Indiana Oh Indiana

We live in an age of “instant” communication through iPhones, computers, texting, Tweeting, and Facebook, among other venues. Some people feel the need to be in constant “communication” with the world through cell phones, which they keep attached to their ears at all times, almost like robotic appendages. It seems ironic to me that in a world that is becoming overpopulated, noisier, and more mechanized on a daily basis, the same world seems to be getting more impersonal and lonelier all the time.

We suppose that a simple text message of, “Hi. I’m in frozen foods at the Piggly Wiggly” is worth sending (in whatever version of trimmed spelling) only because there is that opening for some kind of response, albeit as mundane as the message was. I’m not sure if this addiction to messaging creates the illusion of some level of badly needed intimacy, but it can also separate us further from the very world with which we want to feel in touch. Think of all those folks on streets, trains, in restaurants, theaters, even in cars, who are absolutely oblivious to what surrounds them, because they are consumed by those little cellphones, convinced that texting or chatting is of the greatest import. My question is “why?” What kind of emptiness is somehow filled by that prosaic activity that we imagine to be almost as significant as our own heartbeats?

We have, as a society, come to believe that technology is the answer to all our problems. I realize that my assertion makes me look like a hopelessly outdated codger whose idea of fun might be a Saturday night taffy pull and square dance at the old barn and whose idea of advanced technology is a Model T Ford. In fact, I applaud modern advances that in some ways (i.e. in medicine) have made life safer and more enjoyable for most of us. My contention, however, isn’t with machines but rather with the people who have practically become cyborgs using the machines.

I love to see people take vacations in nature at lakes, in cabins, in forests, at campgrounds, and at the seashore, where computers and cellphones are not the center of attention. Nature has a miraculous way of helping us to heal and to remember what is truly important beyond electrical devices, through fresh air and being together with other people (in person) without dependency upon the stunted, artificial language of text messaging, or the hypnotic embrace of TV. The problem I see is that we are not really in control of technology as much as technology is in control of us. We are numbed by a constant barrage of television commercials every ten minutes practically begging us to try new drugs and to watch thousands of news items from around the world in quantities and frequency that we can never hope to process emotionally, let alone intellectually. In that way we too are becoming machines with reduced intimate emotions in order to survive the onslaught of messages that bombard us with almost no break.

I’m aware too that the comic irony of my essay is that I’m posting it on my blog and on Facebook, media supported by technology. In that way, maybe the final joke’s on me.    JB

Language is one of the main vehicles for our thoughts, passions, and creativity. As soon you think that this doesn’t matter, and you become lazy and unconcerned about how you communicate verbally, your brain already has a flat tire.   John Bolinger

What is there about martyrdom that can at once repel, fascinate, inspire, and terrify us? The lives of the Christian saints are templates in suffering for devout causes, generally in their refusing in one way or another to renounce God in whom they believed completely and literally. Knowing myself as I do, I can’t imagine living during the Middle Ages or any other such period in history, facing an inquisition of any kind that might lead to my agonizing death from being burned at the stake or being broken on the wheel. Even being denied coffee for more than twelve hours would be enough to make me say anything  judges wanted to hear, so it’s very difficult for me to understand sacrificing one’s life for what many might consider an idealistic abstraction with little or no basis in the physical world. Martyr deaths exclude ones from a military standpoint. Such deaths of soldiers from the Allied Forces during World War II, for example, had the immediate and earthly purpose of rescuing civilization itself from possible oblivion. Mind you, my instincts for self-preservation are not hedonistic and might just be considered perfectly normal by many other people. The saints, however, were anything but normal but have left their marks for centuries upon history.

Isis and other forms of the Taliban glorify suicide bombing for their principal cause, which is slaughtering infidels. Such glorification, along with the promise of carnal delights in the life hereafter (paradise) seems to be enough to puff up egos in the world of extreme Islam and, of late, includes some young American converts, who are devoid of identity or self-worth and for whom such majestic acclaim is so enticing, though it is horrible to think that even mass murder can become something that is lauded and rewarded on some grotesque level of ignorance and mental numbness.

