Tag: contemporary thinking

It’s Spring — 2019

spring

Thank God it’s spring!  And this isn’t just another date on the calendar; this is the real meal deal.  Mother Nature is changing her clothes, and Father Time is watching.  We mere mortals are only a small part of what they both have in mind, but, like every year since this planet was a baby, it’s going to be spectacular.   As of today, the birds and the bees are back, and they’re feeling frisky.

Unfortunately, the spring solstice doesn’t carry the kind of punch it used to.  These days, it’s mostly living on its rep.  We all know it’s spring, but in a world of central heating, air conditioning, mega-malls and concrete canyon streets, how many of us really care?  In the 21st century, we generally ignore the world around us until Mother Nature gets pissed off and starts slapping the crap out of everything in her path – then we pay attention.  Primitive humans weren’t this arrogant; that’s why they treated the spring solstice with some respect.

Back in the day, winter in the northern hemisphere was nothing to be trifled with.  Our species never physically adapted to the cold the way some of the other animals on this planet did.  However, despite our natural tendency to freeze to death, we insisted on living in climates that were inhospitable for four (or more) months of the year.  The only recourse for this stupidity was to outsmart Mother Nature, using the tools at hand – fire and the skins of more practical animals.  Plus, our instincts told us to hide in caves when a hostile world starting howling for our bones.  This strategy worked and we survived long enough to understand that — even though Mother Nature spent a good amount of time trying to kill us — eventually she would relent and treat us like her special children again.  And this was cause for celebration.

As we evolved beyond beetle-brow tough to early-human clever, we must have realized that these constantly changing seasons were not random.  They had a pattern.  When winter was over, the leaves came out.  From there, only a Neanderthal wouldn’t put two and two together and realize, once the leaves started to fall, winter was coming back.  (That’s why there are no more Neanderthals, BTW.  Just sayin’.)  With that in mind, it wasn’t a Cro-Magnon leap of intelligence to figure out that, with a little planning, we could gather food and firewood during the good weather, store them away, and a smart cave family could sit out the winter in relative comfort.  Thus, instead of hanging out in the cave, shivering and getting skinny all winter, we had some leisure time to put that big brain or ours to work.  We watched the sun, we watched the moon, we noticed when the ice started to melt, when the birds came back and when the bear two caves over woke up grumpy, hungry and looking for a fight.  This was all important stuff, because the more we knew about the seasons, the more likely it was that we’d be around to see a few of them.

 

Unfortunately, climatology hadn’t been invented yet, and so humans simply filed all these various discoveries under “Mother Nature: Whims and Idiosyncrasies.”  But Mother Nature was real.  She made the flowers bloom, the warm breezes blow, and warmed up the sun.  So, when winter was over, it made sense for primitive humans to take a minute, be polite and say thanks.

These days, we don’t much care for Mother Nature.  After all, for the last two hundred years or so, we’ve been fighting with her for supremacy on this planet.  There are some who say we’re winning and some who say we’ve already lost.  Unfortunately, the majority of us don’t seem to give a damn, either way.  Our egos are so secure we no longer thank her — or anybody else — for our existence.  However, on a morning like this one, in the first sunlight of what’s going to be a perfectly gorgeous day, I tend to get a little caveman-humble.  I hear the birds putting on the brag, see an ambitious green sprig forcing its way through the sidewalk and maybe — just maybe — sniff a sweet change in the air.   And it all tells me something special is happening again this year — and it’s going to fantastic.

 

Thanks, Mother Nature!

We’re All The Same

crowd

These days, everybody seems to be pissed off at somebody, and there are a whole pile of people out there who are making a career out of being angry.  Folks!  We need to calm down because, like it or don’t, we’re all in this together.  Let me demonstrate.  Here are just a few things that prove humans are one species and we all share a common experience.  Everybody … EVERYBODY … has done these things – probably more than once.  And, BTW, if you haven’t, you’re either lying or not from this planet.

You see a piece of lint or dirt or something on the kitchen floor and instead of bending down and picking it up, you kick it under the fridge.

You negotiate with yourself over how many cookies to eat or how many more episodes to watch — as if you can cut a deal with your own brain.

You madly clean the house before somebody comes over because you don’t want them to think you actually live like this.

You’ve experienced that nanosecond of panic when you think the Internet is out.

You buy extra stuff when you shop online just to avoid shipping charges — even though the extra stuff probably costs twice as much.

