Our Changing Times

Will Bunch at Attytood discusses the current paranoia over child predators and accidental injury while reflecting on this article in the LA Times.

Kids Taking a Bus 350 Yards to School

I've contemplated this current phenomenon as well. As a metro-Atlanta child who attended local public schools, I walked a mile or two to and from school. It was a chance to experience the seasons, plants and wildlife of the area. To occasionally detour along a railroad track imbibing the smells of wind, water, earth, wildflowers, creosote, and the nearby poultry farm. And in the first years of high school, gave opportunity to stop at the old wooden framed store on the corner to swap discarded glass bottles collected en route for the dreaded potato chips and other such junk food. I found being free and outdoors much more appealing than being locked indoors alongside clamorous, irrational adults. In fact, I still do...

The ills of society are likely to compound themselves as we draw into tighter and tighter clusters of dysfunctional, hyperactive, paranoid, self-serving isolationists. We are adopting the behaviors and lifestyles of overcrowded rats in cages, whether our confines be pseudo-secure gated communities of McMansions or automobiles inching along grid-locked, polluted highways. Contrast this with the pathetic efforts to shun increasing isolation and meaningless existence demonstrated by society's current obsession with cell-phones, PDAs, and sound bites. All the while lashed into the yoke of perpetual corporate servitude. Activity for activity's sake doesn't allow much time for personal reflection or genuine though, and leaves a populace susceptible to mass-think, propaganda and spin. Perhaps therein lies the most plausible explanation excuse for escalating levels of chaos.