Book Review: Consider The Lobster

BOOK: Consider The Lobster - David Foster Wallace

HOW I FOUND THE BOOK: My friend Eli was kind enough to introduce me to DFW, mainly due to his philosophical proximity to several other writers I closely identify with. In a lot of ways, DFW tends to be a modern-day version of Alan Watts. I had read a transcript of the only speech he ever gave, titled This Is Water...and to say I was very interested would be an understatement.

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Consider The Lobster is a collection of various essays and articles written by DFW that cover a broad range of topics. The articles in the book are original uncut versions of articles that were originally published in magazines. All provide a level of journalistic depth and breadth that are truly masterful. The stories elicit many thoughts, emotions - but they are often presented in way which causes the reader to react in their own way. The reactions are not spoon-fed by DFW, who though he may be very clearly a genius of the highest order (which he very clearly is) - he does not take his audience as idiots. His ability to put you in the situation is uncanny, and the scope of his description and reasoning were true eye and mind openers with regards to "connecting the dots" of many different aspects of our culture and our place within it.

The only real issues I had with the book stemmed from his enormous penchant for footnotes...which break up the flow of his prose with regularity (mostly due to the fact that they're all definitely worth reading, and on occasion are the true meat of the article). It's also handy to have a dictionary on hand - DFW's vocabulary is simply astounding.

The subjects of DFW's prose are so widely varied, yet they are all somehow treated objectively - to the point where the reader has no other choice but to open their mind to the nature of his experience. DFW's presentation of his subjects goes way beyond the superficial standards of many journalists - and he takes his time in doing so. His ability to paint as clear as possible the subject and the atmosphere of their reality is masterful - and keeps the reader on the aforementioned path to objective observation. Simply put; it's this kind of open-minded investigation that can truly change perception. It's very easy to see or hear something and make a value judgement - this is something we all do pretty much all the time...yet this leads me to think that maybe the time granted to an author by forcing his audience to read in a sequential order is to their advantage.

Consider The Lobster has definitely given me a much wider perspective on politics, philosophy, linguistics, talk radio, and so many aspects of American culture - but most of all I feel I have a wider perspective of human nature...and I that's the real gift in reading Consider The Lobster.

- Chris

Ragged Mountain - 9/11/2010

This past weekend was spent in central Connecticut - a trip with Eli, Gabe & some friends of theirs I didn't know beforehand. The purpose: climbing Ragged Mountain - a gorgeous hunk of rock near Meriden, CT. Friday night was spent with Eli & Gabe playing Dominion & Gheos - and catching up. Saturday morning we were up bright and early and headed to the rock. After a refreshing walk through the surrounding woods to the cliff (refreshing if you spend most of your time in NYC), we got to the main climbing areas - and pleased to be the first ones there setting up. We picked out 2 routes in the Weissner Slab area (a huge hunk of the cliff fell off a long time past and lays diagonally against the wall, like a single domino trying to push down the whole mountain). One route was designed to be easy, with options for making more challenging - and the other went through a hole existing at the top of the slab and decending into the cavernous space between the slab and the main wall. The wall was in total about 100 feet of vertical climbing, with fantastic west-facing views of the surrounding area from the top.

I took my first ascent of the day pretty early: a warm up climb over the middle of the Slab - it was a quick 5.4/5.5 climb sloped inward for the first half. It was a lot of fun, and you can use some inventive moves just for kicks. I got the top of the slab, enjoyed the view for a minute - then appraoched the sheer vertical face, and I just rocketed up the wall to the top. It was a stark contrast from my past outdoor experience at Lantern Hill. I definately brought my A-game and I was buzzing the rest of the day!

We had way more people than we had harnesses, so there was plenty of downtime between climbs. I took some of this time chatting with everyone, but also setting aside some sketching time! I make 2 sketches on the day - one from the top of the rock looking west - the other of Gabe belaying another climber:





Throughout the day - I made another 5 ascents of the mountain, all of them harder than anything I've done in a rock gym. I was climbing extremely well and really having a great time. At one point, I was able to hang onto an undercling 80 feet up as Wasp stung my middle finger. Everyone down below was laughing at my yell and watching me swat the air with one hand and holding onto the rock with the other.

