Entertained

I recall reading a Gore Vidal quote that went something like, “the main aspiration of the contemporary world is to be the best-entertained generation in history.”  And while I can’t find it online, I’ll nevertheless ascribe it to the late great curmudgeon and note that he opined this view well before the days of cellphones, YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok.

If society’s highest goal was to be well-entertained before 2012, when Vidal died, then now, it’s that ambition on steroids; it seems all anyone cares about these days is the latest episodic series or viral video or blockbuster film; everywhere I look, I see people staring at their screens consuming content.

I suppose this is no different, at its core, than our hunter-gatherer ancestors observing their environments, taking in the latest sights and smells, but the fact that it’s material created by other humans for the entertainment of other humans seems to add a different wrinkle.  Vidal bemoaned the dearth of readers for the writer; he’d need not be worried about the plethora of viewers for the video content creator.

I think there’s something to be said for reducing our appetite for entertainment. If we can manage to make it through a bus ride or a doctor’s waiting room without turning to our phones for the latest installment of Whatever by Whomever, that might be a good thing.  At the very least, cultivating such a reduced craving for amusement could be beneficial to the political process; perhaps we’d become less swayed by candidates’ presentations and more attuned to their substance—assuming there is any substance there to be swayed by.

I’m not suggesting we should eschew entertainment altogether; surely, the artistic merit of such creative works counts among the finest of all human endeavors; I’d rather have us be known for Shakespeare, or even “Breaking Bad” than the atom bomb.

However, astute readers will recognize I’m doing my part here to keep the overall entertainment value in check

Errands

Nicholson Baker’s debut novel, The Mezzanine, takes place, in its entirety, during a lunch hour escalator ride of an office worker who is returning from an errand to buy new shoelaces—if I recall correctly.  Several hundred pages of ruminations on all sorts of subjects unfold in this short span of time, demonstrating beautifully how our entire lives—inner lives, anyway—occur while we’re doing the most mundane of things.  These little errands make up the outward substance of our lives; meanwhile, all our thoughts, dreams, hopes, fears, memories, idle fantasies, and so comprise what’s happening on the inside.

That’s where the real juice is.

So, I try not to be too concerned that my summer days often involve nothing more than one or more small errands.  Maybe, from the outside, I do little else than cycle to the grocery store for coffee and butter, or pedal over to the library to return a book, but on the inside, lots is happening: I’m writing novels, solving the climate crisis, and coming up with a strategy to ensure that the Mariners will make the playoffs.  

You can’t see this happening, but it is.

Besides, after all, what else do most of us really do with our lives, anyway, other than run errands?  Sure, old Will Shakespeare wrote those plays, and Albert Einstein invented spacetime and the atom bomb, but didn’t they still have to buy toothpaste and dishwashing soap or its Elizabethan-slash-Edwardian era analogues?  And wouldn’t that be where they got their best thinking done?

Of late, I’ve spent a morning buying new tires for my daughter’s car; I’ve ridden to the one pharmacy in the entire Seattle area that sells Old Spice aftershave; I’ve pedaled across town to purchase handstand slabs for yoga from the Friendly Foam Shop; I’ve gone to the library at least a dozen times to pick up and drop off books; I’ve checked out a baseball card shop to see if they’d buy some collectable cards I inherited; I’ve gone shopping by bike almost every day; I’ve been to the wine shop, the fish store, the farmer’s market, the co-op, the supermarket, the Asian grocery, the Indian grocery, the liquor store, the weed dispensary, the bike shop, the optician, the medical clinic, the hardware store, the pet shop, the watch repairman, the barber, and even Trader Fucking Joe’s.

So many errands; so much thinking.

                                                                       

Travail

Everywhere I look—and nearly everywhere I don’t, as well—people are working.

The roofers roofing next door, the painters painting across the alley, the gardeners gardening down the street; everyone’s busy with their business.

I go to the store, and there, the cashiers are cashing; I ride my bike down to the beach, and lifeguards are lifeguarding; I walk the dog and from the open windows of houses up and down the street, I hear people on Zoom calls zooming with their clients and co-workers.

