Thought(s) for the Day

Coffee time and I’m ready for it. I need a little something to get my brain activated today. This morning I resumed my exploration of the BoingBoing site right where I had left off yesterday and I found it to be interesting but less than stimulating; hence the need for caffeine.

On another note… I’ve found out that the car dealers of today; those using the internet as a sales tool are just as obnoxious as the old fashioned dealers with an army of high pressure sales staff to follow you around the lot. I allowed a Nissan dealer in Auburn the chance to give me a price on a new Altima and I was immediately hit with a flood of e-mails from this dealer, promising this and that but never quite getting around to revealing the price. Luckily, I had checked the “Do not contact by telephone” option and then had filled in the required phone number with zeroes. Just to make sure. Now my spam filter is doing the kind of work it was meant for. Of course it’s nothing personal; the mail is quite obviously machine generated but it does reinforce all of those negative feelings I have for automobile dealers. Interesting; the sales manager and the sales (woman) were women. An equal opportunity to be rude and pushy. But why not? (The fact that I found it interesting at all reveals my age)

Yes, I’m from an age and a culture where gender meant everything. Almost all career descriptions ended with the letters, “m-a-n”. Fireman, policeman, salesman, chairman, etc. And even without those letters, certain occupations were understood to be gender specific. Teachers and nurses. Woman’s work. Carpenters and doctors. Man’s work.

Now that I think more about it, I see culture change as being constant. It doesn’t happen as some sort of watershed moment. It’s always happening; pervasive, and it will always be painful for us…unless we can embrace the change. Ah! There’s the challenge!

Old people are always at odds with culture change. There’s nothing quite as good as the “good old days”. But the old people are always replaced by the middle aged people and they find themselves in the same situation. On and on it goes, despite our best intentions.

And although the change is constant, there are high and low points in that change. Women’s Suffrage. Civil Rights and Desegregation. Title IX. How you rate those, high or low, tells the rest of the world where you stand culturally.

So think about it; are we living in the same America as that of 200 years ago? Not even close. And why should we expect it to be? Conservatives think we should be. (I tell you; it’s that missing gene! Liberals got it and conservatives don’t!) Embrace change…before it runs over you.

And speaking of “thinking”, I had a thought about aging the other day. Since we live such pitifully short lives, (in the grand scheme of things) why do we spend so much of that valuable time hating one another? We should be embracing, and not bombing one another.

OK, I guess the coffee worked.