Monday, October 19, 2009

OUR ELUSIVE TOP-10's; OR YOU TUBE vs GANDHI

We've got a problem. Unlike the problems of our ancestors -- lack of enough food, clothes, land, income -- our problem in today's technological age is a first in human history. Not lack, but abundance...!

True, no one has everything; but almost everyone has something. Foods stuff our stores, clothes are easily available, cars and vacations just a credit card away. Even low-income families have more access to more of life than the average peasant in the ancient world ever dreamed of.

What's more, most of this is a click away on our computers. Google...Facebook...E-Bay...YouTube...the shopping & news channels. There's no combination of ancient kings, emperors or popes who ever possessed all that we possess at the touch of a finger. And yet scan the book shelves and listen to the talk shows -- topic number one always comes back to our angst, our health, our insecurities, our desire to find those 10-top-steps to the happiness we assume our age of abundance has to offer.

No top 10's to be found here. That likely is the mission of religion or psychiatry or journeys to mountaintop gurus. There is, however, this thought. Can our very abundance be part of our angst. Everyone understands the emergency of having too little; now we are the first generations to confront the enigma of having too much. So much so that it has become difficult to sort through the choices. What's bad, what's good, what's best...? And who is to say...?

Best to begin at the beginning. Discerning the distinction between the true and the trivial, between what counts and what doesn't. Rather than plumbing the Great Books, a handy place to start might be the paparazzi on one end and the obituaries on the other. The paparazzi bring us a gluttony of half-truth trivia about half-talented celebrities. The obits bring us a litany of lives whose quiet achievements can stir our best thoughts about life.

Here's an example. First, consider that there is a cat that plays the piano on You Tube. The network reports 1 billion hits a day! In contrast, the website with Gandhi's obituary get 15 hits a day! I don't know what the cat has to offer our search, but here's what Gandhi does: "The thing that will destroy us are politics without principle... pleasure without conscience...wealth without work...knowledge without character...business without morality... science without humanity...worship without sacrifice."





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