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.

De-evolution Defined

On October 14, 1978 an avant-garde pop band appeared on SNL to perform their version of the Rolling Stones “Satisfaction”.  The group was clad in hazmat suits and their robotic, herky-jerky movements were eye-catching, to say the least.  I learned the band’s name, Devo, was short for de-evolution.

I found the concept interesting; that mankind had reached its pinnacle and then began to regress, back down the slope it’d taken us millions of years to climb.  Initially, I was skeptical.  The moon landings and other scientific and engineering feats were still somewhat fresh in my mind.  At the same time, I wondered if this musical group from Ohio was on to something; that we had, at least from a societal viewpoint, peaked, and that it was all downhill from there.

In the years that have passed since that day, I have become convinced that we are in fact de-evolving.  The only question remaining is: when did it begin?  And so, in the immortal words of Rod Serling, the following stabs at the genesis of de-evolution are submitted for your approval:

July 16, 1945: The first atomic bomb detonation

At that moment, as a 20 kiloton explosion mushroomed into the New Mexico atmosphere, mankind unknowingly took a giant step backward.  True, nuclear physics have resulted in power production independent of fossil fuels, and opened the door to nuclear medicine, but it also handed Man the ability to utterly destroy himself and his environment in a matter of hours.  To paraphrase Genesis 3:22, Man had become (a God), to know good and evil.

1977: Disco takes over

Described by one music critic as “Muzak for a dry hump”, the symphonic demon of disco succeeded in choking every ounce of soul, style and melody from music.  While many differ on exactly when this crime against art first emerged, the cultural brain freeze reached its peak with the release of “Saturday Night Fever”, in which our hero is a blue collar worker by day and dances at night.  He dances.  At discos.  At night.  Many at the time thought disco was a sign of the apocalypse, myself included.

May 21, 1992: MTV unleashes “Real World”

Many people believe this was the first “reality” TV show, and it is, if you define reality TV as I do: It’s real in the sense that it’s unscripted, but not really real because the participants knew they were being filmed.  Had this been a reality show in the strictest sense, the cameras would had to have been hidden, but that would have resulted in a lot less showboating and incendiary drama, and therefore, sold a lot less zit cream and Jolt cola.

1999: World population reaches six billion

Not only had our numbers increased by a billion (a hefty 20% jump) in the span of 12 years, it happened at a time when a significant portion of us had to have been aware that fossils fuels, potable water, and arable land were dwindling.  Yet we pro-created our behinds off.  Congratulations, it’s a billion.

September 1, 2006: “Idiocracy” is released

This “satirical science fiction comedy” tells the story of two people who are kept in suspended animation for 500 years, and awake to a world populated by idiots. One may wonder why this particular movie (which is satire after all) made the list, and the answer is simple: Anyone who’s seen the movie has seen our future.  It’s easy to connect the dots; we as a species are in fact becoming dumber by the minute, and we’ve done little to change course.   I will forever be haunted by the scene of the skyscraper with a huge digital clock flashing “12:00”.

June 2009: The Forever Lazy is born

The fact that even one of these was actually sold is sufficient evidence for me that humankind has chosen to throw off the survivalist spirit which brought him up from the great primordial soup bowl, preferring instead to vegetate on the sofa wrapped in a “onesie for adults”.  I’m surprised they haven’t introduced a matching feedbag.

What is Man’s fate?  Are we destined to slide down the slippery slope of evolution, back into that primordial soup bowl?  Will we ever create the utopian paradise we claim to want?  Or will we all wind up enshrouded in a onesie, flopped down on a sofa, clutching a remote or iPad, just waiting to die?  Where there is ebb, there must be flow; where there is hope there must be change.

Be that change.