In the shuffling madness

Posted by derrick on May 8, 2008

It’s probably the nature of the moment; The media screams of politics, the opinion battles of guns, gods, activists and naysayers, the wind tunnel nature of my own little world of late, the sound of heavy trucks passing by on the highway. . . Whatever the reasons and likely for all these reasons and a multitude others that have so easily woven into the din, the tenor, the beat, the drums, the bells, the noise seems slightly overwhelming. Even the birds seem strangly loud.  An oppressive atmosphere seems filled with acrid odors aloft on a racing wind.

More simply put its coping with stress. The naked ape was designed for the world as it was created, not for the world created by the ape. Of course the race was afoot some thousands of years ago. Even then some noticed. Somewhere along the way an occasional eye would see beyond the dust of the great migrations to the forests at each side the open plain and wonder why they don’t just turn left or right. “Why not just get out of the flow and go sit under a that nice shady tree?” As history passed these few lost souls would ask, “Is there something more than this?” Why do we do the things we do? The head long rush of progress demands the occasional philosophical reconnaissance mission. Someone has to look over the ledge and ask, “Do we really want to go here?”. “Maybe,” they’d ask, “Maybe we need to stop and think about this awhile.” More often than not they would find themselves crushed under the hooves of the stampede and relegated to a lost corner of history. Today their words a stored away in dusty stacks of fading books on lost library shelves. Who has time to read such antiquated drivel?

It seems to me we’ve entered an age where snarky opinion and a rush to polar battle have become parasitic. The faster we move, the quicker our decision making, the less time we have to consider those decisions. Our own minds inner working mimic the relentless speed of a 24 hour news cycle. With no time to consider, we think in sound bytes and over simplifications. We choose sides and regurgitate talking points of perceived authorities. We have to. Thinking takes time. Who has any of that? Time is a precious thing that we dare not waste.

These days it seems the voices are too loud and too pervasive. We live in the torrents of calls to action. What to buy, what to wear, what to watch, who to vote for, what morality to support. The voices demand we choose a product or buy an ideal. Each voice serving their own best interests. They collect us like baseball cards, as a signature on a petition of their own validity; a party role call, a blip on a profit graph. We are market share. Majority rules. Volume the logic goes, manifests reality. On someone else’s racing locomotive we are the passengers that justify the line. For my part I often feel caught on a train that keeps flying past the stops.

Wouldn’t you know the phone just rang! I need to get back to my real job. I have to build an advertisement. Go figure!