Something I Saw Yesterday - A Mini-Rant

After leaving Payless yesterday. I stood by the curb, smoking a cigarette and waiting for the bus. I heard something metallic hit the ground. Turning around, I saw that a small aluminum roasting pan had fallen out of this fellow's bag. I yelled at him. He could not hear me - he had these white plastic tips in his ears. It took three people to get his attention - me who signaled a man across the drive and the man who picked up the pan and took it to him.

 Here was a man completely shut off from his environment. Why? Was he listening to music? Was it so he did not need to carry a phone? He was about to get in his automobile and drive through the city without being able to hear. Or was he going to take them out when he got in the car. If so, why did he feel the need to be cut off from the world while in a grocery store?

I see this with people walking with their eyes on their phones.

Have we become so addicted to being online that we do not care for the wider world?

My mother worried about me when I was young, about living in my own little world. Too bad she is so long dead not to see what it is really like to see people living in their own little worlds.

 Call me a Luddite, but people are social creatures; not creatures of social media. No wonder we have an insensible form of politics.

 

 sch