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A HUMAN FACE - A HUMAN TOUCH
As we step into the next millennium,
awash in the wake of the post-industrial,
postmodern,
electronic media-saturated environment,
we must be ever vigilant.
Evolution has taken such a wonderfully long time to get us here-
through interstellar trails of primeval dust and muck.
Now,
thresholding into the future
as co-participants in the creative process,
we are faced with,
as always,
the opportunity to maintain an ever-present commitment
to what personhood is all about.
A fleeting incessant blip
on our intellectual, emotional, physical,
and spiritual horizons,
hints of an unknown presence shadowing us.
Something always has -
The gods?
Now that God is dead and evil spirits
the entertainment of children and teenagers,
what is it that blows the winds of turbulence,
shakes our tree,
shadows our sunny days?
What eclectic movements do we fear?
What dissonance absorbs our senses?
The venues of the day's exposure
come from an implosion of people
(other beings present in our known space)
and data coming from everywhere
overloading all of our senses.
Numbers,
beyond the simple,
are incomprehensible
(except to a few)
and therefore without our comprehension, meaningless.
Yet ...
the presence of others,
different others,
(only in that naive historical sense)
is disconcerting.
We don't feel connected.
Something tells us we should,
we are all brothers and sisters,
and yet ...
we really aren't quite sure how we
go about that magnanimous interface.
In any case,
we have too much on our plates.
And the banter,
informative and noxious of all kinds,
soothes, assaults,
and otherwise floods our commuting time
while punctuations of music(?)
occupies our ears and boom boxes
carried on four wheels
invade our space, causing disturbing sensations.
Is any of this understandable,
or are we all by default
"buying"
the postmodern dissonance as the only truth?
If it sells it must be good.
The truth has become a market-driven commodity,
hasn't it?
Projectiles of jacketed lead death abound,
methods of delivery are available through mail order
to almost everyone.
Tons of ordinance
(the equivalent of so much TNT),
including those insidious antipersonnel land mines,
still lay scattered about
as we wander aimlessly into tomorrow
surrounded by the omnipresent
Data Smog* of the day.
To whom can we turn for answers?
Where can we look for that special interface,
that process called higher formal education
(Does formal have meaning anymore?)
education,
and see a human face and feel a human touch?
It must be more or less than "virtual reality"
(now that's an oxymoron).
Something is real either as a creation or an invention,
although "real"
isn't "really real."
Ah, but who can tell?
Some say it is and maybe they are right.
And I don't want to be embarrassed with my ignorance.
God knows
(that’s only a figure of speech, now, of course)
I don't know everything.
But I do, at some level, know what I think I like.
So ...
when I think about it
(that pastime of reflecting with an honest wonder)
"It,"
sharing being in time
(real now-time for most of us)
must,
if we reflect long enough about
our real comfort zone
(with self and others),
be doable, rewarding and regenerating.
It all must be more than a media transformed
into a medium becoming a message.
It must be a transubstantial exercise
of shared being
melting into one
and that one,
for most of us,
must have predominantly real-time,
real-life attributes.
Our universities for the next millennium must be personal.
They cannot be too cold,
they must be warm enough.
They cannot be too hard,
they must be soft enough.
We are that rational social animal,
the homofaber, the destroyer,
a symbolizing, a freedom-needing,
soul-seeking, sentient being
who in the course of our species’ journey
must forever size personhood to itself.
We must be very close
(close enough)
to who we really are,
not simulacra ad nauseam.
After all,
how many of me can there really be?
Just one!
We know the "times are a-changin'."
So they have been saying and so they are
and yet with each ripple on the pond
of the serenity of our aspirations
we feel more than a little disturbed.
Echoes in the winds of time
repeat the age-old rational/social dictum:
How much is too much and how little is too little?
To this we must pay attention.
We
(some of us)
have bought at the physical level
the "use it or lose it" mandate.
Now we must extend this commitment
to the other three theaters of our personhoods:
the intellectual, emotional and spiritual.
So we may ask ...
How many tools do we need and of what kind?
At what pace must we labor and for what purpose?
To whom and what do we dedicate our very best
as we attempt to share the knowledge of the ages
so that we may enhance our now?
Are we able to protect ourselves and our children
from donning victimhoods of our blind machinations
as the Internet’s tentacles gather in force and kind?
The answer must be a forever yes!
Yes! And yes again!
To ignore the hard-won wisdom of history is more than foolish,
it is life threatening and not just to us here now,
but to all those children here now,
"the forever young that come and come and come,
wide-eyed and innocent," **
truly victims.
We must choose not to sacrifice them on some altar
of the market-place.
We must touch them and look into their faces and say,
“Yes! Yes! And yes again!”
Yes! to the beauty of each one!
Yes! To the doability of our real selves!
Yes! To the current crown of humanity
with its multicolored, multilingual, multicultural,
multifaceted personhood!
*Data Smog, David Shenk
** “Reap the Wind,” from Always Extolling: A Collection
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