On George Carlin and the future of nostalgia

I recently received an e-mail from a friend entitled "Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but the moments that take our breath away..." with some words attributed (properly?) to George Carlin.

I am not sure that it is really from him but allow me to reproduce the main gist of the message and then react to it. Here is my excerpt from the message:

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways,but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill.

So, well, overall it is cute and makes some valid points, but in a nutshell I don't buy into it!

It seems every generation has nostalgia for the good old days, and we are just another generation with another case of 'where-did-the-good-times-go' blues... when things were better, simpler, more wholesome, cheaper, of better quality, realer, whatever, etc. etc. etc.

Come on! We have it soooo good but we don't want to admit it. Now I realize that anyone who is reading this is part of the estimated (but not by me) 1% of the world's population who has it good but even if there are lots of things we all would change about the way things are going, we also have a lot more to be thankful for today than ever before. Or at least that is the way I would like to see it, my illusion so to speak.

For anyone growing up in the States, we were enticed regularly to finish our plates because "think of all the starving kids in China"... I don't think any parents are using that line anymore. Moreover, the rising tide of China's economy is now also lifting Vietnam and starting to spillover to the economies of countries like Laos and Cambodia (along the lines of Kennedy's aphorism "a rising tide lifts all boats").

Progress in health means added years of living, even for people who are diagnosed with diseases that used to mean short-term death sentences. Those extra years, in those situations, are priceless. Personally, chemotherapy and other modern developments allowed my dad to add 10 months to his life after having been told that he only had one to live.  Those extra months, while difficult, allowed him to be present at his daughter's wedding, spend quality time with the family, etc. And thanks to progress in modern medicine, and pain management, the dying process was a lot less painful than it would otherwise have been - for him and for us.

While some people do watch TV more than read, for many of the people I know this is simple not true, sorry George. Spirituality, depth, caring, giving, volunteering, spontaneous acts of kindness are there every day, at all times, if we just care to notice them more than what the news shows us about conflict and war and expressoins of violence and hatred. We don't need to turn a blind eye to the negative aspects but should learn to see the positive more often.

Any time there is a catastrophe somewhere in the world, people from all over the world send money, food, aid or themselves to help. Spontaneously. When the Tsunami hit, the outpouring of aid from all over the world that the aid agencies and NGOs received more money than they knew what to do with. Not from governments but from people like you and me.

I guess it all goes back to our original decisions about life - is it a positive or negative experience? is man inherently good or evil? is the universe inherently loving or not? If you see a loving universe then its development can only be more loving... which means that if we give it a little thought, optimism about the future should replace our illusory, i.e. the future of nostalgia should not be so bright...