Sunday, February 8, 2009

Warmth



So many things are taken for granted in our modern world . The warmth of water is so nice . This wasn't always a given item in our world ,this flow of warmth . The Romans could warm their baths but they couldn't warm the water to households . The two thousand years of aqueduct technology flowing into modern plumbing also didn't guarantee warm water to people across America during the Civil War period . The outhouses continued well into the twentieth century without warm water or taps to wash hands . The warm shower is a luxury of our time that is taken for granted till the electricity is taken away by emergency situations . Simple pleasures are simply not so simple ,relying upon so many backstage elements to make them beautiful .

As we look at a little screen and communicate , shooting arrows into the air , who knows where or where they come down , the simple pleasures seem removed . The dot com world takes for granted that people have the top technology when they turn on their computers . Television news programs broadcast their network dot com addresses as if all their viewers have computers on all the time and can jump up directly after the broadcast , go to the address and start typing responses to the editorials . In reality , out of the three hundred million people that have been noticed in the United States alone , I have to wonder at the exaggeration of the possibilities of actual viewers or possible participants . Could it be as little as a few million ? The world percentage of computer communicators has to be much smaller than the States .

It isn't like I am not aware of the entertainer that plays to the house as if it is filled and he is singing to the back row as if they are there . The thing is I am wished "Happy Ramadan" these years and the population of Muslims , while it might be a little higher percentage in the Washington DC area, might be about ten million throughout the entire country . I am wished happy Hanuka and there might be five million Jewish people . Christmas became a dirty word in a country that is primarily Christian . This country which , on the surface , espouses "Freedom of religion" will not recognise a population that doesn't wish to accept the idea of an invisible man looking over everything or divine design . So the network , corporate news , reported from the point of view of sponsors and advertising , will continue to play to the lower denominator . Sex sells . Youth sells . Superstition sells . Religion sells .

Wait a minute , Religion kills , superstition kills , the youth are drafted to kill , and with the advent of aids , sex kills . Yesterday I saw that it was reported that one out of twenty people in Washington DC have the aids virus . Africa would laugh and point at this statistic if it weren't so tragic . Africa and China aren't dwelling upon the simple pleasure of warm water or plumbing except in areas that get attention (Ala Beijing) . The actual numbers of computers in China have not been calculated by American advertising though they are well aware of the lower cost to produce from China . Corporate news isn't concerned about simple pleasures , only the selling of their product . They are singing to the back row but there is no one there except the American public watching television , switching channels during the commercials , and tuning out the rest of the world . Is this what we meant to do ?

Is this the results of the last eight years ? Is this because we have dug ourselves into a economic hole that the rest of the world is following us into ? Capitalism , the sacred cow , has bred greed of incredible proportions . Instead of making it possible for all Americans to find the "Dream" , the greed has prohibited most Americans from going past simple pleasures . The rest of the world can't worry about America yet they are headed in the same direction . India and China is asked to stop using freon when they are finally getting air conditioning and refrigerators . Why should they care about the illusions of American capitalism or the current illusions of American political environmental controls ? The simple pleasure of freon has to be sacrificed for America ?

I doubt it . I doubt that Cuba will worry about electric cars or emission control . Warm water is such a nice thing .
Happy Ramadan !

Happy Ramadan !

No comments: