homo escapeons

A CHARGE OF INSULT AND BATTERY

I had the pleasure of witnessing a televisual feast documenting the current abysmal condition of civility in modern society...which is now on life support.

The program was aptly titled to hell with manners .
and you may peruse through an interview with filmmaker John Curtin HERE as he dissects the death of civility.

Basically far too many modern Homo Escapeons are rude as hell to each other because they are reacting to a perfect storm scenario:

"misguided parenting, longer commutes, less community, isolation due to technology, and impersonal customer service."

Misguided Parenting; Back in the 60s the North American Baby Boomers (like moi) rejected the rigid conformity of the Leave It To Beaver/Father Knows Best society that we grew up in.

Now of course the pendulum has swung too far and as parents many of the Boomers have overcompensated by soaking themselves, and especially their kids, in some twisted form of self esteem.


For whatever reason, self restraint was viewed as being contrary to self respect? So now we narcisshits view life as one gigantic YouTubian show about US. It's all about ME, ME, ME 24/7.

Longer Commutes = Less Community: Road Rage. The sheer volume of Boomers escalated the cost of housing and has forced them to live further away from their workplace. In big cities a 3 hour daily commute sends many over the edge. This is MY LIFE, MY SPACE, MY LANE.

Thanks to the stress of the 3 hour commute people either cocoon when they finally get home after their 12+ hour day..neighbours schmeighbours...or most begin chauffering their little replicants around to a myriad of activities in the race to create the image of being super-parents.

Now that perceived pedophiles lurk at every corner nobody lets their kids walk to the community club. Ergo the kids play on their handheld computer games or talk & text on their cells as they are grudgingly escorted to their next thing..and usually eat McSupper at the Mcdrive-thru on the Mcway.

Techological Isolation: Look at a crowd of people these days and you notice that most avert making eye contact with others because they are either listening to their Ipods , texting/talking on their phone, or zoning out...in the subway, theatre, car, street, library you name it!

The computer age delivers messages at astonishing speeds now and we get impatient after waiting for even a few seconds...we want it RFN!
In case you overlook the obvious, here we are reading and conversing with ethervolk instead of talking to our neighbour...but it's easier, safer, and more rewarding isn't it?

Impersonal Customer Service: Flying used to be seen as the pinnacle of travelling in luxury, now it is a bloody nuisance...personally I believe that asshats like Osama Bin Hidin and that shoe bomber idiot Richard Reid are as much to blame as the decline in civility... and no punishment is cruel enough to exact our pound of flesh from those assholes.

Banking is of course the other obvious nightmare..
gone are the local tellers and managers that you knew for 25 years..as one of the participants on the show said..you don't blow your top at a teller that you have known for years..she is a person not an automated voice instructing you to press 4 now.

So mix it all together and what do you expect? The Baby Boomers have a few years left to fine tune their legacy. At present their revamping of the social contract will be a dismal failure. Instead of Peace, Love, and Unicorns, modern North American Society is a spectacular sickening vortex of excessive individualism and avarice.

Should we have expected anything less from the ME Generation? Where is that middle ground between ME and them? Technology seems to be exascerbating the problem..shouldn't we turn off the computer and go have coffee with our neighbours or read a book with our kids?

Our brain programming for interacting with others was developed over hundreds of thousands of years (after reaching our present stage of arrested development)for living in Clans and small communities.

Ten thousand years ago our Hunter/Gatherer world was turned upside down by the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution.

Three hundred years ago the Industrial Revolution only exascerbated the problem of living like Ants and began disintegrating the extended familiar multi-generational household unit.

Now the Technological/Information Revolution is in full swing and it seems to be dissolving the Nuclear Family into Individual Units.

What will be left when the next Revolution further subdivides the Individual?
Perhaps we will be stored as units of energy as shown in the Matrix?

We certainly won't have any use for manners if we're all just a bunch of computer batteries will we?