Everyone was climbing really well, and I'm happy it was a fantastic time all around. I was able to snap one picture: sunset from the top of the rock as I was cleaning up the ropes & webbing from the day's activities:



I spent Saturday night with some laid-back discussions with Eli about books, life, philosophy, etc...it's always great to have conversations like that. I don't think people have lively discourses enough these days - it helps to keep my mind open to new viewpoints & ideas.

- Chris

Labor Day Weekend

I packed a lot into what proved to be a Labor Day Weekend full of gorgeous weather! I'm going to try a new way to recapping what I've done - so any feedback on the approach is welcome:

Friday

- Friday night I decided to get some extra training in at Tiger's. I was told there would be high-belt classes where we could perfect finer points of our technique. Turns out it was just a ploy to get people to show up for Friday night classes. Regardless of the fact I was one of the higher-ranked people in the class, my hour of grappling, followed by an hour kickboxing provided a lot of practice on techniques that had been giving me fits all week (open guard from ground with a standing opponent & creating angles while kickboxing).

- Met up with Alexandra and Krista @ Cosi's afterwards - where I had probably the best smoothie ever (Strawberry with protein & yogurt). I'm sure the "best smoothie ever" was partially due to being sapped of fluids for 2 hours in a really hot dojo, but damn did it taste good.

Saturday

- Met up with future bridal-party member Brian for some golf @ the Dunwoodie Golf Course in Yonkers, NY. It's only the 2nd time I've been on a course all year, and I knew I needed to practice for a future outing where I don't want to embarass myself. Anyway, it was also the first time Brian and I just "went golfing"...and it was bit bizarre because the Brian and Chris that hung out at Mahopac High 10 years ago would have chuckled about how "adult" we were. I was glad we got to walk the course, even though there were a lot of hills, as it was really pretty awesome. Lots of tree cover, interesting terrain, and great weather. I played the best round of golf in my life, hitting a 105 that included several pars and bogeys. A bunch of tricks I had learned from Gabe last week while in Rhode Island were a huge help, and cut at LEAST 20 strokes off my score - so kudos to him. Brian would probably prefer his score not be made public knowledge :)

- That evening, Brian, Christine & myself, grabbed some burgers @ Rambling House, an awesome pub in the Bronx - before they so graciously drove me back home to the UES.

Sunday

- I went with Alexandra and her family to the Scandinavian Festival in The-Middle-Of-Nowhere, NJ. (Neecong, NJ). While the event was scandinavian enough in flavor - it was basically an excuse for a lot of vendors to sell Scandinvian-themed objects that unless directly imported from a Norse land, usually had Made in China stamped to the back. There was some fantastic Scandinavian cuisine, accompanied by such Norse classics as Italian Ice, Kettle Corn, Funnel Cakes, Fried Oreos, Meat Kebabs & Lemonade *groan*. While I was able to get some tastings of Lingenberries, Sweedish Meaty Breadballs, Red Cabbage and Bread Crackers in - it did seem a bit disengenuous to not put more focus on ethnic cuisine.


- Alexandra quickly signed us up for the 1st Annual Wife Carrying Contest - a request that I would be hard-pressed to deny for 2 logically-sound reasons:

1. It would be painfully obvious that her family would deem me unworthy of their daughter should I refuse to participate. (As Alex put it: "If you can carry me, you can marry me")

2. I routinely wrestle and kickbox with guys in the 170-200 pound range, so carrying my much lighter fiancee shouldn't be that tough, right?

- Besides, who doesn't like feeling like a "donkey" once in a while? Thankfully the competition was at the end of the day's festivities, after the warrior "reenactors" did their best "reenacting" of battles with wooden sticks covered in foam and duct tape. We lined up in the center "pen", and were quickly surrounded by about 500 rabid fans, and we were all introduced to: The Course:

