Humanity Getting its Ducks in a Row

When I was a child my grandmother marvelled at how when she was a child she travelled by ox wagon and now we were sending people to the moon. I wondered then how the world could change in such a way that I'd be marvelling when I was her age. If I ever reached it. It was hard to believe that I ever would, she seemed so ancient. I'm not there yet, but that marvelling time has come already for me. 

There wasn't any internet when I was a kid. Distance communication was by phone, letter or telegram. Arriving by noon train stop pick me up stop don't forget stop I love you stop.

Letters were written by hand, music was played with vinyl, radios were a piece of furniture. I spent 90% of my waking leisure hours outside. We didn't even have a TV. When it came and we finally got a set, we were only allowed to watch one evening a week. And then we could have a coke as well. Bread and milk were delivered to the door. Ice cream cost two pennies, the cost of everything stayed the same from year to year and people stayed in the same job.  

On the surface of things, it was a simple life and a good one. But heaven help you if you were a schizophrenic or depressed or a girl with a sexual appetite, or one who didn't know how to say no. There wasn't a place for you. Where you could feel valuable, that is. There was a place alright; society's garbage bin. Not that it was openly acknowledged. Racism, slavery, abuse of women and children were rampant, but nobody spoke about it. The have-nots were hidden from the pleasant surface of society's fabric. Ah, the good old days.

Now nobody writes anything by hand, radios are either streamed or ugly little boomboxy things. Vinyl isn't dead but mostly it's music by download, books by download. TV on your laptop. 

Conversation happens by tweet or text. Impersonal, no risk, no real connection. Fast, though. Ice cream costs anything from R5 to R20 and the price of everything rises every day. Employees are nomads scrabbling to find work in broken economies. The world is at war; so much of mankind a well-oiled killing machine. Polar ice-caps are melting whilst people still debate if humans are destroying the environment. Women get stoned to death for wearing the wrong clothes and wanting to be educated. Child pornography and the slave trade still flourish around the world. 

Sure we've sent men to the moon and found cures for all sorts of diseases but 'experts' can't explain the outbreak of violence amongst seemingly peaceful communities. And we still don't have anywhere close to an understanding of schizophrenia and depression. Children and adults commit suicide and everybody says 'I had no idea they were depressed'. 

Very few say 'if I'd been a better friend, a better parent, a better sibling, I would have noticed because nobody gets to that final moment of despair without there being plenty of signposts along the way.' 

Has the human race really progressed much since my grandmother was a child? The way it expresses itself has changed, that’s obvious. But the percentages of different types of people are probably still the same. What also hasn’t changed is the human capacity to find joy and pleasure within, no matter what’s going on in your life. That’s a good thing. That’s a remarkable thing. 

And we've identified concepts like entitlement and self esteem. We know - or some of us do - that if those two aspects are fragmented it doesn't matter how talented a person is, they'll never make any progress. If they don't get help. And help is available. We know that we can learn to say no. That we're allowed to pay attention to what we need. That what others think of us matters a whole lot less than what we think of ourselves. That if we want others to treat us with respect we have to treat ourselves with respect. We know a lot more. We haven't necessarily learned how to put it into practise, but that will come.

An even bigger difference between when I was a child and now is that the underbelly has been exposed, that's clear. We haven't been able to keep that lovely smooth surface unruffled by the reality of society's inequalities and injustices. It’s uncomfortable to see but uncomfortable isn't necessarily all bad.

The good thing about it is that the have-nots have finally found their voice. And that makes me marvel as much as my grandmother did. Just learning to get our ducks in a row.

Vinyl is Still Cool

Imagine what the world would be like when digital has taken over everything. No more books, for a start. Life becoming less and less tactile, people communicating in shorter and shorter sentences, getting further apart with every meaningless tweet and Facebook post thrown out into the ether in the hopes that somebody will respond. Everybody quoting everybody else but never thinking for themselves. Nobody speaking directly to each other and dealing with emotions in the moment. Nobody taking emotional risks. Relationships getting more shallow if that’s possible.

The whole of life being experienced through the head and not the heart. Memory and the spoken language a thing of the past. The heart a vestigial organ. The human brain reduced to the size of pea because it doesn’t get used any more. Except for the part that creates the illusion that we’re really clever when we look something up on Google.

Hollywood has optimised on the digital age, making explosive, futuristic movies that impact on the senses like bombs exploding in the living room. But those movies are dry and cold and awfully dull really. There’s barely an original or truly creative idea in any of them.

Maybe, though, the digital age is nothing more than a passing fancy and maybe the proclaimers that it’s the way of the future are just unimaginative sods who know how to speaking convincingly from their soap box. We’re fascinated now, but we’ll get bored, we’ll move on to something different. We want the experience of life at the coal face and of love even if it’s uncomfortable sometimes. We like the sound of our own voices. We’re moved by music and creative ideas.

A romantic, renaissance type existence has more pleasure in it than a cold, digital, futuristic one. We like pleasure, our bodies and beings are wired for it. Even if we’ve never had it or had it enough we long for it. Something inside of our brain calls for it. And we like to feel and touch. 

Take the record industry. When CD’s took over from vinyl it was fun, it was exciting, it was the way of the future. But they just don’t look and feel the same. Some die-hards never gave up on vinyl. It  became a collector’s item. Many thought of it as a thing of the past, though. Maybe thought of it with regret. Then the digital age really closed the door. Or did it? Not with everybody. Some didn’t give up on their vinyl. Then some more didn’t. Soon there was a market again. Sooner than you would have thought. Amongst people born after the advent of CDs.

And that market is growing. According to the New York Times, CD sales are of course dropping, digital downloads are on the rise, but so is vinyl. Figures for Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music corporation, show that from 2011 to 2012 vinyl album sales rose by 3%. All major labels release vinyl now and the number of vinyl pressing plants around the US is growing, working to capacity.It's happening in Asia, also.

It's not just classic albums like The Beatles being re-released on vinyl. French Punk sold 19,000 vinyl albums in a week on releasing Random Access Memories. About 25 million discs were pressed in the US last year. Record players are being manufactured and the whole industry is starting over again. A industry based on our need for a tactile life. Because tactile is cool amongst college age kids. 

Thank God somebody’s got some sense. You watch: one day Microsoft, Google and Apple are going to get into recycling paper and the book manufacturing and marketing business. If they're smart enough. If there are any real brains left in any of those organizations.