My new-year resolution is to get through Tolstoy‘s monumental “War and Peace.”
The characters and ethos were deliberate and elaborating (everyone wants a piece of the inheritance while the man was dying etc….).
Visitors were announced at the gate (no intercom), received at party etc….
Tolstoy’s imperialistic people have time on their hands. We don’t. We tweet, text and retweet.
But man’s nature remains the same: greed, exhibitionist, illusion of grandeur.
Trapped in their place and time, would we be doing any better?
How much is man a product of nurture vs nature?
With chip speed doubles every 18 months and Google Kansas City SuperFast Broadband, where do we go from here (or do we wish to go on to infinity?).
The I-pod cannot get smaller (Shuffle).
A tweet cannot be shorter.
If someone could think of something to debunk Facebook and YouTube, they probably would.
Faster, more efficient and more savings. All fine. But that doesn’t explain Newtown, 9/11 and gang rape in India. (as of this edit, it has just happened again, this time, to a Swiss couple).
Stuff that Taleb coined “black swan” in human nature.
It’s a vicious cycle. We think like this because we are taught to reason, to ask question (Socrates). But then we are inside the system, like cog in the wheel, unable to have the bird-eye’s view, to see the weakest link.
With new Congress sworn in this week, I sincerely wish the freshman class have fresh eyes, and hopefully, committed hearts.
May they live out their terms and their years with honor and worthy of our votes. Just hope that while they tweet, they would remember Tolstoy. We still live reflexively as cavemen, with Black Swan and blind spot. Our blindness is built- in, and should not be viewed as a weakness. Just is. (no one has ever seen their eyes with their own eyes). But then, we need someone to point that out. We need a team. A partner. Someone who is both prophetic, yet pastoral. Condemn and console. Yes, we are imperfect products of our times. Just as Tolstoy’s people, of theirs.
Thang Nguyen 555 
This is so true! We were sitting with our 23 yr old daughter at dinner and basically sat there watching her text, check Words with Friends and other things on her smart phone. If the phone was so smart, it would know when she has spent too much time connected and auto shut off on her. Whatever happened to the art of the conversation? Of course I can’t say too much. Today I told my husband we should think about getting a Pinterest and Twitter account set up. … sigh.