Dear Editor:
Nothing new under the sun, claimed Ecclesiastes, and maybe, then, a long time ago, when life crept along at a slower pace, there wasn’t. But there is now, in Hoboken. When you walk down the street, you see every other person walking along carrying a drink of some kind. You didn’t see that a few years ago.
What’s next? Are we going to be so rushed, so starved of time that we’ll have to walk down the sidewalk eating our lunch? A slave, under a cruel master, had to hurry: “Back to work, varlet!” and if he dawdled too long the lash reminded him of his low station in life.
Is our station so low that we can’t sit and relax a few minutes to enjoy our coffee or tea, and perhaps exchange a few words with a fellow taxpayer? Perhaps wonder why our city taxes are so scandalously high?
It used to be fun to ride the train across the country, but no more. Each train had a club car where one could have a drink or two and a smoke and be sure to partake of conversation in this convivial atmosphere. People exchanging news, opinions and ideas; the backbone of democracy.
In George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, Big Brother made sure his subjects did not engage in conversation. The slave-citizen got his “news” from the State TV, not from the grapevine.
Often as not (something else new) that person walking along with a drink in one hand will have a phone in the other. One sees a couple in a café, talking not to each other, but texting on their phones. The more time-saving gadgets we have, the less time we have for each other.
Young people, coming up, will not know there was another way of living.
We are supposed to celebrate all this new stuff under the sun, because they allow us to “multi-task”. In the days not long ago, one had plenty of time to task, or not to task, one had unhurried time to waste.
But one should not be a complete Luddite. The Internet is something new under the sun which Big Brother hates and wants to control because his tax-slaves do not get from his TV their daily dose of lies. “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
T. Weed