Secular Fundamentalists

Our book club met later than usual today because the bookstore opened late to mark Easter.

We became engrossed in The Kite Runner and finally the next group coming in tapped on the window to tell us our time was up. Turned out to be a Humanist (a.k.a atheist, they said it themselves!) book club. Had a very brief discussion with a couple of the gentlemen -- they struck me as a group of sterile, dessicated, lost souls!

We can lament the loss of civil discourse as everything seems to splinter into a fragmented mosaic of 500 TV channels, I-Pods, single serving prepackaged industrial meals, personalized everything, so no one has to share anything. But at the same time I have to recognize that I want my zazzle postage stamps and to listen to Rai music, flamenco, the oldies that the oldies station won't play, the earnest discussions on c-Span 2 and the movies that Blockbuster can't be bothered with.

But we have lost the camaraderie of a shared culture, even if the sharing was to laugh at how stupid it was. When there were only 2 TV channels everyone had something to talk about. Today if you want to talk about TV most of the time you first have to tell the other person what the show was about before you can cut to the chase of what you thought about it!