He levered his arm downward as if switching off the power and said to just turn off the internet. I’d asked him how to calm many of the arguments plaguing society. He offered a simple yet fascinating fix.
Don grew up at the time of my dad, the Silent Generation. A time of resilience, framed by wars, economic depression and traditional values. These guys knew how to build stuff and were active during the Merchant Marine heyday of America.
I recall dad talking about how he delivered crude from some of the meanest places on earth back to U.S. soil so that the muscle cars I admired as a kid could rumble down the rural roads.
Don sat at the cafe and smiled. He’d spent a career selling and manufacturing some of the largest turbines ever built to produce power across America for homes in places like rural Montana. We’d stopped in to catch-up as thousands of miles and time routinely stood between us. On that day we sat, talked, ate, and laughed.
His daughter told me that as her parents held house parties, dad removed all the chairs from the living spaces so that people were forced to mingle and talk to others. He didn’t want neighbors, friends just sitting in the corner quietly talking. People need to engage, associate, and socialize.
How quaint that sounds. Today adults and kids surf the internet, digitally triggered by something social media fed us via the feed. Stuff we’d never hear that same person utter at the pub or a downtown diner. Screens offer magic protection and dissociate us from community, as if people on the other side of the internet are simply bots.
Times are different and nothing is as affordable like it was just years prior. To many it feels like the economy is rigged against the working stiff and in favor of the uber-wealthy and corporations. It looks like the landlords and banks are profiteering from the misery of the working class. I mean really, look at the price of everything today.
I recall pumping gas at my dad’s service station when he took a break from operating some of the largest ships ever to navigate the open ocean and heard first-hand how angry drivers were as fuel hit 64 cents a gallon. The culprit was an oil embargo imposed by the OPEC countries controlling crude.
Those were the 70s, the muscle car and dirt bike days. For a while the nation switched to conservation, as solar panels got installed on the White House and carburetors that suddenly put out 50 miles per gallon got bolted onto four bangers on much lighter, smaller rigs.
I told a podcaster bud about the idea of turning off the internet and he bluntly stated that if he were elected king, he’d pull that internet lever on Memorial Day and turn it back on Labor Day. I smiled, thinking that people deserved, even craved, an old-fashioned summer free of algorithms. Get outdoors.
Switching off the internet like Don suggested back in the day won’t make stuff cheaper but it sure might make people nicer to one another. Listening to podcast, surfing the net, or posting on social won’t ever deliver that same connection as talking to another across the table, on the trail, or in the pub.
We grew up with the internet, dialed in with a used IBM 8088 we bought from the local print shop back in the day. Today’s digital divide feel more about how social media locks people into algorithmic camps. Going downtown for taco night keeps it real.
We don’t have to agree on every damn thing to know we are all just people trying to get by in a world that got way too expensive. That guy wearing the sweaty baseball cap, sitting across the VFW table from us and eating the same Korean Taco -made with pork and topped with sauerkraut, isn’t ‘the man’ responsible for how expensive everything got. He’s just another working stiff like myself trying to do the best he can.
Social media is owned by the richest people on the planet. They’ll feed stuff to users with their money-making algorithms seemingly intended to annoy, irritate and get everyone worked up. The other side of the digital divide agrees. Kvetch all we want, yet everyone says that everything is way too expensive.
A cold north wind hit the farm. Pumpkin spice season has begun. The end of the growing season approached fast when the hungry ghosts of fall come looking for crops. Maybe the clouds would drop some fall rain to ready the ground for garlic planting.
I thought of other farmers across Montana who are rightly alarmed to see the loss of many trade deals across the globe. It devastated livelihoods. Seems hard to figure out why Congress is bailing out Argentina farmers who sell grains to China while letting Montana famers suffer, many facing bankruptcy. What’s the plan, Congress? Bloody hell. Get your act together, I mutter.
I put on Don’s shirt, a short-sleeved collared ones. It’s got great color and fits good. I appreciate being the new owner and keep striving to turn off that addictive social media as Don suggested so many years back, to sit across the table of more friends in the upcoming season.