Glad I’m Not Young
In a culture obsessed with looking, acting, and being young I’m definitely off course and on a different road. It’s taken some time but I’m comfortable in my skin and with the circumstances of each moment as it comes along. I’m not saying I don’t care about how I look or take care of myself but I’m not on the social rollercoaster to deflect the onslaught of time on my body or try to convince anyone else that I’m not a 71-year-old man. My days aren’t driven by a desire to fill every moment with meaning or to chase an adrenalin or dopamine fix to be satisfied that I am living. I’m not trying to escape reality.
Meandering on a Vespa the the hills and dales of home provide me time to think, reflect, and enjoy the breaths I take without any weight of performance or requirement. Just me walking on the earth feeling in balance with life. And in the particular moment standing in the woods I was glad I’m not young.
Damn The New York Times
I subscribe to The New York Times. And for the past year also The Wall Street Journal. A little research project to determine how different the news is reported between a left-leaning and right-leaning legacy media outlet. I won’t bother you with the project but the executive summary goes like this:
For news their reporting is remarkably similar. Each may have a different perspective but nothing I would call manipulation or propaganda. For their opinion pages they are far apart and illuminate the left-right, liberal-conservative bias. But each are thoughtful, well-written, and are part of an intelligent discussion. I don’t always agree with things on both sides but I appreciate the perspectives.
And last, I trust both. I don’t trust politicians of any stripe, form, or identity. These media outlets are staffed with professionals and the journalists I have known in my life chase the story and not the politics. And from this comes a commitment to not get any news of any sort from social media. It’s not curated, edited, or to be trusted. And certainly nothing from the mouths of political babes.
Anyway, how this relates to the ride and escaping reality. I read a story called “Silicon Valley is Bracing for a Permanent Underclass.” Simply put, the long summary is that AI is going to rob a large swath of people of their economic leverage and relegate them to a permanent underclass and unable to make progress in the manner we have always believed in the free market.
I can’t predict if any of it will come true. But the ideas infected my mind and has me thinking. As the complexities build so does my desire to escape reality and go for a ride.
Fiddling While Rome Burns
With even a modicum of imagination and curiosity it doesn’t take long to create a dystopian world where there are more people than jobs. Granted a long term problem but with a Government that thinks in two-year re-election cycles it is beyond their ability to address in a timely fashion. But even the most conservative legislators in Congress are beginning to whisper the dreaded socialist-communist-satanic phrase “Universal Basic Income.” Never fear though. They can’t even address Social Security. Everyone reading this will be long dead and turned to dust before they can tackle that.
I’m old enough now not to be too concerned but that New York Times story got my brain rolling in a way I don’t like. Takes up too much time and energy and space in my head for no good reason. So I ride to escape reality.
Am I the only one?
The Underclass and Obsessive Music
One of the benefits of living in a more rural area is generally whatever social disasters occur they’ll start in cities. And that will give the rest of us some time to prepare. And the preparation is where the crazy begins. Buying gold actually thinking if the dollar collapses you’ll be able to go down the street and buy a quart of milk with gold. Water and bullets will likely be more valuable during the apocalypse.
What’s remarkable about this stop to take a picture was how badly I wanted to stop thinking about the ramifications of an underclass created by AI. I don’t dislike artificial intelligence but the humans developing certainly should be suspect. And it would be nice to think the Government was caring or intelligent enough to deal with it.
I think that’s where my brain snapped and started playing music. “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” by Crash Test Dummies to be exact. Loud and on repeat because the ride wasn’t helping escape reality.
Have you ever had a song in your head that will not stop? It certainly can erase everything else.
Grateful to Be Out of the Storm (Sun)
Say what you will about agriculture but it puts food on the table. Plus a lot of other stuff. And for now, even in the most industrialized parts it relies on humans and their actions. I always smile when I see these lone trees standing out in a farm field. They’re beautiful and trigger a nostalgic view of the world for me. And they reflect a decision a farmer made a long time ago when plowing with a team of mules or horses. They provided those animals shade at midday when the farmer would have lunch. There’s no reason to keep them otherwise because they eat up space that could be put into production.
I’m glad when a landowner allows them to stay. Some are nondescript. Others become iconic in a community and are mourned when lost to lightning or development.
Standing there thinking about those horses in the past I was hoping some similar human kindness remains in place as technology moves towards whatever it is going to create. I’m glad I’m not young. I don’t have the energy to embrace a brave new world. I’m grateful that I’m out of the storm and can ride to escape reality rather than have to wrestle with the unpleasantness of the kind of change that New York Times article triggered.
Maybe it’s all just a dystopian fantasy.
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I don’t ride to escape reality but use the time to either think about a problem that needs solving or chase the high. On a long stretch of road like my trip to Americade on the thruway/northway I have plenty of drone time to examine anything that requires deductive reasoning. Ah, but ariund here on twisty curves with elevation changes I need to be counter steering, examining the road for curve changes and keeping the bike in the proper gear for power requirements. None of these things are escaping reality. More like living in the moment and keeping my pulse up.
I think our approach to riding and the benefits we derive are largely the same. Especially in regard to how riding brings us into the moment. I often find myself grateful to have found my way on to two wheels. Life is richer and more exciting.
Just face it Steve, you r just an old fart like me….Thank God we r for now able to escape on two wheels..Lots here in town call me Scooter boy, well that’s about as close to a boy physically as I will ever b now. I am approaching 72 this year and really solving no world problems anymore or at least when I sat on a barstool thinking I did.. I mostly think about the big stuff now like checking to see if I’m wearing pants before going to the grocery store..Keep on riding bro. no matter the reason and for a while all in the world is fine..Dr.Don in Texas.
