Illustration by Carl Friedrich Deiker (1875)

ALAN writes:

Is there no escape from the drivel of human chattering? And could that question ever be more apropos than in this year of propaganda, revolution, electioneering, and the Great Flu Fraud?

These thoughts came to mind when I read a column Chicago newspaperman Bob Greene wrote twenty years ago about walking along the beach in Florida. He had been doing that for more than fifty years, since he was a boy.  He enjoyed it immensely. He walked alone, but he knew he was not alone. The Gulf, the beach, the sky, the silence, the sounds of night were always there for him to see, to hear, to absorb, and to appreciate.

He wrote about that experience in sharp contrast to the busy-ness and transience of men and women chattering about this or that political candidate.

He preferred the beach and the ocean. As far as I am concerned, there would be no contest. He was right.

The older I got, the more respect I have for nature and the less for modern Americans.

It was years and years ago when I concluded that there is no human invention for which I have less use than television.  During the early weeks of the Great Flu Fraud last spring, I decided to see whether I could find anything worth listening to on AM radio.  I was looking for some evidence—some tiny trace—of reason and old-fashioned American common sense.  I couldn’t find it.

Tuning from one radio station to another along the spectrum, I heard endless chattering, pandering, the sorriest excuses for human speech I have ever heard, advertisements, noise called music, endless recitation of telephone numbers, more advertisements, sports talk, hip talk, cool talk, fast talk, and feminist talk, still more advertisements, and guarantees that I could be saved by joining this group or could improve my life by calling that telephone number.  It rapidly reached a point where I could hear more merit in the static between stations than in the endless chattering and drivel.

Radio was one of the three cultural forces that philosopher Richard Weaver called “The Great Stereopticon” in his 1948 book Ideas Have Consequences (Chapter Five).  And it was particularly useful for telling lies, he noted.  The effect of The Great Stereopticon, he argued, was to propel Americans along a path toward increased stupidity, sensation-seeking, and degeneracy—mostly with their enthusiastic approval.  Imagine what he would think if he were here today and could see how The Great Stereopticon has been made even more powerful by the addition of television, round-the-clock entertainment, the Internet, and millions of personal screens.

I can easily understand why Bob Greene preferred the beauty, the quiet, and the mystery of the ocean over and against the endless imbecilities spoken by human beings.

I cannot enjoy the ocean here in St. Louis. But I find serenity in quiet corners of city parks with only the company of ducks, owls, geese, and other feathered friends.  If they talk, they talk to make a point.  Then they stop talking and remain quiet.  Could modern Americans ever do that?

As the birds go about the important business in their lives, do they chirp about the joys of diversity?  Do they practice multiculturalism?  They do not.  They stick with their own kind, thus proving that they are smarter by far than the modern American variety of homo saps.

One day recently I sat on a park bench inches from a lake to watch the ducks put on their show for free.  They never fail to satisfy.  At one moment I glanced to one side and saw out of the corner of my eye what appeared to be a white statue a short distance behind my bench.  That seemed odd, I thought, because I did not remember seeing a statue when I sat down.  And indeed it was not a statue.  It was an egret, 3½ foot tall and with beautiful white plumage, standing there in the grass a few yards behind me, perfectly quiet, motionless, and patient.  On some days he likes to perch on a branch 30 feet above the lake.  As he watches the silly antics of the homo saps on the walkways below, I like to imagine he is thinking to himself, “Lord, what fools those creatures are.”

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