“Git ‘er done!” The cry of the modern masses. It, perhaps, says something about our society that we prize the completion of tasks above all else. Why else, do we reward students for doing their homework, even if that homework teaches them nothing? Why else to we heap kudos upon those who finish a race, even if they run it so slow as to reap no physical benefit? Why else to we have social sites where people can crow their day’s accomplishments to an audience of peers and receive a chorus of congratulations for nothing more earth-shattering than eating breakfast?
Is it any wonder that I find this mentality….lacking? No one who knows me is surprised, I’m sure. I hate everything, I’m told. Continue reading »
The myth of the NYC Park.
Picture a serene scene. The most serene scene you have ever seen. One in a park of lovely green. (Forgive the Dr. Seuss treatment. I’ll stop.) Anyway, the grass is soft, the breeze light. Above you, the Brooklyn Bridge stands like some granite colossus, straddling the East River. It is majestic and powerful, enhancing the beauty and serenity of the surrounding park through it’s monumental architecture. A tugboat sounds a wistful horn in the distance. A gull soars overhead, starkly white against the bright blue of the sky. You are alone in a city of 8 million….lying cradled between the soft, cool grass and the warm midday sun.
Now, as you picture this wonderful scene, picture also a family of five. They stomp onto your soft delicate lawn, bickering, dropping litter, and dragging an assortment of towels, loud radios, kids, toys, lotions, hats, smells, and Teddy Grahams. They are a hurricane ravishing your oasis. They are a monster truck, tearing across your field of wildflowers, leaving a scar of mud and a cloud of diesel fumes. They march across the vast openness, and plop down, still bickering, right beside you. Your fortress of solitude is invaded, and you have been rendered powerless by the red sun of Krypton. (Okay, nerdy metaphor, but stay with me.)
Soon, a young couple arrives. They are ill dressed in spiky clothes and gothic makeup. They lie mere feet away from you, alternating between sharing a 7-11 slurpee and making out luridly. They smell funny. Their uncomfortably-tight yet trendy-in-some-circles clothing slips about to reveal rolls of fat and unsettling bulges. They grope and straddle each other openly in simulated love-making poses. You become sandwiched between them and the family of five.
Continue reading »
I heard a sentiment recently that, to turn a phrase, stuck in my craw. I guess it’s one of those ideas that you sort of take for granted, often hearing it tossed about in preachy statements or political speeches (neither of which are often very profound). The sentiment is that we should be “getting back to our roots.” Now I’ve been known to drop the odd aphorism, and no doubt you’ve heard it used and even used it before. I’m just wondering what the hell it really means? What are our “roots” and do we really want to get back to them? Moreover do we really need to get back to them, as it seems we are often told?
I guess I’m being a little purposely obtuse, because I know that people mean it to say that things were better when they were simpler…when our focus (as a nation, as a people, as a culture, as whatever group you’re addressing) was narrowed and purposed! When people lived simply and had simple wants, needs and desires! Of course, I know that’s what people mean. But is that really what we’re after? Think hard on that. Do you really want to take what humanity has wrought over the centuries and chop the tree off at the stem? What else is “getting back to our roots.” It’s conservative code for the status quo. Continue reading »
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