People sometimes threaten martyrdom when they haven’t the slightest intention of following through with it. My mother, for example, used guilt as the penalty for the misbehavior of my brother, my sister, and me. Mom would put her right hand thumb and forefinger between her eyes and squeeze the bridge of her nose, tilting her head back slightly, closing her eyes and in a quivering voice utter, “Why do you kids do this to me? Where have I failed? I try so hard to do the right things for you. I cook, I clean, I remember your birthdays, and I make sure you do your homework. I don’t deserve this. It hurts. It really hurts.”

She would then open her left eye the tiniest bit just to make sure the effect of her performance was getting the result she wanted. David and I would look at each other as if to say, “Oh, God! We’ve done it again!” If Mom were in a particularly bad temper, she might increase the voltage of her words by adding, “Yes, I can see it all now…my coffin at Bocken’s Funeral Home. There will be flowers and soft weeping, but in the midst of all the mourning as I lie there, you kids will be wearing Indian headdresses, whooping and hollering at the top of your lungs. Then you’ll punch each other senseless after shaking the casket to plead, ‘Get up, Mom! He hit me again!’ And finally, each of you will scream, ‘I need clean underwear!’ but it will be too late, and you’ll all be terribly sorry.” At last she would take a deep breath, expel a heartrending sigh and leave the room, again looking askance during her exit to see if what she had said was registering in us some level of guilt. Such were many of the sessions with our mother, Saint Bonnie.

Less amusing today are the histrionics of some on the Christian far right, who whine incessantly that they are under attack by the country in its insidious attempts to destroy Christmas, the sanctity of marriage, prayer, and patriotism itself. Especially annoying have been attempts to arouse public sympathy and action regarding the Supreme Court’s decision to render gay marriage legal everywhere in the nation. For many others on the far right, the most important freedom is having no restriction on owning and using guns. The most outrageous threats over recent events are those claiming self-immolation if gay marriage isn’t repealed. Similar threats have been hurled over the Affordable Care Act. Such mean-spirited and dramatic intimidations make me want to gift wrap boxes of matches to help such people achieve their heinous martyrdoms, but the most astonishing part of such pseudo-martyrdom is the disturbing fact that the true victims of injustice for centuries have suddenly become the supposed oppressors, simply because they have been granted equal rights, also despite there never being any lucid, rational explanation as to how gay marriage can in any way destroy traditional matrimony.

Thus, many on the far right of these issues have become befuddled in their failing attempts to reverse the roles of the oppressors and the victims. The very thought of “equal” rights for all sends them into a tailspin of terror and rage. Such persecution has nothing whatever to do with God, the Bible, or anything else but personal fear, misunderstanding, ignorance, and incredible vanity based upon “Us versus them.” Like Don Quixote, they aim their lances at windmills and other imaginary enemies. Poor things. So, put your halos back into the drawer with the moth balls. Martyrdom based upon hate is no longer an option. Redirect your hatred against hunger, poverty, spousal abuse, animal cruelty, toxic prejudice, and the wanton, greedy destruction of our planet. That should keep you busy and prevent you from persecuting and wounding more innocent fellow human beings as your principal occupation.    JB

I am what some folks might call a junkie for a television show called House Hunters, a program dealing with people looking for homes to purchase.

Part of my fascination is based upon a bewilderment regarding the clients of this program and how easily they seem to pay for houses and/or the necessary renovations, apparently from inexhaustible monetary resources. I have rather a grisly interest in watching others spend money in so cavalier a manner, while I sit in a reclining chair at home. Maybe there’s also a connection to my loving to watch shows like Hoarders and Cops, much the same experience, I would imagine, as seeing exotic life forms on planets in other galaxies, so remote, they seem at times to be creations of science fiction.

