America the Distracted

Okay, so I was thinking, there’s this… wait, that’s my phone.  Okay, my team’s up two nothing in the first, good.  But anyway, I was- the door.  Who’s at the door?  Oh no, it’s the Lawn Rangers again.  How many times do you have to shout obscenities in Mandarin out the window before they get the message?  I’ll just duck in here until they’re… Dang, my phone again.  Oh, it’s just a video of a Panda playing a banjo.

Where was I?

Here’s the thing: Is it just me, or have we lost like 75% of our attention span?  I mean, you can’t even have a conversation without the other person donning that faraway gaze two minutes in.  My last attempt went something like this:

Me:  Hey, what’s up?

Them:  Nuthin.

Me:  Nothing huh?

Them:  Yep.

Me:  Really? Nothing at all?

Them:  Have you seen that video of that Panda playing a banjo?

I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone focus on anything for more than a few minutes, unless it was binge-watching the latest flavor-of-the-week Netflix release, or immersed in some video game.  Engage in conversation? Pooh-pooh the thought.  Having a barbeque?  Better collect the phones at the door.  Trying to organize a neighborhood clean-up day at the local park?  Good luck with that.  Unless there’s Wi-Fi.

No, we have – through conditioning, apathy, or some combination of the two – pretty much lost our ability to think about one thing for more than fifteen minutes, twenty tops.  Yet we are captivated by the most trivial, inane, and immaterial of shiny objects; it’s like junk food for the brain. 

A series of tornados tears through the Midwest sucking a few hundred people – and a handful of tractors - up into the vortex, but that’s soon forgotten when some reality show chucklehead tearfully reveals she was forced to eat lima beans as a child.  Life-changing events are occurring all around us, often right on our doorstep, but social media is abuzz over a couple of celebrity’s Twitter feud.

Some have suggested that we’re being manipulated into focusing on some things, to distract us from others.  And, they’re probably right - to some degree.  But, we can only ascribe so much blame to others when we are ultimately responsible for the choices we make in where to invest our time, energy, and emotions.

So, that’s it.  In closing, I’d just like to say- WHOA! A METAPOD JUST SPAWNED LIKE 600 YARDS FROM HERE!  Gotta run!

 

Stay focused out there.

Is It 2010, or 1984?

I made the mistake of watching a few minutes of “the news” earlier, and was once again treated to a sampling of what I like to call “ignorance gone to seed”. Long story short, some guy has decided that we as a society eat too much, and eat things that are not healthy for us. So, he has decided that the best way to stop this is to increase the tax on “unhealthy” foods.

I say we erect a statue in his honor.

This man has single-handedly taken on the challenge of saving us from ourselves. How noble! How altruistic! He knows what’s best for you and I!

Well, I have a message for this man, whomever he is: Mind your own business. If you want to eat tofu and bean sprouts, go right ahead. But you do not have the right to tell me what I can and cannot eat (or to artificially inflate the price of a free-market commodity in an attempt to dissuade me from partaking). If I choose to balloon up to 400 lbs., what business is it if yours, anyway? It’s my life. I can make my own decisions, thank you, and your opinion is neither solicited or appreciated.

It seems these days someone is always trying to save us from ourselves. Many of our “elected officials” have decided that no one should be allowed to smoke cigarettes in restaurants and bars. In Virginia, the law took effect last December. A certain politician reputedly referred to the introduction of the law as a “stroke of genius”.

So - just to get this straight in my own head - the decision to tell a bar or restaurant owner, who often puts in 12 - 14 hour days, and has invested his life’s savings into his venture, that he cannot allow his patrons to use a substance which is completely legal in his establishment, is a “stroke of genius”?

No, it’s not a “stroke of genius”; it’s authoritarianism. It’s Big Brother “protecting us from ourselves”.

Many politicians, in pushing smoking bans, have made the point that employees of the establishment have the right to work in a smoke-free environment. And, they do. But, 50% or more of the bars and restaurants in Virginia had already voluntarily gone smoke-free. They came to the determination all by themselves, without any government interference. Without Big Brother making their decisions for them.

Some non-smokers have hailed the move, as they prefer to not be subjected to cigarette smoke while they dine. And I completely understand why they wouldn’t. To those people I ask: what’s going to happen when the same legislators decide you shouldn’t be able to have an alcoholic beverage with your dinner? Or, that you shouldn’t have red meat? Or dessert? Or, anything else that they determine is “bad” for you?

So-called “blue laws” have also been in the news lately. Those are laws which basically say you cannot buy this or that between such-and-such hours on such-and-such days. Some years back, there were places you could not buy gasoline for your car before noon on Sunday’s. Because you were supposed to be in church on Sunday mornings, not out gallivanting around the countryside. Here we have an example of Big Brother keeping your feet on the straight-and-narrow. Can I get an Amen!

The older I get, the more Libertarian I become. The more I appreciate my freedoms, my right to make my own decisions, whether “good” or “bad” in some bureaucrat’s eyes, and the more I long for a government which is truly “of the people, by the people, and for the people”, and not one comprised mostly of millionaire ex-lawyers living in their ivory towers and dictating morality to us.
Finally, if you’ve never read George Orwell’s 1984, I highly recommend it. It’s the story of what happens when a society allows their government to do whatever the government thinks is best; to protect the citizens from themselves.

Doubleplusgood.