Imagine a passenger jet, bursting through the blossoming clouds to parallel itself with the ground below. With fascinated glances, a child peeks out from a window onto the emerald ground below, where he sees impossibly huge landscapes of billowing trees and jutting mountains, which seem to be all but the size of Lego bricks to him. Yet he is thrilled the prospect of flying so high, and going to exotic places where new things are to be found and had. He dreams, as he squeezes his nose against the cool plastic to see yet further into the patches of cotton candy floating like a bed beneath him and that which is beyond, of birds with rainbow colors and peculiarities such as the ones that he has only seen on the magic box of the TV, and of course the prowling tigers and snorting elephants. His eyes sparkle with delight and imagination, of futures fantastic and dreams to be had. There is a slight cough beside him.
A businessman, who much too regularly – in his own opinion – takes this trip. It is a hassle, and a strain to his sleeping pattern as well. He, slightly curious and annoyed as to the child’s valiant struggle towards his seat belt, glances towards the outside view. He coughs and returns to watching a video upon his tablet. It is brand-new, as well as state of the art, an anniversary gift from his wife. He had smiled and graciously accepted it then, but within a few days, it turned out to be no different than the others. A useless gift, as there now existed many more another more powerful. The video stuttered and lagged, infuriating the man towards thoughts of simply dumping the item into the wastebasket. As the tablet responded with a low battery warning, he throws up his hands in the air with an exasperated gesture and grumpily attempts to get what winks of sleep he still can.
We now live in a world where abundance is an extremely true characteristic. Regardless of the starvation within poverty stricken countries, or the millions who regularly beg for their lives, we have more than enough to sustain ourselves. Just look around in our supermarkets, our fast food restaurants. Just look at the sheer amount of food that we have. But limit yourself not to these, but also look at everything. We have more clothes than we know what to do with, remainder of fashion trends or fads come and gone. We have electronics numbering in the millions, with new records being broken nearly every year. (We also have an abundance of debt and an dependence on that which is not stable – fossil fuels, the playing of the economy by fools with much too much economic power. But that’s just my own personal opinion). But most of all, we have an abundance of non-independence upon the virtual world.
I am a regular user of the internet, to a degree of discomfort. It is a fact that is much too apparent in my lifestyle, as well as my priorities. I have waged an impossible battle against one devastating effect that has much too plagued the new generation, including mine own. Almost literally everyday, I hear my classmates, as well as the others within my internet world, speak of getting better and newer things. Let it be a new iPad, a new computer, or even just new sports equipment, I hear desire of something that is better than now. What troubles me is that prevalent within the darker undersides of these wants is the disappreciation – which is a word, regardless of what the spell-checker exclaims – of that which we have once wanted and now have. We are most probably the only generation, within the entirety of mankind, that has become bored with that which had once entertained their elders.
And it is that pattern that so troubles me. There isn’t even a gap of a single decade between that which entertains and that which once had, but no longer does. Look at my own generation. Which one of fellow folk do you, or have ever seen, playing a SEGA or a Playstation (the first generation). For those who still do at my age, I esteem you. For you have done what nobody seems to realize in my own generation. That the past is beautiful, and something that is newer and ‘better’ does not warrant it to be any better than what was once had, and what you still have. But save your extremely limited population, look to the rest. There are few who would ‘willingly’ play the ‘old’ games of the past (TF2, Counter-strike, Half-Life) in exchange for that which is newer. No matter if we had played them for years past, and once loved them as perhaps even Gods or the best-est of friends; they still hide beneath that dusty clutter in the corner of the room.
The problem is that we too easily replicated this into our own lives, seeing as we are starting to become more and more blind to the differences between that which is virtual and the exquisite beauty of the reality. I have not seen it with mine own eyes, nor do I want to, but I sense that there is coming a time where children will no longer see the beauty that once inspired and frustrated us with nature. I sense that they are starting to find it a dull and irritable thing. And why shouldn’t they, as some might ask. Obesity has tripled within the last three decades, and the pressure upon study force us into our rooms (in which are coincidentally located our electronic equipment). There seems to be little wonder anymore in that outside, with it mostly just representing an annoying glare in the afternoon, and a blanket of irritating blindness at night. As cities become more and more crowded, overstuffed with people and electronics, where are they anyway going to find a single grove of trees, where the exhilarating smell of pine sweeps in through the senses. So they look towards their electronic equipment, and driven by (horrifyingly effective) ad campaigns and social pressure, they wish for that which is better, becoming bored with the old. But is this truly what we wish to gift to our children? To my generation? To the generation beyond?
So take your child to a national park, to some serene landscape where they can realize that nature is something that we cannot ever become bored of. And that the newest of things are not the most important, but instead the things that that have been with you, struggled with you, and been campaigners for you during your life. Fin~
SMIC Perspectives 