One of the intriguing things about many of the young couples on House Hunters is their seemingly vast incomes, despite their weeping about having to stay within their budgets, which are often at $750,000 or more. From where do these people, often in their twenties or thirties, get such sums of money? Sipping a glass of chilled pinot grigio yesterday, I watched a married couple (on House Hunters International) in their thirties seeking a “vacation” home in Aruba. They crooned to the realtor about needing an oceanfront property but having a budget of “only” half a million dollars. Let me remind the reader that the quest was for a “vacation home.” At that point, I couldn’t help imagining the couple as drug smugglers or high-end embezzlers. I mean, where do people at that or any other age get that kind of income outside a comfortable trust fund? Beyond that, I was annoyed by the wife’s whining about the necessity of a bidet in her own bathroom. Her husband’s eyes rolled slightly, either in dismay or in a daydream about using the device as a cooler for the beers I was certain were his buffer against her other demands for redoing the house from top to bottom. The lovely quartz countertops in the kitchen and bathrooms, she said, would all have to be replaced by granite, and all appliances would have to be stainless steel, a common requirement that still mystifies me. Kitchens and bathrooms inevitably become “dated” every five years anyway, when the next bully decorator in New York snarls that something has become outmoded enough for hordes of homeowners to rush out to Lowes and Home Depot to purchase whatever is “in” at the moment, replacing whatever has been declared outdated by current decorator gurus of the newest kitchen crap.

 I usually end up talking to or yelling at the TV (depending upon how many glasses of wine I’ve had) that the house they passed up was actually the best bargain for their purposes and that the hen-pecked husband should just leave his shrewish wife.

Heated argument

I suggest that the already popular TV shows, House Hunters and Divorce Court could merge into a fantastic new program called either House Court, or Divorce Hunters, either one of which I would be only too happy to host, as long as there are plenty of beers chilling in the ice-filled bidet.   JB

By the 1990’s, whining had become one of America’s chief pastimes. Even while grocery shopping, I was unceasingly annoyed by the more and more familiar sound of childish whimpering in places like the cereal aisle, where a kid would moan demands, like “Awww, Mommy, I want this cereal, pleeease!” “No,” would come the first response. “Chocolate Rasberry Sugar Bombs are not good for you.” “Awwww, that’s not fair, Mommy!” was often the comeback, which would usually only prolong the debate until the mother would at last give in by saying, “Oh, all right, but only for small portions. I don’t want to pay for any dental implants until you’re at least twelve.”

These collective grocery store experiences became, over time, the basis of my theory that many of our social ills can be traced back to the cereal aisles of grocery stores across the country, among all those hundreds of brands of tooth-rotting breakfast fare, with colorful and humorous logos on the boxes, reinforced on Saturday morning television commercials, mesmerizing children into believing that all that sugar was as vital as the air they breathed. Finally, it was almost as though these children from all across America had banded together at secret meeting sites, when their parents thought their kids were really playing on monkey bars, riding their bikes, or skate boarding. This facade covered the fact that the kids were actually meeting to share their new national message of, “WHINING WORKS!” Playgrounds everywhere became convention centers to spread the word that, not only could grocery store griping and sniveling bring results, but such intense complaining could also bring rewards in other sectors of society.

Thus, whining made its way into public schools, where its effect on scholastic standards may still be seen in the demands placed upon classes of our public schools, which I believe sometime during the past twenty years managed to merge with the entertainment industry. Another result of this huge bellyaching business has been that certain teachers across the land have banded together in a counter-movement, the crux of which is that homework requirements should remain stringent, and that all teachers for all grades in public schools must join together in building a mass immunity to the lamentations of those students, who have honed complaining down to an art form, which has seeped into factories, courthouses, the auto and garment industries, food production, and to every other conveyor belt, literal and figurative, that produces shoddiness as its chief product, rather than standing up to the laziness of moaning shirkers of duty in living up to higher, albeit more difficult, expectation. The more I encountered the tired old phrase from my students of “That’s not fair,” the more I became resolved to live up to a teacher headline I longed to see on the front pages of newspapers across the country, TEACHERS FIGHT BACK WITH MASS WHINING OF THEIR OWN! Of course, that story never actually hit the news stands, but its significance became my focus in the attempt to help squelch the national whining fest, that had already been going on for years.

