talkin about my generation

 

 

i was born in the wrong generation.  i really think i would have done well as a twenty-something during the sixties and seventies.  i would have fit right in, with my seafarers and moccasins, my long unwashed hair, my love for gram parsons and counterculture lifestyles.  yes, i would have fit right in. i would have been right in the mix, with the protesters, the rock-and-rollers, the tree huggers, the peace-lovers, the free thinkers, the artists, the revolutionaries, the activists.  nowadays, i feel afraid that most hipsters are too concerned with their technological gadgetry and their fashionability to really have anything important or meaningful to add to the equation.  and that, my friends, is a source of frustration.  please, someone, prove me wrong.

call me a hippie.  i don't mind.  because i'm different; i see examples of it everyday.  it's amazing, for instance,  how unsympathetic many people i meet are towards certain creatures, namely rodents and bugs.  in our modern era, are we so concerned with issues of cleanliness and sterility that a cute little fuzzy grey thing could pose a serious threat to our well being?  there is an entire aisle at every hardware store dedicated to various poisonous potions designed to decimate populations of slugs, termites, mice, rats, moles, ants, yellow jackets... you name it, we've designed some caustic way to rot it's insides.  to me, it's just a sign of ignorance.  you don't think that poison will catch up to you, but it will.  and really, what is grosser:  poison, or a bug.  it's hilariously ironic to me that people are fearful of  these creatures, when they are so essential to our life as humans, and to all life on this planet. In his book the Diversity of Life, Edward O. Wilson discusses the importance of insects and land-dwelling arthropods in the ecosystem, saying that "if [they] all were to disappear, humanity probably could not last more than a few months."   rodents and insects provide pollination for plants and food for too many creatures to list.  poison one creature, and essentially, you poison us all.