Reading Between The Lines

I’ll be honest. Despite my Journalism degree, most days I skim the headlines. And most days, it’s just one bad news story after another. I can only take so much. I don’t usually connect any of the dots or analyze any of it too deeply. Maybe it’s my age. Maybe it’s my circumstance. Maybe it’s the economy. I can’t tell you what it is, but more and more, I’ve begun to read beyond those headlines and think about some of the implications for me, for my family, for the world.

Here’s one you probably saw today, “Spies Hacked Into US Electricity Grid.” Excellent. That’s great news. Really? And how many grids has the US hacked into? Am I supposed to believe we haven’t? Is this the real future of warfare? Can I stop worrying about North Korea launching a nuclear missile into my living room and start worrying about when the intermittent blackouts are going to start? 

It made me think. Are there really people in this world who have decided to spend their lives dreaming up ways to annihilate civilization – one way or another? What must it be like to wake up in the morning and begin the work of destroying your fellow Earthlings – whether it be through mass destruction or simply by undermining the technological underpinnings of society and creating entropic chaos. Why? What is the point? What is the reward if you succeed? 

Then I read another headline “Sims and Spore Creator Leaves EA.” I don’t know if you ever played Sim City. I did. If you haven’t, you should. It makes you feel like part city planner, part god. But that’s not what I saw in the headline. This obviously talented mind, Will Wright, isn’t leaving his job to simply disappear into retirement. He is leaving to start up a new kind of think tank. A think tank that will develop new intellectual properties that will drive new games, television shows, toys and online fodder.

The think tank’s name? Stupid Fun Club.

So, as much as I struggled to understand a world where people rise each day fixated on bringing all of us to the brink of disaster, I was encouraged to see that even in that world, people strive to create. To create something new. To create ideas that will spawn even greater ideas. A world where people follow their dreams. And even do it with a hint of self-deprecating humor. Stupid Fun Club.

For me, for my family, for the world, I hope those dedicated to creation, not destruction, win the battle we all face each morning when we wake. Because whether we realize it or not, we all make that choice every day. Maybe neither you nor I do anything as dramatic as building bombs or hacking into electrical grids. And maybe neither of us will ever start a think tank of our own. But each of us makes the choice – perhaps countless times a day at work or at home – to tear someone down or build someone up. We make and break entire worlds each day.

Each of us.

Not just those who make the headlines.

Never Say Never

I’ll let you in on a little secret. Just you, though. Don’t tell anyone just stumbling around the Internet.

When I decided I wanted to write the occasional essay of sorts, I thought about just picking up another journal, like the one I started keeping one fateful summer between 7th and 8th grade. I filled notebook after notebook of all shapes and sizes through 8th grade, high school and college. Most of which are packed away in some box somewhere in the attic. I don’t know what I wrote about back then. But I doubt I’d ever consider posting them to the Internet.

When I opted to post my pointless thoughts to the ether instead of committing them to the gravity and permanence of ink and paper, I promised myself that I would never, never, NEVER talk politics. Well, one should never say never.

So, here goes. Are you ready?

Al Gore is right. There. I said it.

If you decided to take a vacation from newspapers or your news.com of choice this week (I’m often tempted to do the same myself), you may have missed that Al Gore “challenged America to make a ‘man on the moon’ effort to produce all of the country’s electricity from renewable resources within 10 years.”

The guy is right. And I’m not saying he’s right because I love the trees or I’m afraid of rising temperatures and suffocating greenhouse gases. I’m not sure the proof is truly conclusive on all of that stuff. Even after watching “An Inconvenient Truth”. Twice.

I’m not even saying he’s right because I’m tired of the gas station siphoning my wallet.

No, none of that is why I think Al Gore is right.

He’s right because America needs another race to the moon. America needs another impossible dream.

When Kennedy made his “man on the moon” speech, a lot of Americans considered it a PR move to recover from the Bay of Pigs. Or worse, he was a simple lunatic.

Yet, it happened. He placed a dream before America, and America transformed it into reality. Not because Kennedy believed in some crazy idea, but because America believed in itself.

And now, here we are. Oil prices have soared beyond the moon. Finding a way out is impossible. The infrastructure just isn’t there. Our cars are built for gasoline. Every intersection is peppered with gas stations. Do we really expect oil companies to walk away from $12 Billion per quarter in profits? That would be crazy, right?

Almost as crazy as launching a human into an uncharted void of a vacuum in a cramped tin can tube atop a huge fireball aimed at a lifeless rock. Almost.

When I think about it that way, I guess I’d have to say that what Al Gore is asking for can never happen. Never.

Oh, wait a second. What was it I was saying earlier. No, I learned my lesson. One should never say never. 

Yes, that’s right. Never say never. The America I know never would. Never has.

Why start now?