Not Better, Just Different

Did you all know that the number one irrigated crop in the United States is grass (as in, front lawn)? Seriously. That’s probably the most interesting thing I’ve learned from my sociology text book so far. The class is called “Social Problems” and is really depressing, actually, because it’s all about, well, problems. But reading the text book has made me realize something: we do not live in a perfect world.

Okay, so I knew that already, but this text book brought it back to the front of my mind. This book can whiz through about five major problems (decline of small towns, pollution from huge farms, unemployment caused by manufacturing moving overseas, automobile dependency caused by commuter culture, overdrawing from aquifers) in just a couple of pages. And this is supposed to be the best possible age to live in? Yeah, right.

One of my favorite things to do is list all the ways that life would have been better in the past (for example, lack of the aforementioned problems). Everybody’s favorite response, of course, is to tell me all the bad things that I would have encountered had I lived long ago: people didn’t live as long, women died in childbirth, nobody knew how to read. Because obviously a history freak like me had absolutely no idea that it used to be common for women to die in childbirth.

I get it, there were problems in the past, too. But the present is most definitely not the rosy, perfect world some of these historical naysayers are making it out to be. We have more than our share of problems, many of them direct results of the “solutions” to problems of yore. And all I’m saying is that if I had the choice (which I don’t, so this is all pretty much a moot point anyway), I would rather deal with the historical problems, thank you very much.

And the thing is, we could have the best of both worlds if we wanted to. We could reclaim some of the good things about the past without giving up any of our lifesaving medicines, overhyped educations, or nifty gadgets. We don’t have to eat crap. We don’t have to let huge corporations rule the world. It’s not like your iPhone is going to stop working if we all tell McDonald’s to shove it. This could be the best possible age to live in, if we wanted it to be.

I like my computer. I like my cell phone. I like my washing machine and my indoor plumbing and my electric lights. I wouldn’t want to give any of those things up. But I like my homemade-from-scratch dinners and my local coffee shop and my medieval music. I wouldn’t want to give any of those up either.

“The past is like a foreign country. They do things differently there.” That’s my favorite quote. I like it because it makes the point I’m always trying to make. No matter what country you live in there are people from other cultures and other countries who live differently. But is any one of them any better or worse? Most people wouldn’t say so. That’s how I like to think of the past. It’s like a foreign country with strange customs and beliefs and ideas. But you know how if you go to a foreign country the people there are still people, and they still have the same basic human traits that everyone has? I think the past is like that, too. People were different, but they were still people, not better or worse than people are today.

The world is different, now, than it used to be. It’s not better, just different.

Another Week in My Life

Okay, so I'm not the best blogger in the world. I don't know what the booger to write about. I read all these blogs where people are going on and on about how they took their kids to the zoo and then got home later than they expected because there was an accident backing up traffic and then they went to the grocery store, where they used their super mom powers to save a zillion dollars. It's boring. I skim through those blogs and look at the pictures, sort of like I do in my Art History textbook.

Every day life is not that interesting. Well, it's interesting when you're living it, but not when you're reading about somebody else's everyday life. I don't even write about everyday life in my diary anymore. I used to, but then I realized how boring it is to go back five years later and read page after page about what's on TV and what happened in English class that day. So why would I want to write about my everyday life on a blog that I actually want other people to read and find interesting?

See, I could write about how I had an Art History test on Wednesday and then on Thrusday I went to choir and dropped my music on the floor, where it promptly slipped under the risers, never to be seen again, and speaking of losing things, on Friday morning my toothpaste fell in the toilet so now I've got to go buy a new one. But see, that's boring. If I'm going to spend time on this, I'd much rather spend it writing about politics and religion and history and education and other interesting things that actually matter. If you really want to know about my adventures in Art History, well, then you can become my friend on Facebook, and you'll get to hear all about it.