Saturday, July 19, 2008
Last week at the wedding, my friend Katie's dad was giving a toast, and he did a really nice job. But at the end he finished how the way things are looking it is going to be harder for us than it was for them. I think there is a lot of elements of truth in this. I freak myself out sometimes thinking all worst-case scenarios that could happen. RIght now, each time I pull up nytimes.com or listen to any other news program, it seems to always revolve around how many problems there are.
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Hey buddy, while I certainly understand the sentiment I'm going to have to disagree. All due respect to Mr. DelloStritto, but I don't consider the problems we have today to be any more or less threatening than those from 20, 30, 40, or 50 years ago.
Because, really, what are the major issues making our future so bleak? On ongoing war on an unpredictable and, often enough, unidentifiable enemy? The threat of nuclear war? Well, we've lived in a nuclear world since the early '40s. That omnipresent threat is far from novel, and America managed to flourish in spit of it. And a seemingly endless war on terror? It harkens back a little bit, perhaps, to the Cold War. Those pesky Soviets were always a threat, were they not? Of course they were, just ask James Bond.
What else? Plummeting stores of fossil fuels? Fair enough, gas prices have skyrocketed. But we're still not restricted on which days we can buy gas. And look at some of the incidental byproducts of the gas hike: SUVs are no longer cost effective and hybrids have exploded on the market. It's certainly not a final solution, but it's definitely a step towards reducing our carbon footprint and addressing global climate change.
Environmentally, planet earth has survived far worse than what we've thrown at her. Our concerns aren't for the environment. Rather for our ability to sustain our existence in the environment as it changes around us.
Don't put toomuch stock in the news. Bear in mind that news papers, news magazines, news channels, and news websites do not exist to report the news. They exist to generate income by either selling hard copies of their news or by selling advertising space. Or both. Reporting various information is just a path towards making money. As noble as they consider their endeavor to be, it's something to always bear in mind. Good news doesn't sell: there's a reason the wedding and birth announcements are tucked away on back pages of late sections. Bad news creates the headlines that sell papers.
Things aren't as bad as they seem. We're just capable of transmitting them much faster and to far many more people than we've ever could. So things seem far worse than they are. It's all about your perspective.
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