<\/p>\n
Wasn\u2019t it Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote admiringly about self-reliance?\u00a0 About two hundred years ago?\u00a0 Well, I got some news for Ralph.\u00a0 The world changed.\u00a0 It got real small, Ralph, about the size of an I-phone, and nowadays you rely on IT, not on yourself.\u00a0 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\u2019d prefer the large size or the organic kind or a plastic jar not the glass one or exactly what kind of mustard?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I really don\u2019t know what to make of this.\u00a0 Do my buddies call across the house every morning to see what color socks they ought to wear today?\u00a0 I mean, damn!\u00a0 Make the decision!!\u00a0 All by yourself.\u00a0 Be brave.\u00a0 Be bold.\u00a0 Get the mustard YOU want.\u00a0 Then live with the consequences!!!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We got GPS to help us NOT get lost.\u00a0 We got Google to find us a quick answer to about anything.\u00a0 We got Facebook to keep us abreast of our pals\u2019 last 6 hours of late breaking activity.\u00a0 We got internet shopping and Netflix movies and satellite TV.\u00a0 We got e-mail and cellphone and twitter and text messaging.\u00a0 We haven\u2019t got one iota of time to make even a simple decision, you get right down to it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Poor sorry Ralph Waldo.\u00a0 He might\u2019ve been stuck sorting it out solo, but we\u2019re linked up, digitally connected, nano seconds from somebody else\u2019s answer to any question we got.\u00a0 And we got plenty of questions.\u00a0 Just none we\u2019re willing to answer by ourselves.\u00a0 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\u2019re going to that restaurant.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ralph probably ate his hot dogs without mustard, is my guess.\u00a0 Too much trouble deciding.\u00a0 Besides, if you google it up, the supermarket hadn\u2019t been invented\u2026..\u00a0 Don\u2019t believe me, cellphone a buddy and ask them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wasn\u2019t it Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote admiringly about self-reliance?\u00a0 About two hundred years ago?\u00a0 Well, I got some news for Ralph.\u00a0 The world changed.\u00a0 It got real small, Ralph, about the size of an I-phone, and nowadays you rely on IT, not on yourself.\u00a0 I got friends who go to the grocery store […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[7261,7259,7260],"class_list":["post-19008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-emerson-on-google","tag-hive-mentality","tag-self-reliance-no-more"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19008"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19009,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19008\/revisions\/19009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}