A friend of mine, Ryan Shafik, sent me this video that the Harrisburg CBS Affiliate did on the Smoke Freedom Day. Enjoy! You may recognize some of the people in the video.
I think Ryan’s analysis can be used for more than just smoking bans. I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count how many issues the legislature deals with that it shouldn’t. Another good argument of why the legislature should be in session for a few days as possible each year.
I read about the family fight over Clinton and Obama that ended in a stabbing. You can read the story here.
This is not a good development for our society. We are in bad shape when we come to a time in our history when we are trying to kill each other over politics. Of course, this isn’t new in our country - we had a civil war of course. But in modern history, our political history has been very tame to say the least and we’ve had a high level of success in our stable society - this stems from the fact that regardless of who wins office, people recognize that there will not be much change. What I have been seeing over the last several presidential elections is the hyping of elections - in other words, “this is the most important election in our lifetime” language. What do you think the effect of this sort of thing is?
Take a look at the situation in Africa - violence is the norm after an election - not just any violence, but large killing sprees because elections there do become a matter of life and death. You vote to ensure that your candidate wins so that your land isn’t taken away or you aren’t killed for supporting an opposition candidate. These are also countries that have high voter turnout - again for good reason, you’d vote if your life literally depended on it.
Is this the direction we want to take in this country? I certainly don’t. I don’t want the presidential election to matter that much frankly and it really shouldn’t have that much importance that it drives people to stab one another. We are losing our common sense if we start viewing politics as the most important thing in life. We lose our sanity if we view elections as determinants to our success and happiness. We lose our country if election become a matter of life or death for people.
Let’s get back to reality - regardless of who wins, not much will change and that’s a good thing - it’s how our system was designed. We don’t want an efficient government. The most efficient governments are dictatorships. Gridlock is a good thing - it means the people aren’t getting screwed as often. If election won’t bring about all that much change, then having a low voter turnout is a good thing too - it means that everyday people are putting politics in its rightful place, in the background. They are viewing politics as it should be.
I’m one of those 90% who don’t care about the Oscars. In fact, I couldn’t really tell you the difference between an Oscar, a Grammy, a People’s Choice Award, or any of the other awards that are given out. I can tell you that the American Country Music Awards are for country music, but only because they made it easy for people like me who don’t pay attention to any of the awards.
I appreciate Michael Medved’s piece on the fragmentation of our culture, but I somewhat disagree. The segmentation of our society isn’t a result of the proliferation of media - media works on market forces (the profit motive works in Hollywood too), it doesn’t drive market forces. People want, and have wanted a segmentation of media, just like all other products. It’s the same way our political campaigns work - we look for “niche” voters and speak to their needs and wants. Media does the same thing - provide products for niche audiences. It’s next to impossible to have mass appeal, which is why we don’t have many blockbuster movies that have mass appeal. From a strictly economic standpoint, you get a better return on investment by niching than you do in trying to have a broad appeal. In a niche you recognize that a higher percentage of people will buy your niched product, and hence give you a better return, than if you try to appeal to the mass audience.
This has been going on for a long time. One could argue that with the advent of our society segmenting ourselves by our backgrounds, where we are as a society, our politics, our media, etc. makes perfect sense. In other words, when we started to refer to ourselves as something-Americans, we were already on the way to segmentation of our society. So do I think this hyphanated-American society is the cause of this - no, merely a symptom.
Years ago, a book was written, that has been out of circulation for many decades now called Civilization. I don’t recall the author’s name, it was something like Fitzpatrick or something of that nature. The author wrote about the cycles of civilizations - their rise and fall. He wrote that from his study of civilizations throughout time, they all experienced the same cycle. At the beginning of a civilization the most important unit is the extended family unit, tribe, etc. They provide all the needs of everyone in that community - defense, food, labor, love, etc. As civilizations advance they become more individualized, losing attachments to other people. The role of government increases as a civilization becomes more individualized. It has to start providing the things that an earlier civilization no longer has the ability to provide. When we individualize, we of course niche. When a civilization is at the individualized point, it falls apart because there is no commonality, no common purpose and no reason to stay together, no personal care for others. All that matters is the individual’s needs and wants.
One could argue we are moving in that direction - is it bad? Can it be stopped? Should it be stopped? It is what it is. It is the cycle that every civilization goes through and has gone through throughout history. It is the same cycle that every future civilization will go through as well.
I would make this argument, we are no longer in a melting pot. How can we be in a melting pot - our whole society serves the need of individuals. Our media, our politics, our food, our jobs, our retirements, our every moment is specialized, personalized, and niched. We are at the height of individual freedom, and yet it is that same yearning for individual freedom which will most likely bring the ultimate end of our civilization, just as every other great civilation has experienced. It is our cycle and our human need to express individual freedom.
I heard there was a live earth concert yesterday that attracted a large number of people to watch it. I, of course didn’t see it. I was busy doing something useful - moving furnature around the house to rearrange space, and give my 5 month old son his own bedroom.
It is my understanding that this concert was one of those “save the ______” concerts - fill in the blank with your favorite cause/crisis, hold a concert to show you care and then everyone goes back to living their lives and the people who put it on feel important because they did something about the problem. Here’s the problem with these things - how many people watched it because they really, truly, deep down in their heart were concerned about the climate and were hell-bent on doing something about it? How many of the people watched the concert because of the bands that were playing and while they “care” about the planet, they don’t care enough to do more than watch the concert.
Rich Galen wrote about the event on his Mullings enewsletter. He said that the biggest push that the concert made was to get everyone to go change their lightbulbs. Yippee!!! I wonder how many people went out an got new lightbulbs. Here’s the thing - I doubt many people did, or will, especially long term, because a lightbulb just isn’t worth people’s time. The only reason I think about a lightbulb is when one blows out and I have to change it, otherwise, I could care less about it. If you want to get people to do something, and make it appear like it’s something worth while, I like Rich Galen’s idea - go plant a tree. That’s an investment, not something you do because of an inconvenience of a blown lightbulb. And it actually makes some difference. Yeah, yeah, the whole CO2 thing. But really, planting a tree has more to do with enhancing the beauty around you and life around you. A tree is alive, a lightbulb isn’t. Because of a tree, you have the potential for other living things to call the tree home. What do you have with a lightbulb - just light.