I did see one the other day that actually struck me. Very few ideas worth considering are boiled down to a single, short statement.
Some classic nuggets of such short and sweet wisdom would be:
- Life is too short for [insert stupid b.s. here]
... - It's a small world.
- Treat others as you want to be treated.
- All things must come to an end.
... and maybe a few others, but that's basically it. This bumper sticker adds another nugget to this elite list:
- These are the good old days...
Think about that for a second. Sometime in the not-too-distant future they'll look back at us like Roman nobility, with a culture all gluttonous and over-sexed. They'll analyze our hip-hop videos with half-naked women, our Girls Gone Wild, our porn, our idiotic leadership, our divided culture, our illnesses (diabetes, gout, heart disease, obesity, autism, cancer of everything), our militant nation-states, our moronic political process, and the blind way we stumbled through life and they'll wonder:
"How the hell did they make it as long as they did?"
I was reflecting on these notions last night as we had Father's Day dinner at my house. I had prepared these awesome Cuban style pork tacos and for desert my wife made a great strawberry peach shortcake with homemade whipped cream and homemade shortcake. I looked over at my four year old daughter, who had some silly sunglasses on, a feather boa, and some Disney princess dress. I watched as my eldest finished up his chores and immediately picked up his Nintendo DS to play some Pokemon game.
I thought to myself, as I sipped my expensive local microbrew, "Not too long ago, only royalty and the very wealthy lived like this."
And then it occurred to me that not even nobility would have had the benefit of air conditioning like I do. Not even nobility could travel miles in mere minutes on a whim in a personal motor coach like I can. No matter how rich you were you couldn't communicate with a friend or family member on the other side of the planet instantaneously. I can.
Then I realized that people have never lived this well. Never. I mean there are many, many problems with modern industrial society but comfort is not one of them. I have of course had this thought before, but the idea that - these are the good old days - really sunk in. It may never be this easy again. We may never again lay in the lap of such luxury.
I don't know if that's a bad thing. There are so many times when I just can't stand the idea of working for lesser men, of toiling towards goals that are so abstract. I spend all day away from those I love to go work in some terrible building under flourescent lights for a paycheck that is usually spoken for the instant it arrives.
Why? I'm really not sure why. Because that's what people do? I guess that's as good a reason as I can muster. Maybe because I'm addicted to this soft life that I simultaneously hate in many ways. I like my blog and my internet and my MMORPG and my easy access to food and clean water.
I like functions like security and fire fighting being left to the professionals. I like my HOA which comes by and cuts the grass and fixes my roof and siding.
And I hate it. I hate it all. I hate this stupid waste of time I'm engaged in right now. The internet is 80% stupidity, 10% porn, 9% storefronts, and 1% useful information. Really you could throw the porn in with the storefront category. They're just selling sex.
My gaming is a waste of time. It's an idle way to piss away the precious few moments I have to be on this Earth.
I hate the stupid, meddling emails I get from the HOA. I'm actually on the board. I thought I'd be the voice of reason for these jackasses.
Nope. These petty tyrants can't be beaten by words - that's where they rule. Make them actually do something themselves and that's where they fail. But with the complicated machinations of law and society and management companies to back them up it's guaranteed they'll never lift a finger.
Meh.
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