FEBRUARY 22, 2020 – These days, we dwell on the crazy and dysfunctional about our politics. I hear people—myself included!—say, “It’s never been this bad.”
And yet, despite our insanity, we manage many things extraordinarily well. When we’re down on the state of our world, it’s important to take stock of what does work and celebrate the stuff that should make us proud to be human.
What sparked this subject was a left-hand turn. Recently, while driving to the store, I reached a controlled intersection and saw a motorist approaching from the opposite direction. The driver had turned on her signal and was waiting for me to clear the intersection before she executed her turn.
How miraculous, I thought, that the situation required little thought. We’d both been schooled to know that my car, heading straight, had the right-of-away over the woman’s car, which was making a left-hand turn. It all worked out by law and convention. In the vast majority of cases like this—people observe this critical, rational rule of the road.
Next up: buildings. Next time you’re out and about, notice the miracle of “plumbness.” Every single building, big, small, short, tall is as plumb as a bob on a string in calm air. When you consider what can go wrong in the course of construction, be amazed that workers countrywide have been able to build buildings straight up, one after another.
Likewise, commercial aircraft—making over 110,000 flights per day, year after year. We might be stupid and insane in politics, but I’d like to see another species or a set of extra-terrestrial beings who could manage something so complex so well.
Now take high-end professional sports and the top-drawer performing arts and what it takes to create, organize, and execute these endeavors. Not since the ancient Romans staged full-scale naval battles in the Coliseum (!) has entertainment risen to such heights.
Then there’s this machine on which I’m composing these words—and its connection to a server farm via a worldwide network of cables. How about all that?! Yes, occasionally a blip occurs, as happened with my machine. That will take a week for Apple “geniuses” to fix, but again, look at the bright side: they can actually fix it at no cost to me. (This post is written on a back-up machine.)
Have you ever mused over what someone from “old times” would find most “amazing” about modern society? Try “grocery stores.” For most of history, the biggest deal in a person’s existence was daily bread. But what patron of Zabar’s, Krogers, or Whole Foods marvels any more over the choice of cheeses and exotic fruits and how any of it was produced, packaged, distributed, and laid out on display for the customer to select and secure by inserting a small plastic card into a “reader”? No club, net, spear or scythe required.
Now rejuvenated (and rehydrated by your favorite brand of bottled water?), you can return to the All-Star Wrestling ring for another round.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
