“It is often said that one has but one life to live, but that’s nonsense. For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.” Louis L’Amour from Education of a Wandering Man, published by Bantam, and featured in the Points To Ponder column of the July 1994 issue of the Reader’s Digest magazine. The author certainly gave us an opportunity to experience what it might have been like to live in the Old West.
We are turning to the “artificial” in increasing numbers. We spend an increasing amount of time on the Internet. In fact, a whole new generation would much rather spend their free time in that “virtual” world than in the “real” world. They are more comfortable exploring cyberspace than they are their own space in the backyard.
This past weekend, there was an interview with the great wildlife artist, Robert Bateman, in the Saturday edition of the Toronto Sun newspaper. He was reminiscing about all the times spent in the outdoors with his family. He also remembered the many times he went exploring on his own. I did the same thing, too. I can’t tell you how many weekends I spent with friends exploring the countryside around where I grew up. My friends and I left no stone unturned, no woods unexplored, no creek and stream undiscovered. We were familiar with all of nature in every season. There was no virtual world in those days, unless you count Saturday morning cartoons or the books we read. If you wanted to escape the “real” world, you picked up a book and got lost in the make-believe world of a writer’s imagination. At night, we looked up and marveled at the stars in the heavens. There wasn’t a lot of light pollution in those days. There were very few lit billboards and tall buildings were mostly dark at night. Busy thoroughfares, like Yonge Street, still had their marquees lit, but the harsh glare seemed to fade just a few blocks away. Now, instead of being outside in the warm sunshine, we want to get lost in a virtual world, lit by all the gaudy neon lights of the new “Wild West.”
In the Star Trek universe, the crew was entertained in a virtual world on-board the spaceship. It was called the “Holo-Deck,” a room where they could create any setting or world and interact with computer-generated figures. If they wanted to climb a mountain, they could do so, the simulation created was that “real.” In one of the series, the captain interacted with a computer-generated Leonardo da Vinci. She sought his counsel when she needed a fresh perspective on a problem. In another series, the chief engineer needed to run a simulation concerning the engines. The only safe environment to do this was a “simulated” one. He could “conjure up” the engine’s original designers from information in the database and figure out how to get around a problem before testing it out on the real engines. That’s a virtual world that seems intriguing to me. In our world, “virtual reality” is very rudimentary. We’re a long way from being immersed in a false environment that for all intents and purposes feels ”real.” We see headgear being worn to simulate a virtual world for the eyes. One game system allows the user to wield a “wand” to simulate sporting activities. I think I’d much prefer to play the game itself outdoors. I’m not against technology, so let’s clear that up right away. I just think our world outdoors offers more adventures than any man-made environment.
In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Picard had a book under glass in his ready-room off the ship’s main bridge. In Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future, books had all but disappeared. All the literature of the world was available to be read on a computer screen, but there was something tactile that the captain missed by not holding a book in his hands. That book was held in high esteem. For the life of me, I can’t remember what the book was. If a reader to this blog remembers, I’d like to know. Send me a note…
Books are still the most sought-after product on the Internet. In today’s world, we haven’t completely done away with one in favor of the other. Not yet, anyway. 26,312 people in 48 countries were surveyed by Neilsen Online. 48 percent of users of the Internet had bought books online. Some authors have produced e-books available to be read only on your computer. But we seem to still favor holding the book in our hands, as Captain Picard did. The source for those figures was BBC News and the Thursday January 31st, 2008, issue of The Globe and Mail’s Social Studies column. Books are still a virtual world that most of this world seems truly comfortable with.
In one segment of my radio program tonight, I discuss how we love to get so caught up in a book that we’ll even stay up through a long night of reading just to find out how the story ends and how our fictional friends fare. We know the characters aren’t real, but if the story is compelling enough, we just can’t put the book down. It reminds me of this quote: “Books say, ‘She did this because.’ Life says, “She did this.’ Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren’t. I’m not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people’s lives, never your own.” Julian Barnes from Flaubert’s Parrot, published by Knopf, and featured in the Points To Ponder column of the December 1997 Reader’s Digest.
Saturday night, we turned off our lights for an hour with cities all across Canada and the rest of the world. It was dubbed Earth Hour. Even Google went dark, so to speak. They offered a black background while Earth Hour was underway. For those who couldn’t stay offline for the hour, they were reminded of what was going in all over the world by the world’s most popular search-engine.
At our house, we dimmed the outside security lights and lit candles inside. I went outside after it got truly dark and noticed the streetlights were still lit in our community. I guess for purely safety reasons the city could not switch them off. I really believed they would. I looked up and saw the familiar constellations of stars overhead. Maybe it was just my imagination but I believed they seemed brighter, more vibrant. More stars seemed visible than normal while I was outside. There was still enough light pollution that it was unlike the great blackout some years back. Maybe it’s been awhile since I’ve actually taken the time to really look up that made me think that there were more stars visible. I was the only one out on my street, though. I thought others might come out for a peek, but I was alone.
I watched CNN later that night and saw people in other cities counting down the seconds to Earth Hour as they might count down the seconds to New Year’s. One of the goals was to save about 5% of electricity. I would imagine some of that percentage was saved. The other was to raise awareness of global climate change. If this generation was truly comfortable in the outdoors, they may have seen some of those changes first-hand.
“The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.” John Berger from Ways of Seeing, published by Viking Penguin, and featured in the Points To Ponder column of the July 1994 issue of the Reader’s Digest.
***
Don Jackson
