Until the Smoke Clears, Literally and Figuratively
The smoke from the many wildfires still pervades everything. The weather has become less hot and windy (thank Goodness), and it appears firefighters are making fast progress on the westside fires. There are several places where the previous evacuation orders have been lifted. These are all things to be grateful for. Still, the smoke hangs everywhere like a toxic fog.
Little by little, the air is clearing up as the days go by, though. It’s almost imperceptible, but it’s happening. Yesterday around 4 pm, the sun was actually bright enough to make me cast a shadow on the sidewalk. This alone was cause for celebration after a week of near-dark conditions (smoke only, no clouds in the sky), where the afternoon sun was a faint orange disk.
Today is the 8th anniversary of the day I was married to my beautiful bride. We have no plans, as there is really nowhere to go right now. For cards, we’re printing pages off the Crayola website and coloring them for each other. For gifts, she bought me facemasks with the logo of the Vegas Golden Knights (our favorite NHL team), and I bought her a necklace that looks like a seashell but is actually made of silicone. It’s made so that on the back she can write her emergency info in case she is found unconscious. Signs of the times.
We plan to drive to the coast this Friday afternoon, assuming we are able to. (All the highways to the coast are currently open save for OR 18.) By then we’re hoping the air will have cleared a little, especially on the coast, as the wind although slight is coming from the west.
Speaking of clearing the air, last night we watched “The Social Dilemma” on Netflix and I highly recommend it for everyone who has ever been on social media (so basically everyone). The types of human behavior manipulation perpetrated by Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon and Apple among others are heavily reminiscent of Big Tobacco in the latter half of the 20th Century. They shape the truths we each operate in, and to a large and frighteningly unconscious extent, control our behavior in ways that seem small and innocuous at first. Think about it: until about a decade ago, we could all live independent of our devices. Yes, we had PCs, cell phones and televisions, but with rare exceptions we didn’t carry them with us 24/7. We didn’t sleep within inches of our PC. We didn’t check our cell phone the instant we awoke in the morning. We didn’t rely on one single device for all of our news, work, and social activities…and no single one of them threw a Presidential election (although it could be argued that TV has come close). Now, all of these things are true of the smartphone.
Don’t get me wrong. Smartphones and social media make a lot of wonderful things possible too. Communities can rally, friends can reunite, and families can stay in touch to a degree never before possible thanks to the smartphone and the technology it employs. But the potential evil it can do as an instrument of greed, manipulation, false narration and power must be acknowledged as quickly as the potential good it can do via helpful communication and connections.
Am I going to go “off the grid” and live in the woods without any electronic devices? No. But I have taken all social media apps off my phone, and have silenced all but emergency alerts delivered to my phone. I plan to make more use of my much-easier-to-ration desktop PC. I will still be online, but on my own terms as much as possible.
Bike Newbie 