{"id":556,"date":"2018-04-16T13:21:04","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T17:21:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/reverberations\/?p=556"},"modified":"2018-04-16T13:21:04","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T17:21:04","slug":"so-why-bother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/reverberations\/2018\/04\/16\/so-why-bother\/","title":{"rendered":"SO WHY BOTHER?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>by JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cThe future does not belong to the faint hearted, it belongs to the brave\u201d &#8211; Ronald Reagan<br \/>\n<\/em><br \/>\nOne quarter of the internet is pornography<\/p>\n<p>Cyber bullying is on the rise<br \/>\nIt seems dark, pointless<br \/>\nAll so\u2026 fake<br \/>\nFake friends, fake likes, fake\u2026 everything<br \/>\nWhat ever happened to talking over the phone?<br \/>\nSo why bother<br \/>\nThe phone is practically used for only gossip<br \/>\nSpreading rumors, harming one another<br \/>\nYou can even have sex over the phone<br \/>\nIt seems fake, you\u2019re not even talking to the real person<br \/>\nWhat ever happened to sharing in hearing stories over the radio?<br \/>\nSo why bother<br \/>\nThe radio\u2026 it\u2019s not even real<br \/>\nThey make up half the noises they use<br \/>\nYou know that, right?<br \/>\nThe horse trot? Smacking tap shoes on a table<br \/>\nThe fake static? It\u2019s just tin foil<br \/>\nIt\u2019s so cheap, just share a real story among family<br \/>\nWhy do you have to import it from some stranger<br \/>\nLittle orphan annie, probably part of the damn soviets<br \/>\nWe should just stick to the paper, at least it\u2019s real<br \/>\nSo why bother?<br \/>\nYou read the paper?<br \/>\nIt disconnects us, draws us away<br \/>\nWe\u2019re too caught up in our crossword puzzles to even notice an oncoming car<br \/>\nWhat ever happened to getting news the old fashioned way?<br \/>\nAt least then it was more personal, there was a human element to it<br \/>\nNow, it\u2019s just lines on pulp<br \/>\nThere\u2019s no imagination, just\u2026 the facts<br \/>\nI remember listening to the telegram, a proper conversation<br \/>\nSo why bother?<br \/>\nThe telegram is an invasion, I swear on it<br \/>\nBeeps coming through to the house? No thank you<br \/>\nI\u2019ll know about the impending tornado when it gets here, and I\u2019ll like it that way<br \/>\nI don\u2019t need some stranger beeping at me from new york, when I\u2019m living in Kansas<br \/>\nAnd to learn a whole new alphabet? Hell no!<br \/>\nI\u2019ll just stick to my letters, thank you<br \/>\nThis whole telegram is a whole load of bull<br \/>\nBack in my day, we read real books<br \/>\nSo why bother?<br \/>\nBooks?<br \/>\nWhat a load of malarkey<br \/>\nThe common man will never read, that\u2019s for the upper class<br \/>\nYou think you\u2019re real slick, huh? Thinking you\u2019ve made it<br \/>\njust because you got your grubby little hands on a real book?<br \/>\nI don\u2019t care what new \u201cprinting press\u201d has been invented,<br \/>\nit\u2019s a fad, it\u2019ll be over soon, and we\u2019ll be forgotten as always<br \/>\nWe\u2019re not the wealthy, my boy. We\u2019re the forgotten<br \/>\nThe static of history<br \/>\nBooks are for people who matter<br \/>\nSo put that shit down and quit dreaming<br \/>\nBack in my day, we didn\u2019t even have books,<br \/>\nwe just read the bible, and that\u2019s all<br \/>\nI wish we could go back to the simple days,<br \/>\nwhen we read simple versus<br \/>\nSo why bother<br \/>\nThe written word inspires forgetfulness in its beholder<br \/>\nIf you really care about your knowledge, you\u2019d remember,<br \/>\ninstead of letting it spill out, like it\u2019s nothing<br \/>\nKnowledge is something to be earned,<br \/>\nit doesn\u2019t just belong to everyone<br \/>\nThe written word breaks that rule, allows the simple man<br \/>\nto facts outside his reality and comprehension<br \/>\nThere will be a breakdown in the order of society<br \/>\nIt will turn on its head<br \/>\nI remember the days when we remembered everything<br \/>\nwe needed, like good, honest people<br \/>\nSo why bother<br \/>\nFor everyone of those, there is a Ben Carson,<br \/>\na little kid from the hood who made it, tooth and nail,<br \/>\nto become a neurosurgeon. Or a Sherman Alexie,<br \/>\nwho\u2019s told he\u2019ll never make it out of the reservation.<br \/>\nBut by breaking that expectation, he got through.<br \/>\nOr a Syrian refugee, always told that because they were a girl,<br \/>\nthey would never amount, and now they are learning to code,<br \/>\nbuild from chaos, a new order in which they have the power.<br \/>\nOf course, all these individuals are entering a lake,<br \/>\nwhere what what seems to surface is always the least dense,<br \/>\nbits of fluff, like the easy things in life, where pointless literature,<br \/>\nthe meaningless joke, the self obsessed selfie lie.<br \/>\nSo why bother? You bother because with each revolution,<br \/>\nthere comes a chance for everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by JAMES \u201cThe future does not belong to the faint hearted, it belongs to the brave\u201d &#8211; Ronald Reagan One quarter of the internet is pornography Cyber bullying is on the rise It seems dark, pointless All so\u2026 fake Fake friends, fake likes, fake\u2026 everything What ever happened to talking over the phone? So why [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":624,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/reverberations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/reverberations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/reverberations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/reverberations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/624"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/reverberations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/reverberations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":557,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/reverberations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556\/revisions\/557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/reverberations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/reverberations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/reverberations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}