1. Leave pen with woman somehow attached to your person - as fast as possible (you're being timed, after all!)


2. Turn corner (so as to realize how difficult it is to change course with another person attached to your person)
3. Football Tire-Stepping Drill with 5 Small tires (if you had size 14 feet you'd realize how things like this make "Klutz Kreuter" nervous) This is supposed to emulate sneaking out of the town with your chosen woman to avoid the townsfolk noticing
4. Turn corner and jump The Hurdles. (Log on ground, Log 1 Foot off of ground, Log 2 Feet off of ground). This is supposed to emulate jumping over animal pens of sort
5. Run 20 feet or so through a winding path of trees This is supposed to emulate...oh whatever you get the point by now...
6. Climb up and back down a 3 tiered box structure (which must have been built by a one-eyed dwarf after one hell of bender - because this was the shoddiest piece of craftsmanship since I helped my buddy Dan build that platform bed last year)
7. Jump into and run through 2 Large kids wading pools, filled with 1 foot of water each. (Note pools had rims that were about 2 feet high. Also note that pools are last obstacle, conveniently placed where your legs are absolutely BURNING in agony. Also note that pools are made of plasic, and with my engineering education I realized quickly that water + rubber + plastic = LOW FRICTION ENVIRONMENT)
8. Finish back in pen

- I will note here that we both had to sign a waiver, and the geniouses that planned this thing at LEAST had the foresight to buy a helmet for the women to wear...but this really was flirting with disaster.

- Anyway, Alex and I decided to go with what we termed the Modified Fireman's Carry, as opposed to such classics as the Estonian Wife Carry or the Piggy-Back Carry. We got to race in the middle of the pack, and we were encouraged that I seemed to have a pretty good shot at winning Alex's weight in beer (I think this is the first mention that this is the prize for winning this gong-show...but it really didn't matter for reasons #1 & #2 above - so I neglected to mention it).

- So I raced out of the gate, the fasest start yet! The announcer apparently made a mention of this saying "He must really want that beer", but all I heard was the THUD THUD THUD of my bare feet tramping the earth - I was in The Zone. I rounded the corner, hopped through the tires quickly, but cautiously given the whole "giant-feet" thing...and then set my mind to The Hurdles.

- It's at this point where I forgot many important physics lessons, including - but certainly not limited to:

A. Weight Distribution
B. Centers of Gravity
C. Momentum
D. Pivot Points

- I cleared the first 2 hurdles without a problem...except that I was going WAY TOO FAST. I assure you that right now you've underestimated how fast I was going: I WAS GOING WAAAAAYYYYY TOO FAST. I had about 0.0001 seconds to decide if I was going to stop and step over the 2 food hurdle, or just jump it and hope for the best. Those of you that know me are already shuddering - knowing I picked the latter option.

- I cleared the hurdle with style (but devoid of any grace whatsoever), and landed with all of my weight (and Alexandra's) way way way way to far in front of my Giant Feet. This caused a Center-of-Gravity nightmare, where no matter how fast me feet tried to keep up - I was completely aware that were were going down.

- At this point Alex must have known what was up because she was like a cat. As I tripped over my big toe (which did try valiantly to catch up - but failed) she sprung from my shoulders and immediately went into a ninja roll 10 feet in front of me - which was prompted with a loud, collective "ooohhhhh...." from the pretty supportive crowd. I wasted no time mulling the fall (a 15 second penalty), and got right back up into a full run towards Alex, already standing and ready to go...I just grabbed her legs and slung her over my shoulder - I don't even think I spoke...I just channeled my inner Norseman and was determined to finish this thing.

- Needless to say the rest of the course was painful, but we forced through it, with Alexandra holding on for dear life with every limb and joint she could...and we finished in 52 seconds (after the penalty). The winning time was 31 seconds, meaning without the fall we would have been close...but the tournament wasn't without controversey as the winner's "woman" had to weight far less than the 108-lb minimum...but all 26 competing pairs maintained the good-spirited nature of the competition, and watched the winner take home a measly 4 cases of beer.



- We ended up getting interviewed for a local NJ paper (since she's from NJ), and wait...there's more:

VIDEO LINK


- I was treated to plenty of shoulder rubs and pampering the rest of the day for all my hard work though, and not to mention the event has helped endear me more to my future in-laws and escpecially my fiancee.

- We took NJ Transit home on the Gladstone Branch - a line I've never been on before. It was a really pleasant train ride though some fantastic greenery - a really relaxing cap on a great day.

