Slowly but surely, I’m getting it, I really am. Honest!
True, I did go all spiritual commando on someone’s ass after she wrote an online piece about not being able to take a walk without GPS and a slew of iPhone apps. (Way to go, you tribal elder, you.) Man, there comes a time when such as I should just shut up.
The trouble is, it comes, and then it goes…
[What was I thinking?]
I’ve heard all kinds of perfectly fine people — mostly younger — rave about using GPS and iPhone apps to get directions in an unfamiliar city, for example. Me, I’d probably just familiarize myself with the destination in advance. You know, look at a map, memorize a few main streets and have a picture in my mind of where they go, maybe write down an address. But so what? I don’t have an iPhone, and I’ve never used a GPS device. I’m a “take the next exit and go a couple of miles until you hit a light with a McDonald’s on the left” kinda guy, not better than anybody else, just used to different ways. I’ve also never even tried it, have I? — and I can think of situations where the technology might save my life, which means I’m probably old AND stupid.
The “kids” are different now, duh. To me they seem so fragmented and disconnected, learning Nature through an interface and loving passive entertainment. But there are different kinds of experience, and this is theirs. It’s all light and energy, anyway, but most of all, they get to say. It’s their time, not mine. They’re rolling into their strongest years, and I’m rolling into the grave. Good God, when I was 30 years old, I was so freaking raw! I see it in the younger ones and sometimes try to tell them, just like people tried to do with me. Why is that, I wonder? Why do we tend to make the same mistakes over and over, generation after generation?
The thing about being raw, though, is that it never really ends. That’s what I’d like most to communicate. It just never does, or at least it hasn’t yet. There’s always some new idiocy or challenge. It’s like a cosmic practical joke. I realize not everybody in my age bracket feels that way, but this is something everybody living has at least potentially in common, that we’re all still growing, even if some of us look like food for feral hogs.
So you just stay right there on my grass as long as you want. Dig a garden, put up a yurt. I won’t play loud rock & roll after midnight in the summer with the windows open, and everything will be just fine.
You are okay with nudity, right?
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
I see what you see.
As a member of the younger generation, but not a participant I see the world like you do. We are so distracted by technology and gadgets that we seldom have time to think deep thoughts. My generation doesn’t know how to entertain itself either.
Its kind of a sad reality we are facing.
My point was that as an incipient ancient one, I have to let your generation find its own way– and I’m happy to do that! You of course can say whatever you want, and I’m gratified to hear your responses.
Reality reflects our beliefs, not the other way around. This is a tricky thing to grasp and also the keys to the Universe. That none of this responds to intellectual problem-solving is extremely aggravating and rightly so: we’re supposed to learn to push the envelope. What ONE PERSON does with his or her life can change everything, though. So keep on learning your own truth. It matters!!!
My wife has an iPhone. Neither of us has a GPS. But at least I know where I’m at (very existential). Where I grew up, in the frozen swamps of the Upper Peninsula, An old Marble brass pin-on compass worked when the sun was dead. And that was almost always.
The best way to figure out where you are is to figure out where you are not. It’s a good system, but lengthly and tedious. In a Walgreens the other day, Their computer went out. They couldn’t sell me cough drops.
This is problematic (although nudity is fine by me).
I’m only 44 years old and already feel like some half-tribal-elder and half-insignificant-old-fart… but the fact is, not only is the world changing (as it always has) and not only is a younger generation “taking over” (as they always have) but that this is happening faster and faster and faster.
Alan Moore says: “…if we take one period of human information as being the time between the invention of the first hand axe, say around 50,000 BC and 1 AD, then this is one period of human information, and we can measure it by how many human inventions we came up with during that time. Then we see how long it takes for us to have twice as many inventions. This means that human information has doubled. As it turns out, after the first 50,000-year-period, the second period is about 1,500 years, say around about the time of the renaissance. By then we have twice as much information. To double again, human information took a couple of hundred years. The period speeds up. Between 1960 and 1970 human information doubled. As I understand it at the last count, human information was doubling around every 18 months. Further to this, there is a point sometime around 2015 where human information is doubling every thousandth of a second. This means that in each thousandth of a second we will have accumulated more information than we have in the entire previous history of the world. At this point, I believe that all bets are off. I cannot imagine the kind of culture that might exist after such a flashpoint of knowledge. I believe that our culture would probably move into a completely different state – would move past the boiling point, from a fluid culture to culture of steam.”
I’m not sure I’m capable of living in a culture of steam, or that I would want to (unless it was steamPUNK, I guess). I think part of the problem seems to be an overly-reverential attitude to THE TECHNOLOGY ITSELF, rather than what it can DO. Now, I don’t have a cell phone, and I don’t have a GPS device. At my most “you-damn-kids-get-off-my-lawn-ish-ness” I feel the urge to start throwing bricks through windshields every time I see anybody talking (or, Goddess forbid, TEXTING) on a handheld cell when they’re driving. I obviously have a computer, and enjoy some aspects of it, and loathe others. I don’t believe that the so-called “democratization” that we’re supposed to see with all this technology is happening nearly as fast we’re seeing its use as a newer, faster, “better” way to sell us plastic shit we don’t need and to shape and control our consumptive behaviours and social and political attitudes to more properly reflect what our corporate overlords most desire.
