As everybody knows, December 21st, 2012 is the date the Mayans predicted as the end of time. Some are interpreting this to mean the apocalypse is upon us, while others see it as a time when the consciousness of the world is elevated and we move into some sort of different, perhaps even enlightened, phase.
Ridicule and nervous laughter abounds.
But could we actually be reaching a kind of tipping point?
The Information Age has accelerated our world in unprecedented ways. I think it’s fair to say that our civilization has changed more in the last 15 years than in all the millennia stacked before it. And as I sit at home in front of my computer with streams of information flowing through me from limitless channels, I find myself in a perpetual state of cognitive dissonance. It seems that almost all of the inherited cultural beliefs that shepherded me into the mainstream of North American society seem tragically flawed, even deceptive.
There are simply too many examples to cite, but after the murders in Connecticut, who in their right mind could possibly oppose stricter gun control laws? The only reason a rational (if selfish) person would do so was to protect a financial interest above a human one, or because they valued the reassurance and confidence they received from having their weapon of choice at the ready over the proven actuality that innocents are going to be slaughtered in order to achieve this (perceived) liberty. (Adam Gopnik put this much better in the New Yorker)
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/12/newtown-and-the-madness-of-guns.html )
As far as I’m concerned, anybody who trots out the 2nd Amendment as rationale for owning an AK-47 is mad and should be seeing a mental hair care professional. And really, shouldn’t people who feel a need to own guns (without any obvious necessity for them) have to see a psychiatrist every week? Isn’t there something delusional and potentially destructive in that desire to be armed, something that suggests an anti-social character waiting to emerge in the worst possible way?
We all know that guns are not just part of American culture, but bound and smothered by politics are a part of the economic machinery that governs the nation. Politically, such elephants in the rooms as Global Warming and Gun Control, matters that need to be addressed with utter urgency and sincerity, weren’t even spoken about in the US Presidential debates. Is that not crazy?
Still, the fact the President Obama went on TV and spoke about gun control is a good sign. Hopefully, this suggests a tipping point may be at hand, and what is truly important will no longer be held hostage by political and economic interests. Maybe something like the Overview Effect is happening to all of us, and we’re starting to realize that not getting shot is a civil right and that all living things are mysteriously bound, obliging us to serve the whole rather than the self.
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Coffee pedants with laptops sit at the cramped tables and servers who pretend to be more interested in maintaining the integrity of their craft than in customer service, work the bar. As Rachelle and I passed through I noticed a table inhabited by a university-aged couple. Serious and hunched over in distant concentration, they both read thin and difficult paperback books in defiance of the populist culture they so clearly abhorred.
“Those things, those things you’re holding in your hands,” I said, as if astonished, “what are they?”
What I’d hoped might result in some whimsical banter instead produced a short, somewhat prickly conversation about the integrity of books, and as Rachelle and I left with our high-end coffees, I was happy to be heading to People’s, an old school diner that served slutty, speedy breakfasts to people with hangovers.
People’s, an iconic Toronto institution, has been around for 50 years and is run by a candid Greek family. They don’t look like the sorts who are transitioning through the service industry into something else. No, they come in all shapes, sizes and ages, and the women who work the floor are good at their jobs, have large arms that will never see a Spin class and seem generally concerned, even offended, if you don’t finish all your eggs. At each booth there’s a barely functioning little jukebox and a huge laminated menu with all the things you expect, in fact need, to find at a diner. It’s a gem, and Rachelle and I have been going there for as long as we’ve known one another.
Well, on Sunday we found out that it had closed.
And there you go.
The world just went and changed on us.
It’s a melancholy thing, this, and as we stood there in front of the place considering all the other inferior options around us, a small group of like-minded people were making the same discovery and going through the same process. One of these people was a solitary, elderly man with vivid bruises on his arms, an expensive watch and a food-catching mustache. He seemed a little bit lonely, even lost in the face of this news, and so we ended up going out for brunch with him at another local place.
He had a very gentle, slightly effeminate manner and he graciously answered all the questions that we asked, telling us that his journey started in Nebraska before winding it’s way over the course of 80+ years through Little Rock, Grand Rapids and Pittsburgh, amongst others, before finding himself in Toronto and sitting across from us on a Sunday afternoon. He told us that he’d found a kind of peace in Toronto, and as he said that there was some sadness in his eyes.
We all tried to order the same things that we would have had at People’s, but it just wasn’t the same, and as we shook hands and promised to see one another again after the meal, we knew that we wouldn’t, that our time, too, had passed.
