Everything Nac

Chris Herrington, Contributing Writer

     It used to be that people would rush to where they thought there was gold. In past times, gold was more philosophical, and so anywhere where answers were, where God was, or where health was, people went, but now, everything can be brought and bought, so we just need money.

     When we were in the ’50’s a guy sold cow dung in a candy box to prove that he could sell anything. In the ’70’s, it was pet rocks. We’ve sold each other everything under the sun, including buzzwords and catch phrases; remember “three-peat?” We’ve gone way beyond the slogans of advertising, bumper stickers, fortune cookies, and box tops. We’ve even eclipsed the headlines, the blurbs, the tweets, and the media one-liners, sound bites.

     At this point, anyone can create an avalanche of press and coverage by simply saying something offhandedly or slightly ineloquently or even childish. So, why oh why do we need to hire people to stand in front of us and say outrageous things that are sure to shock, annoy, disrupt, disturb, and otherwise challenge our sense of fair play, human decency, and common courtesy? Oh, why not?

     We have gone out of our way in the 21st Century to shock, impress, humiliate, and manipulate others into reacting and expressing outrage. It’s fun. We are having the times of our lives making sure that others are crying, screaming, throwing tantrums, humiliating themselves on international TV, and showing their absolutely worst traits. and then we TEVO it so that we can rerun it to make sure that others are having a harder time than we are.

     What we have forgotten to think of is a basic lesson of history: “That which you touch touches you back.” While we are wallowing in the satisfaction that everyone is miserable, we find that we ourselves have lowered the bar on what it takes to be happy. “At least I am not having as miserable a time as that poor slob,” is not exactly having a blast, you know?

     “What we need is a good 5 cent cigar,” they used to say. Whoever “they” were, they were on the right track. We need something. And it is not simply giving others a hard time or making a picnic out of their difficulties. Imagine then that in order to enjoy yourself, you have to see pain, misery, abuse, injustice, difficulty, harm, self-destruction, or humiliation. You could not be in the Rocky Mountains, or riding a wave in Malibu, or walking the Appalachian Trail, or visiting Mt. Rushmore, or heading to Fiji, no. You would have to be right there at the event, waiting for some violence, some trauma, some irritation, and then the reactions.

     Okay, so we have gotten a little caught up in soft core snuff films on TV, overtly sexualized commercialism, and a wave of technological gadgets that have literally ostracized us from the people we are with so that we can have virtual meetings with others who are not present. An 11 year-old Willow Smith is a demon of activity that remodels the idealized freedom our parents joked about when they told us stories of how our children would take over as pre-teens. They have. From Bart Simpson to SpongeBob to Bobby on King of the Hill, we have now gone the way. It is now not only not cool to listen to or talk to your parents, you can hardly wait for them to die so that you can spend your inheritance on the next generation of technology and clothes.

     These kids just want to be famous and have their pictures taken. That’s all. Life in the next version, the 2.01 update, the Navel Ring update, is a diamond studded future of shimmering multi-platinum sounds laced with jolts of caffeine and sprinkles of genetically modified über- sugars. Paste and obsolescence. Updating and retrofitting.

     And this brings us to how fast they are living. Marriage. Church. Education. Jobs. IF these words scare you in the context of talking about your kids, welcome to the home group. The best you can do seems to be the least you can manage, and they are two if not 5 steps ahead of you at all times. Who even knows what they’re saying and if it makes sense or is just a filler that is used as a marker to hang a grunt or a cuss word on? OM Mani Padme Om.

     We look back at our own homes and houses. Sure, mom was a little over bearing and in some ways too critical. But this is the living end! We reached out to technology and it ripped us a new one. From the 1850’s and then reconstruction into the 20th Century, the family went through a tremendous overhaul. And now that we are at the end of a very long set of stairs, we turn the corner and oh, my God, the next flight is straight up! Computers in the last 5 years have completely blown the previous ones away. What is on the drawing board promises to make that into child’s play.

     We reached out, and it touched us back with cyber fingers that have reached into our very essence. What we do, where we go, and what we know. We are afraid that the government knows where we are standing in our houses, but the Internet is now showing advertisements from what we were shopping for yesterday. We are being tracked, traced, trampled, and trailored around from idea to concept to ideology to service ID. We are now a target demographic in every way and are being compiled and stored as a digital identity for later sales tracers in the digital marketplace. It’s perfectly legal and very necessary.

     They are bringing the gold right to your door step and have preapproved the sale. Your not declining is a symbol of your acceptance and that you are not aware of the purchase is not a legal position that will hold up in court since you checked the box by clicking through on the previous page that you cannot return to. Have a nice day.

runningturtle87