Do we live longer because we have forgotten how?

It seems that bizarre philosophical thoughts always come to me when I should be sleeping. The other night my mind was wondering through random fact after random fact, when it got stuck on one. I started to think about life expectancy and how it has changed over the course of human history. With a few cultural oddities, humans now live longer than they ever have in history (as a whole). I started to wonder why.

I shrugged off the boring scientific answer that has to do with advancements in medicine and other boring, non soul-wrenching facts. I started to bend my mind in order to reach outside of the cultural box we are all placed in at birth. With that bend I started to wonder if there is, perhaps, another reason entirely behind why humans live longer now. I thought that maybe this reason is what stands behind the medical advances, what drives them.

I began to consider quality of life, and the differences between the way we live in modern western society and the ways in which people used to live in nomadic societies—notably many Native American nomadic societies. As often happens, things I have recently read (especially in Derrick Jensen’s A Language Older Than Words) started to play into my take of things. In his book, Jensen discussed how food of all sorts used to be so plentiful that many cultures spent most of their time in leisure activities. With just a bit of conservation and understanding of the environment many Native American tribes could focus on the arts, love, and nature in general instead of constantly worrying about providing for their families.

These people had time to really enjoy and experience life almost every single day. They truly LIVED every year of their lives. That is in stark contrast to the predicament western culture has gotten us into. The wondrous industrial society that so many embrace and essentially bow to makes it impossible for anyone (even people who have removed themselves from it) to truly live life every day.

The rivers that once ran so thick with Salmon that you needed only to lower a bucket into them to get dinner are now dammed, and empty. The few remaining salmon launch themselves fruitlessly at the concrete structures we have built to create ‘clean energy’ and lakes that we in turn, pollute. The fields once so thick with Bison that the ground could not be seen for miles are now empty, dusty, and dry. Those that remain walk penned and domesticated—perhaps wondering where the days of old have gone to.

I think life expectancy is higher today because it needs to be. In order for us to truly live the 30 years that our ancestors lived in 30, we need to live 80. We spend the other 50 wasting our lives in front of computers watching YouTube videos, pretending we are intimately connected to those we only communicate with on FaceBook, commuting, shopping, and wondering why our lives hold no meanings.

If we restored the environment to its former glory, and gave up our consumer driven lifestyles would we not live as long? I of course do not know this, and no one ever can. The environment is too broken, our population too large, for that to be a realistic experiment. Perhaps we should start be fixing what we have broken, and go from there.

I for one miss the days I have never seen. The days when salmon ran nearly solid in the waters and bison shook the ground with their mere numbers.

Did Christ Have Bad Timing?

Driving home to Madison from my parent’s house in Lake Geneva, I found myself drifting into thoughts I don’t typically catch myself having. Perhaps it was the insane amount of coffee I had consumed, or the Christmas songs I had playing at full blast in my car. Whatever caused the meanderings of my thoughts—the consensus they seemed to come to was startling to me.

The fact that I started to think about Christianity while listening to holiday music is no jump of imagination, but where I went from there wasn’t exactly pleasant. I found myself tracing time from when Jesus came to earth over two thousand years ago, to the modern day. I looked at the wonderful things Jesus did, and the horrible things that have been done in his name. I thought of how he spoke of loving neighbors, no matter how different. I remembered the story of him saving the woman who would have been stoned to death. With all of these thoughts I began to wonder where Christianity went so wrong.

Jesus was a strong leader. He spoke of love, tolerance, and faith. He lived simply and shared everything he had with his friends and with strangers that didn’t necessarily share his beliefs. I wonder what he would have said to the forced faith that was shoved upon Native Americans with the choice of Christianity or death. Would he have said anything? I think he may have just shook his head, and wondered what had happened to the loving souls he had died for.

Maybe Jesus came too early. Perhaps if he had come in the early 1800’s to America, things would have been different. Yet, I think he still would have been killed for doing the horrible deed of spreading love and hope. Societies don’t ever take kindly to those who speak truth with love in their eyes.

Where and when would have been a good time for Jesus to appear? Does one exist?

Perhaps he came too late. Maybe if he’d been there when Mesopotamia was formed. If he’d appeared the very instant consumerism started to take hold. Maybe if he had told man that being nomads was the only way to peace—that greed would corrupt every soul the second they settled down into one place. Even then, would anyone have listened?

