Sunsets on Face Book

I watched a sunset today.  Not the whole thing, but more than I have of any other in a long time.  The wind chills are dropping rapidly in Minneapolis, so I watched from the third floor of our house, which has three windows facing west.  With the angle of the sun still so far south at this time of year, the sun set between two large houses across the street, giving me a perfect angle to watch the sun descend, flare out, fade, give color to the last of the day even as the day calls to its beloved night.

Why do I not do this more often?

Oh, I’m too busy. Oh my chronic back problem prohibits me from sitting or standing in one place too long.  Oh, I usually think of watching the sun set outside, when it’s warm, but then I worry about mosquitoes, and so on and oh, yeah.

Part of the truth is that I am disconnected from the earth I walk on.  Gravely disconnected from the earth that will likely be my grave longer than it will be my sustenance.  The irony is that I can feel more connected to the world by the technology we own—Face Book friends in Estonia and Korea, talk to relatives in Chile, check the time of the sunrise and sunset from Manila to Antwerp to Valle de Bravo. And yet all these connections to the world virtually leave me less connected to the earth. Literally.

I’m not opposed to modern technology.  We own computers, cell phones, cars, plural.  They make things easier and faster in many ways.  What I do question is how much they distract us from what is real, how much time they take from us, and how they may make us uneasy with the world that is around us, especially when it’s quiet, and there is nothing we can do about it.

I checked my e-mail a couple times while writing this.  It wasn’t that I needed to. I’m not even sure I wanted to.  I just did it, because that’s what you do when you’re on the computer. 

It reminds me of the poem, The Unknown Citizen by W. H. Auden.  It was written in 1939  

The Unknown Citizen

(To JS/07 M 378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be

One against whom there was no official complaint,

And all the reports on his conduct agree

That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,

For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.

Except for the War till the day he retired

He worked in a factory and never got fired,

But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.

Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,

For his Union reports that he paid his dues,

(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)

And our Social Psychology workers found

That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.

The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day

And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.

Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,

And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.

Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare

He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan

And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,

A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.

Our researchers into Public Opinion are content

That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;

When there was peace, he was for peace:  when there was war, he went.

He was married and added five children to the population,

Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.

And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.

Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:

Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15549#sthash.NSdZW6Rj.dpuf

Wikipedia interprets the poem in part by saying: “By describing the "average citizen" through the eyes of various government organizations, the poem criticizes standardization and the modern state's relationship with its citizens.”

I don’t doubt the controlling aspects of the modern state, although I can’t summon the fear of a representative government protecting the environment or seeing that there is universal health care, as some of my conservative friends can.  But I do wonder how often we stop and think about how the choices we think we make freely, especially about what we buy and use in terms of technology, really binds us to an order to keeps us from the natural order that is so beautiful and powerful.

The sun will rise tomorrow and it will set tomorrow, no matter how apocalyptic the news stations will make the weather seem to tonight.

Be justice. Be beauty. Just be

Patrick