:: anne in the attic ::

Create Your Own Countdown

:: Friday, January 30, 2004 ::

What is the wisdom of the moment? William Bell said it best with "a smile can't hide a broken heart." Everywhere I turn these days, people are coping. There are those who try to keep the volume down, who cope in quiet desperation; and then there are those who cope all over themselves, it seems. Is this just something that comes with adulthood, that a person learns to recognize the pain in others? Mom? Dad? Or is this race of women and men encountering such sorrow that their predecessors could never have known? Either way, I feel it heavy in the air. Approaching storm? Perhaps the barometric pressure has us all on edge. But I think it's the times that's weighing us down. We all have the usual progression of human life to carry, that's nothing new. But we've accelerated our culture such that now it's that much more possible for many wolves to be at one's door all at once. Instant access to everything: pleasure, knowledge, information, communications, commerce, danger, disease, imminent disaster. It's all at hand. Do I sound like a doomsday prophet? I guess it's more like a theory of the melding of time to space to thought, where it feels like every moment of the past and every iota of history and fact rushes up to meet you and travels with you, your own personal internet hovering just above your head like some binary aura without a shadow. Only, it does have a shadow -- a conceptual one, which is cast only by its potential: good or evil, your choice. These days we can do everything faster, more thoroughly, to the nth degree -- and I fear that probably, eventually, somebody will. Is it really that surprising then, despite the brilliant experiences and joys our inventions have afforded us, that we are such a depressed nation? All of this from a self-confessed techie, and very possibly a flunkie in matters of the heart.

:: Anne 7:48 PM [smartass remarks] ::
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