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| Image by elizabethaferry from Pixabay |
This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.
Trigger Warning: This column rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in debilitating psychological trauma.
"Show business is just like high school, except you get paid." -Martin Mull
Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,
So-called real life, at least in the countries that used to be proud to be identified as products of Western Civilization, is just high school with money (and smartphones), that's all you really need to know.
In fact, modern technology + modern prosperity = perpetual high school (mt + mp = phs).
{But some of the countries in the Eastern Hemisphere and the Global South are also...}
Yes indeed, but the majority of them are products of radically different cultural traditions than ours which they aren't abandoning as rapidly and enthusiastically as we are.
{Wait-wait-wait, you've revealed the secret of life, as alleged by you at least, several times over the last hundred years or so, old man. What gives?}
I haven't written about the subject since my four-month sabbatical last year at a secret Taoist monastery in the Wudang mountains. Like its predecessors, this missive serves as an update to previous versions.
If technology keeps advancing arm in arm with global prosperity, eventually the entire planet will consist of H. sapiens with psyches equivalent to that of an average American high school student (and many of their elders).
The good news is that with a bit of luck, this will cancel out the ChiCom's effort to destroy Western Civilization via their not-so-secret weapon, TikTok. By the way, I define ChiComs as the current emperor and his minions, not his serfs and slaves.
{But there's no shortage of countries mired in poverty and primitive technology.}
Sure. But if you adopt a birds-eye view you'll discover that technology and prosperity are spreading at unprecedented rates. At least for now.
{You're gonna' have to supply links to the data if you want me, the Stickies, or your gentlereaders for that matter, to believe that.}
Well, I'm not going to... but I would if I thought it worth the effort.
Prosperity has made it possible for more people to access technology. Technology has enabled more people to access the worldwide web of all knowledge.
But unfortunately, the web, particularly social media — as well as traditional media like TV, print, and radio — is chock-a-block with contradictory knowledge that constitutes the ultimate, international version of a classic debate format familiar to everyone:
Uh-huh! Nuh-uh!
{You've mentioned this uh-huh, nuh-uh thing before too. In fact...}
I know, but it just keeps getting better and worse. Modern technology has made it possible for everyone to become a publisher, a broad/narrowcaster, a producer/director, a musician/record label, etc. Any moron can claim to be a columnist. Power to the people!
But nowadays, all sides of any given argument are able to supply links to all sorts of websites and data top-heavy with links to all sorts of other websites and data top-heavy with links... ad infinitum.
Flame-fanning by traditional media outlets more motivated by financial survival than the search for truth, makes it hard to tell genuine thoughtful, carefully reasoned disagreement from mere partisan infotainment, ideology, gossip, and propaganda.
{Well, that's a spiffy paragraph, but what's it got to do with your notion that real life is high school with money?}
It's an October morning in 1968 and a bunch of bleary-eyed teenagers are seated at a high school cafeteria table waiting for the homeroom bell. Being 1968, there was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air (HT: B. Dylan).
A vocal minority of Boomers a few years previously, had begun a cultural trend that has since gotten out of hand: all politics all the time. An argument has broken out at the table and an occasional, "It's a fact! You can look it up!" can be heard.
{I still don't see...}
Well, now you can look it up, but most Uh-huhs! can be easily refuted by a Nun-uh!
Bottom line: All politics, all the time is spreading around the world at light speed. Filtered through social media and exploited by the outrage industrial complex, the result is a virtual version of an endless American high school civics class debate (or a cafeteria kerfuffle).
{Do they still teach civics in high school?}
Later that same day our typical American high school Boomers are eating lunch at their self-segregated cafeteria tables. At the cool girl's tables, top-heavy with salads, cans of diet soda pop, and little else, they're speculating about Debbie. Turns out her family didn't move. Debbie's been moved, to the Saint Mary McGilliddy home for mothers and babes.
At the jock tables, they're congratulating, Bob, a wrestler, as it turns out he won't be dropping out of school and getting married after all. Bob and several of the members of the wrestling team aren't eating, an important match is pending and they need to "make weight."
When lunch is over a flurry of notes are exchanged that will be delivered by an ad hoc postal system once classes resume.
It's an October afternoon in 2022, and at a typical American high school Zoomers are eating lunch at their self-segregated tables. At the cool girl's tables, salads and bottled water are being consumed with one hand, information consumed and disseminated with the other.
At the jock's tables, members of the wrestling team are working their smartphones with both hands.
An endless stream of pics, selfies, videos, gossip, trolling, canceling, cyberbullying, tweets, and etcetereets is being generated.
A few girls are pregnant, but nowadays the whole world is becoming a small town wherein everyone can gossip and fret about every-thing that every-one is up to, and can do so anonymously.
Marshall McCluhann achieved his 15 minutes of fame (H.T. Andy Warhol, fellow Yinzer) when he posited that "the medium is the message." I think that although the mediums keep changing, and do have an impact on the messages, the messages, like human nature, remain fundamentally the same
Poppa loves you,
