self-reliance googled
Wasn’t it Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote admiringly about self-reliance? About two hundred years ago? Well, I got some news for Ralph. The world changed. It got real small, Ralph, about the size of an I-phone, and nowadays you rely on IT, not on yourself. I got friends who go to the grocery store to buy a couple of last minute items and they no more than get to Aisle #1 than they need to call the missus and see if she’d prefer the large size or the organic kind or a plastic jar not the glass one or exactly what kind of mustard?
I really don’t know what to make of this. Do my buddies call across the house every morning to see what color socks they ought to wear today? I mean, damn! Make the decision!! All by yourself. Be brave. Be bold. Get the mustard YOU want. Then live with the consequences!!!
We got GPS to help us NOT get lost. We got Google to find us a quick answer to about anything. We got Facebook to keep us abreast of our pals’ last 6 hours of late breaking activity. We got internet shopping and Netflix movies and satellite TV. We got e-mail and cellphone and twitter and text messaging. We haven’t got one iota of time to make even a simple decision, you get right down to it.
Poor sorry Ralph Waldo. He might’ve been stuck sorting it out solo, but we’re linked up, digitally connected, nano seconds from somebody else’s answer to any question we got. And we got plenty of questions. Just none we’re willing to answer by ourselves. We need confirmation, we need a social network, we want to know if our friends will approve, if they bought that product, if they liked that movie, if they’re going to that restaurant.
Ralph probably ate his hot dogs without mustard, is my guess. Too much trouble deciding. Besides, if you google it up, the supermarket hadn’t been invented….. Don’t believe me, cellphone a buddy and ask them.
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