Monday

- Monday was spent with a gathering of buddies @ Sheep's Meadow in Central Park - to enjoy a picnic and outdoor board gaming. Our group consisted of 8 people, where we enjoyed lots of snacks - and some games of Blokus, Telestrations, Dominion and Kill Dr. Lucky. It was as relaxing and fun a day as I ever remember having on Labor Day.


What a weekend!

- Chris

A Weekend in Rhode Island

"There are a thousand reasons for failure, but not a single excuse." - Rudyard Kipling

It had certainly been a strange couple of weeks leading up to this past weekend. Something was most certainly off - and I found myself becoming more and more disconnected, regardless of what I tried to do to "jump start" myself. While I was certainly being very productive, I was finding myself being very insular and at times short with people. I get like that sometimes, but never really for a protracted period of time.

Anyway, I took this "funk" (for lack of a better term) with me on a road trip to Rhode Island - to visit with friends. After a brutal 5 1/2 hour bus ride to New London, CT (thanks to traffic on I-95, it wasn't Greyhound's fault) - I met up with Gabe, who had a softball game. I started watching the game, and then some friends met up with me to take me to go play some beach volleyball - which was completely unexpected. I hadn't played since goofing around in college, but it's one of those sports I seem to play pretty well. I think it's got a lot to do with my willingness to flail myself at any ball within a 100 foot radius without any permanent damage.

It was perfect weather that night, and we had a blast. Gabe and I went back to play plenty of board games - and went to bed knowing we were going to go climbing @ Lantern Hill the next morning! We met up with Eli early in the morning, and you couldn't have asked for better weather to climb - maybe 80 degrees, a slight breeze, not a cloud in the sky...yet I was still feeling...off.

The view from the top of Lantern Hill is amazing, albeit there's a few man-made eyesores. The hawks and vultures soaring right around you makes up for it though. We setup top ropes and began climbing. For all the reasons mentioned earlier, I just kept freezing on the wall. I found myself coming up with so many lame excuses for barely being able to stay on the wall - simply put, I felt weak.

Typical of my feelings then: The heights are causing me to feel sick to my stomach, my fingers scream in agony just placing them on rocks, I'm not comfortable with the ropes, my shoes aren't sticking very well, my shoulder's bothering me, I don't want to look like a schmuck, I climbed this rock better in sneakers 3 months ago!

I was so down on myself then, but I kept trying to hack away at the frustration and just fucking enjoy myself. The company was good enough (another group joined up with us), and then I just got on the easy wall - and was urged on by Gabe and Eli to get to the top of the wall come hell of high water. I got setup at the bottom of the wall and just said to myself "Stop feeling fucking sorry for yourself and get your ass up that wall"

So I started to climb. I took a slightly awkward route, which was proving to be pretty fun for the first 40-feet or so, till I got to a point where I had to navigate a traverse that earlier in the day I bailed on because it was making me feel very vulnerable to the heights. Eli continued to urge me on while belaying for me - and the confidence he showed in my ability (which I didn't feel was warranted by my previous attempts to ascend the wall) pushed me right through the traverse! This put me on a very large comfy ledge about 75% up the climb, where I took a minute, turned around and sat on a rock outcrop and took in the view. A peaceful calm washed over my body - and for the first time in weeks I felt simple and at peace. At that moment, a hawk flew past very majestically. It's just one of those moments that will always stay with me.

It didn't matter that this was the "easy" climb, or that I was struggling and needed prodding to get to this point - I was just present in the place I found myself - connected to the reality of it in a way I'd missed lately. I was happy.

Eli urged me to continue the climb, and to my surprise I finished it strong and came back down. I proceeded to climb pretty well the rest of the day - with my mind and body much more co-ordinated and elated. The rest of the weekend was awesome, and I got home feeling much more at peace with things.

I'm pretty grateful I've got friends who push me to always get better - and the ability to kick my own ass when I truly need it.

