Thanks to our host Clayton for posting this item, only one of an ongoing stream of semi-extemporaneous writings I send to him and others on a fairly regular basis.
One thing anyone who reads these must have noticed by now is how often I use the terms 'fashion' and 'superstition' in my discussions of what I find to be the motivations behind one form of 21st century human behavior or another. This is because I have maintained a certain skepticism about the viability of our modern living standards for pretty much my entire life. Considerations such as the latest Kardashian scandal or the outcome of some 'first-round draft pick', or just about any other currently headlining item which gets treated as so very important each day (until something else comes along and distracts out attention from them), just never seemed for me to have much actual importance.
I often feel as though I have shared a planet for a lifetime with silly creatures whose fleeting attention spans are continually diverted this way and that, from one absolutely trivial and meaningless consideration to another, depending only on what the fashions and superstitions currently being distributed by mass media might be from one day to the next. What I find so dangerous about all this is the continuing sense I get that few really concern themselves with how a life of consumerism really works on a planetary scale, or with how vulnerable we all are to anything which might someday make a life of having what we want when we want it only because we want it, impossible to sustain.
Then what?
I can't say I have ever truly wanted to know what the answer to that question might be. But we may be all on a course to finding out, whether we want to know or not.
Good luck, humanity. I think we're all gonna need it. I truly do hope that maybe luck alone will serve us better, than all the fashions and superstitions of consumerism which have brought us here ever have.
Thanks to our host Clayton for posting this item, only one of an ongoing stream of semi-extemporaneous writings I send to him and others on a fairly regular basis.
One thing anyone who reads these must have noticed by now is how often I use the terms 'fashion' and 'superstition' in my discussions of what I find to be the motivations behind one form of 21st century human behavior or another. This is because I have maintained a certain skepticism about the viability of our modern living standards for pretty much my entire life. Considerations such as the latest Kardashian scandal or the outcome of some 'first-round draft pick', or just about any other currently headlining item which gets treated as so very important each day (until something else comes along and distracts out attention from them), just never seemed for me to have much actual importance.
I often feel as though I have shared a planet for a lifetime with silly creatures whose fleeting attention spans are continually diverted this way and that, from one absolutely trivial and meaningless consideration to another, depending only on what the fashions and superstitions currently being distributed by mass media might be from one day to the next. What I find so dangerous about all this is the continuing sense I get that few really concern themselves with how a life of consumerism really works on a planetary scale, or with how vulnerable we all are to anything which might someday make a life of having what we want when we want it only because we want it, impossible to sustain.
Then what?
I can't say I have ever truly wanted to know what the answer to that question might be. But we may be all on a course to finding out, whether we want to know or not.
Good luck, humanity. I think we're all gonna need it. I truly do hope that maybe luck alone will serve us better, than all the fashions and superstitions of consumerism which have brought us here ever have.