I don’t have internet in my apartment right now, and it is wonderful. Life has slowed down considerably. I go out of the house to a coffee shop if I really need to check my internet for some reason, but other than that, I stay at home and write, pet my cat and enjoy life.
When I do step out of my home, however, it is made obvious that the rest of the world is paying entirely too much attention to the internet. How can I tell, you ask? Easy: gas prices.
Since moving to western Virginia a month ago, the price of gas has gone up 10 cents nearly every week. Over the past five years, I have seen the price go up and down quite a bit, down at just below 3 dollars, back up to 3.54, back down again, and round and round it goes. But something happened after we “hit the fiscal cliff” in January. My guess? It’s all fictions.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no doubt that the “fiscal cliff” is real. What I doubt is that anyone outside of yuppies in congress have the faintest notion as to what it is.... let alone people who own gas stations.
What does this lack of knowledge produce? Fear. What does the internet provide? An enormous quantity of information. Put ‘em together and what’ve you go? Bibbity, bobity.... misguided panic.
The internet, for all its genius, has stunted our ability to process information in any reasonable way. For thousands of years, news and information has travelled at a pace that the average human brain could process and understand at a reasonable rate. The internet has not made us smarter, it has made our knowledge infinitely broad, but incredibly shallow.
So since we know ABOUT everything, and yet know NOTHING about individual topics, everyone is an expert, despite the fact that no one has any idea what they are talking about. Groups like Anonymous, LULZSec and other have seen this, and along with internet trolls, have made it their personable business to make sure that no one takes the internet as “serious business.”
And they are right. Increasing the number of blind men leading each other around, does nothing to increase anyone’s ability to see. There are simply a larger number of people falling into holes. Granted, the greater numbers also increase the odds of someone stumbling upon a loaf of bread... but there are still more people than not falling into holes.
As a result, the fuel market has fallen into the hole of misguided panic. If I am to believe the Bible as a Christian (and I do), then I take the Scripture’s word that there is nothing new under the sun. People today do the same stupid crap that they did when King Solomon commented on how everything is meaningless.
But just like our inflated egos are so quick to accept the evolutionary lie that we are better than all those who came before us, so too we are quick to deface our time and say that no one has ever had it harder than us.
Both are equally false. As my history professor sagely informed me: “There is no such thing as ‘the good old times.’” There were fools thousands of years ago, there are fools now. There were wars thousands of years ago, there are wars now. Christ was in charge thousands of years ago, and He is still in charge now.
Fear profits a man nothing.
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