- Chris

Mix CD

My buddy Mike and I came up with a cool project a few weeks ago: let's make mix CD's! It's something I haven't done since high school, when our friend Amanda was the queen of mix CD's. I thought it was a cool opportunity to share what kind of music really resonates with me, and I'm glad that he really enjoyed the CD. Without further ado, here's the playlist:

1. Rjd2 - Ghostwriter
2. Royksopp - What Else Is There?
3. Bonobo - Flutter
4. Antaeus - Motherese
5. Thievery Corporation - Facing East
6. Caia - Summer Lightning
7. Moodorama - The Bushoong
8. Bjork - All Is Full Of Love (You Tube the music video - it's amazing!)
9. Dan Black - Stewing Scintillation (from the real Dan Black)
10. Yoshida Brothers - Blooming
11. The Bravery - Believe
12. Mattafix - Big City Life
13. Andy Hunter - Come On
14. Hybrid - I Choose Noise
15. Kid Cudi - Alive (Nightmare) feat. Ratatat
16. Huey Lewis & The News - Hip To Be Square (just for fun)

The mix definitely starts with slower "working music" and progresses to a more accelerated "city beats" feel. If I could only listen to 1 CD for the rest of my life, this would be all I would need. Thankfully though, I can continue to broaden my horizons when it comes to music.

- Chris

New Work Update!

I've posted a new abstract piece on my website:



I made this piece in celebration of my father's birthday last week - and it was received very well. I am definately planning on doing more "caracature abstracts" in the future.

Website Portfolio Link Here

A Sunday

My birthday party Friday night was fun - although attendance was sparse, everybody had fun with some Telestrations, Dixit & some drinks.

In general I've been a bit distracted this past week...for all the great things going on in my life right now - I haven't been finding any spiritual fulfillment in my day to day life. For all the reading & intellectual efforts I've put in trying to understand faith, spirituality & truth - I've finally realized that it's all bullshit unless you put it into practice in everyday situations. It took somebody this past week helping me make the connection between my MMA training and spirituality to see this...

Let's say 2 years ago I decide I want to learn MMA - how to kickbox, grapple, train to defend myself and get into great shape. Motivation isn't the problem - let's go kick some ass...to the library! I'm going to read every book I can find on the subject - and when I'm not reading I'll sample for sources on the Internet, YouTube videos...and I'm going to be ready to step into a UFC title bout!

Now it's easy to see that this is impossible. Thankfully, 2 years ago I walked into a Tiger Schulmann's gym, signed up for classes - and I've put the mileage on my body to get where I am today. The journey has shaped me into a much more confident, fit & healthy guy. I have received expert mentoring from some of the best in the business. While my learning is never complete, and I continue to develop - I have put the mileage on my body so that I can perform the moves with confidence. You can't get that from a book.

So now I look at my efforts in spiritual practice over the past 3 years - and I'm left wondering why I've settled for the first option. Sure, I've visited some temples on occasion, even happening in on some dharma talks & Buddhist rituals...but I have been trying to learn through intellectual effort. Spiritual development is no different than the physical development of a skill. While it's been definitely helpful for learning the terminology, history, theory & helping me to develop wisdom...it hasn't manifested in the spiritual "blooming" I've been yearning for. I simply haven't got put the miles in - haven't experienced spirit - just read about it in books.

So I took this person's advice, put down the books for a while and did something about it. It was a calm Sunday morning, and I woke up early and headed down to the Zen Center of New York City, a Zendo near Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn. I was happy to wake up early enough to make a stop at Starbucks for some tea and sketching time before heading down - and I was able to really enjoy the fact that it was a quiet, calm day.

I arrived at the Zendo and was warmly greeted and shown around. Zen Buddhism has always intrigued me, and it's central focus is on self-development of one's mind through Zazen. Zazen is a method of meditation where one focuses on bringing the mind to a stillness - and develop the ability to be present in the moment you find yourself in. For more info: Wiki

The Sunday service began with some liturgy and chanting (a first for me to hear some chanting in English - which doesn't flow as well but helps to make more of a connection to what's actually being said). This was followed by an introductory lecture for us newcomers where we learned some effective postures and some information regarding the temple and goals of zazen, etc... While I knew a lot of what was being said - I was happy to maintain the "beginner's mind" and pick up a lot of valuable pointers.

