There is never any shortage of subjects to write about. Or talk about. The world today is ludicrously different from the world of my younger years, but the amount and scope of problems are about the same.
In the 1960s*, the war, civil rights, women’s right, climate change (yes, way back then), voting rights, tree-hugging, love, sex, algebra, the Exquisite No Bra, the end of The Bullet Bra, there was just so much to worry about that old people often warned me the end of civilization was near.**
With the young deaths from The War, the riots in the cities, and an older generation intend on making my cohorts and I toe the “shorthaircutcleanface” regimen from the 1950s, it did seem like The End was near. My father personally offered to end my world if I did not get my haircut.
Ah, good times. One good thing about my father is he loved bars/taverns. If we were with him, we loved them, too, especially the patrons who felt it was the right time for me and my brother to learn the evils of alcohol. And pickled eggs.
Flash forward to the present and what are we worried about? The End, still. Our Democracy is threatened, again, our natural world is at peril, still, and our capacity for destroying each other has increased. We can kill people from afar with effortless ease and without the time-worn threat of nuclear involvement. Through Ai, we can even wipe ourselves out with a “fox in the henhouse” attitude that seems to enjoy the eggs without regard for how long they may last.***
And we can instantly tell someone they are a butthead from long distance. We can even put it in writing so the butthead can review it at his/her/their leasure. ****
Soon, the magic of Quantum Entanglement might make it possible to insult the butthead face to face and beam back home before they understand what butthead means.
Here begins an age-old problem. This essay was started with the best to intentions and clearest of “point to be made”. But you can tell by the footnotes my brain has taken the nearest exit from the constructive, intelligent speed of the super highway to the slow-paced, drowsiness of memory lane. A cogent, pithy, well-thought-out essay is now as extinct as a pterodactyl. (Why can’t you hear a pterodactyl go to the bathroom? The “p” is silent.)
What do you call a person who can’t fart in public? A private tutor. Hope you don’t have to think about that one.
Or anything else. The World is The World and it has been for billions of years. Can we do anything to change it? Or course we can, look at history.
But can we do anything to change it and make it better? More livable for all? Happier for at least The Majority? Even if we change the world for the better how long will we be able to enjoy it?
Meh. Let’s say not long, and believe there is life after death, a better life, a fuller, life, an easier life with no Ends to worry about.
There was an advertisement for a self-help book “How to Solve 50 Per Cent of Your Problems”.
Ever the optimist, I bought two.
Full disclosure, if I ever write a joke of my own I will make sure you know it.
*Conveniently forgetting pre-1960 years of farming, using a baseball bat with the wrong grip, trying to shoot snakes with a cap gun, building snow forts in snowbanks as the plows were still running, and—you get the point: stupid kid.
**Apologies for mentioning the bra controversies but it was puberty and my mother bought all my clothes from the Sears Catalogue, so fashion (ahem) intrigued me.
***Pardon me for kind of enjoying this symbolism/metaphor/mini allegory.
****Yes, I do do this. Do do. Ha.
