I will not be able to attend this week's blogger convention, because I have to go to my EMT class. But I do wonder if meeting in real life for purely social reasons will become obselete soon. You can see and hear your friends if they have a webcam and a microphone. You probably don't care about touching or smelling them, unless they are really good friends. And state law prohibits finding out what your friends taste like.
Consider a traditional night on the town. You shower and use up water. You put on sweatshop produced clothing and deordorant tested on animals. You arrive in the meeting place in a vehicle that emits greenhouse gases and is powered by a dwendling supply of fossil fuels imported from countries that force women to wear veils in public. Once at the restaurant, you clog your arteries and pollute your liver.
Now imagine this: You take one good photo of you when you were 20, post it on mySpace or Facebook and just stay home. You don't have to shave or shower and you save gas. You can get as drunk as you want because you don't have to worry about driving home.
In the future, all you'll ever need is a computer and a bathrobe to put on whenever you have to answer the door.
Of course, there are those of us who wonder what the purpose of life is in the first place. The reason I'm here? Probably because my sister died the day after she was born. Had she lived, I would not be spewing out my foul mouthed lunatic rantings on a populace who doesn't want to read them because the family would have been complete with one boy, one girl.
ReplyDeleteBut because my mother wanted a daughter, I'm here.
Your theory sounds plausible, except when it comes to sex. Some people are hell bent on screwing anything that crosses their path, and unless you live with a bunch of people, it requires a minimum of grooming efforts to have sex happen. It means going out of the house. For the truly lazy, it means they and their kind will slowly die out, and the truly motivated will continue the species. As it should be.
I like Gloria's idea of the lazy vs the motivated...it DOES provide hope for us as a species!
ReplyDeleteWe're already seeing a lot of the printed word losing ground to technology. Letter-writing is about as passe' as you can get for many people. Fortunately, I don't subscribe to that mayhem.
It just hope the truly lazy don't take ALL that long to disappear...lol!
Have a Merry Christmas, all!
:)
B.G.
Thanks for the kind words, Bobby.
ReplyDeletePart of the reason I made a huge, totally motivated effort to change careers is because the printed word is losing out to technology. Journalism was a crowded field long before blogging became "cool," and if you're someone like me who doesn't want to knuckle down and write the way the newspapers want you to write, it means you won't be working for a newspaper. So, instead of griping about not being able to work and support myself as a writer, I got my butt in gear and learned to do something else. In today's world, the survivors will be characterized by their ability to adapt to certain situations, change careers when needed, and live WAY below their means. Oh, and the survivors will have a low "laziness" factor, I'm predicting.
Personally, I love it when I get Christmas cards with long notes written inside. E-mail, like e-books, is fast, but there's something about a sheet of paper with someone's handwriting on it that is way more magical than seeing it on a screen.
That being said, eventually some of my writing may wind up in an e-book. That is, as long as I can produce enough stuff to make that person happy. I'm not going to turn down their offer, but I'm also not going to give up my dream of seeing my work in an actual book with paper that will wind up at someone's bedside, or in their bathroom.
I could go on and elaborate about the human species and how lots of people who really shouldn't have kids DO end up having kids. I used to work for a dog magazine, and the phrase, "not of breeding quality" popped up on occasion. If humans were as picky about who they bred to as dog breeders were, you'd see a much healthier breed of humans, but there would be fewer of us. But you can't really legislate who you want to have kids with. It's something to think about though. I guess if I had the opportunity to choose, I would have designed myself as someone with a super-high metabolism, who learns quickly, has people-savvy, and who doesn't let stuff get her down. As for the physical part, I guess I would have opted for whatever looks would ensure that I wouldn't be teased or put down.
:)
Have a Happy New Year, everyone!
speaking of "some people shouldnt breed", and "thinning the herd":
ReplyDeletehave you heard about or read the Peta.org ad about jamie lynn spears? k-fed and britneys gene pool will continue. makes "idiocracy" seem all the more real.
whos got time to meet up? price of gas- price of drinks. cops on every corner.
they cant get me when I'm home or behind a keyboard.
group conversations, contributing to the common good- free- form thoughts, discussion. many heads are better than one.
glad i'm single. notice how i'm studiously avoiding political discussion, except to add a comic releif giggle to keep things from getting too serious? and if i can make you laugh, thats half the battle- the absurdity of our huan condition here in this galactic dustspeck. wow!
happy 2008.
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dcroach@yahoo.com for ideas for my blog http://x-wire.blogspot.com