When you’re driving around looking for an address, you turn the music off — as if that’s going to help.

Sometimes, you forget a person’s name right after you’ve been introduced – and you fake it for the rest of the evening.

When you fill your gas tank, you try your damnedest to end on an even number — even if it means three or four extra jolts.

You’ve given that phony little laugh when you’re in a group and you’re the only one who doesn’t understand the joke.

At the grocery store, when someone is in front of the thing you want, you stand around, pretending to look at something else — until they leave.

You’ve excused yourself from a group of people at a party because you needed to find a secluded place to fart.

You press the “walk” button a couple of extra times as if that’s going to make the light change faster.  (This doesn’t work for elevators, either.)

You try to channel The Hulk and carry all the grocery bags into the house in one trip – every time.

You give the tongs one or two little test drives before you use them.

When you see someone you kinda/barely know on the street, you avoid eye contact so you don’t have to have a conversation.

On occasion, when you’ve been invited somewhere, you say, “Sorry, I have other plans” — even when you don’t.

You’ve eaten a candy bar in the car (or the closet) cuz you don’t want to share.

When you hear an old song you like but don’t actually remember the words, you compensate by singing the chorus really loud.

When the remote doesn’t work the first time, you stretch your arm out closer to the TV – like that’s going to make a difference.

And finally:

When someone shows you a picture of their kid, you say it’s cute — even if it looks like Satan and Medusa had a baby.

Popular Culture — Temporary Truth

pop culture

Pop culture is to culture what water is to granite: write your name in water and see how long it lasts.  But, eventually, even the mightiest carved granite tablet will be worn away by rivers of water.  Pop culture might be trivial and easily forgotten (I’m looking at you, Beanie Babies) but while it hangs around, it can change the way we think.  For example, for 99% of human history, a person had to work hard to be universally hated – mass murder usually did the trick.  Enter the Internet.  These days, all anyone has to do is disagree with Twitter once too often and they’ll find themselves on the business end of a Cybermob, howling for their blood.  Here are just a few other examples of how Pop Culture has changed our perceptions.  There are many, many more.

Look what happened to clowns!  Back in the day, clowns were fun.  They were colourful.  They were silly.  They had big feet and made balloon animals.  They hosted TV programs and were everybody’s first choice for their child’s birthday party.  They even advertised fast food.  Then, in 1986, along came Stephen King.  BAM!  Suddenly, clowns became evil.  And not just regular evil, either — eat-your-eyeballs evil!  Now, everybody’s afraid of clowns as if humans have always had a deep, primeval fear of painted faces.  We even have one of those meaningless psychobabble names for it – coulrophobia.

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, vampires were created to scare the hell outta people.  They were the creatures whose very existence broke the laws of God and nature.  They were the secret horror that lurked behind us in the dark, thirsty for our souls.  Wow!  What a difference a generation makes!  Anne Rice and a couple of million imitators have turned vampires into that kinda odd, undead guy next door.  Vampires play video games and Monopoly, and aside from the nasty habit of wanting to feast on your blood, they’re no more dangerous than an angry Chihuahua.

For centuries, machines were our friends.  However, the prevailing wisdom of our time is that, one of these days, your laptop is going to become self-aware, leap up and slaughter you, the kids, your neighbour, your cousin and anybody else who gets in its way.  Apparently, this is the inevitable result of Artificial Intelligence.  Crap!  It’s too complicated to explain here, but trust me: there is no scientific proof for this, at all.  None!  It’s all based on recent science fiction books, television and movies.  Think about it!  My computer can’t even get Auto-Correct right; how the hell is it going to take over the world?

And finally, one of the best ones:

Of all the lame excuses in the history of lame excuses, sex addiction has got to be the lamest.
“Sorry, honey!  I slept with your brother, his best friend and Carl from work — cuz I’m a sex addict!”
“No, not all at the same time.  I’m not that addicted!”
I’m pretty sure sex addiction isn’t a real thing.  Mother Nature made us wanna have sex because that’s how we make more of us.  It’s next to impossible to be addicted to something that you’re biologically programmed to do in the first place.  It’s like saying, “I’m addicted to breathing.”  Contemporary culture made up sex addiction so we’d have someplace to hide when we act like emotional assholes.

My point is, be careful what you believe to be irrefutable truth because, as some Persian poet said, a thousand years ago, “This, too, shall pass.”