Old is New

I am a late adopter.  I usually jump on the band wagon once everyone else has moved ahead in the parade.  I am particularly reticent when it comes to consumer technologies.  

To this date, I would be much happier, if the internet hadn’t conquered our lives, if phones remained a thing stuck to a wall, and if my personal information was exactly that: personal information.  

Maybe I am slow to see the benefit of a new trend, or maybe I am worried about its potential downside, or maybe it´s that I believe that we have rounded a corner where so-called progress is really just that: marketing. 

But here is a trend, I wouldn’t mind suggesting:  Let’s get rid of all that junk!  But then, we are curious monkeys no more, no less.  

Charline

The shock waves from the attacks in Paris earlier this month can still be felt.  Clamorous demonstrations have yet to abate, meandering TV debates continue to befuddle a confused audience and a tsunami of cartoons has yet to recede behind the flood barriers of either good taste or necessity.

More important than whether we are Charlie or not, however, is to understand what emotional hurricane has been unleashed in us that continues to churn up so much activism.  

Is it that we really care about free speech?  Do we truly appreciate what it took to have this right be enshrined in our western constitutions?  Is all of this really about a principle?

I am wondering because where is Europe and all its loud-mouths, when women become the target of a heinous attack, and when the hard fought for right to fair and equal treatment regardless of ones gender is trashed, because some guy had a bad day?

Or is that too close for comfort?

Of course, it is always easier to look for the evil asshole across the fence of religion or ethnicity instead of in one’s own backyard.   

I am Charline and I am looking at you!

Moonwalking

If religion was once coined "opium for the people" surely the assumption was that the masses would be lulled with the promise of abundance in a yonder world.  

Little did Marx realise that, when given the chance, the masses would dump all spiritual ambitions and sign up for capitalism.  

Regardless of whether its underlying principles of profit optimization would mostly come to benefit but a small circle, the promise of instant gratification and on-demand distraction from any potentially irksome thought, was all that was needed to make the slaves endorse their masters.  

And so we have arrived at the most sobering and admittedly dumbest stage of human civilization - the era when there are no longer any excuses for inequality, exploitation, destruction, abuse and violence.  The point in time where the only explanation for human suffering is human nature.  It remains to be seen for how long this planet will support it. 

I heard, however, that there are already plans underway to continue this nonsense elsewhere on a distant moon...

more...

Alright...money isn’t everything. But it sure helps to have enough.  Problem is...how much is enough?  Seems to me that no one really knows.

groundhogged

Here we are again on the other side of that night...!

I hope you all had a very enjoyable time moving through the years either tucked away or mingling.  We had a bit of both and loved it.  

There is something special about this time of the year, even if its symbolic nature is rather arbitrary.  I think we all enjoy the idea of starting over, of being given a new chance.  

New Year somehow implies that we got through with the last task and now can move on to the next.  There is something cyclical in this, however, since usually the new task looks oddly familiar...

Groundhog Year!