to a crawl compared to being on the go for 18/7 for the past 30+ years.
Our lives have many parts to them, almost as if they were individual lives of their own. We have our formative years of growing up and gaining our basic education, the college, military or early work years and then coasting until retirement.
Once we left High School the greatest change our worlds, in a sense, happened. Life after High school made us put the past behind us and gave us a chance to explore new directions. Sometimes, though, those new directions were at the great expense of those friends and acquaintances we had growing up.
The bonds of childhood and adolescence are deep yet under appreciated until well into adult hood. By that time a lot of distance has passed and the trail gets cold. Friends also have a way of taking new and different directions. And those paths can parallel, converge, cross or even be right there in plain sight without us knowing.
So now we enter the age of the computer and instant communication. Not saying the old Bell Telephone wasn't instant, I mean, poof, you're there. Marshall McLuhan and his global Village has really come to be. We can instantly reach out and touch someone seemingly worlds away. As an example, just think about dinner time, when that phone rings, and that familiar voice comes on the phone and says in a very thick accent: "Hello, my name is George, and I would like a moment of your time if you please?" "I have a wonderful opportunity I would like to share with you." Well you know just from his accent he ain't from around these parts, let alone his name being George!
For the most part I'm really noncommittal about all this instant juice running around. Kids tuned in and loosing sight of the world around them, people talking in the supermarket or some "clack, clack, clack, click click," sound from a person using their thumbs to communicate. Lost into a parallel dimension of neither sight nor sound, they've entered the "Text-it Zone!" Some day they will awake and find the world has passed them by.
So for me, the only positive thing I have seen from this instant communications age is that the cold trails of lost friends can be uncovered and found again. But this too is not without consequence. Imagine finding out your best friend from school married that "bitch you couldn't stand!" Or some old flame that would make a reunion seem strained at best. So now you have a dilemma. Go forward and connect or unplug and forget about it.
Unlike the face to face meeting we are able, through technology, to still isolate ourselves from those not so pleasant acquaintances of the past and escape without dreging up "Those Feelings." But with the rediscovery of dear friends of the past, we can now do face to face with digital TVs on computers. Oovoo, Skipe, just to name two.
So the race to be connected is really a double edged sword. We can relish in the light of re-found friends yet scorn the invasion of the privacy we once thought absolute. Do we move forward, backward or just slightly to the diagonal?
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
How Did It Get This Bad? or "Life After Man"
It is sad, troubling and down right scary that, America, the engine of democracy and arsenal of the world has become a nation without a future? You ask, "how could I say we have no future?" Simple, we've just let it happen and like global warming once it's here it's hard to deal with and will take greater effort to overcome.
Jobs, good jobs, any jobs, have just about disappeared from most of our small towns and cities. A new term has been applied to the old manufacturing areas of this country, "Rust Belt." Everything is just rusting away like that old car in the woods, or that lawnmower left behind the shed.
Politicians dam near break their arms trying to pat themselves on their back when they say umpteen thousand jobs have been saved or created! Just great! The new joke is not how many (Ethnic Insert) does it take to screw in a light bulb ..... ? But how many of these new jobs does it take to make a whole one?
So many union jobs, now don't think I'm pro or con on unions, just the facts here, have been lost over the years that the biggest employer of union labor is Government! What that tell you? Once an indicator of the health of our manufacturing prowess the barometer is heading below hurricane pressure and falling fast!
America has been the dream land to many of the worlds people. Our country and its culture have been built on the premise that hard work, ingenuity, a little luck and by the grace of God a person could become something. Immigrant families came to America, and they still do, (although some not within the legal framework) with aspirations for a better life, not only for themselves but also for their children and their children.
Not everyone was destined to become a Rockefeller, Carnegie, or an Astor. But they had the opportunity to dream and aspire to a greater level than what they had elsewhere. They had opportunity! What do we have today? Somewhere along the line the human condition intervened and what was once thought of as success morphed itself into a feeding frenzy of greed.
The broken down empires of Europe got themselves into a urinating contest about 100 years ago and dam near killed each other in the process. They exhausted resources both in men and material for what? To show who had the bigger set? And like spoiled children they couldn't work out a compromise and they went at it again about twenty years later.
