Yesterday I showed two kids how to make little houses out of sticks...
Yesterday I showed two kids outside my local laundromat how to make little houses out of sticks and stones. They lunged at the task and asked me endless questions about what it was they were doing. Had no one ever done such things before with these children? Is physical craft and simple acts of community building so foreign to us all now?
Where once we were self-organized via local culture, family building, nearby jobs and civic life, now we seem to be hidden inside cars, lost behind screens and passively consuming corporate products in malls populated by strangers.
Our own ability to cook, teach, entertain and contemplate the universe is taking a back seat to the mass-produced. The personal neighborhood life, where children play outdoors and grandparents watch over them from the porch and provide the occasional moral quip or encouraging hug, is giving way to isolated childhoods buried behind screens.
We have built an infrastructure where highways bypass small towns and rob them of social and economic relevance. And we've rerouted our attentions in the same way. These screens seduce 50% of our attention into ghostlike virtual communities located everywhere and nowhere. The other 50% of our attention goes to ads and corporations far from our home towns. Actual, in-the-flesh-evolution-approved community has become increasingly too difficult as many have lost the art and craft of do-it-yourself living.
The breakdown of society begins with corporations, their new fleet of mind distracting machines and governments which support the rerouting systems in our midst. Trump and the Russians are merely adding salt to the wound.
In the end we serve invisible masters. We are moving our attention, roads, and financial resources up the economic pyramid to corporations and oligarchs, not to a local biome. The gap is as much our own fault as it is those who are rigging the system.
So stop reading this entreaty my friends. Walk outside and do the unthinkable: talk to your neighbor or that bright, but equally lonely coworker in the next cubical. That is where the revolution will begin. We must reroute our spirits while rerouting our roads and wires.
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On Friday one of the young boys was dropped off by a family friend but his mom wasn't home and he didn't have keys. We talked about his football practice and then we did some math tables. I showed him the tricks of the nine times table. He asked me if he could keep the paper to show off to his mom when she got home. Yesterday his mom asked me how I got him interested in math tables. I did laugh.
All kids want is some of our time. Love what you did there 
