The last time I saw Paris -- I like writing that, it sounds so cosmopolitan -- I spent a few cafe coffees sitting with a writer who must by now be dead. But his musings about niche marketing live on with me here back in the home of shaken but still still shimmering American capitalism....!
His thought was that while entrepreneurs aim their goods and services at specific niches of their market, consumers choose to live in specific niches of their life. There may be niche marketing, but still more relevant there is niche living. And could there be any better time to indulge in this prescription than today's daily avalanche of words and images, facts and statistics, theories and conspiracies?
You may have witnessed the same scenes -- bartenders turning off the newscast at the request of upset customers, mothers easing children away from the nightly news, jobless men fighting back despair at the latest unemployment reports. While we no longer go to our beds at night with long-rifles in the event of Indian raids, we do climb into them trailed by nightmares of the impending Armageddons faithfully but breathlessly reported by our 24/7 media.
One of the questions the media often poses is do we have more information than we can process? more knowledge than wisdom? The questions are of course sandwiched in between another breaking-news dispatch that slams into your life like another missile.
And so as Jacques pointed out lo these many newscasts ago, "You can't stop the missiles, but you can step out of their range." What he had in Gallic mind was a practice perfected by certain souls travelling this same ship of fools with us.Those who, for a variety of reasons, have reasoned that we live in herds, but can still graze in private. And so these escapees travel in their minds to other lands for brief respites.
The artists among us do so as they sabotage their way behind the line of daily fire into the bloodless fields where live music and literature and poetry. The philosophers among us do so as they tease out of the everyday hair-fright strands of thought which transcend the mud of the moment for the message of the eternal. Nostalgics too do this as they escape -- yes, they have no shame about the word! -- into remembrances of things past, people loved, and times savored.
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My Parisian friend wouldn't shape the words this commonly, but what he was saying and what I was approving is: Different strokes for different folks! And while today's helter-skelter age brims with rhapsodic new opportunities, it bubbles with discordant new disasters. Sipping coffee in that Paris cafe and slipping into bed this night, I carry a feeling next to my heart which whispers: Yes, seize the day, but only in the pieces and parts you can actually hold.
After all, the world is a very big pot of coffee, and you are only a very small cup.
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"One of the questions the media often poses is do we have more information than we can process? more knowledge than wisdom?"
ReplyDeleteI think this is one of the main problems we have today...and you hit it right on the head.....we have all this so called knowledge at our fingertips but not enough time or brain power to process it. Or it falls into the wrong hands. What would your propose?
Your essays are always so thought provoking!
Nicole -- Thanks for being "provoked." It is a problem of, I think, epic proportions. We are so busy expanding our vast informational resources, our capacity to wisely use them hasn't kept pace. Something like putting a youngster in the Indie 500 before they've passed driver ed!
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