I began practicing an irritatingly nasal tone of voice in my use of important whining terminology as in, “Awww, you guys can read all twenty pages in one night. Breaking them up into little baby assignments would just be silly, and that’s not fair!” If students persisted, I would plug my ears with my forefingers and walk around the classroom singing, “Alouette.” After a while, perhaps to avoid the torture of my increasingly professional whining skills, they stopped arguing and just did the assignments. This technique was far more successful than my earlier one, which was doubling an assignment (with an attempted straight face) and then cutting it in half to make it seem they were getting away with something. That method was not only devious, but my acting was never quite good enough to pull it off, because apparently, despite my best efforts, there always remained the hint of a smirk on my face and just enough inauthenticity in my voice, that even the slowest kid in the class was on to me.

So, the next time you want to know what’s wrong with America, in terms of our shrinking standards of quality, go to your nearest super market, get a shopping cart, and mosey on over to the cereal aisle, that wonderland of sugar-impregnated breakfast vittles with about as much nutritional value as bubblegum, and observe the children there and the interaction with their parents, the outcome of which will almost assuredly be a mother caving in to her child’s demand for a marshmallow cereal with soda pop overtones, in order to avoid the screeching, high-pitched and embarrassing hint of abuse that might carry over into the soup and condiments aisle. This, dear friends, is really the source of all irrational and unmerited sense of entitlement in our country, the only remedy to which may be a good dose of homework. If all else fails, then just blame everything on Count Chocula and that awful sugar rush our kids have come to require.   JB

When I was a Kid in the 1950’s and 1960’s, there were TV drug ads only for aspirin, Rolaids Anti-Acid, and Alka-Seltzer. It was a more innocent time, when my parents were embarrassed even by the innocuous intimacy of bathroom tissue commercials. Today my parents would be shocked by the frequency of drug commercials that appear, one or another of them, every five to ten minutes.

The veneers for these ads are generally pleasant settings in woodland areas or beside pastoral lakes or affluent seaside cottages. There is always familial bonding and laughter with friends, including beautiful, romping dogs, activities like fishing with grandkids, or simply sitting blissfully on benches of lovely gardens in public parks or backyards. All of this manufactured joy often beguiles me into forgetting the intent of the messages until the final moments of revelation about the terrifying possible side effects that can accompany use of the meds.

There are times when two to three such commercials will be aired in a row, often making me feel uneasy about our culture’s apparently cavalier way of accepting medication as our only path to happiness and good health. This prevalent attitude reminds me of the novel Brave New World (1931) by Aldous Huxley, and the seeming dependence by that fictional society upon “Soma tablets” to take care of everything, with no one, except one man, to question their validity or possible danger. All of this compelled me to create a little parody inspired by the immense power and presence of the drug industry in our world today:

Use Pylorexene with caution. Side effects may include nausea, internal bleeding, blindness, stroke, desire to commit suicide or murder, uncontrollable urges to stick your finger into an electric light socket, to pee on a neighbor’s new car, or to shoplift tubes of expensive toothpastes. See your doctor if side effects persist, and eat plenty of peanut butter.

