With such a golden age of communication somehow it is simultaneously the dark ages of thought. Idealistic catchphrases written on banners, hashtags, and wristbands now seem to mute the old traditions of over the fence conversation, the coffee table discussions, even saying hello on the sidewalk. These are seen as cautionary warnings that you are either for or against not just an idea but a people. It is a very cold sediment from a person who seemingly cares, just not about discussion.
In the steps we take with each generation we forget some of what makes the previous special and different. This has no effect on generations past, they are set in stone now. Instead it adds a value and nostalgic glow to them unfortunately at the cost of the next. Jealousy and envy can at times drive the unexperienced to burn down the virtues of its precursors in some self-aggrandizing, Freudian extravagance. Yet this will never fill the emptiness the younger feels.
Things are just things every generation has them; the variant is found at how the things represent the owner’s acquisition and experience. Be it with division, or respect. Be it at the cost of labor or at the cost of your neighbor. Stuff isn’t bad, how you use it can be. Stuff isn’t good, it’s how you earn it. However, in the end, stuff or the lack of it represents the choices taken for yourself or others have taken in your absence. The more your involved with life the greater the individual, and the more you treat others as individuals the greater the generation.
To me thoughts/ideas are like the pages in a book, virtues are the glue that binds them and without virtues they are scattered to the changing winds. Tradition is the cover; it can change over time but it is the familiar face that greets the reader to reach out and pick it up.
Over all I guess this about the troubling observation at growing division between people. We really shouldn’t fit every person into a category. It’s not genetics, popularity, riches, or articulation that makes a person good or evil, it’s virtues and the merit in actions. Everyone should be left to try themselves, fail themselves, and to try again without the intolerance from those who never tried or let to fail. Likewise, they should be able to hold a dialog without retaliation for lack of an echo chamber.
This post accompanied by the music of Jamiroquai. Preach it!