Missing

No, I’ve never heard of that guy until now.  What’s he famous for?

Sorry, I’m not familiar with that podcast.  Honestly, I’m not really a podcast person.

Yeah, I don’t know anything about that series.  I haven’t even ever seen The Wire or The Sopranos.

I don’t have Instagram; I can’t open the link to that reel you sent me.

It’s a post on Facebook?  I’m not able to access that, either; I don’t have an account.

Not even sure what Substack is; do you capitalize it or not?

I do know what TikTok is, though; I can’t say that I’ve ever watched a TikTok video, however.

That article is behind a paywall for that website; I’m not a subscriber.

I’m sure that episode you’re describing was hilarious, but I can’t really bring myself to watch reality TV.

She has tens of millions of followers?  Wow.  I’m not one of them.

I guess I’m just not influenced by that influencer.

I must be immune to that viral video.

There’s a new trend trending on the internet.  Apparently, I’m not trendy.

This next big thing isn’t big enough to include me.

You can’t have FOMO if you’re not even aware of the thing you’re missing out on.

Everybody’s doing it, except for me, I guess.

I’m late for the latest thing; too old for the newest trend; cold towards what’s hot.

I haven’t heard what everyone’s talking about; haven’t seen what all eyes are on; I’m not excited about what’s new and exciting.

I don’t have a feed or a timeline or a queue; I’m sure the algorithm knows all about my preferences, but I prefer not to know what it knows.

I’m sure I’d be more “with it” if I were more with it, but it’s all I can do to keep up with all I can do.

Maybe I could be famous if I were hungrier for fame.  

For now, I’ll just be what I am.

Silence

Wittgenstein famously wrote, as the last proposition in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

That admonition has rarely stopped politicians, pundits, celebrities, and social influencers from weighing in on unspeakable topics of all sorts.  

Me neither.

To wit, case in point, this right here.

Silence may be golden, but noise must be platinum because people consistently value it more highly than remaining quiet.  Talking heads are always talking, right; no one makes a living as a mute head, do they?

Mom used to say, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all;” nowadays, it’s more like “If you can’t say anything nice, let the networks sign you up for a multi-million dollar deal.”

Or, at least let’s get you some likes for your Yelp review.

Nearly everyone enjoys flapping their gums about whatever; that’s fine, of course, by why isn’t reposing one’s ears held in similar esteem?  Everyone wants to be a speaker or writer; where are the listeners and readers?

According to the internet: “The Orfield Labs anechoic chamber in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is considered the world's most soundproof room and holds the Guinness World Record for the quietest place on Earth, with sound levels as low as -24.9 decibels. This anechoic chamber is designed to absorb all sound reflections, and its construction includes a floor of sound-absorbing wedges that float on springs to eliminate echoes and external vibrations. The extreme quietness allows people to hear their own internal body sounds, such as their heartbeat and breathing, a sensation that can feel disorienting or even deafening to some.”

Silence is deafening, literally!

Meanwhile, out in the world, birds are singing, horns are honking, leaf blowers are whining, trucks are grinding their gears, music is blaring, airplanes roar overhead, the neighbor’s dog keeps barking all day long, the refrigerator hums, the fluorescent lights buzz, the shutter bangs repeatedly in the wind, and all over the world, nobody shuts up.

Me neither.

Endings

Beginnings get all the love: births, ribbon-cuttings, wedding ceremonies, first days of school, the start of the new year; those are the events that people celebrate.

Endings, not so much: deaths, de-accessionings, divorces, the shuttering of beloved restaurants; these all tend to be mourned or looked down upon.

But if weren’t for endings, the world could not function.  For one thing, we’d be so clogged up with human beings from time immemorial—our ancestors in animal skins or wearing togas or dressed up in Victorian finery—that there’d be no room to move.  And just try getting a table at your favorite restaurant!  No way.