OK, that felt good. Now I have to deal with an actual problem. Yesterday my next-door neighbor’s house began the installation of a new roof by a team of four workmen, who have been making  sounds constantly that I might otherwise have guessed was a group of fifty toddlers with drum sets, pie pans, and spoons. The work, said my neighbor, won’t be completed for at least two more days. I’m now ashamed to confess that I then went directly to the medicine chest for a Bayer aspirin.   JB

I grew up going to church every Sunday morning, to church camp every summer, and Bible study every Wednesday evening. It was a protestant sect that had during the 1930’s broken away from The Disciples of Christ (founded by Thomas Campbell), which I didn’t join until my late thirties, having, in my late teens, left the other, more rigid, independent church of my childhood and youth after some huge, ideological battles with my parents and our rather fundamentalist minister, who also happened to be my uncle (husband of my mother’s younger sister). Going back to the Disciples church was a wonderful thing for my life, considering especially what I had endured as a teen in the church of which my uncle was pastor.

As a child I didn’t have the verbal acuity to express my growing suspicions about sermons and other teaching that seemed centered mostly upon the “evils” of this world and the gift of “salvation” from a man who suffered and died for our sins. Such rhetoric is very difficult for a child (and I dare say, most adults), when the word “sin” becomes the center of every admonition, every lesson, and every conclusion. Anything outside the pleasant safety of our church services and pot luck suppers was, it seemed, “evil” in one way or another. “Those people” became a phrase referring to folks in the outside world who weren’t members of our congregation. By the time I reached age ten, my fears became more vivid that heaven would be a small realm, with no room for my Catholic, Jewish, and unaffiliated friends. The absurdity of this notion increased as I began to reason that people would not go to hell (if there was even such a place) just because they had not been baptized by immersion, or because they didn’t observe the Eucharist (Holy Communion) every Sunday. As religion became more and more about following the rules of ritual but less and less about Christ’s message of mercy, compassion, charity, forgiveness, and inclusion, I knew it served no purpose, except to give people the comforting illusion of being God’s chosen, despite their condemnation of a world I knew contained non-church people, who practiced far better the message that Jesus taught. It showed me that the frameworks of belief we have that make us feel safe or superior are not always true, good or necessary. This is so in society and government as well.

Reading or memorizing Bible verses doesn’t make us good Christians any more than reading and memorizing the Dow stock report makes us wealthy investors. The backlash of my religious training is that, though I still believe in God, I have a much broader, more forgiving view of people than I did as a child. Perhaps that’s true of everyone. I don’t know, but this point brings me to some recent social and political backlashes in our nation.

Last winter in Indiana, for example, there was the legalization of gay marriage. It seemed that  just minutes later the Religious Freedom Act was passed, giving carte blanche to anyone claiming to be “religious” to deny service from his or her business to any gay person. This was like an angry reprimand or retaliation against uppity people who demanded basic human rights that should always have been theirs anyway. In fact, I don’t believe that The Religious Freedom Act had anything to do with religious conviction or faith. Religion can be, as it often is, a mask to cover the personal fears, misgivings, and actual hatred of anything or anyone that is not understood or that some people don’t want to understand. It’s an old country club value of “We’re better than you.” It’s the same reluctance to enlightenment that existed before and even after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Treatment of Negroes as slaves was, according to the establishment of the time, “God’s will” and it was condoned from pulpits all over our country. Most of us now look back in horror at the assumption that some human beings could be considered inferior enough to be owned as property. That was only 150 years ago. Perhaps in another 150 years people will look back at our own time with abhorrence at the snide, detestable way gays and lesbians were treated circa 2015 by zealots hiding behind religion, even though gays have come a long way in the past fifty years. Really, it’s the same old saga involving one group of people claiming to be, in one way or another, intellectually, morally, or anthropologically superior to another group or race, subjugating them, usually in the name of God. The British, the French, and Americans have all used God as an excuse to treat others badly, only on a somewhat grander scale.

