Editor’s note: This commentary is by Walt Amses, a writer and former educator who lives in North Calais.
[S]tepping into the leafy archway where the hilly, dirt road ends, I wonder if the town crew made the grade steeper. I’m quickly eased out of rumination, the dappled sunlight on the well-worn trail providing the precise respite I’m looking for this early September morning. A gentle breeze is almost imperceptibly fluttering leaves and flickering shadows, making my surroundings appear underwater.
Being underwater — even if it’s an illusion — may be one of the few methods left to avoid the withering electronic chatter about everything, offering sense and nonsense, ranging from serious: Will the media continue allowing Donald Trump to fabricate without accountability; to completely absurd: the latest trending topic on Twitter, about which I gleefully know absolutely nothing.
The problem lurking in our tangled underbrush of information overload is that we’ve reached the point where serious and absurd have become indistinguishable, frequently embodied in the same entity — Trump, for instance. Did he really threaten an act of war in retaliation if Iranian sailors had the audacity to “gesture” at our sailors? Here’s what he said, decide for yourself: “When Iran, when they circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats and make gestures at our people that they shouldn’t be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water.”
It’s completely mystifying why voters would hear this — or any of his other verbal misadventures — and not run in the opposite direction. But apparently the presidential race is tightening and no longer considered anything even approaching the Hillary Clinton landslide predicted a few short weeks ago. Several polls have the race dead even and a few have Trump slightly ahead. Most people I come in contact with find this incomprehensible. Granted they’re mostly aging boomers who still don’t get why Woodstock didn’t solve everything.
Several polls have the race dead even and a few have Trump slightly ahead. Most people I come in contact with find this incomprehensible. Granted they’re mostly aging boomers who still don’t get why Woodstock didn’t solve everything.
During our life cycle — roughly the last seven decades — science fiction has become a lot more like science and a lot less like fiction. Achievements, once mind-boggling, are becoming so banal that astronauts orbiting the earth for months at a time are barely acknowledged; the discovery of new, perhaps Earth-like planets causes hardly a ripple; and when we hear talk of landing on Mars our first thought is a yawning “didn’t Matt Damon already do that?”
Once, not all that long ago, just being an astronaut was enough to inspire awe. And presidential candidates were respected and respectful. Those days are gone, thanks in part to civilization being otherwise engaged. We’ve seen it all before, either on television, at the movies or online. Our mediums of choice, attention-devouring shiny objects, designed to distract and entertain, are so engaging they have become a stand-in for reality.
The confluence of journalism, celebrity worship, politics and reality television has rendered each dangerously indistinguishable from the other while insuring our amusement remains a prerequisite to focusing our attention on almost anything. Consequently, it’s difficult to determine what’s important without negotiating the virtual information minefield between us and what might be pertinent on a given day — like one of our presidential candidates being (minimally) a pathological liar and quite possibly the poster boy for a variety of serious psychological disorders.
But, luring people away — even for a moment — from whatever is providing the mesmerizing nonsense of the moment is next to impossible. The proliferation of exponentially more interactive “content” renders us oblivious to things that don’t include us. Astounding scientific breakthroughs or presidential politics engender the same ambivalence as another celebrity entering rehab or a gamer epoxied to a smartphone walking into an open manhole pursuing imaginary Pokemon characters.
An unplugged walk in the woods offers time to breathe and appreciate early signs of Vermont autumn that could have otherwise been sacrificed to the all-consuming quest for data. The first insinuations of color are barely visible through the morning fog that becomes routine this time of year as nights lengthen and the ground cools rapidly. The fog will lift later in the morning as mare’s tails whip across a bedazzling blue sky. All will seem right with the world. For a little while anyway.