Of course, it’s sad when someone or something we’ve cared for is no more, but that’s from the perspective of the left-behind, not the leaving.  The person arriving at the end doesn’t care; they’re gone, and the something that’s no more—the restaurant, for instance—is likely relieved it need not struggle on anymore.

Some endings, admittedly, are objectively depressing: the last few days of summer, the few remaining bites of pie, when the crotch of your favorite pair of jeans finally wears through; but even these have an upside: mainly, you don’t have to worry about holding on to them anymore.

An apt metaphor for this is the experience of reading a book that you really enjoy.  You’re thrilled to turn the pages, to see how everything will come out, racing toward the end, but when you get there, the enjoyable experience is no more.  

You want to get to the end, but you don’t want to get there.

I suppose life itself is like this, more or less, perhaps with the difference being that, in many cases, the last few chapters aren’t all that wonderful.

Maybe our lives should read less like novels and more like novellas or short stories.

Or maybe more like a 327 word essay, like this one: no one is really sad when it’s over, right?

Borders

Humanity’s third worst invention—after the internal combustion engine and money—is borders.

Why do we even have them?

What do borders even do other than create strife and conflict?  Aren’t we all human beings with the same DNA and evolutionary history?  What’s the difference between an American and a Canadian, for instance, other than some artificial, made-up, and invisible line in the sand, or tundra, as it may be?

It’s generally considered wrong to discriminate against people on the basis of some characteristic over which they had no control.  No one chooses their race, gender, or eye color, so it’s unjust to advantage or disadvantage people based on those qualities.

No one chooses where they were born, either, but for some strange reason, it’s considered perfectly fine to provide or withhold benefits to someone just because they happened to be born north or south of some random latitude line on the map.

What the hell’s up with that?

Think of how much safer, kinder, and more harmonious place the world would be if there were no countries or borders.  Most of the wars and armed conflicts in the world, (and throughout history) are (and were) because kings or queens or Presidents or Premiers are fighting about which side of the invisible line ought to get this or that or where the invisible line should be.

Dumb or what?

When the extra-terrestrial creatures finally decide to invade planet Earth, maybe then human beings will forget about the invisible lines on the globe and rally as one people against the marauding horde from outer space.  Probably not, though; probably different countries will vie to be the extra-terrestrials’ best friend and so the divisions among humanity will continue to be enforced.

It seems ridiculous, though, when you stop to think; we all live on the same planet, no part of which belongs to any of us.  The case isn't one for “open borders;” it’s for no borders all at.

Money

Humanity’s second worst invention—right after the internal combustion engine—is money.

Imagine what a better place the world would be if money had never been invented.

In the first, place, there would be no billionaires; that alone is enough to make the case, but that’s not all.

If there weren’t any money, then no one would have to work some crummy job just to earn it.  This isn’t to say there wouldn’t be any ditch-diggers or roofers or people who clean out porta-potties; people would still have to do those things; it’s just that there would be other incentives or maybe a system where people would rotate into those jobs: rock star one month, sanitation engineer the next.  Human beings have figured out how to schedule 32 major league baseball teams while simultaneously making room at their stadiums for the occasional country music concert; it shouldn’t be a problem to manage the arrangement of job shares for an equitable division of desirable and undesirable occupations.

Besides, if money didn’t exist, plenty of jobs that are currently considered desirable no longer would be.  No one really wants to be a hedge fund manager, for instance, for the sheer pleasure of manipulating numbers on a computer screen; it’s only because doing so affords one the opportunity to endow concert halls and museums in one’s name or to populate one’s superyacht with supermodels and gym rats.

If it wasn’t about making a lot of money, plenty more people would prefer to be janitors or farmers; chances are, it would be all that difficult to divvy up jobs so all the necessary work of having a society could be taken care of.

Some will contend, of course, that without the motivation of having to earn a paycheck, that people would only do what they want to do.

But if you ask me, that’s a feature, not a bug.

After all, no one is paying me for writing this, are they?