The twist for me comes from the use of martyrdom by many fundamentalist Christian groups recently, as though they, not gays, are the ones being oppressed. Is this based upon the vain assumption that there aren’t or can’t be any gay Christians? This makes me wonder what the bottom line is in defining what a Christian really is. I’m weary of the tired message, however it may be disguised or reworded, “We don’t hate them. We just don’t want to have anything to do with them, or allow them to participate in American life as we think it should be lived.” The backward hypocrisy of that thinking takes us back to the 19^th Century, or even before. It’s that “us against them” mentality that continues to grate against good will.

“Onward Christian Soldiers” was, when I was a child, a favorite hymn of mine. However, its meaning for me has become embarrassingly exclusive and unloving, even a battle against other Christians as we become a nation of gated factions, one against the other. For many, the terror that America may no longer be a Norman Rockwell painting is too much to bear. In that way, maybe gays and lesbians are seen as invaders, unless we can have the courage, the imagination, and the loving spirit, not just to honor the past but also to create new, inclusive, loving “paintings,” done sometimes in Rockwell’s style, and in a spirit of which Jesus himself would approve. Let the next backlash be one of acceptance, tolerance, forgiveness, and hope for a better future, not just for some but for everyone.

JB

I can’t remember another time in my life when Democrats and Republicans were so distant, one from the other. In the political arena, both have become stereotypes of their former selves so that the terms “liberal” and “conservative” have become catchwords for a series of associations that have come to define us, not just for political choices, but as human beings. Republicans use the word “liberal” in derisive tones, and Democrats say the word “conservative” in similarly mocking ways, making up their minds before even getting all the information to make sound judgments. Our responses have become more emotional than rational.

The results of this deadlock of philosophical differences are a comatose Congress and political battles in the media bordering on civil war, stirring up the basic prejudices and preconceptions by the media, and a few resonant voices on both sides. There seems to be no middle ground for sensible discussion, only an atmosphere of suspicion and accusation, as in Ann Coulter’s sweeping generalization this week that “Liberals hate Christianity,” which made me want to know her definition of that religion.

It’s interesting to me, for example, to observe the often self-righteous extremes of social and political vitriol between Fox News and MSNBC. There are certainly other forms of media, but these two television networks distill down to their purest forms the convictions of Republicans and Democrats. Tweaking issues and facts by leaving out important details has become an art form on both sides. It reminds me of the British cartoon posters displayed during World War I of German soldiers wearing spiked helmets and stabbing infants with swords before holding them up in triumph. Both our political parties are guilty of such unapologetic hyperbole to the point at which it becomes almost comic. There’s no better way to get an ally than to make someone angry in a shared cause against a monstrous enemy, real or imagined. Martyrdom on both sides is basic in gaining sympathy (and votes). Persecution has become a political device.

What bothers me most is the blind hatred of one side for the other, often funneling itself down to mere name calling and pure meanness of spirit through altered photographs and other caricatures. There is nothing new about such deliberate exaggeration. That sort of furious rivalry goes back more than two centuries of our political landscape, but such rage can have a powerful effect on our figurative and collective vision of whatever and wherever the truth may be.

I’ve always been suspicious of people who have no doubts, second thoughts, or reservations about their apparently clear-cut answers to spiritual questions regarding God and our “only” ways of seeking and achieving salvation (whatever that may mean) and eternal bliss. If such a person has no questions or no gray areas of thought, I usually run in the opposite direction. By the same token, if someone is so satisfied that he is completely correct and omniscient about the political arena in this country (especially if he or she foams at the mouth), I know the person is emotionally or sentimentally reduced to a simple and puerile black and white view of whatever the truth may turn out to be.

No matter how staunch a Democrat may be, if he can’t examine calmly Republican values and try to see the sense of at least some of them, his grasp on reason is impaired by tunnel vision. This works the other way around as well for Republicans. Members of both political parties wear blinders, whether they are the most naïve and fantasy-prone Democrats or the most rigid, gun-toting Tea Party Republicans. On Facebook almost daily, I see deliberately isolated and trimmed issues posted, creating false impressions and faulty conclusions among readers, who often express indignation and white-hot anger before knowing all the details, which have been cleverly omitted. The result is unjustified anger, simply because people have not done their homework to see important details that help provide an entire picture. This type of vigilante publicity is only half-information, which can sometimes be worse than total ignorance.

