IS HUMANITY UNRAVELING?

I could quickly answer the question posed in the title of this article but I'd rather explore the reasons why this question would be more poignant now than at other times in recent history.

The internet, as we commonly know it today, has now been with us now since the early 1990s, around 24 years. We have access to seemingly unlimited entertainment, information, research and all kinds of distractions that we seek out to either improve our lives or disprove (make us forget the realities of) our daily existence. We carry with us devices that allow us to instantly get a hold of everyone we know while listening to a library of music or video content anywhere at any time. At home we can dial in movies on demand and have hundreds if not thousands of channels to choose from. Today's life is all about having options and choices. In essence we have access to everything all the time and with that comes the expectation that "everything" is there for us.

This is very big problem.

With these so-called advancements and the explosion in the number of choices at our disposal comes a new found narcissism. Think about it; it's as if we've become royalty in our own little artificial worlds. Everyone has a Facebook page or a MySpace page or both. If you are a Twitter user, you have the option to receive updates all the time. Now, every time there is a photograph of you, a comment about you, or a comment you or someone else posted about any ridiculous thing one could think of, there is the potential for everyone in your sphere of "friends" and all of their "friends" (real or electronic) to get an update.

I'm hardly the first to point this out but people.... this whole thing is completely fucked up and it's not slowing down.

We have become a society of self-absorbed, self-congratulating voyeurs. We have simultaneously begun to redefine what relationships are. We have reached new heights in terms of unrealistic expectations and we are in the "ON" mode far too many hours of the day.

People have argued with me saying that all of this is great because it allows us to keep in touch with so many different people. We're not supposed to keep in touch with so many people. We're supposed to have close relationships with the people who matter most. The rest of the people in your life should be relegated to being no more than an acquaintance or a professional/business associate. There is supposed to be a natural hierarchy. If we have all of these people in our lives all of the time, even if it's merely online occasionally, there is less and less time for the few key people who would otherwise take up the greater majority of our time we spend with others. It adds up. More people in each of our lives mean less time for each individual which translates to diminishing the truly important relationships (even if it is not that severe in some cases) including lifelong friends and family members. This in turn causes there to be less time that we spend by ourselves _ alone. If we don't have sufficient alone time, and I don't mean alone-on-the-internet time, another problem arises...the end of artistry.

Ask yourself what your life would be like without music, literature (and I mean real literature), fine art; the things that make us human; the things that inspire us.

In order for there to be such things there must be creative-minded people with the discipline to work at something to the point of mastery or at least competence. Individual people need to channel inspiration, passion, anger, sadness, loss and hope in order to deliver inspiration to others. That inspiration shapes us into who we are, what we aspire to and it makes life really mean something because it reminds us of the strength and beauty of the human spirit. It doesn't matter if you're into Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Debussy, Puccini, Stravinsky, Chuck Berry, Jimmy Page, Paul McCartney, Miles Davis, Dinah Washington, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Dave Mustaine, Slash, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Count Basie, Sinatra, Coltrane, Jaco Patorius, Maria Callas, Barry White, Stevie Wonder, John Lee Hooker, Clapton, Rembrandt, Dali, Reubens, Picasso, Mark Twain, Hemingway, Dumas, Charlie Chaplin, Michael Mann, Francis Ford Coppola, Spielberg, DeNiro, Hepburn, Bogart, Fred Astaire, Cate Blanchett, Anthony Hopkins, Merryl Streep, Balanchine, Martha Graham, Shakespeare, Goethe, Verlaine, Auden, Dickinson, or Dylan Thomas. Those people had discipline. The work they did took time and the skills they required to do this work took time _ time alone, working on a craft, time practicing their technique, perfecting their respective approaches and nuances.

And now there is less and less time for this. The artists, writers, musicians, actors and dancers of tomorrow are consumed with text messaging, social networking updates, video games, streaming online games and pornography and other meaningless "content" and the idea that "everything, all the time" is a way of life. It's being chipped away at day after day. It's being swallowed in the throat of mediocrity and hedonistic bliss. It's being fed on by the ugly scavengers that disguise themselves as the purveyors of modern progress.

Time.

However, if there's less time to write poetry and novels, less time to paint, sculpt and draw, and less time to write music and practice our instruments, there will be nothing left to inspire us. There will be no great ones anymore. There will be no one to hold our hearts and minds and to lead us through our experiences with the sense that there is something greater than ourselves to reach for.

We may be closer to the beginning of this unraveling than we are to the end of it, but it has begun and has done so in earnest.

I am frightened by what I see, not just as a musician and writer but as a person who spends a lot of time thinking about what will come next, in the future; what we leave behind.

I am frightened by the insouciance I witness with regard to this topic and I am frightened by the alienation and disenfranchisement of those younger than me and the general lack of the sense that we are in a society, together seeking to live fulfilling lives in peace with one another.

We have forgotten ourselves in our cell phones, MP3 players, Instant Messaging, status updates and online friend-making and we are losing a sense of past or future. We have forsaken quality time in exchange for momentary blips and flashes of trite pleasure. We have become so convinced that we have, not realizing that we have so much less of actual value.

This isn't the end but it's the first stretch of pavement on the highway to the end.