~ ONE JOURNEY ~
~ There is only one journey: going inside yourself. ~
- Rainer Maria Rilke
Mum on CBC Radio, aka, you know you're famous when... ~ Thursday, June 26, 2008
... someone calls you up from the CBC and asks you to prepare some comments about what life might be like if gas prices remain high and flying becomes too expensive for the average person.
Mum is a pundit! How cool is that?! And she consulted Tom and me about what we thought the future might look like under such circumstances, which I guess makes Tom and me pundits to the pundit. Not bad... ;-)
Of course, chortling over mum's latest coup aside, I hope that doesn't happen--that gas prices do settle and so does life. Though I'm well aware of the environmental impact of flights, and so on, it would sadden me to see the horizons of our worlds grow narrower and more circumscribed. The cultural impact of those greater distances between places and people is worrying, particularly given the rise of other trends, to do with dogma and fundamentalism. It's partly those smaller distances between diverse locales, and the resultant ability to see how others live--or to change the way we live (e.g. via immigration)--that, while it creates some frictions in the short term, has allowed us to develop insight into each others' differences. It's a big factor in what has helped us dispel at least some of our assumptions and the mystification of the "other." We have a long way to go, and if the distances between us grow larger, I fear that culturally, we may regress.
The thought of all those distant lands becoming once more inaccessible for most--and that our children might not have the opportunities we have had, to see so much of it, with such relative ease--is a sobering one. I'm hoping that those alternative energies come on line soon and that we're able to make the transition without too many bumps and skips. I don't really know if that's actually plausible, but as I say, one can hope!
Update: Mum's broadcast has been moved into next week--either Wednesday or Thursday, I believe.
::Posted by Anduril Elessar @ 6:03 PM::
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