A friend recently bought a vehicle equipped with Onstar. It’s an excellent tool and safety device, no doubt, and although I don’t have a vehicle that includes this service, it sounds interesting. I also don’t have a portable GPS – Global Positioniing System for satellite ground navigation. But do I really need it? Getting lost and trying to find my way around is nearly the only exciting thing that happens to me anymore and one of the only sports where I can still compete. I have a pigeon's sense of direction. Margaret, my wife, calls me The Pathfinder.
Mine and Margaret’s biggest monthly outlay is electronic communications including a cable TV and internet provider, plus MLB.TV package, cell phones and land phone line, etc. This world is becoming so technical what with Handheld PC/Phones, GPS’s in cars, cell phones, OnStar, etc. what’s next, personal satellites? And what if you prefer that Big Brother and the Brownshirts don’t know exactly where you are? What if you cherish privacy and your freedom? (BTW, Big Brother and the Brownshirts would be a great name for a rock band. )
That’s right – freedom. Freedom from TV, Computers, cell phones, GPI devices (Ground Point Indicators), etc. Have we become slaves to technology (the correct answer is yes)? Are our lives truly richer for all the microwaves, shortwaves , etc. that bombard our bodies and our brains every second of our lives? Or is there a danger? Has anyone ever read The Zapping of America?
I have one friend of substantial means who refuses to have cable TV, a computer or a cell phone and I’m beginning to see the value of this decision. He refuses to succumb to herd mentality in other ways as well. He values his freedom and his privacy. He is also environmental/energy conscious and a conservative in the original sense of the word. Women in huge SUV’s with a cell phone permanently attached to their ear is his biggest peeve.
How many of us are addicted and have lost the biggest percentage of our lives to the computer? And how many people have lost their lives to vehicle accidents caused by cell phones? Five young female students died just last week. There are two deaths that are glaring examples right here in our community just in the last couple months.
And what happens when these systems fail? What happens if an enemy targets the critical communications satellites we rely on now for nearly everything? Is there one survival system now integral to that communications system that is not threatened as a result? Food supply and distribution? Fuel and transportation? Emergency healthcare? Water? You name it.
Remember this. When the Native Americans were introduced to and became reliant on the technology brought by European invaders, over a few short decades they lost the ability to produce weapons and other essentials. Their survival skills diminished dramatically and they became almost totally reliant on trade goods and food produced by others. They were enslaved by an advanced technology and unable to survive without it. You’ve been warned.
I recently wrote that an old friend who lives in San Francisco has neither cell phone nor computer and still relies on a “rotary” dial phone. How retro is that?
I can dig it. I’ve got one of the old replicas hooked up in a spare bedroom. It’s the pedestal kind with the speaker cone and the ear piece separate – remember? Our number when I was a tad was BR (Bridge) 2439 or something like that. I can’t recall. Remember Junior Sample’s used car lot number from Hee Haw? BR-549. It spawned a popular country group by the same name.
Speaking of old cord sets, my son lives in a rural area with spotty cell coverage and recently when their power failed so did their cordless land line phones and their cells wouldn’t connect. Everyone should have one of the old cord phones available for power failures. Those will still work when the power is off since they are powered by a low voltage signal that comes through the phone line..
It also helps to have a battery operated radio, a gas or kerosene lamp or both, and a small gas camping stove. Of course that list should include extra white or bottle gas. We also include a gas powered generator which is very nice when the power fails during either cold or hot weather. But those are all examples of advanced technology.
Technology is not all bad and might make life easier and more conveinient on some levels but when you become so reliant on it that you can no longer provide for your basic survival needs for lack of an energy source - you are in big trouble when you lose that energy source through accident or when those who control the source decide to hold you hostage.
Sort of like the gasoline situation we now face. If there ever was a mass war and global shutdown of food and energy distribution, the Amish with their horses and wagons and self-sufficient lifestyles would look like the smartest and most blessed people on earth.
To illustrate the point there is a story I like to tell about being in the recording studio when a storm caused the power to go off. Hargus "Pig" Robbins, a well known blind piano player here in Nashville, was on the keyboards and when the windowless studio went black it was like being in a cave. We were all helpless. After about fifteen minutes the drummer on the session, Buddy Harmon, called out to Pig saying he had to piss and would Pig please lead him to the restroom. It was funny at the time but is a prime example of how helpless we can all become when the tecnology we come to depend on is suddenly taken away or witheld to hold us hostage.
Better get out your old scout manual and start learning how to survive with just sticks and rocks and the animal and plantlife at hand - just in case.
