Reflections on Living 10 Years in the 21st Century
I think Bono captured—eerily foreshadowed—the spirit of the first decade of the 21st century singing…
The heart is a bloom, shoots up through the stony ground
But there’s no room, no space to rent in this town
You’re out of luck and the reason that you had to care
The traffic is stuck and you’re not moving anywhere
You thought you’d found a friend to take you out of this place
Someone you can lend a hand in return for grace
It’s a beautiful day the sky falls
And you feel like it’s a beautiful day
It’s a beautiful day
Don’t let it get away
Melancholic yet still always finding something beautiful in the moment—It’s a beautiful day…don’t let it get away.” And this decade certainly, at least from where I am sitting, had a hefty dose of this paradox.
We had crashes…9/11, Enron, Shuttle Columbia, Katrina, wars in Afghanistan & Iraq (at least for America), and the Wall Street crash. Yet, it all this, people in general still yearn change for the better.
CD recordings are going the way of the dodo, vinyl records resurged for a while (perhaps still popular enough for artists to still press them?), & mp3 music downloads are becoming the way we get our music. Heck, we can even create our own Internet music radio via Pandora. This music decade has also been creatively diverse from the brash neo-punk edge of the White Stripes to smooth ethereal grove by Cold Play.
Web 2.0 and the new social media has also become ways to communicate and reacquaint with each other.
Some thought the “Religious Right” had a stranglehold on setting the moral agenda, perhaps a few even had the notion of it being some kind of problem; yet, it seems the spirituality of the West is in decay and becoming more and more rancid. One can speak about faith, God, or religion, but forget about making claims to absolute truth. One does not even have to identify with any belief, just be spiritual, and forget all that “institutionalized” religious stuff—just simply design a personal religion. The new credo is for all faiths to coexist and accept no belief as correspondent to ultimate truth; yet, this is offensive to anyone seeking truth (Buddhist, Hindu, Jew, Christian, Muslim, etc) and makes the idea of tolerance meaningless. (If everyone has something true and no one is truly wrong, then what is there to tolerate?)
Who knows what might be in store for us this next decade, but the last one was certainly one wild and crazy ride.
The heart is a bloom, shoots up through the stony ground
But there’s no room, no space to rent in this town
You’re out of luck and the reason that you had to care
The traffic is stuck and you’re not moving anywhere
You thought you’d found a friend to take you out of this place
Someone you can lend a hand in return for grace
It’s a beautiful day the sky falls
And you feel like it’s a beautiful day
It’s a beautiful day
Don’t let it get away
Melancholic yet still always finding something beautiful in the moment—It’s a beautiful day…don’t let it get away.” And this decade certainly, at least from where I am sitting, had a hefty dose of this paradox.
We had crashes…9/11, Enron, Shuttle Columbia, Katrina, wars in Afghanistan & Iraq (at least for America), and the Wall Street crash. Yet, it all this, people in general still yearn change for the better.
CD recordings are going the way of the dodo, vinyl records resurged for a while (perhaps still popular enough for artists to still press them?), & mp3 music downloads are becoming the way we get our music. Heck, we can even create our own Internet music radio via Pandora. This music decade has also been creatively diverse from the brash neo-punk edge of the White Stripes to smooth ethereal grove by Cold Play.
Web 2.0 and the new social media has also become ways to communicate and reacquaint with each other.
Some thought the “Religious Right” had a stranglehold on setting the moral agenda, perhaps a few even had the notion of it being some kind of problem; yet, it seems the spirituality of the West is in decay and becoming more and more rancid. One can speak about faith, God, or religion, but forget about making claims to absolute truth. One does not even have to identify with any belief, just be spiritual, and forget all that “institutionalized” religious stuff—just simply design a personal religion. The new credo is for all faiths to coexist and accept no belief as correspondent to ultimate truth; yet, this is offensive to anyone seeking truth (Buddhist, Hindu, Jew, Christian, Muslim, etc) and makes the idea of tolerance meaningless. (If everyone has something true and no one is truly wrong, then what is there to tolerate?)
Who knows what might be in store for us this next decade, but the last one was certainly one wild and crazy ride.
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