It is no wonder why many of our current celebrities seem to be unsubstantial, shiny dolls. Or why the largest grossing businesses in industries ranging from fashion to photography are those with the catchiest, most cunning websites and web communities. When addressing the struggles suffered through by ambitious writers, artists, CEO’s – and anyone characterized by big dreams and coupled determination – our elders used to tell us, “Listen, kid. If it was easy, everyone would do it.” It was then our duty to wait patiently through the hardships and fight the opposing tides, bent on the ideal that, with enough courage, cunning and hard work, you would outlast your competitors and finally come to the top.
But now it is easy. And so everyone’s doing it. How can one tell which artists or businesses are seriously engaged with their goals? It is legal for anyone to walk to the park and play music. It is legal for anyone to climb atop a soapbox and promote their newest discovery. Why then, might you ask, is the number of people willing to do this online so much greater than the number of people who actually risk their skins and dignity, determined in the streets? Because it is easier in cyber space, the disconnected world of false courage. And we love easy. We live for it.
But there comes a time when people must decide to first do what’s best, rather than what’s easiest, mindlessly fun and ultimately damaging. Everyone visits this crossroads in life. We can’t keep cluttering our nostrils with cocaine, or else our hearts shall so quickly beat that they will die. The same can be said of cyberspace.
We can keep our internet communities, but let’s not lose our social gatherings. We can meet our husband on jDate, but let’s not stop going to the park in hopes of meeting someone new. We can access a plethora of legendary literature and journalism through online archives, but let us not lose the feeling of a book in our hands, a still, printed page before us. We need tangible reality to remain functionally and accessibly alive.
Until the world deigns to take the time to discover the best, most valuable, system for such a slippery, virtual realm, our real world will continue to silently suffer the gradual loss of its full worth. And the upcoming generations fighting to change the landscape of our tangible world will be wordlessly strung amidst these two hemispheres, unsure of where or how to begin; because, at this moment in time, we are entirely uncertain of where the real world ends and where the surreal world starts.
Let’s not die figuring out how much cocaine we can manage to consume. Let’s not cut our lives short with short cuts. It’s much too ironic to climb into our own grave. It’s all the more terribly ironic when the grave is a gaping, nonexistent hole called cyber space.
