APPROACHING THE “PEACE AND JOY’ AGE
Well I woke up this morning randomly reaching for electronics to recharge and get ready for another “productive” day. As I plugged in one of my two sets of bluetooth headphones I noticed that I had forgotten to plug them in last night and that irritated me. Why? umm because I’m a spoiled brat and I let things like that rob my peace and joy. Well… of course I said I have more than one set of these so I unlinked them to my phone and connected to my desktop and here we go.
But the title of this post is not “things I whine about inside” (although maybe it should be lol). The title refers to “the age” of Peace and Joy and so let the discussion move that way.
Before I started writing I took two of the sharpest objects in my house and rubbed them across my face for a bit because that’s always the smartest thing to do when you just wake up and are not really thinking about the technology and the idea behind such a task. However, in this case an inspiration came to pass. Let’s climb into the “wayback machine Sherman” (if you don’t know the reference—let’s set the flux capacitor back several thousand years Marty—If you don’t knowt hat reference either just keep reading.
Long ago there was this “age” known as the stone age. From what our investigation tells us there was a period when human beings said or grunted to each other “hey Bill if we are going to kill this buffalo that outweighs us by about 1500 pounds sneaking up on it and slyly giving it a left jab to the ribs isn’t going to cut it—how about we use some of these rocks here and maybe knock it out and then crack it over the head with a rock or a club?” So the stone age was born.
Then of course we wanted different things and had to try to find different tools. Nature and the good Lord led folks to discover thatsome of the stuff in these rocks could be somehow extracted and we then had this stuff called metal. I know we went through like the bronze age and I don’t know if we officially ever called it the “iron age’ but we started building tools and weapons and things out or that and we could do more things like build bridges and swords and stuff. As a side note if you a are a bit of a prude don’t read the next paragraph.
Somewhere in this “iron Age we started using some of these tools for “modern medicine.” Speak most specifically of circumcisions. This couldn’t have happened in the stone age. Also it couldn’t have happened in the pre-alcohol stage and ifI could go back in history I would love to hear the conversation that led to the decision to perform it. “Well Isac—just hold it right there and we’ll just take a little of this skin off the top…trust us” I also want to hire the people who convinced the first “patient” to do this. They had to be the greatest marketing agents ever to wander the face of the earth.
Okay that observation being made let’s return to our main theme —the Peace and Joy Age.
Well we went from this iron age to the industrial revolution where we started using our new materials to build machines to do tasks. Some might argue and i would agree we had to have the “enlightenment” before this industrial revolution waso possiblewhat’s that mean? We had to have a great period of ideas on how to do things differently and show that these things would fit into our real world. So we had this enlightenment and the beginnings of the industrial age kick in. Which brings us to almost today.
We have been hearing for some time that we are no longer in the industrial age—we are in the “information age.” Information sour new tool set and information machines are the new rulers of the human tool pyramid. Well I disagree.
We have already zipped through that age. Oh sure we are still building machines that other information and can store it. We already are producing new information at mind-numbing speeds…
So if not the information age where are we? Well we are certainly capable of merging industrial age products like refrigerators with our smart devices so that the cameras in the can se somebody left two bites of Jello instead of throwing it out. Our printers can order ink for us and our phone can serve as a pizza delivery beacon. We are at least in the “connection age.” Who has Facebook, twitter, instagram, pinterest, have I”snapchat?” Oh and I almost forgot YouTube and did forget “myspace” because so did everyone else.
Now… finally to the point I am trying to make…. we have almost all the tools needed to build things and connect people… and yet are we all happy and feeling good about the future? Well oddly I say “yes we can!” if we now turn our attention to the”Peace and Joy” age. We have worked on the “external” problems/challenges that ace our human being… and have done well. We now for the first time in human history have eliminated most of the barriers that keep us from working on human to human connections, the connection between the outside world and our real creative talent, and so we are ready for the peace and joy enlightenment. I say bring it on…let’sget to work on discovering our best selves instead of our best external substances. We are ready as a being on this planet to do so…. and thus have a real shot of finding the peace of knowing oneself and each other the the joy of maximizing the balance between acquiring wisdom and celebrating our growth and the ability to assist others in also walking that path…..
Okay… it’s time to stop writing and find a new razor blade…andtime to accept that peace and joy is the age peaking around the corner and asking us to move into it.
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