DIGRESSION — THE MOVE TO MAKE NOW

by Jerry Murley

Recently I undertook a mental time-travel exercise. I multiplied the age of just one of my still-vibrant parents by three. To my astonishment that number in years traveled backwards would land humanity at a time before the French Revolution.

I recommend this as a sobering and humbling imaginative journey for when we are patting ourselves on the back for our modernity – for the supposed distance we have come in our evolution. We do want and expect the human condition – or at least our passage through an individual life – to improve. But how much have human beings changed? How much can they change? Have we really evolved much in 240 years? I know that we have not evolved much when I hear people acting ugly as sin on Fox News.

We get caught up in the wonder of our technological advancements. But consider those countless indispensable gadgets of ours now buried in a refuse pile at the county landfill. I don't recommend that we attempt to return to earlier times. Earlier times are all around us. Most of the activities that we do today in some form were done by generations before us for much the same reasons. I would argue that computer programming has nothing on the generations of humans who contemplated the mechanisms of the cosmos without benefit of our instruments of measure.

It is no mere coincidence that some of the stories that will appear in TennesseeSoul in the next months were conceived in the 1970s. That was another time when there were questions about our material progress and the advancement of human society.

So let the stories flow. If you find no comfort in simple stories, I give you the words of my saucy 4-year-old niece to her disapproving grandmother, "Live with it Granny."

To perversely paraphrase a Janis Joplin song, modern is just another name for nothing else to gain. So let's go pre-modern awhile. The sweet songs of dialogue and the wonder of discovery are acts that we can experience anytime. The beauty of one's surroundings and daily life are probably more intense as one steps forward from illness or loss. Therefore, open a can of joy and savor the solid and sublime sensations of our own backyard.