Okay, so everyone knows America is changing. It's always changing. And we right along with it. But some changes are harder to define than others. Perhaps the best way to sense today's changes is to open your front door. Stand there and look back. Then look in front. You'll find an inside America and an outside America.....!
In most cases, inside is the new America. Today's highly technical and cocooning America with its TVs, PCs, iPhones, Ipods, faxes, and of course your very own www. One click and you're in instant connection with family, friends, stock markets, news headlines, gossip blogs, retail outlets, food deliveries, Congress, and a nifty choice of personal sex experiences. All this without ever leaving your room.
And that's only during the first hour.
Outside is something of the old America. Sky, grass, mail carriers, home delivered newspapers, baby-strollers, joggers, chatting neighbors, kids loafing on their way to school, toddlers giggling on tricycles, and puppies barking at everything that passes. No, this is not a Norman Rockwell or Thomas Kincaid illustration, but out here the pace is slower, the focus is less intense, the information is less impersonal, and the distance between people much shorter and more touchable.
Lets not get confused here. Most of us are pretty happy with home comforts that are a few eons beyond the cold caves our ancestors used. We like indoor plumbing, and we love our everywhere gadgets. However, in our transition from outdoor living to indoor living, we've lost a few things along the evolutionary way.
For instance, our senses.
Cocooned inside our splendiferous homes and condos, our sense of sight has lost its 360 degree alertness...our sense of sound is confined to this acoustically controlled venue....our sense of touch is often limited to switches and keypads...and our sense of smell, well forget it, because the smells of the green earth have little chance inside climate-controlled living rooms.
This isn't a plea to return to nature and the noble savage. Rousseau and Gauguin got that wrong. Cities and city life are in many ways the pinnacle of human achievement. Its boulevards and parks and great buildings and fine arts aren't to be found either in the land of Amish or the world of nostalgia. On the other hand, the Amish and the nostalgics may have a case when they pose this challenge before the jury of history: Is the new always better than the old?
Perhaps they answer their own question. They have no problem embracing some of yesterday's finer values while at the same time using today's indoor plumbing! As to the rest of us using indoor plumbing, might we have a problem with yesterday's values?
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I think you answer it all in your last paragraph. I balance of the two, in this case indoor plumbing and outdoor "senses and surroundings" is the perfect mix. The problem, at least for me personally, is finding that balance. I suspect a lot of people probably overdue one or the other. The only thing I disagree with you about is I think today's "outside America" is sadly just as face paced as the internet....which is sad. To be cliche, how many peoplw stop to smell the flowers anymore?
ReplyDeleteEmily, I love your cliche! I believe all cliches are somehow rooted in truth.
ReplyDeleteI suppose "outside America" IS also fast-paced. However, if we listen to the more natural rhythms out there, we just may feel something that is nature's alone. A good break from our busy mechanical "inside America."
Here's to cliches if we know how to use them...!