Irrelevancy in the New World Order

Recently, it was suggested to me that perhaps a 'sans serif' font may be better for certain types of correspondence.  The implication was that, in certain fields of endeavor, suspicions will be aroused by a slight whiff of creativity.

Really.

My inward response was a mental yawn and a 'Screw you', albeit with little malice.  I had the same feeling as the time I was told by a job recruiter that having too great a breadth of experience made it harder to get hired.  I didn't feel as pissed off this time.  Tired, yes.

By a chance encounter on the internet tonight, I was reduced to tears at the sight of prayer flags flapping in the wind, up on what appeared to be a mountain.  These flags appeared in a video accompanied by a Buddhist prayer set to music. I couldn't tell you the translation in English, because I do not know it.  I can tell you that when I saw those flags, they were so beautiful and calming that I immediately relaxed.  It was this relaxation that made me weep, I suppose, from joy and peace and beauty.  

In turn, I meditated on the current state of my place in the universe.  I considered all that I am, all that I want to be, all the things that interest me and bring me joy.  At this point, I realized that I am flirting with irrelevancy.

In an age of 'blobitecture' buildings of high-tech glass and polymers, I want to build stone cathedrals.  I yearn for a typewriter, and maybe even a ditto machine.  The global appetite for flash and dazzle, for shiny things that curse or explode: this I do not feel in my belly. LeBron and Lindsay, I wish them well, but I won't lose sleep over not knowing the latest ego-born debacle, nor will I care.

I'm not wired for snark or trash, but I do know it sells.  Some who know me may think I am a hard-hearted man, but I lack a true killer instinct. Alas it seems the world is more interested in giving money to thuggery and mayhem, and I have no desire to be a gangsta.

Technology has given me access to things and people I may not have otherwise experienced, this is true.  I treasure much of what I have found and many whom I have met in this way.  There is a lot that leaves me cold, however, and wondering just what it is I am expected to do to survive in this culture of competition.  I most likely may always be behind the curve of the latest gadget, the latest app, the slickest new media platform.  I try sometimes to be as interested as societal pressure seems to demand of me...but I struggle to keep focus.  The amount of energy expended to be the loudest, biggest, brashest (and therefore the most relevant and profitable) astounds me.  This expenditure has an unnerving tendency to reduce people to sound bites, becoming parodies of themselves in a bizarre effort to be 'winners' who drown out the reflective quiet that might actually bring peace of mind.

I don't know how to feel, exactly, in this new world order: it wants fluency in programming language and rapid-prototyping; I want to illuminate manuscripts and be a blacksmith.  

The issue as I see it:  become relevant or fade away.  If I can create the digital equivalent of the Book of Kells and a horseshoe, perhaps relevancy won't be far behind.  Fading away, well, the thought of it makes me weary.

It makes me want to sit on a mountaintop, watching the flags, praying until the stars go out.