Now, I know that wording’s a little heavy-handed, but I stand by the substance. Knowledge – even for its own sake – isn’t a bad thing, but I don’t trust it near as much as I trust understanding. Sure, I could climb Flag Mountain with a GPS device, and it would probably be fun. But getting to the top is the whole point, and I can no doubt find my way to the top without a GPS device… and from the top, I can see a long, long way.
my one hope for Seth’s generation is that, like the ’60s generation that became disillusioned with the empty materialism of the ’50s and at least *tried* something else, this younger generation will begin to collectively awaken to the passivity and technological fetishization of our current culture and try to do something about it. everyone has that yearning for connection to something deeper, even if they’re not aware of it on a conscious level – indeed, so much of today’s passive electronic distractions seem designed to specifically numb one’s awareness of anything deeper, and file any such glimmers of perception into the local approved fairy tale (organized religion) so they don’t have to actually think about or really experience it firsthand (as John said: “learning Nature through an interface”).
time to unplug from The Matrix (there’s a media reference the younger generation would get ^_^ ).
Chipper – i’m 42, and have a somewhat similar perspective; change seems to be exponentially accelerating (to the point i’ve stopped trying to really keep up anymore like i used to), and i have this weird cognitive dissonance where on the one hand i’m starting to feel that “tribal elder” thing too, but at the same time inside i still feel basically the same as i did 30 years ago; i.e. there’s 3 decades of accumulated knowledge and experience tempering perception, but i’m the same person i was when i was 12.
and yes, you’re right about technological idolatry (the “fetishization” i mention above) – all the shiny blinky Star Trek gizmos sure are pretty – but what good are they really if you never take the Enterprise out of drydock?
humanity: bawling away at nothing and crapping its own crib…… one day Mama Bird is gonna kick us out of the Nest, whether we’re ready to fly or not…..
(ps- Chipper, have you ever seen George Lucas’ first film, “THX 1138″ ? remarkably prescient depiction of future dystopia.)
Thank you all for stopping by.
I love Joseph’s comments on knowing where you are (or aren’t). Chipper is positively literary and right on. Number 6, provocative as usual. All of these and Seth’s too deserve their own posts. I’m grateful for the obvious care that went into your writing.
But as usual, whenever I think I’m writing about one thing, my readers make it plain that I’m writing about something else! I never intended to argue for or against technology and how we use it, but rather to make a point about generational differences and how an ancient one learns surrender of a sort. That, and how we’re all in this together: as an old warrior, at some point I may need a little physical help from the young braves, and so being worthy of respect is vital.
That’s the personal slant. Once out in the world, however, the post attracts broader concerns over the application of technology and our relationship to Nature, sympathies we obviously share. The leitmotiv becomes the theme, and what does THAT tell you?
heh ^_^ i don’t know about the others but i didn’t put much “care” into the writing – it was just a first-dose-of-caffeine mid-morning off-the-cuff response to the responses to those first couple comments and only tangentially related to your original post.
it’s not so much you “think you’re writing about one thing but…” – more like your posts are pebbles thrown in the pond, and you never quite know what interesting interference patterns the waves will make as they propagate outward.
“provocative”? me?? really??? to paraphrase Evil Spock from the “Mirror Mirror” ep. of the original Star Trek: “I do not provoke. I merely state fact.”
(ps- Chipper: i only mentioned THX 1138 because as someone who clearly appreciates Alan Moore i thought you might dig it)
And lest anyone get the wrong idea, as soon as my Verizon contract runs out (14 mos.), I do plan to get an iPhone, which should then either have a Verizon version or run on an about-to-be-improved local AT&T network. I have absolutely nothing against this device — and being able to check Google maps to get directions if I need to — and I would love to have one, frankly. I just don’t pine for one.
I doubt I would ever use the phone in the way mentioned by the person I wrote about, though. And even for finding directions, if I took a trip, I’d still get the lowdown first and have a mental image of the lay of the land in my head. But we shall see, won’t we?
Speaking as a fart older even than JHF himself (I’ve checked the birth certificates) I find that I feel more benevolent to the young (40′s) and very young (20′s) and micro-young (pre-pubescent) the further I grow away from them and their travails.
As you get older you tend to withdraw from the competitive aspect of life, and you just enjoy seeing the spectacle of it all unroll before your now somewhat knowledgable eyes. When you were younger you couldn’t appreciate very much of this. You had your unforgettable youthful intensity and angst, but you didn’t really have much of a clue about what it all meant.
Competition, fear and idiocy are important for the very young and the semi-young. Life is thrilling, dangerous and full of agony. The semi-old (me) and the truly old (me a decade hence) are just happy to be on this side of terra firma. The storms are past. Yet we oldsters like remembering when we were in the thick of it, and, yes, we like dishing out advice just as advice was dished out to us. This, my friends, is the great human comedy. I can’t deplore it, and I can’t truly love it. But “it” doesn’t care much about me and it will last long after my own poor bones are interred. There’s nothing else except it, might as well accept it – as wiser men than me have said.
I second Kenneth’s increasing sense of benevolence toward the young, which dear God DOES include those only a generation or so behind.
No one to pick up after me, though. Arrghh.