America, concentrating on its own growth and emergence as an industrial and potential world player was too far removed from the bedlam that was occurring just three thousand miles away. We had vast untapped natural resources and growth potential. We were the young kid on the block and not an old wheezing rocking chair bound artifact of a former time. We were full of "piss and vinegar!" We had what it took to get the job done. A sleeping giant, some say. But when awoken, the American spirit took that potential to the limit. We supplied the needed resources and materiel to get the job done and overcome the belligerents and quite down the neighborhood.
After the second time around with this nonsense, there was a vacuum, that left the world out of balance. We were faced with a dilemma, we cleaned up the neighborhood with the lesser of two evils only to loose the streets to a new gang of thugs? Or do we step up to the plate and help our our neighbors.
We did what our country's Judeo-Christian heritage taught us to do, help out the less fortunate. It is much like spending our time and money to help rebuild a neighbors store, after a fire, and we let ours go. They had the newer store and everyone went to them. Lower prices to get new customers in the door, fancy state of the art displays and a security system paid for and operated by us while our store lost customer base and was slowly robbed.
Investment money in American business became a system of cut and run. Buy it, gut it and sell it and put the money elsewhere. People in the neighborhood can go across the street to shop.
So over a period of years our side of the street became the low rent district. Nobody wanted to invest here. Businesses were going across the street or down the block and people living on our side of the neighborhood were forced into lower skilled and lower paying jobs. One family incomes became two and then three and sometimes today four or more and yet we're still broke! No money and little to no future. Sure there are jobs going unfilled. But not everyone can be a nurse or a teacher. Where's the painter, plumber, electrician and other skilled craftsman going to come from? Who's around to fix a broken TV or Bike? Just throw it away because it's cheaper to get a new one than fix the old!
We worship the "cause de celebrity" (sic) and pay vast sums of money to bask in their glow and charm. We buy products that we are told we, "Just got to have," because "Joe Cool Beans" says so. We let our banking system become nothing more than a bookmakers dream by running the odds on broken down racehorses. Sooner or later the old nag will win and the payouts will be staggering and break the bank! We talk a good line about "Buying American," yet we scream bloody murder when we see the price!
Our government, once a model for all to imitate, is nothing short today of a legalised Mafia exacting tribute through taxes and and helping their well healed friends. Politicians take the easy road and blame the other guy for the lack of direction and results. Deflect the issue and maybe we won't see the Emperor without his clothes! All the while we wonder how we got here.
How can we really understand this situation without looking inward? We are the masters of our own destiny, not some special interest lobbyist, greedy banker, or self promoting politician. This country was founded on the principals of freedom and self reliance, yet we have succumbed to an almost indentured servitude to these people. We say we abhor them but we are unwilling to refute their being! We are like the sickly addict in the darkened alleyway, looking for that fix to make us forget the problems and are willing to take whatever is thrown our way as a panacea of indulgence rather than take a tonic for what ails us.
We have let the system self perpetuate itself. Our own inaction and self fulfilment has allowed this to happen. The system was suppose to protect us, the people! But we have failed ourselves. We need to start someplace. We need to get beyond the "I'm right and he's wrong" element that divides us. We have started to evolve into that wheezy old codger in the rocking chair from Europe of 100 years ago. Getting into a Urinating contest with each other over no real reason rather than building a sustainable and coexistent future. Are we becoming just like the elected officials that bicker and point at each other and get nothing done? Are we evolving, or should I say we are de-evolving into our own worst nightmare?
Let's get our crap together. Like global warming, we can reverse the trend, but we have to start someplace and the best place is to embrace the notion that we are all God's children, and he being the father, should be pretty pissed off at us! We need to look for what holds us together rather than what drives us apart. Life is to short to keep going this way. If we don't come to grips with our problems and seek a common solution through understanding, compassion and compromise those programs on the History Channel, foretelling "Life After Man" will be true long before we know it!
Jobs, good jobs, any jobs, have just about disappeared from most of our small towns and cities. A new term has been applied to the old manufacturing areas of this country, "Rust Belt." Everything is just rusting away like that old car in the woods, or that lawnmower left behind the shed.
Politicians dam near break their arms trying to pat themselves on their back when they say umpteen thousand jobs have been saved or created! Just great! The new joke is not how many (Ethnic Insert) does it take to screw in a light bulb ..... ? But how many of these new jobs does it take to make a whole one?
