Bel Paese
“Are you excited” I am asked this question frequently when people are aware of an impending trip. I generally give a none emotive answer. A cross between guilt for taking the trip and self-effacing embarrassment for being able to take the trip. But that is not the case this week. I am truly excited about my upcoming trip. My large family will be celebrating Thanksgiving together and that in itself is very special given that we live in different parts of the world.
I look forward to travel as it gives one the opportunity to meet new people and to remove oneself from the norm. Travel gets you away from your normal access to news or at least it used to when news was dominated by radio and TV. Now we are living in a world that is giving us news in real time twenty-four seven.
One of the original ideas of the internet was to increase the connectivity of humans. The idea was if we knew more about each other we might understand each other better. What developed was a constant drumbeat of crisis and conflict. No wonder we are anxious and worried. Do we long for the day of the answering machine? That special moment of playing back the messages you had received while you were out of the house free from the annoyance of the phone. Now we get to take the annoyance with us. Like most things human there is an appropriate level of things that we can tolerate and then there is the level of “ excess” that we live in. Everything in moderation is the general goal for living within our means and our tolerances. We do not live in an appropriate level of information nor moderation.
Like many of our habits we quickly accelerate to a level that is unhealthy. We then spend the next decade or more trying to rein it in. Drugs are an excellent case in point. If one pain killer works what do you think ten could do. The internet and the news cycle are in excess. We received news in understandable segments when news was dominated by radio then the early days of TV. Now we are living in a world that is giving us news in real time all the time. News comes to us in a firehose of information from multiple sources, many of which are dominated by ideology rather than reliable facts.
Is it any wonder that we travel through each day with a litany of things to be anxious about? Not to mention family, children, job and all of the issues one must navigate. The firehose of the never-ending list of dire issues cannot help but make one nervous, concerned, and downright anxious about the well-being of the planet. This solution less world has given permission to a growing number of conflicts. No one can come together to form a united front against the atrocities of the world.
What all of these conflicts lack is compromise. There are just too many waring parties and no belief system to compromise. The root causes are long since forgotten. Now we are left with the immediacy of revenge for the most recent atrocity, while we grasp for the historical reference that supports our team’s view.
We find it hard to communicate in person. Rather we use an electronic device that allows us to maintain our distant hostility. Conflict resolution requires two parties to recognize each other and to embrace compromise. Since this is not available we all live out our anxious lives.
And so, it is with this backdrop that I exit for a few weeks. Off to the “Bel Paese” to celebrate Thanksgiving and to embrace that which I do not yet know. It is an exciting time. A time made more exciting as it exists in a world without resolution.
Sono fortunato, emozionato e felice