The NOW Culture

I don't remember how long ago it was. I think it must have been 20 or 30 years ago that a professor from Harvard called the culture of the "blacks" in America a NOW culture, a culture of the moment, a culture of immediate gratification.

It's strange but many academics seemed to have turned a blind eye to the current culture or to have just accepted the new culture.

NOW, there are many good things about the current culture. Internet banking is a miracle. I can lower costs by buying through the internet. I can preserve fuel. I have less dependence on vehicles or tools that carry me to places.

BUT, NOW culture assumes that there is a permanent moment that houses all moments. NOW culture, as far as it is driven by a desire for endless pleasure, erases memory and even tries to erase all pain.

In another sense, NOW culture is the burning moment... it is where things happen.

It is not like the internet created the NOW culture. Whether it is instant messaging, twitter, or other forms of immediate communication... it was really there before in phone calls, rushed meetings, etc.

ALSO, NOW culture is about sacrificing the person. The person is tired, she takes a drug to sharpen her mind. We'll fix her later. BUT the human soul never gets fixed. Everything is about the act and the performance. People can break apart. Their morals can disappear.

I was myself very frustrated with NOW culture when the North Korean nuclear crisis hit the airwaves. The first time it hit, everyone I knew asked me about North Korea as if I was North Korean. I didn't know much so I didn't say much. The second time the nuclear crisis hit the airwaves, I saw it on ABC TV with Diane Sawyer. She read a text that presented the crisis as if it were the first time it happened. This time, it was the son of the former dictator threatening the US with the possibility of nuclear war. Only later was I able to understand such threats as a "phallus" of Chinese agenda.

To look again, In Saudi Arabia, the Royal family made a deal with the fundamentalist religious leaders of Saudi Arabia not to bother them if they promised not to assassinate the royal family. This is a deal not to bother the terrorists. This is never mentioned in Media. Neither did the Media really attribute the right amount of blame to all the Saudi Arabian terrorists who were part of 9/11. Nor is it ever mentioned in Media that the the US may have sold weapons of Mass Destruction to the United Emirates.