Has Humanity Passed Its Useby Date?

                           HAS HUMANITY PASSED ITS USEBY DATE?               March 24 2009

I thought an old work colleague would appreciate a friendly phone call, so we could catch up on each other's news, but sadly I was wrong. "When are you going to start sending emails instead of wanting to talk to me?" was the unwelcoming comment I received. That was my last phone call to that particular person. Another friend’s husband was constantly tetchy and unrelaxed while they were travelling anywhere, and rushed into each arrival place, his arms and fingers poised for immediate action. I thought he must be a passionate piano player, but the sad reality was that he was desperate to attack the nearest keyboard, of the computer variety, and would decline to visit anyone who couldn't oblige. I travelled around the scenic South Island on a coach tour and countless times a day, the drivers commentary or music was interrupted by a mystery electronic noise. Ninety five percent of the passengers frantically scrambled the contents of their day-packs or gyrated strangely in their seats while extricating mobile phones from their back pockets. I took a day bus trip around Whangparaoa beaches and the Hibiscus Coast, in the early summer, and was enjoying the beautiful flowering pohutukawas and colourful residential gardens. I smiled with pleasure, while glancing around my fellow passengers, but none of them were enjoying the splendours of nature, they all had their heads down, busy texting. I felt like I had arrived from another planet. I have tried to admire inspirational works of art in public galleries, study exhibits in museums, or contemplate the tranquil environment in a Japanese garden, all the time desperately trying to evade the loud, unwelcome human voices, closely following me everywhere, with their bellowed barrage of trivia. Even while attending to the calls of nature, I have been disconcerted to hear personal conversations resounding from adjacent cubicles of public amenities. Are those people, perhaps, hoping to drown out are the sounds of an intimate nature? And speaking of those, even in TV films, people are viewed indulging in a variety of highly personal, private activities, while managing to converse on their mobile phone, with a third party. No problems for the participants should other partners seek phone reassurance of their whereabouts, I suppose. It is a whole new world out there, establishing a different code of behaviour and values of all of us: violent TV programs, video games, iPods and other accessories which are useful devices to facilitate switching into another isolated world. I look through the latest avalanche of retail brochures retrieved from my letterbox and most of the electronic gadgets offered, are described with numeric codes completely foreign to me. We have increased violence against people, animals and property, and we are all worried about global warming and our carbon footprint aren't we? Are we? I remember a friend with tears in his eyes and a shocked, subdued tone of voice saying he would do anything to save the polar bears and halt the melting ice caps, then he promptly promptly went out and filled his pleasurecraft with $500 of fuel and took his same old regulars out on yet another jaunt on the Hauraki Gulf. Then I read in the local paper someone's angry complaint about our beaches looking like a third world tip because seaweed had washed ashore in recent storms. How dare it actually come ashore and lie there, polluting local sands! Was that writer for real? Sadly, I believe so. A recent directive from that video recommends we stop wishing our fellows a “Merry Christmas” – “Happy Festival” is apparently more appropriate. Maybe we should not say "Good morning” to anyone, either – they might not be having a good morning, or even consider themselves a morning person? Please stop the world – I need to get off. I have realized I have now passed my use by date.