August 18, 2013
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PBS was airing a show on guns. One man stated that guns have been in the ‘New World’ since the beginning, and were necessary for survival.
That is an erroneous notion. It certainly wasn’t necessary for Native American survival. They had used knives, spears, and arrows for thousands of years. Western-styled weapons, such as firearms, were not essential to survival. One normally doesn’t fish with a gun or plant corn with a gun. Just saying/ Weaponry assisted with survival, but guns are not essential, even though they may be more accurate and efficient.
Much of what nonsense we use to justify a position is circumstantial. Today, one might think a car is essential. Perhaps some kind of phone is essential. As communities broaden, some things are certainly practical, convenient to the point of being thought of as essential. Wichita is approximately 18 miles across, east to west. The three major hospitals are almost in the center. The Social Security office is on the east edge of town. There are places where an automobile or some form of public transportation makes things easier to access, especially in a timely manner.
To confuse essential with convenient stifles our imagination. To confuse the way things are – have become – with being necessary is to limit our thinking about how things might be different than they are. To ignore the past also limits how we think.
I just re-read Bel Kaufman’s book, Up the Down Staircase. That book was written almost 50 years ago. Bel taught school in New York City, and recounts some of the anecdotes of that experience. Bel is now 102 years old. She certainly would not have contemplated school massacres when she was teaching.
We have a great deal of information regarding education – past and present – and to assume that the odd and occasional bout of school violence, and policemen patrolling the halls of our schools is the way thins ‘must’ be and must remain, limits our thinking of how we might make improvements.
Our modern cars are essentially the same as an early Reo or early Model T. Now we have computers and regulators and sensor, but they are regulating and sensing the same essential of crank, bang, suck and blow of a 1902 automobile engine. Sophistication in technology may over-complicate our thinking.
The film, Sling Blade, came out in 1996. Billy Bob Thornton played a character named Karl Childers. Childers was slow witted, thought of as being ‘retarded’. A group of men were struggling to get a push mower started. Finally they asked Karl to look at the mower. He did. It was out of gasoline.
As we study- and as we are taught – I wonder how often we forget the basics? I wonder if we are hyped into thinking in terms of the latest cell phone without asking why we even need a cell phone, and if we need a phone, why does it have to have internet access, the ability to take photographs and all but cook our dinner. And certainly, why does the new model cost so much when so often it is a minor tweaking that has been produced. Did someone invent an alternative to radio waves? Cyberspace? Magnets or whatever? Did any thing revolutionary or extraordinary occur to make a phone that can take an 8 pixel image rather than a 5 pixel image? In getting a clearer picture, did someone invent an alternative to say, gravity, that makes the new model cost more than last month’s model?
Comments (2)
After the recent recession I thought people would have to give up a lot of “non-essentials” and that society would have some change. But nothing did. We go how long in history, in our own lives, without having a mobile internet device, texting, and a mobile phone in general, to it being perhaps the most expensive non-essential liability each month? People will rack up credit card bills, not save for retirement, but they won’t cancel their cable or cellular phones, modern 1st world amenities that are truly useless.
@Bobby - Once upon a time, I’d get email notification when people posted and/or commented. Now I have to search each site to see what’s going on. I want my old Xanga back.I was cleaning out a junk drawer last week and found a cell phone I purchased LAST CENTURY; perhaps 1997 or 98. I used it for three weeks and then put it in a drawer. I don’t need to be in constant contact with anyone.We are a strange people. Sartre said that hell is other people. Maybe hell is our own lack of self reliance, self assurance.