The show must go on

Yes, the show. Where would we be without the show? Over the past couple of weeks, especially in America, there has been nothing but non-stop show.

I'll tell you, though, what is tough for us ex-pats to explain: why all the show, and why doesn't substance matter anymore? I realize, of course, that the statement/question is a bit oversimplified and something of a rather platitudinous generalization, but it's not completely without merit. After all, as I asked a couple of posts ago: why conventions? they really don't do anything except put on a show.

Well, without thinking about it long and hard - which I'm sure I'll do eventually - I think that the lack of substance that all of sense is a simple defensive reaction. There's too many stimuli in our environment, there is too much noise, too much movement, too many unresolved issues, too many things that just don't seem to work anymore, too many unanswered questions ... and beyond the shadow of a doubt, too many opinions. We're being overwhelmed, we are drowning, in a flood of data, information and issues, too many of which are simply beyond most of our understanding.

There are things that we probably can do very little about without Herculean efforts: global warming (it may not be just humans causing it, but if you don't acknowledge it, you can't do anything about it, but it'll happen anyway); economic inequality (not just personally and individually, but globally); debt and deficits (what can I say); militarization and war (if there is anything that 100,000 years of human history should have made clear: it's not even worth thinking about as an answer). But, in all the conversations that I've had, especially over the past two weeks or so, everyone whom I talked to said the very same thing, almost as if it had been scripted by someone else: "Well, that's just the way things are, there's nothing that a little guy (or gal) like me can do about it."

To my mind, that's the biggest problem of all.

I think one of the reasons we think we can't do anything is simply because we're overwhelmed by it all. There's just too much to think about, and thinking about stuff - whether you want to admit it or not - is a lot of work. There's too much to keep track of, there is too much for me to figure out, there's too much that I don't know enough about, there's not enough time in the day, there is nothing I can do. Same old same-old means we get more of the same old stuff.

How frustrating is that? There is obviously something wrong with the picture.