The Incessant Insistence for the Immediate!…
I walk a few blocks from my house to the gym. The walk takes about 20 minutes and it is a really great warm up prior to my actual workout. If I am in a less than grumpy mood I notice the blue of the sky, perhaps which ONCE family owned business is now out of business due to LA’s very outrageous high retail spaces, or sadly the additional amount of people either living on the terraces of vacant buildings or pushing around a shopping cart with a few plastic bags of their ONLY possessions. I think to myself why while the sky is blue and the day seems so good for me are there people who must go out of business because it takes too much money to transact business, people living on the streets when this city has so many vacated buildings and how I might be able to survive using my own shopping cart as my means of transportation and storage for what is left of my dreams. When I am in my morning MOODY self my focus is still on the people for whom I recite, “there for the Grace of God go I”, but then I focus on a whole bunch of people who seem so preoccupied texting on their phones, speaking extremely loud on their phones; oblivious to any living creature in their way who at that moment as THEY walk right into you PRESENT this face of poop popping out of their mouth’s because YOU didn’t move out of their way demonstrating very little interest for anything or ANYONE but their immediate needs.
My mood then deepens and I sigh and stew and begin connecting some dots in my mind which lead to how I view the conditions of our American political landscape. I then recite the mantra… “The Incessant Insistence for the Immediate!” Politics has become about RIGHT this minute… never a concern for the facts of history, no need for REAL information about topics… if it takes more then 5 minutes it is wasting time, FORGET if it is truthful sound bytes work better and everyone knows you can try and pretend someone ELSE misquoted what you really meant to say! I shift from politics and get in a pissy hissy state and turn my attention to the media (having to quote Sarah Palin on this) what seems more and and more the “lame street media” I recall how any tragic events are showcased immediately without any facts formulated, but as long as you are first to throw out a few statistics of the abused or murdered…insinuate this might be a terrorist action…place a microphone in front of the cousin who lived three blocks from the perpetrators step fathers home…pan the area of devastation but not really the exact location but close enough is good enough…AND of course give it a theme and theme music…It is CONSIDERED news. It satisfies a societal disregard for real and replaces it with what sells: THE INCESSANT INSISTENCE FOR THE IMMEDIATE!
The people walking down the streets on their phones, driving while texting walking triple file who expect you to move because what they are doing at that moment IS important seem satisfied NOT to notice the lives of those around them. There is this urgency that MY immediate needs must be pleasured. If you are NOT selfish or self-serving you ain’t gonna get what is promised to you. If you don’t rush and hurry you will never arrive at the next milestone so you can rush and hurry again, again, and again. The folks who love them some banner moving left to right on a the news channel with words like Trump up 10%, Hilary lied, Obama this or that, 7 black churches burned, NEVER need more information that that; perhaps because while all that is happening they too are on the phone waiting for the next immediate thing to happen. THE INCESSANT INSISTENCE FOR THE IMMEDIATE is certainly slowing down the human aspect of living.
