George Orwell we have arrived.

I comment a lot on technology and the information highway.  I know I seem to dislike where we presently are on that highway and that could appear to be hypocritical seeing that I am writing a blog that is a part that highway.  Truly there is much to be appreciated about all of the advances we have made.  There is however a dark side.

If in 1998 you would have told me that many of us would be giving away information on our personal lives to the government, to business and to individuals,  including some who are the worst among us, I would have laughed.  I would have been especially skeptical if you told me we would do this willingly.  It is like embracing George Orwell’s novel called 1984.   Orwell’s novel took place in the future (1984) and the government would watch and track us 24 hours a day.  They would know all of our personal info.  The main difference in 1984 and today’s reality is that business and individual citizens from all over the world also have this info.  When we are on the internet our geographic location can be tracked.  When you make a call or send a text from your cell phone it can be tracked down to the exact location.  Most of this information is shared with others.  The pictures, videos, words and info that we post on places like Facebook, blogs and other locations is given to the world forever.  Not a single word that I write on this blog can ever be taken back once it is in cyberspace.  Yet we all take this very cavalierly.  We continue to give ourselves away to the world.  It has become such a normal thing that we tend to do it without thought.

No I am not a paranoid schizophrenic.  I know my residence is not electronically bugged.  I don’t think that there are spies living under my bed and I know that nobody created all of this for the express purpose of watching us.   Curiosity has always made me an observor of human behavior and I just find it interesting how willing all of us have been to give away our privacy.

I have been a part of this “cyberspace thing” for quite some time, but a while back I left the “grid” in every sense of the word.  For a couple of months I had no internet connections.  I did not use a cell phone.  No cable or dish television.  Only rabbit ears.  No GPS. I didn’t exist by 2011 standards, but the truth is that I did exist.  It was one the most freeing experiences for me in many years.  There is life in the dark ages.

Yes George I do believe that 1983 was a very good year.

The images below have nothing to do with the diatribe above.

The glow of spring.  A wet and humid spring forest.

Cultivated garden flower.

Jewels of the morning.

Morgan Falls.

Male and female Hooded Merganser.

Immature American White Pelican.

Five to a team.  Pigeons

Male Rose-breasted Grosbeak.

Young Red Fox.

I love true individualists.  People who do not follow the crowd.  Creative minds that don’t just copy those around them.   Those are the people who don’t care what the “in thing” is.

That does not mean that I do no realize the importance of society as a whole, or that I do not recognize that a group can be very important.  It does mean that I think it is important to remember that groups (and society) are made up of individuals.  Even in groups the “rugged individualists” in the group tend to be the most creative and productive.  I never understood that when we find a corporation to have broken laws we feel the answer is to heap a hefty fine on that corporation.   A large segment of the population (not individualists) applaud.  The company raises its prices and the actual person/persons responsible for the crime usually receive no punishment at all.  If the company actually does become hurt and is publicly traded, then a lot of blue-collar people who actually own that corporation via 401k and IRA plans are the ones that are truly hurt.  Those same (hurt) people are happy that we socked it to the evil company.  In the mean time those people who are actually responsible for the crime laugh all the way to the bank.  Corporations just like governments are made up of individual people.  I do find that creative individuals are the only ones who will ever change the government that we all consistently bitch about.  I know that because they are the only ones who have changed it in the past.  Adams, Madison, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt etc.  Abraham Lincoln is idolized with good cause.  During his five years in office he was hated by half of our country. He was hated by almost all of the country for three of those years and was finally shot and killed.  He was shot by a man who was a proponent of “group think”.  As long as it was his group.  Lincoln was indeed a creative individualist who believed in the sanctity of the union.  A union made up of individual thinkers. This is also true in other group causes.  Martin Luther King Jr. was a great man who was a true individual for a group cause.

Long live the creative individualist.