This weekend Americans (and some others) go through that twice yearly madness of figuring out exactly how to open the back of the antique mantel clock or adjust the electronic version in the middle of the dash of your mid-nineties jalopy while reciting (mentally, hopefully) “spring forward, fall back” as the debate over the necessity for Daylight Saving Time and/or Standard Time plays out on the nation’s talk radio shows.
While that is going on I’d like to ask everybody to fall back just a little more than the proscribed one hour. Let’s shoot for, oh how about 60 years. That would make it 1958. The legendary ’57 Chevy Bell Air would be just a used car (and it’s Nomad counterpart a regular old (eww) station wagon, Jack Paar was hosting the Tonight Show, “It’s All in the Game” was in its 6th and final week as the Billboard #1 Single, and I was not yet allowed to cross the street by myself.
Ok, I’m not a nostalgia freak. I could really care less that Conway Twitty would wrest the top spot in the charts from Tommy Edwards next week with “It’s Only Make Believe.” (But I was pretty tickled that later on in the year The Chipmunks with David Seville would have the top selling record with their iconic Christmas song.) And 1958 had a lot going against it also. Unrest was escalating in Vietnam, the U.S. and Russia (then the USSR) were both putting the finishing touches on the first intercontinental ballistic missiles while they and Great Britain began conducting atmospheric nuclear tests, and a three year famine would begin in China ultimately taking 30 million lives.
Something that happened in 1958 that could be good or bad actually went on a little earlier than early November. September 12 actually. That’s when Jack Kilby discovered (developed? perfected? made usable?) the microchip, the heart of integrated circuitry. Because of him we have cars that can let you know when you wander out of your lane, phones we can carry around with us, computer assisted tomography that allow doctors to see inside us (that’s the CAT in CAT scan in case you – yeah, you knew, sorry), and (drum roll please) the Internet.
Most days I’m OK with the cars and the phones and even with the CAT scans. But lately I’ve been really ambivalent about this Internet thing. Of course if it wasn’t for it you’d not be able to read these ramblings, and for that you might be more grateful than I’ll ever know. But without it I’d not be able to see firsthand just how two faced, insincere, hurtful, and to be blunt, disgusting people have become. To not be exposed to such constant streams of hatred I’d gladly give up everything new from these 60 years.
It’s not been a week since eleven congregants were gunned down in a Pittsburgh synagogue. A day after that horrific occurrence a vigil was held to remember the victims and speaker after speaker including local politicians stood before the community and said hate cannot win, everybody should be and is welcome here. A day after that momentous event those same politicians were denouncing members of the opposing party, urging other politicians to stay away, and continuing to air the most vile political ads to date while jockeying for position ahead of next Tuesday’s general election. It only took two days for politicians to revert to being their typical unsavory selves, to letting the public know how unsuitable, untrustworthy, and dishonest their opponent is and oddly saying little about themselves (or perhaps much about themselves) at the same time. With the help of the Internet and news sites’ comments areas, the followers of this party or that have marched in line spewing the insults that they’ve taken the last two years to perfect.
It’s in everybody’s best interest to live kindly and peacefully. Yes, you get to pick and choose who you are going up like just as others can decide to like to you or not. But nobody – NOBODY – has the right to hate. Lies are hate. Saying what you think people want to hear then doing the opposite is hate. Being a sheep isn’t hate but it is stupid. If we can’t rely on those we look to for leadership and guidance to take the time to demonstrate their commitment to not letting hate win, then we’re going to have to do it ourselves.
Maybe a starting point would be to spend some time face to face with your neighbor. Of course you’ll have to put down your phone to do that. Fortunately because of the efforts of Mr. Kilby, you can fit it into your pocket while taking that time.
Fall back this weekend. However far you’re comfortable going.
The Real Reality Show Blog 
I couldn’t agree more. In fact, reading your post about the famine in China startled me. Thirty million. I don’t even know what to say about that. And the horrendous massacre of the holocaust. And the starvation of the soviet people during the first war. Genocide in Africa and of the Rohingan people. The war in Syria. Death and destruction. All back to the same basic human illness—self deception. We believe, whoever we are, that we are the chosen ones. And those others are the usurpers. We create enemies were there are none because we can’t quite get over the fact that difference doesn’t mean”threat.” Fear of the other is the real enemy. Not the other him or herself. But I’m probably wrong. Just another no one saying nothing and hoping a scream into the void is enough to show I’m alive.
Although it appears we create enemies where there are none, I think what we really do is let them escalate by allowing them to hate unfettered until they out that hatred into action. Rather than wait until something horrific happens and then we attempt to band together, wr have to learn to start respecting and each other and putting that into action first.
Such a good point. I did have a boss once that said something like, “sometimes things just have to get “that bad” before they change. And in some ways I think he’s right. It’s the boiling of the frog idea. The key is, to tune our awareness so we make little corrections–take care of the little things, they say, and the big things will take care of themselves.
I agree. And it’s why I avoid the news except occasionally and the main reason why I deleted my Facebook account several months ago. To much hatred and it’s got to stop – and we have to make it stop.
That said, people have to be willing to listen. When I try talking to my neighbour, she runs inside her house! (Sorry, I’m trying to use humour, here, to lighten a situation. The world needs that, too.)
Yes indeed the world can use that sense of humor! Keep at it!