After the introduction, we rejoined the rest of the students in the main hall for seated zazen, lasting a little over 30 minutes. I was then able to join the group for a 10 minute walking mediation - something I had never done, and was initially skeptical about (ah, the danger of those darn books). I really enjoyed this, and the senior student that gave a discourse afterwards really resonated a lot with how I've been feelings lately.

I can't say it was an overpowering experience when I left the Temple, but I was definitely feeling more connected to the pulse of everything around me. Having planned ahead, I walked the 10 blocks or so to Brooklyn Boulders, for some solo bouldering. My calm state helped me to visualize my routes better, and I was really enjoying completing some difficult V1's that I hadn't done before. I completed about 20 ascents out of 30-35 tries, which made me very happy.

So, in closing it's been a very calming day - and I mean calming in the sense that I feel a lot wiser for coming to the realization that I can't control change - even the good kind. I can't sit here and regret that I hadn't made these realizations sooner. The only thing I can control is what I do with where I find myself now - and for the first time in a long while I can say I find myself with some modicum of serenity.

- Chris

The History of the Dahlia Hockey League

For my brother's birthday this past July, I cooked up a super secret project - a short comic based on our childhood street hockey days. The book was a real hit, and I've uploaded the complete book to my website.


View The Book: HERE.

Caviar into Steroids

If you've never played the hit new game Telestrations, you're doing yourself a disservice. I picked up in anticipation of Game Night @ Gabe & Auren's place in Rhode Island this past weekend. It ended up being played pretty much throughout the day, and near the end of the night it started getting particularly hilarious.

For those who've never played, the premise is everyone draws a card with 6 possible words, and a die roll decides which word everyone draws on their multi-paged whiteboard book. Then you pass the sketches to your left/right, and those players write a guess as to what the drawing depicts (not knowing the original word). Then players pass the word guess and have to sketch that. Then the books get passed, and another guess..etc until the book gets back to its original owner.

We decided to play one last game at the end of the night, and Lisa draw the word "Caviar". Without further ado, I present a perfectly fine sketch to represent Caviar:



Lisa passed her book to Eli, who started chuckling - writes a word - and then passes the book to Gabe, trying not to burst out in laughter. His guess: Menopause

Gabe gets the book, and starts bursting out in laughter and was joined by Eli to the point where Eli fell off the couch in tears...and nobody really knew wise. So Gabe did his best to convey the word:



I am the lucky soul to get this hilarious sketch, and now I start laughing to the point of tears, and I end up with barely enough sand left in the timer to make a guess. While I think I could have come up with a much better guess, I was laughing so hard and in a rush, so my guess was Female Hormone Suppressant

Alexandra gets the book, laughter naturally ensues and she sketches the following:



Alex passed the book to Nate (laughter of course ensues), who guesses Testosterone, and chuckles profusely as he hands the book to his wife Beth. Beth does her best to contain herself as she sketches this gem:



Yes, that is an injection directly into a penis...

Mike then gets the book, practically wets himself with laughter and makes the final guess: Steroids

Upon Lisa's revealing of the book, we were all in stiches as everyone was in on the whole joke. The quote of the night came from Gabe to Eli: "You made me draw menopause!!!"

What a fun time, and the closing game was absolutely epic.

- Chris

Selfish & Vicious?

A few weeks ago, my dad said something very interesting to me. I don't remember the quote verbatim, so I'm paraphrasing a bit here... "you know, I really feel like the world is becoming a more selfish and viscous place." In context, we were talking about the demands we've been finding on our time, and recent dealings with people in general.

At first, I agreed with my father's sentiments as they to a large degree sum up my feelings lately. Living in New York City, I'm constantly faced with a deluge of people that either rude, ignorant or both. Yet, I found myself contemplating what he said for the better part of the last week. There's a lot implied by a simple sentence like that, and I think there's a lot that lurks under the surface that deserves a lot of attention. It's more of an emotional reaction than a factual statement, and I surprised myself at how much my perceptions changed as I dug deeper into it.