Maybe then, there was no better option than the time that he was born into. Messiah or not, he changed lives and history forever. Perhaps, even the son of God cannot change more than several generations of hearts.

Where does that leave us? If even someone as prophetic as Christ cannot change things for more than 100 years before they again become corrupt—do we stand a chance at all? In a society where we are shunned for saying Merry Christmas—a culture where people call themselves Christians while declaring war on those who are different—is there any hope of redemption?

I have shown you in every way by laboring like this, that you must support the weak. And remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, that He said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.
-Acts 20:35

Sprint I Loathe Thee

Bad Sprint jokes I made up while on the phone wasting two hours of my life:

For being called Sprint you sure don’t move very fast.

It is a little ironic that you asked me to call back from a land line because the phone I was on (a Sprint phone) had poor service.

So, the story—well let me first say that I might be a little spastic and ADD-like in this entry because I just wasted the last two hours of my life being transferred from person to person in Sprint’s wondrous network of good humored, clueless, individuals.

What did I want to do that it took so long to not accomplish anything? All I wanted to do was transfer my number out of a family plan into a plan in my name. I was told by approximately ten individuals in the last two hours that this was possible, only to find out that it is not possible, not at all.

I gave out my social security number and address to two random strangers from the southern united states that are probably opening their own cell phone accounts through other providers as we speak. I was asked why in fact I want to keep my phone number. I heard about fifty different pronunciations of my last name (that I pronounced for them about eighty times) and none of their takes on it were correct.

I threatened to switch services to AT&T about ten times and got very little response. I was hung up on twice and transferred more times than I am years old. I found myself carelessly discussing the cost of hand guns in the Cabela’s flier when I had been on hold (with a constant 30 second loop of hold music) for over five minutes.

I considered drinking beer (I am now). I considered the meaning of life and how warm it was where the people I was speaking to were sitting. I even considered how bad it would really be if I had no cell phone at all.

You folks that reside in Wisconsin have likely dealt with the horrible state of what Charter calls customer care—well this was worse. Because quite frankly I would rather be bitched at for several minutes than smiled at for two hours and still accomplish nothing.

So long story short—screw Sprint, I’ll try At&t…at least they don’t have a name that gives the illusion of speed.

Sometimes Lessons Learned Need to be Reiterated

“Play hard to get”

“You need to act uninterested”

“Be unavailable for awhile”

This is advice I have been given time and time again, and as many of you know, I don’t take advice very well. The moral of the entire Thanksgiving holiday was simply that I am fed up with men—and I don’t know why I bother at all. I know, I know, same old story from good ole’ Amelie, complaining about men…blah blah blah.

But here’s the thing, men, listen up. Women are not always at fault when things don’t work out. That isn’t exactly earth shattering, but getting it off my chest is important. Also, one night stands don’t necessarily get taken in the same way by both parties. I have had this reversed on me, so I can’t hold much blame—but it’s annoying as hell when one party thinks nothing of it, and the other really thinks there was a connection. This will be a major philosophical insight for the history books: avoid one night stands.

I sound like a religious freak now, but randomly sleeping with people is never a good idea. I don’t care if you know them, care about them, or just met them—it still doesn’t ever work out well. You fall for them, they fall for you, or you feel like a total hung-over whore the next day. Breaking up with someone you aren’t dating, but slept with, is a messy situation. It is also no fun at all to sit by a phone waiting for someone to call that you inadvertently fell for when sleeping with them.

So, girls and boys: random make outs at bars are fine, but don’t take someone home you aren’t dating, it just turns out messy, annoying, and infuriating in the end.

I am not innocent here—I have both inadvertently and purposefully played guys in the last year. I have watched as I crush them when we weren’t even dating, and lacked the emotional response I assumed I should be having. I have ignored phone calls, listed people in my contacts list as “do not answer”, blocked people on Facebook, and mostly been a total bitch. Having the situation reversed on me makes me neither feel guilty or innocent; mostly it just makes me angry.

I can play hard to get like a champion…until I get more than three drinks in me. With that I decide I am in love (only takes two drinks if it’s wine) and I decide that I am nearly an old maid and should go for it. I act like I would if I just found my true soul mate and likely end up at least kissing them. As I have learned time and time again, soul mates aren’t quite so perfect when sober—and lead to awkward situations.

The real problem is, that I typically have at least three drinks in me—so how on earth can I find a man? I think the answer is simple—I need to choose: alcohol, or men.

I think alcohol is a more reliable choice.