So many union jobs, now don't think I'm pro or con on unions, just the facts here, have been lost over the years that the biggest employer of union labor is Government! What that tell you? Once an indicator of the health of our manufacturing prowess the barometer is heading below hurricane pressure and falling fast!
America has been the dream land to many of the worlds people. Our country and its culture have been built on the premise that hard work, ingenuity, a little luck and by the grace of God a person could become something. Immigrant families came to America, and they still do, (although some not within the legal framework) with aspirations for a better life, not only for themselves but also for their children and their children.
Not everyone was destined to become a Rockefeller, Carnegie, or an Astor. But they had the opportunity to dream and aspire to a greater level than what they had elsewhere. They had opportunity! What do we have today? Somewhere along the line the human condition intervened and what was once thought of as success morphed itself into a feeding frenzy of greed.
The broken down empires of Europe got themselves into a urinating contest about 100 years ago and dam near killed each other in the process. They exhausted resources both in men and material for what? To show who had the bigger set? And like spoiled children they couldn't work out a compromise and they went at it again about twenty years later.
America, concentrating on its own growth and emergence as an industrial and potential world player was too far removed from the bedlam that was occurring just three thousand miles away. We had vast untapped natural resources and growth potential. We were the young kid on the block and not an old wheezing rocking chair bound artifact of a former time. We were full of "piss and vinegar!" We had what it took to get the job done. A sleeping giant, some say. But when awoken, the American spirit took that potential to the limit. We supplied the needed resources and materiel to get the job done and overcome the belligerents and quite down the neighborhood.
After the second time around with this nonsense, there was a vacuum, that left the world out of balance. We were faced with a dilemma, we cleaned up the neighborhood with the lesser of two evils only to loose the streets to a new gang of thugs? Or do we step up to the plate and help our our neighbors.
We did what our country's Judeo-Christian heritage taught us to do, help out the less fortunate. It is much like spending our time and money to help rebuild a neighbors store, after a fire, and we let ours go. They had the newer store and everyone went to them. Lower prices to get new customers in the door, fancy state of the art displays and a security system paid for and operated by us while our store lost customer base and was slowly robbed.
Investment money in American business became a system of cut and run. Buy it, gut it and sell it and put the money elsewhere. People in the neighborhood can go across the street to shop.
So over a period of years our side of the street became the low rent district. Nobody wanted to invest here. Businesses were going across the street or down the block and people living on our side of the neighborhood were forced into lower skilled and lower paying jobs. One family incomes became two and then three and sometimes today four or more and yet we're still broke! No money and little to no future. Sure there are jobs going unfilled. But not everyone can be a nurse or a teacher. Where's the painter, plumber, electrician and other skilled craftsman going to come from? Who's around to fix a broken TV or Bike? Just throw it away because it's cheaper to get a new one than fix the old!
We worship the "cause de celebrity" (sic) and pay vast sums of money to bask in their glow and charm. We buy products that we are told we, "Just got to have," because "Joe Cool Beans" says so. We let our banking system become nothing more than a bookmakers dream by running the odds on broken down racehorses. Sooner or later the old nag will win and the payouts will be staggering and break the bank! We talk a good line about "Buying American," yet we scream bloody murder when we see the price!
Our government, once a model for all to imitate, is nothing short today of a legalised Mafia exacting tribute through taxes and and helping their well healed friends. Politicians take the easy road and blame the other guy for the lack of direction and results. Deflect the issue and maybe we won't see the Emperor without his clothes! All the while we wonder how we got here.
How can we really understand this situation without looking inward? We are the masters of our own destiny, not some special interest lobbyist, greedy banker, or self promoting politician. This country was founded on the principals of freedom and self reliance, yet we have succumbed to an almost indentured servitude to these people. We say we abhor them but we are unwilling to refute their being! We are like the sickly addict in the darkened alleyway, looking for that fix to make us forget the problems and are willing to take whatever is thrown our way as a panacea of indulgence rather than take a tonic for what ails us.
We have let the system self perpetuate itself. Our own inaction and self fulfilment has allowed this to happen. The system was suppose to protect us, the people! But we have failed ourselves. We need to start someplace. We need to get beyond the "I'm right and he's wrong" element that divides us. We have started to evolve into that wheezy old codger in the rocking chair from Europe of 100 years ago. Getting into a Urinating contest with each other over no real reason rather than building a sustainable and coexistent future. Are we becoming just like the elected officials that bicker and point at each other and get nothing done? Are we evolving, or should I say we are de-evolving into our own worst nightmare?