I suppose we need both extremes to arrive at some sensible kind of middle ground, where we can look at enough sane details (dispassionately if need be) from both sides and understand them without having brain aneurisms.

Finally, I would love to see literal boxing matches with the political opponents paired off in this way:

Chris Hayes versus Ted Cruz

Chris Matthews versus Mike Huckabee

Ed Schultz versus Rush Limbaugh

Al Sharpton versus Bill O’Reilly

Rachel Maddow versus Sean Hannity

What a great TV special this would make! The sponsor would be Ovaltine. 

JB

At the risk of generalizing, I would say that America doesn’t appreciate speculation or theory as much as it lauds action. This is fundamental to the understanding of why education in liberal arts is shrinking in our culture.

A college education today is very expensive and growing more so yearly. A practical viewpoint is for many, not surprisingly, aimed at using their education to earn a living. Parents who foot the college bills for their children usually have a similar aim. Making one’s way in the world by being independent enough to pay his or her own bills for housing, food, transportation, medical costs, insurance, raising children, etc. can be a daunting prospect, as many or most among us may remember from our early years of trying to stretch each dollar to make ends meet. None of this should come as a thunderclap of astonishment for anyone who has “been there.”

High schools and colleges have, in recent years, begun using a different modus operandi to prepare students for what has popularly been called, “the outside world.”  Though there is nothing wrong with wanting to make the most money possible in the most efficient way, such a goal has become so laser sharp that it has burned away some other considerations and benefits that can come from being “educated.”

Most people can live secure, comfortable lives not knowing how to diagram a sentence (though I find it helpful in deciphering the “legal” language of a contract). Nor will one’s life be necessarily less successful if he’s never heard of Othello, Elizabeth Bennet, Willy Loman, J. Gatsby, Blanche Dubois, Captain Ahab, or Miss Havisham, but I believe also that life will not be as full emotionally or intellectually if one skips the otherwise shared icons of literature, art, and music, all bulwarks of civilization that no amount of computer surfing can replace. We still need English, art, music,  and philosophy majors.

We live in an age of technology, something that has become almost deified and which is daily modifying or even supplanting what we have known or thought we knew. The importance of technology through science, mathematics, and engineering goes almost unchallenged by most, as though we are all on some sort of fast-moving conveyor belt hurling us toward a time when instrumentality will hardly be necessary, as electronics creates a world in which even getting out of one’s chair may eventually not be required, because pushing buttons will do everything. Sounds like the old cartoon, the Jetsons, doesn’t it? Even now cellphones and texting, though reputed to keep us “connected,” have separated us more than brought us closer. I’ve been told by several people that they like texting, because its efficiency makes it possible not to have to talk to people. Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Isaac Asimov, and Ray Bradbury have all written about civilizations like the one we are becoming. The difference is that their creations were fictional.

Funding for art, music, drama, and literature programs in our schools has been sadly reduced over the past several years and continues to decrease. For me in school they were sometimes the only programs that kept me from becoming a robot set on “automatic.” Though not a particularly religious person, I do believe that music, poetry, drama, visual art, and sports all help to enrich the spirit in a shared quest to understand ourselves and other people, all over the world. I believe also that the best CEO for any company or head of any organization will be someone whose education has had a generous helping of liberal arts. I think it is a grave mistake to believe that a liberal arts viewpoint does not hold an important place in schools. Literature, visual arts, music, and I’m adding sports here, are not frills. They open the mind and heart at least as much as science, mathematics, and engineering. We need all of these things to provide us with a fuller sense of the world around us. That broadened view can help us all understand not just how to get somewhere, but why we are going in the first place and with a much deeper comprehension of where we have been.  JB