Opinion/Editorial
COME A LITTLE BIT CLOSER…
The Holidays. Are they the best days of the year for you, or are they the worst? They cannot go unnoticed in life, not in the western civilization countries, that is. Economics plays a big role in celebrating, or hating, the holidays now; what with sales of products and gifts skyrocketing because of the penetration of advertising in every genre and venue…as well as shipping that is blindingly fast. But what of relationships?
The intensity of relationships has only increased with the enforcement of rigid separation tools, like masking, distancing, closures, and other tools deemed necessary for responding to the seemingly never-ending pandemic (when will the next variant be announced?). The American culture grows tremendously more communicative but tremendously lonelier. Most of the communication is one way; sources such as broadcasting don’t interact at all. On the Internet, we first had email, then chatting, and now social media sites. They all started out as personal communications venues, and all have ended up being endless chambers of broadcasting, repetition and near drooling idiocy, if not outright spamming and scamming.
What happens as the culture continues to lose touch…not just the touch of association but the actual physical touching that was once so important to us all? That loss of importance is much more serious than the actual decline in touching. As touching declines so does reproduction, so does social capability, so does real communication. There is alienation today like I’ve never seen it before. But it is the acceptance of alienation as if it is somehow in any way a good thing that is much more telling and potentially terminal. The pandemic is caused by a virus. Much of our response to it as a member of the human culture is creating a more potentially terminal pandemic…social wasting disease.
As the distant drums of the communications cultural broadcasters have grown to replace nearby social sources, belief has shifted away from the local sources, even though the credentials of those broadcasting on television and the Internet are mostly non-existent. School Board Ph.D.’s are lectured to by parents who have no education at all, and they are threatened by them as well. That has happened with the shifting paradigm of electronic influence and replacement. Former rodeo and circus clowns now rule much of the airways, and the formerly happy but now unfortunately miserable members of the culture with lower intellect are raised up to follow the purveyors of deliberately killing lies at the top. Tucker Carlson and Hannity both make about 40 million a year and each has no doubt killed more people than died in the Vietnam war, with their lies. The lies are worth 40 million a year, so who can accuse them of being dumb? Pray this holiday season that God will turn his face to stare down upon these evil self-seeking cretins and take them back, gift-wrapped, into his loving arms. Merry Christmas, as we ‘endeavor to persevere.’ A screenwriter for a great movie penned those words some years back. White Christmas, Holiday Inn, It’s a Wonderful Life and Christmas Story are great holiday movies, but maybe all of us should be watching The Outlaw Josey Wales.
As so well portrayed in that Wonderful Life movie, don’t forget those things that are simply terrific in life today. Even the pandemic has good news, not for everyone, but nothing accomplishes that, because the world is now paying attention and curing the effects of virus infections that have plagued mankind all through the ages. Flu, colds, and all sorts of viral disorders are being beaten back, if not downright conquered. Life has more food, more air-conditioning, more heat, better cars by far, air travel everywhere, and the availability of information in amounts that are staggering, if not always totally accurate. Our responsibility is to harness all these wonderful tools, unknown less than a generation ago, and make them work for us instead of against us. Treasure those you hold close and get vaccinated and boosted, as you convince them to do the same, so you can continue to grow closer and not further away. Merry Christmas, as the Geneva Shore Report’s favorite Season begins. We, the staff, hope to grow closer to you as the temperature outside drops but the temperature in hopeful all of our hearts rises.