Let's get our crap together. Like global warming, we can reverse the trend, but we have to start someplace and the best place is to embrace the notion that we are all God's children, and he being the father, should be pretty pissed off at us! We need to look for what holds us together rather than what drives us apart. Life is to short to keep going this way. If we don't come to grips with our problems and seek a common solution through understanding, compassion and compromise those programs on the History Channel, foretelling "Life After Man" will be true long before we know it!
Monday, March 1, 2010
The Sounds of Silence
As a kid my parents would always walk my sisters and myself a little faster when we encountered people on the sidewalk who talked to themselves. They never said why but as a kid you learn to pick up on weird behavior.
So as an adult I became familiar with those unfortunate souls who would spend their time walking the streets of Kingston talking to either themselves, the public at large, or the imaginary person standing alongside themselves. You got used to who was slightly off balance and those who would or could do some real harm. But being a trash collector for many years, nobody really messed with us. We all sort of passed in the greater scheme of things without firing a shot. Respecting reach others space.
I'm not proud of my behavior twenty or thirty years ago when I would laugh and crack jokes about these folks with my co-workers, for I was uncaring and thoughtless. These poor folks had something that devastated their minds to the point, either through illness or a sudden and horrific trauma or loss that caused this behavior.
But I can't help myself when I'm in a store today and I see people walking up and down the aisles talking to themselves. I begin to think that there's more of them then us. I was beginning to think that maybe somebody opened the door to the loony bin and let all the crazies out. Then I discovered these folks were talking on hands free cell phones. Man what a relief! I was beginning to think everyone was slowly cracking under the stress of everyday life or too much caffeine!
So now my question is, "have we as a society gotten so insecure and initiated to reaching out and touching someone we have to talk and be connected all the time?" What ever happened to private space and time for inner reflection? You know, "Quiet Time." Are we falling apart as a species? Is the only way we can communicate with our fellow man through some implant in our ear and a keyboard in our hands?
I remember when we first moved to Jersey. There was no dial one. You waited for the operator and then you told her the number you wanted to call. Nothing was instant! Today you can almost think and the phone connects you. Are we becoming so dependent on technology that the minute the power goes out we can't function? Are the sounds of silence so overwhelming they hurt our ears? Have we tuned out the world only to hear ourselves? Are we missing out on life? Has the techno-hug replaced the real thing? To me this is a real "Hang Up!"
So as an adult I became familiar with those unfortunate souls who would spend their time walking the streets of Kingston talking to either themselves, the public at large, or the imaginary person standing alongside themselves. You got used to who was slightly off balance and those who would or could do some real harm. But being a trash collector for many years, nobody really messed with us. We all sort of passed in the greater scheme of things without firing a shot. Respecting reach others space.
I'm not proud of my behavior twenty or thirty years ago when I would laugh and crack jokes about these folks with my co-workers, for I was uncaring and thoughtless. These poor folks had something that devastated their minds to the point, either through illness or a sudden and horrific trauma or loss that caused this behavior.
But I can't help myself when I'm in a store today and I see people walking up and down the aisles talking to themselves. I begin to think that there's more of them then us. I was beginning to think that maybe somebody opened the door to the loony bin and let all the crazies out. Then I discovered these folks were talking on hands free cell phones. Man what a relief! I was beginning to think everyone was slowly cracking under the stress of everyday life or too much caffeine!
So now my question is, "have we as a society gotten so insecure and initiated to reaching out and touching someone we have to talk and be connected all the time?" What ever happened to private space and time for inner reflection? You know, "Quiet Time." Are we falling apart as a species? Is the only way we can communicate with our fellow man through some implant in our ear and a keyboard in our hands?
I remember when we first moved to Jersey. There was no dial one. You waited for the operator and then you told her the number you wanted to call. Nothing was instant! Today you can almost think and the phone connects you. Are we becoming so dependent on technology that the minute the power goes out we can't function? Are the sounds of silence so overwhelming they hurt our ears? Have we tuned out the world only to hear ourselves? Are we missing out on life? Has the techno-hug replaced the real thing? To me this is a real "Hang Up!"
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