I’ve wanted to talk about this for a while now, but haven’t had anything to say that isn’t brooding. I think The Rejectionist did a fine job of capturing my mood, and without making me seem like the whiny source.
Later, I’ll post a more objective study on the topic. For now, feel free to lament with me on the pitfalls of being carbon based life forms who require food, clothing, and DSL.
I read an excellent post today, titled 101 Tips From Small Business Bloggers. Not only does it cover many core concepts of being a professional writer, but also offers some great meditations on effective living and thinking.
It never ceases to amaze me how mastery of any art–writing, painting, martial arts, sports, music, et al–follows the same fundamental traditions and practices as wholistic living.
Go check it out!
I weaved through hundreds of black, gas barbeque grills on my way into Lowes last week. I was awe-struck by the sheer number of these polished machines. Each with a small tank clamped under a cheap aluminum tray, and a faux wood handle. My first thought was that my charcoal grill works fine and it certainly isn’t worth $299 for an upgrade, thanks. My second thought was that our community isn’t big enough to need that many grills.
Interrupting that idealistic thought, a couple–trapped in another row of the barbeque battallion–stopped, examined one, and carted it off for home. Within the next couple weeks, hundreds of homes in my small community would be tossing out their old cheap grills and erecting new monuments to Family Guy and Consumerism. I wondered how many folks on my tiny street would have one. How many in my little neighborhood. Then I considered that nearly every home on my street probably owns a gas grill of equal or greater money siphoning ability.
On the way home, I marveled at the houses. At least half must own a set of tools, an air compressor, two step ladders, and without a doubt, three cars and a large screen television–many with two or three televisions pouring distraction into every room, all via a thin, black cable. After all, you can never have too much raw sewage piped directly into your home, right?
Considering how ofter I use either of my two step ladders, I’m wondering if we couldn’t just keep one for the whole neighborhood and still never lack. One could argue that I’d never know where it is, but I never do anyways.
Considering how many of the things we own that we use yearly or even less, why doesn’t Lowes just keep them and charge a membership, like a library. We could come in and check them out for the day and need a two bedroom house with a one car garage instead of the monoliths of garagedom and bedroomage that loom around our tiny place.
But every family is building their own little empire. Why? The answer was immediatly obvious, but took many days to figure out how to articulate.
See, our culture now moves at 10/100 megabits per second. There is a service for everything: to clean our houses, mow our lawns, cook our food (thank God for that), and even to wash our dogs. There are even services to meet other people with similar interests so you can go out and do said interest, then come home and sit. Alone. Unbugged.
After all, it’s easier than having a relationship with neighbors. This requires both skilled communication and diplomacy. We’re bound to disagree on religion or politics, or both. And so it’s easier to interact with a computer or a television, which will happily tell me I’m right, and I can turn off whenever they disagree.
Fifty years ago, you could go to your neighbors house and borrow his chainsaw, walk three houses down and grab Jim’s nifty ladder, and ask Ruth to come over from Elm Street with her four boys to help. Now days, we’re probably lucky to know anyone who lives more than one house away. In a big city, one might be lucky to even know the neighbors. So we need two hundred thousand dollars worth of home to store our seventy five thousand dollars of cars and fifty thousand dollars of tools and one hundred thousand dollars of appliances. And we’ll gladly pay a service before asking the neighbors for help.
We are social creatures, though, and require interaction. We have to fill the void of human contact with something. So we need ten thousand dollars of electronics and entertainment, with a hundred and fifty dollars a month in cable and cell phone bills to fill our need for friendship and community.
We build our own single serving empires, complete with fortified walls to keep out the beautiful, magnificent, and interactive world right outside.
It’s easy, and fast, but I’m really starting to wonder who the awesome people living next door are. And would they mind if I use their DeWalt table saw for a week?
Google has developed a new social networking and document collaboration tool called WAVE, and after watching the demo, I’m very excited.
WAVE not only looks like a fun and productive tool for offices, but also a great tool for writers. What do I think you could use it for?
Have a look at it and see for yourself.