So I looked into this thought, and asked myself "is the world today that much more selfish and/or viscous today?". I think in large part, the statement depends on context...too often, people (myself included) tend to be short-sighted on this very notion of context. Yeah, I think it's easy to say things are a lot more selfish and vicious feeling today if the sample size is narrow enough. For me, the world was a lot simpler and easier when I was a kid. Now that I'm in my late 20's and playing the role of "adult", this statement is easy to justify. Even trying to step into my dad's shoes, it could be very easy to justify that the world was a much saner and comfortable place. He's surrounded by different people, different situations (he's only got 1 kid still in the house instead of 4), a lot more responsibilities, risks, experiences, not to mention now that he's hit 50 there's an increased possibility of (knocking on the proverbial wood) health issues, increased insurance premiums, retirement, (as good a place as any to throw the words massive recession out there). So yeah, trying to put myself in his position, it's EASY to make that statement and honest-to-goodness believe it. However, I felt like I was taking the wrong approach, I don't think the comment was meant to reflect on our own personal lives, but rather as a broad brush on today's society.

Has "modern society" given in to feeling justified as selfish and self-serving as everyone else; "Damn the masses, I'm going to get mine come hell or high water". My initial reaction is to say that soooo many people in this day and age have come to this conclusion, it's easy to see it everywhere. But, is this feeling more prevalent now than it was in the past?

I think what underlies all of this is technology - the major driving force behind the majority of societal change. My personal experience with the effects of technology has been the "coming of age" of the Internet. I was born in 1982, so I basically grew up as the Internet did. By the time I was in high school, its true potential was being realized. I got my first cell phone at 17 and being heavily involved in technology since my youth I've been intimately intertwined with the amazing amount of technology advancement in the past 2 decades. I think it's relevant to mention all of this, because with these advancements in communication and information technology, it's fundamentally altered how we communicate and interact. Our world today has become one where we're literally bombarded with information on a regular basis, and one where it becomes very easy to feel like an insignificant cog that's got to fight to get above water & get what's ours.

We're plugged in pretty much every minute of every day, always anxious that we're going to miss out on something. We're forced to digest the myriad of information thrown at us so fast, that we've all become extremely adept to filtering it in quick little parcels, easy to throw it in the trash or hit the delete key. "It's not worth our time". I think this has made us more attuned to quick bits of information rather than longer, thoughtful transmissions of ideas. This anxiety doesn't allow us the freedom to sit with a particular issue/item/experience long enough to seek its true breadth. We're constantly looking forward to the next e-mail/issue/entertainment/item/etc... long story short -- we make ourselves this busy for fear of falling out of "the know".

Bringing it back to the comment at hand, I think everyone's got a lot more built-in excuses for being selfish. We spend less time meaningfully interacting with people because we're "busy". The pace of today's society is such that it takes a larger and larger percentage of our time, energy & resources to maintain our status, that often we resort to quick facebook updates or text messages to maintain contact. We feel comforted that we have hundreds of facebook friends, or e-mail "contacts" -- but how many of those people have you just sat down and had a real experience with in the past 6 months? a year?

What I'm trying to get at is that all this time being "busy" makes us seem selfish and self-absorbed. It's not completely true though, we're simply absorbed in all of our technology. It's a surrogate, not the real experience. I find myself more and more cherishing time spend around a board game with friends, a beer with a buddy, walks in the park, etc...than I spend checking my RSS feeds, filtering through friend's status updated and FarmVille accomplishments on Facebook (which I can't stand by the way), and I haven't touched on work e-mail yet...

So I don't think it's so much that we've become more selfish and viscous towards each other - I just think that the pace of life has blurred things so they seem that way. For as many burdens as technology may place on our time, it also opens up so many more opportunities. Access to knowledge and information is always becoming easier and easier, the spread of ideas are wider and quicker. For as much as this technology has added to our responsibilities and invaded into our personal time, it's also done much more to improve humanity on a global scale - the exact opposite of making the world more selfish and vicious.

I feel that the world has a way of self-balancing - writing, printing presses, radio and television have all had fundamental influences on humanity...and the internet is just the next stage in that evolution. Humans are still left with the fundamental choice on how we react within the situations we find ourselves in: situations that are increasingly infused with technology. I feel that the majority of people don't intend to be selfish or vicious, but we need to put in additional effort to get through the noise those technologies add to our lives.

- Chris