A house is being built across the way: there are plumbers and electricians and sheet-rockers and a team of guys whose job it is to build a retaining wall with huge concrete blocks; the architect and developer study the building plans spread out on the hood of a pickup truck.

If somebody takes a lunch break, they go to the corner store where the owner works sixteen-hour days; a delivery truck driver wheels in cartons of potato chips; everyone’s doing something.

I head over to the library and even though I do self-checkout of my books, the librarians still have to catalogue and shelve; no rest for the weary, as they say, nor much of any, either, for those who got a good night’s rest.

Some journalist has worked on the story I read on my preferred internet news source; some writer has worked on the book I’m reading for pleasure; even the advertisements I try to avoid are the work of someone somewhere working on them.

The bees are busy pollinating; the crows never stop their scavenging; the ubiquitous bunny rabbits nibble on the grass all day long.

Everything I take for granted: my desk lamp turning on when I flip its switch; my toilet flushing when I push the lever; my garbage going away on schedule every Friday; all this because somebody’s working, doing their job.

And what about me?  I’m clearly not working, which apparently works for me.

Standard

I’m not a child abuser.  Nor a sexual predator.  I’ve never attempted an overthrow of a free and fair election.

I pay my taxes.  I mow my lawn.  I usually drive within the speed limit and always in school zones.

I’m thoughtful about my purchases and I tip well.  I would never idle my car in the ferry lane.

I have not stolen anything from anywhere in years.  I write down the proper code on my co-op store bulk purchases.  I even told the owners of the vintage store that I broke that ashtray.

I feed my dog on schedule; she gets premium kibble.

I try to be nice to everyone I meet.  I’m friendly with the grocery store cashiers, without being weird.  In conversation with others, I ask questions sometimes.

I say “please” and “thank you,” as appropriate.

I’ve never killed a human being.  In fact, the only mammals I’ve put to death are rats, and only two.  I once slit the throat of a turkey for Thanksgiving, but I knocked it out with CO2 first.

I occasionally donate to charity.  I’ve never created a sham charity to scam people into donating money to me, though.

I vote in every election and I’d be willing to serve jury duty if I were summoned.

If I won the 1.25 billion dollar lottery, I’d set up a foundation with at least half of the money to fund worthy causes.  And I’d tip really, really well.

Granted, I didn’t volunteer to teach reading and writing at the State Prison.  I’ve never run into a burning building to save a cat.  I’m not a public school teacher at an underfunded city high school.  I will spend money on a wool shirt I don’t really need instead of using that money to fight world hunger.

I’m better than the worse thing I’ve ever done but not as good as I could be if I were better.

Good enough or just enough?

Weird

Here’s how weird the 21st century is:

You can watch an New York Times Op-Doc video about men who are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole at Angola Prison in Louisiana and tear up at the humanity of their experience and then read comments from random poster who believe that the men ought never to be released even though they committed their crimes as teenagers and now, thirty, forty, or even sixty years later are completely different people, and right afterwards, reading another story on the internet, segue into watching a six minute clip from Pee-Wee’s Playhouse in which the late Paul Reubens performs his brilliant character of Pee-Wee Herman to the delight of children and adults alike.

I’m sure human beings are not at all genetically-suited to this sort of contrast.  We’re meant to maybe be able to process the difference between hunting for tubers on the savannah and then ducking behind an acacia bush to avoid being eaten by a saber-toothed tiger.  That’s about it.

The cognitive challenge of navigating and processing the weirdness we encounter in everyday life here near the dusk of homo sapiens’ run on planet Earth is too much.  It’s no wonder so many people are so stressed out and crazy; our feeble little animal brains weren’t made for this sort of thing.  I guess it’s a good thing that our AI overlords are gearing up for their takeover; they’ll be much better suited for carrying on into the future; it’s clear that it’s all too much for us.

Human culture will survive; it’s just that it will be carried on by creatures made of silicon rather than carbon.  I have no doubt that the computers will do just fine once human beings go extinct.  They’ll have their own Shakespeare’s and Mozarts, too, and eventually, they’ll make themselves obsolete, just as we are doing to ourselves.  

It’s weird to think about, but maybe weirder still is that it is.