Op-Ed

Opposite the Editorial - World writings based on a word

The Downfall of Everything [The Rebirth of Playfulness in Intellect]

By waxieus • December 22nd, 2007

It sure is easy to be a genius nowadays isn’t it? What a relief for all of us who had any doubts, hidden deep within ourselves or worn plainly on our sleeves. With all the ease of access to capture, replay and memorize any form of media: film, music or editorial, we’re all packing the heat of the latest, greatest buzzwords and phrases, sounding just like the hard-won minds of old-school intelligentsia. What a triumph of this age of advertising and marketing. We have but yet to thank collectively the alpha consumers who strongly lead the way in their travels, purchases and examples of witty banter in the online pages of our world.

This does a lot, in unquantifiable ways, to help us be open to each other. We’re all so open to other people because of it and post our opinions to further bring our disparate cultures together and not further invoke the incendiary flame wars that push us further and further down the road to oblivion at the cost of artificially inflating our imaginary worth.

Now, we read the books, watch the films, listen to the music that inspires and makes us think, “Gee, that person is a good person, an interesting and thoughtful person, someone i wish to be like” and become transformed immediately, given to pity for our former selves! Yes! In a moment, in a breath, we breathe new life into our otherwise cement-laden personalities that were once made leaden by lack of vision, adept at being only big-picture-latest-spin-dropping-bully-suit-wearing-intimidation-spewing-imitations of real, living, breathing people who completely overlook the tiny tiny things that everything pivots on.

At last, we are aware that we’re no better off, no better off at all, than anyone else! All of those feelings of earned superiority and the vapid energies of false confidence powered by one surrogate or another have faded away to true connectedness. What a miracle this age is!

As we continue to soar above our new found ground, it rises to meet us each day as we drink this water that we didn’t even know we knew we prayed for. Suddenly, we’ve let it wash over us and colors are more vivid, the flight of birds has once again interest for us, and the fools we suffer with a smile and with an open heart as if they were speaking in a tricky secret language that is presented to us to decode. What a transformation this world has seen!

Without all this technology in a culture eager to report all the happenings in the world, logging how very cool and smart we all indeed are, what would we have become? We would have left the crucial, yet small, details of our days like wrappers and cans beside the road of time, lost forever like “tears in the rain” while absorbing only the big, histrionic occasions that were perpetually leaving us empty and striving for that next hit, the next buzz of something akin to life, to excitement, through spending or building some such story out of all the wrong motivations! To travel to tell, to buy and sell these memories like such drivel of a culture that we would otherwise abandon, too, if we weren’t actually living it : sadly, it’s not possible to fix the car while driving it.

Thankfully, no more! Now we have the tools to live these moments in earnest, not only for the sake of having the stories to tell, to validate our knowingly small world views, but to experience them with the open minds and hearts of children in the same playful and whimsical way that we used to only dream of.
Thank the gods for that!

Waxieus

waxieus is waxieus is the god of adaptation. he is capable of communicating with and relating to any culture and/or sensibility, thus, able to navigate nimbly through most any environment with a voracious appetite and knack for learning his way around. his weakness? well, he has no individual culture of his own, instead he's a rather strict product of environment. waxieus makes choices based on experiences and intuition rather than established forms and functions. he tells it like it is, without sentimentality but not without care.
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