Day 11-Culture Shock

I was watching “Morning Joe” on MSNBC this morning like I do almost every day. I don’t care much for Joe Scarborough but as far as conservatives go he’s not so bad. I watch the show because they have good guests and the tone of the show is a good balance to the uber-liberal shows on at night. Naturally, today, they were discussing healthcare and the CIA program for assassinating Al Queada operatives. Meanwhile the crawler at the bottom of the screen throws a bunch of other headlines at you so you can get more information in less time. Hooray for technology! As the show was going to commercial they had a live picture on the screen of the current space shuttle mission while simultaneously running a crawler blurb about Walter Cronkite’s memorial service.

Suddenly, I had one of those moments where you feel like you are instantly spun to the other side of the room. It’s like you are standing there watching a scene in front of you and then Bam! You are now standing on the opposite side of the room and everything looks different even though you are looking at the same thing.

I grew up with Walter Cronkite on the TV. My parents watched Cronkite, without fail, every single night of the week. That was when news was news. The three things that stand out for me from the mid sixties through the seventies were the nightly reports about Viet Nam, the Apollo space program, and Watergate. In a large sense, I think these things, along with my Father’s commentary about them along way, have formed much of my own point of view about the world. Now, if you’re thinking that I am going to break my promise about this blog being non-political, you can rest assured that I am not.

The point is about how far we have come since John Kennedy first challenged America to achieve something great just for the sake of doing it. Here we are on the 40^th anniversary of meeting that first challenge. Walter Cronkite, the newsman through who's eyes we watched those momentous events unfold, is dead, and now we routinely send people into space and send crystal clear images back to our morning news programs as a matter of routine. Most of us barely give it a second thought. So where do we go now? As a society we seem to have forgotten how to dream big. Have we seen the passing of the greatest generation? Have we become so petty and selfish that we can no longer achieve great things for society? Historically it seems like all great societies crumble because people become complacent and lazy, forgetting how it is they got to where they are to begin with. What is the next great challenge that will fire our imaginations and fuel our ingenuity? Is it health care? Is it rebuilding our energy and transportation infrastructures? Who will lead us? For me, my year without cars is really all about rethinking what my actual requirements are for an interesting and satisfying life. What do I value and why? What can I contribute? These are questions that I think many of us struggle with at some point in our lives. But then again, it seems like many people never give it a thought and go through life grabbing at what ever they can without purpose.

So my quest will continue. Day 9 it poured rain all day long but I rode in to work and car pooled home. Day 10 was a nice ride in and then I headed over to the Tourne for our weekly mountain bike ride. Today I rode my mountain bike back to work. So that’s 11 days with one less car on the road. Beyond that I’m not sure what it means yet.