Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Been too long and Haunting

Holy crap, I've not posted anything since June, already!

Oddly enough my last two posts have generated more traffic than all my other blog entries combined since the beginning!

Just goes to show I guess. Techies unite!

That's all okay now since I've taken a shine to my iPhone since I've mostly resolved the issues I had. A sad chapter indeed.

On a more positive note, I must confess that I am just as exasperated with the world-at-large as always, but not quite so angry of late. I'm guessing this is a good thing, although the "very stupid" (tm) still need slapping upside the head they don't read my blog anyway, and if they did, they wouldn't get it.

Today I am compelled to write after this long hiatus if only for sign of life. Befitting, I think, since last week I went through a bit of a rough patch. All is well now, at least as well as can be expected.

Fellow bloggers were each stating abandonment issue with their respective blogs recently. Something about a two-year mark in one case. To me this hypothesis holds water, in fact, methinks a summer full of rain doesn't help the creative juices either, as it were.

I read over a few of my older blogs, and this led me to think about, about staying power. For example my blogs about the iPhone will see their relevancy expire eventually, in effect this knowledge has a past-due date.

In a roundabout way and on a much grander scale this got me to the subject of historical staying power.

This weekend friends and I were discussing historical events that mark us and our daily lives. Don't ask how we got onto that subject.

The subject eventually turned towards big brother watching us. I've talked a little of this before.

In this instance the analysis went towards what historical events molded my generation's thoughts on big-brother inherently being a "bad thing"™. Today's youngsters have no qualms about sharing the very core of their lives on facebook or twitter and what not.

I don't actually remember McCarthy's red menace shenanigans, I wasn't born yet. Nevertheless, it was an influencing factor in my childhood that one should be careful whom one associates with. This is good advice anyway, but the point is made that something so simple as having coffee with a co-workers speaking their minds can have adverse effect on your very livelihood should the gubmint or special interest group decide take exception.

No one in the current generation of youngsters even knows about McCarthyism, nor cares, not even as lessons of the past, because obviously this could never happen again.

Of cooooooooourse not!

How quickly we forget, regardless of the fact that it happens time and again throughout history. Wonder where the term: "witch hunt" comes from? Doh!

Yeah, but that was all really just local phenomenon was it not?

Ok, so how about on a truly grand scale, just offhand: Jews and Jewish sympathizers leading up to and throughout WW2.

And thus we moved on to the subject of the Second World War, which is still relevant to us, especially given that there are people alive today who remember it directly.

As I mentioned previously, I asked my nieces once, now 25 & 27, if they knew about this thing called the WW2, all I got was blank stares. Then one of them chimed in, "waitaminit, the second?"

My hopes were dashed but lifted at the same time. At least she'd realized there were two of them, although knew nothing about either.

Hmmm, staying power indeed.

I was talking about the Apollo missions with others of a younger generation, again blank stares. Just shook my head. One saving grace at least they didn't say, "it never happened."

So I made a statement at the breakfast table that 9/11 was going to be the defining moment of this generation of young people today. I also submitted that their kids will know a little about it, but this will also fade in time, as much as we may hate to admit it.

But the kids born 10 to 20 years from now will give us blank stares upon mention of 9/11 when they reach the age of reasoning. That'll be about 50 years after the event, which is roughly the same timeframe as WW2 and my nieces, give or take a decade.

But really who cares about an old chunk of history? It doesn't affect me here and now does it? So why should I care? I remember those exact words coming out of my own mouth when I didn't want to study history in high-school.

What the teachers failed to drill home was the ramifications of these events in our everyday lives. Cause and effect were never clearly laid out. Maybe that wasn't part of the curriculum as this could lead to some serious discussion, probably heated at that, actually more than likely outright belligerence as everybody's interpretation of historical cause and effect is different, and indeed usually much more complicated than not.

Yeah, we just can't be having that kind of debate in schools. This simply would not do at all. It would skew way too much unilateral dogma.

Now, to get back to those kids that will be born in 2020: where privacy will no longer be relevant in their minds and indeed contrary to the public good. Will they have the hindsight to know why they are growing up in a policed state?

I submit that they will accept and indeed cherish their civil liberties being curtailed to a point past any relevant definition of the word freedom. They will welcome being observed 24-7 as to them it would be unconscionable not to be watched, under this new dogma of security that we are, even now, in the process of refining.

Hell kids today not only don't miss having any privacy, it is wholly irrelevant to them. Privacy is something they neither understand nor care about really. I will likely debate this again in another blog entry.

The point I'm trying to make, is that they will have absolutely no idea that the concept of liberty, privacy, and freedom, came to a crux because of a terrorist attack on a date represented by a couple of numbers that will mean nothing to them.

Major events in history fade, but the ramifications on the other hand do have staying power.

I know this is a repetition of some things I have touched on before, but for some reason it seems to haunt me.


 

2 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Geeze, almost a year since update. But what can I say, when it's been almost a year since I got back to read the updates. As usual, excellent read, and so true. Did you hear that North Carolina was going to stop teaching History prior to 1877. Think about that one, how much affects our lives that happened prior to 1877, and North Carolina doesn't find it relevant. Thanks ET.... Lyle

September 14, 2010 2:20 p.m.  
Blogger Steve said...

You're welcome Lyle - good to hear from you!

April 08, 2011 10:03 p.m.  

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