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I feel like Rip Van Winkle.

posted October 29, 2006 - 9:10am
I feel like Rip Van Winkle.

When I was a kid a long, long time ago, our parents started leaving Queens in droves for Nassau and Suffolk on Long Island. Critics with big audiences and small brains said they were racists and part of the "white flight" herd, running from all the "inner city" people simply looking for a better life. Those critics used small pieces of truth to simplify and distort complicated issues with misleading and mindless headlines.

Everybody, and I mean Everybody,including people in Queens, the "inner city" and Timbuktu, had prejudices. Whatever else may be true, Long Island gave people the dream of a better life with nicer, newer houses, better schools and safer neighborhoods. The realities didn't always match their hopes but on balance, they were better off. They didn't need to go broke getting a new life.

So look around, what happened? Each family used to have one car and if really necessary, two. Now, each has two, three or more. Everyone needs his or her own car for work, school or to hang out and shoplift at the shopping mall. Barbeques used to mean charcoal grills but now, nothing less than an outdoor version of the indoor kitchen range will do. We escaped the drugs and fighting in city schools and got a good education as well. Now, our kids go to the school parking lot and smoke weed while their teachers sit inside calculating their pensions. They may be able to calculate benefits five years from now to the day, but our kids don't know how to add fractions.

We escaped the local gangs in Queens, but now have MS13 instead. We usually had one parent working and another at home to keep an eye on us. Acceptable behavior was drawn with clear lines and we knew if we crossed them. Our kids now have both parents working, assuming both parents are still together. Our minds are elsewhere while our teenage kids figure life out with help from MySpace.

Are things as wrong as I think they are? Am I missing something? So tell me, am I wrong? Straighten me out. Please let me know what's happening here.

www.xomba.com/xombyte/thewonderer

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Comments

I am not CERTAIN things wll get "better."

Les Porter - Sun, 2006-29-10 5:47 pm
I'm Hopeful. I'm an unflagging optimist. I delude myself that things WILL get "better", only because they can. I love Antonia's biting wit; shrewd, deep, and rapid analysis, and abide her cynicism. I know a few of the flights "above" there, in her cynicism, have seen a few; and with them also, the glorious hints of a beautiful world much better, much more in line with what I would hope are the species Life-force values that you point out in the xombyte, by pointing away from them. And these are the things I see past the outward cynicism. Or delude myself to see. But Wonderer, I believe you must make the conscious choices we are all accused of making, to make it better, not different. And it is therefore, in all aspect, and every respect, a moral choice. I offer my simple tests for a solid moral basis. 1>. Does it enhance overall chances for the species survival and continued existence? 2>. Does it enhance overall chances for the individual's survival and continued existence, subservient to the needs of the species? Some of my favorite people, even some who are not my favorite people, do not grasp altruism, and also fail to recognize that when they succeed by downtrodding or stepping on their peers or destroying them, they hinder rather than improve the species options at a long and "better" survival. Despite what the many individualists here feel, and I am one of them, locked into the individual perspective of a single mind, I know that everything we have, we have only by permission of those in our society. That is, if society want's to take it from you -- even your life or your illusions, society can do so. As strongly independent thinking you are of mind -- the very act of communication, of exchange, relies on the social acceptance of the words we use. Words spoken, written, whisked away on an electronic device at the speed of light need be deciphered and modulated for understanding, turned into meaning, or become entropic noise, and heat death. What has gone on in this nation, and in the world this last half decade has not been positive for the species overall survival. It has been fine for a few million individuals, but it fails the moral tests above. I may not respond here, but you can post and I might. Else send me a private message. If you wish.

Precisely. Well-said.

Antonia Dwells - Sun, 2006-29-10 4:47 pm
Antonia Dwells

Antonia Dwells

But what will it be?

TheWonderer - Sun, 2006-29-10 4:41 pm
Life is what it is because millions of people made millions of individual choices to create our present. We'e creating the future right now with our choices. The future will be different from the present,but whether it's better, worse or just different is being determined right now by all of us.

http://www.xomba.com/user/thewonderer

It is what it is.

Antonia Dwells - Sun, 2006-29-10 3:15 pm
Life has progressed to what it is now. How could it be any different?

Antonia Dwells

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