Filed under: Musing
This is what is currently on my mind:
Bin Laden is dead. Well I guess this has probably been on most people’s minds the past couple of days. Now personally I think his death was a good thing symbolically (as I don’t think it will change that much that quickly) but what this has really got me thinking about is whether he, or Al Qaeda for that matter, is still relevant. It seems with the recent uprisings in the middle east, there is a fundamental rejection by people of the region of the things that the extremists stood for. I know recently an Al Qaeda spokes person responded to CNN, who was making similar allegations, and said the uprisings are in fact the opposite and are in fact making room for extremist regimes to come in and take over these parts of the middle east. This response from Al Qaeda basically stunk of desperation, like the CEO who tells everyone that business is great in order to keep stockholder confidence, while the whole time secretly hoping no one will notice that he is dumping all his stock and strapping on a parachute. From the outward appearance of the situation it seems like there is a fundamental shift away from the oppression of the past and an openness for a more modern society. Whether this means the people want democracy or not is difficult to tell, but they want a change, that is for sure, and it is hard to believe that what Al Qaeda has to offer is the change they are looking for. That being said, it is just hard to see how Al Qaeda can have any relevant impact on the world these days. Sure they can still (and probably will) kill people senselessly, but to what endgame? What would that even accomplish at this point? This is not saying the “war on terror” is by any means over, but it certainly is not the same boogie man it was a mere ten years ago.
Speaking of ten years ago, I was watching the Colbert Report and Colbert made some joke about returning to pre-9/11 times. This got me thinking about how things were before 9/11, and how it seems that life will never go back to how it was. Maybe it felt so different just because I was young, but at the time, the world just seem much more innocent then it really was. Since then it seems like the world has gotten more crazy. Maybe it has always been crazy and we just had our eyes closed to it before 9/11. Maybe I was just young and naive at the time. Either way, it makes me wonder if we are better off knowing the reality of the world we live or living in blind ignorance. Though the illusion of safety was comforting, I think life is more fulfilling when you are living in the reality of your surroundings (yes I just made two album title references in one sentence; can you find them both?).
On an unrelated note, I have been thinking about why we always want the things we can’t have, and when we get those things, we often realize we don’t actually want those things. While this is not true of all things, when it does happen, it seems like a lot of time and energy was wasted for nothing. What is it that makes us psychologically think that things we can’t have must be things that are great? I don’t have any answers on this one, just been thinking about it lately.
Also been thinking about how I have been buying waaay too much music lately. Mostly it is because Amazon offers digital downloads for so cheap. Unfortunately, consuming so much music makes me give that music much less attention. So I’m listening to a lot, but I’m not really listening to many albums a lot. In the last two weeks I have picked up: Etta James – At Last, Cheap Girls – My Roaring 20′s, Violent Femmes – S/T, Silversun Pickups – Swoon, M. Ward – the End of Amnesia, Booker T. – Potato Hole, Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues, Thelonious Monk – Genius of Modern Music Vol. 1, Thursday – No Devolucion, and Preservation Hall Jazz Band & the Del McCoury Band – American Legacies. So I have a lot of good stuff to listen to. Maybe I should slow down and focus on less music. Or maybe I will never learn . . . .
Soundtrack – Bob Marley – War/No More Trouble (live)
Leave a Comment so far
Leave a comment