Well Scooter boy, the big things are important at our age. Escaping those world problems, or rather accepting that they are no longer ours to deal with, is a gift. The scooter reminds us of our immediate responsibilities of riding. Whether one calls it escape or something else, riding has a great way of putting everything in perspective.
Thanks to your insight I’ll add “pants” to my mantra of “wallet, keys, spectacles, testicles.” I want to make sure I have pants on…
Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm that’s a good song. Now it’s in my head.
It has a way of sticking in my head. Not all songs do that.
Beautiful photography, Steve. I’m convinced that nobody takes better moto pics than you do. You’ve mastered making the road stretch out behind the scooter like a ribbon, and I’ve tried to replicate it with minimal success. But it’s fun trying.
My first reaction to the title of your post was, “No, I don’t ride to escape reality.” But a reaction like that for me usually means there’s more to it that I need to unpack.
I find your independent study of the NYT and WSJ fascinating and enjoyed your take. I’d say I align with your view that serious journalists who operate in good faith can be trusted because they follow professional and ethical standards and report the facts. Interpreting those facts is important and unavoidable, part of being human and falls on a spectrum that I believe gives the overall discourse its strength. I feel similarly about the discussion of religious topics.
(I’ve noticed a pattern in my own life: my reality seems to mean a particular structure or orientation of things. Change, often disorienting and sometimes painful, inevitably arrives at the scene and serves as a reality check. Then, time and practicing acceptance seem to help me construct a new reality that I settle into. Then the pattern repeats. I think it’s called Life!)
As we have seen, politics influences big business deals that impact the news industry, and I’ve been watching many journalists go independent. I’m glad that our free market system allows these voices to continue to be heard. It’s a strength of our democracy that I may not have appreciated before, and it gives me hope.
Speaking of reality, I find riding a perfect place to ask myself the big questions in life, usually while feeling more grateful than usual for the beauty around me. A song that has been on repeat in my own head for the past couple of weeks is The Riddle, by Five for Fighting. God knows I don’t always have this perspective, but it’s something I can aspire to.
Thank you for the kind words about the photography Andy. Beyond the satisfaction I get from the process of making pictures I find them valuable as touchstones of my life. It’s easy to forget so much that I’m glad I have an archive of remembrances here. I have to say I see a marked difference in my photography of the past couple years since almost exclusively shooting with my iPhone. It’s easy but the images lack the energy of earlier work. I’ve begun carrying a camera again but the phone is just so easy to use. It appeals to my inherent laziness.
Escaping reality. The option is always there but I’ve found embracing reality to be more productive and a reliable path to some daily sanity. But as you say, there are always things to unpack.
Change. Ugh. Never easy or welcome for me but the only way to acknowledge that life isn’t static.
I agree with you that riding is the perfect place for me to wrestle with the big questions. Not every ride is like that. Most are just enjoyable and satisfying and recharge my batteries. But sometimes when something is weighing on me it is the right place to ponder.
I just listened to “The Riddle.” It’s a beautiful song. And it brings with it a reminder of the beauty and sometimes sad reality of life. Thanks for sharing it.
This post made me think too much so this is what I’ve determined. I ride to find reality, not to escape it. The road under my tires and the wind in my face are real. Most of social media is illusion.
I have been lied to by journalists for so long that I no longer trust any of them to the degree that you seem to. Andy is right about the rise of individual journalists who are less beholden to any corporate mandates, but even they often succumb to envy or greed and their biases start to show through.
Many years ago I attended a local organizational meeting, then later read the “news” article in the papers. That reporter and I must have been at two different meetings. You are wise to subscribe to newspapers that represent both sides. For more extreme viewpoints try watching Fox news and MSNow for a while. Each lives in its own world and neither will ever give you the whole story.
I feel the same way about the experience while riding. I may escape something but never reality. I wish I felt social media was an illusion but man it drives so much of society for an illusion. I think of it more like a lie. Or an incomplete truth.
The challenge for each of us I think is learning who or what to trust. There’s just no way to know most things first hand. So we’re left with the challenge of sorting things out if we’re smart. Or just drinking the media Kool-Aid closest to our beliefs. I don’t watch any TV news. Everything I embrace is in print or on a screen in text. The difference between a 90 second story and a 10 thousand word news piece is striking. It’s easier to find the whole story.
You’re right though, everything has a bias. But knowing that to start with allows me to bring a keen eye to what I’m reading. Any time I read a source telling me that they hold the truth I am immediately suspect. And I appreciate how the WSJ and NYT clearly indicates what pieces are opinion.
More and more I pay less and less attention to the news. Not much I can do about anything.
I find nostalgic thought to be, primarily, a desire to force change to stop. It is particularly Quixotic in Pennsylvania (“Penn’s Woods”) as there were no large expanses of tilled land connected by winding roads originally. That was all a disruptive technology brought on by entrepreneurs who saw opportunity and “seized the day”. All the nostalgia seekers never (voluntarily) left Western Europe. Or Rome before that; or the Western Mediterranean before that. And with each passing trend of technology shift, new/desireable goods/services are developed, internal costs are reduced, new fortunes are created, fortunes unwilling to change are lost. Everything changes; but is it change for the better or worse? Who decides? What is the measure of good?
I’ll have to think a bit about the idea of nostalgic thought being a desire to force change to stop. Does quite seem right to me.
I do agree that everything changes and often for reasons hidden or dismissed. It only takes a view of Pennsylvania’s forested mountains to realize how difficult life would be to migrate westward. Entrepreneurs and governments certainly hastened the changes. History helps identify good and bad but man in the present it just seems like a political and economic crap shoot.
Who decides for sure.