What's it like taking a lateral pass in a football game or a relay throw from the outfield in a baseball game? Strangely, something like being one of the honorees at your old school, looking out at a student body entirely new to you. And yet, even several generations apart, experiencing the power of the connection between you.
Perhaps it was just the physical proximity that day. More likely it was the psychological bonding. Those students and I were individual moving parts to a social whole which if meshed just right could serve the nation in its time of need. The success of any great nation has much to do with how well its generations can pro-actively connect.
Trouble is, generations are so innately different. Those coming up have little understanding of how-it-was; those beforehand have little patience for how-it-is. The infamous gap...! However, occasionally it's wondrously bridged. Sometimes by leaders (a Kennedy or John Paul II). Sometimes by celebrities (a Sinatra or the Beatles). Perhaps by popular movies (a Casablanca or Star Wars). Maybe simply by shared foods like pizza and technology like cellphones. Even disparate generations can't live totally isolated from one another in the same land.
At one time there may have been social glues that bonded us more tightly. Not because of nobler efforts, mostly because there were fewer options by which to go our separate ways. Only a few national magazines (a Life and Saturday Evening Post); only a few TV networks; only a limited number of sport leagues; only a small cluster of Hollywood studios. Connections were simpler when options were fewer.
Today we have the beauty and the burden of 1001 voices, each speaking from their own niche of the market place. No longer any need for us to all read, watch or listen to the same things, when the number of things available is now virtually infinite. Little wonder the voices I and those students hear on a regular basis are so improbably different. At one time, the market wanted to find what made us the same; then go after that "America." Today, the market wants to find out what makes us so many different "America's;" then splice and dice us by age, gender, race, religion, region, politics, car we drive, clothes we wear, and pretty soon DNA codes we harbor.
All the while global computer banks are vetting and profiling us by our billions of 24/7 Facebook and Twitter activities. Welcome to the next brave new world! At one time kids like those students that day dreamed this very dream. Now that it's here, the psychological connection I felt with them has only to pass this test....
....can the extraordinary diversity which energizes their generation somehow relate to the extraordinary uniformity that electrified ours?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment