Riding the Slipstream

Sometimes the world we live in scares the crap out of me. Things around me are changing at such an alarming pace that I sometimes feel I am in a giant washing machine stuck in the rinse cycle. Sweesh... Sweesh... What’s hot and what’s not… what's hip... what's old, what's new…. what I should have and shouldn’t have… blah blah blah... one big giant ball of string. We are so obsessed with being different and going forward that we we started to move backwards. Retro is in… then it is out... the friggin' 80’s is making (or have made) a comeback… same ol' same ol' -… in a different guise… dust it down, shine it up and let us do it all over again. Well fuck me sideways with a giant corkscrew! Things have become bigger, better, smarter, faster, sleeker… smaller. Just when I think that I have caught up (it happened way back in 2000 and lasted for about one nanosecond) with all the technological advancements, something new comes along and I am right back where I started. In my inability to keep pace, I view every new advance with a degree of skepticism and alarmism. I pretend that nothing fazes me and I outrightly dismiss those things I cannot understand. I have no choice in the matter. It is the only way I know to keep me head above water. I have installed giant filters over my eyes and ears and block out that which I cannot make sense of. We have created a world where we insist on perceiving every new development as a culmination of something great or as a climax. We live our lives going from one amazing discovery to the next. Every new fad is greeted with a big 'wow’, an ‘at last’ or viewed as the ‘nth degree’ – with a constitutional fatalism that constantly adjusts itself to the ever-changing present. We have been getting out of hand and it has been two thousand years in the making. Perhaps one day we will simply die from an overload of technology and sheer boredom with the things we have created. Where has the magic gone? (Damn, now I have a head-ache... I knew that thinking is bad for me!)