THE WORLD HAS GONE A BIT MAD
Wednesday, May 26, 2021
What is going on?
In a decade or a thousand years, our earth will still have volcanos, viruses, and virtual-everything available by a simple click, a thought, or a spoken word. Some piece of technology we wear, use, or sit in front of will entertain us, run our money and facilities, energy to empower everything will come from the ocean floor – but whether people will still walk the earth as dinosaurs once did, remains as hopeful speculation.
Few people would argue, the world has gone a bit mad …
The best science, math, chips and circuitry – and the best minds, are at work every day, leading us to exceptional product and service innovations. Soon, you’ll be able to book a space-flight, sign-up to colonize the moon or adventure off to Mars. Not for everyone, and by comparison, climbing Everest or Kilimanjaro seem so ‘yesterday.’ And beauty queen contestants will still pray for world peace.
Pigs still wish for swill.
What do you wish for?
As the weekend news revealed, low-tech wars continue in the middle-east, Russian influenced republics ignore international rules and conventions to round up dissidents (which is not to say other countries don’t), the junta still rules Myanmar, Canada’s two Michaels are still locked up in China, volcano lava runs downhill very fast, and there is no shortage on stupid. I read an op-ed piece by the former Prime Minister of Sweden giving his solution for peace in Gaza – a four-step program to solve thousands of years old conflicts. He was last there twelve years ago, but he writes pompously as if he knows what is going on there now …
We think that way now, in the 24/7 real-time news cycle, as if we can deeply comprehend what is happening by watching the news, reading the news, or reading re-tweets of every twit who says they read some twitter-fed fire-hydrant forced flood of barely-substantiated data where shite, shinola and shiny-bits merge like purging bilge from a rusty ship.
If you doubt me, on any given day regarding the big news of the day, watch several global networks, read the coverage from several highly-regarded old-media sources, and you will soon learn that, rather than everyone knowing what is REALLY going on, nobody knows. We cannot run a life, let alone a planet, by remote control. Surely the evolved society that can land safely on Mars by remote control can put food in a mouth or a jab in the arm of a human anywhere on earth – but it seems we can’t. I know – it’s about priorities.
Meanwhile, arrogant disregard for facts, science, and the grim reaper is everywhere.
First, it was ventilators, masks, hand washing, distancing.
Next, it was masking, hand washing, distancing.
Now, it would seem, none of those are needed – not according to the CDC, but by human actions.
Everywhere crowds gather, masks are few, distancing is non-distancing, and nobody is washing their hands because they are too busy de-restricting themselves.
Reader feedback:
Love the idea of waiting a week for a warmer long week-end. TV weather says over last 20 years for this long week-end, we have had snow a few times, rain most times, and warm and sunny very few times!, BR, Calgary, AB
PPS to your PS - IMHO Victoria Day is a central Canada holiday instituted by the Ontario gentry so that they could open up their summer homes before the black flies and mosquitoes descended on Muskoka!, SB, Calgary, AB