The More Things Change, The More Things Change

July 14, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

It’s hard to knock the French. What with their incredible baguettes and that nifty decision to call potatoes the apples of the earth. But they got it wrong when it comes to change. From where I’m sitting their expression ought to be: “The more things change, the more things change.”

Because I see change. I feel change. I experience change. Everywhere.

Like the words we use. Over time, some of them slip away. They die.

In the hustle and bustle that is life today, we don’t have time for complicated words. Especially words that describe things, but don’t sell them.

That came to me this morning as I was thinking about Bob B. Bob, a retired teacher and street performer, loves to read. He reads poetry. Pretty much every morning he brings a poetry book to Fuel. You just won’t find as many poetry readers today as you would fifty years ago, when many a young person would carry a dog-earred copy of Gary Snyder around, or Ferlinghetti, and some were brave enough to tackle Ezra Pound.

Aside from those slightly snooty literary critics, does any ordinary person know what the heck Ezra Pound was talking about? Or why?

Anyway, as I thought of Bob, the word “erudite” came to mind. And just as quickly I realized you could go weeks these days and never hear the word “erudite.”

Yesterday, my friend Patricia referred to dusk as “the gloaming.” Pat’s got a highly developed, old-fashioned sense of style and aesthetics. She loves beautiful things and lovely language. But talk about a word rising from the dead. “Gloaming” makes “erudite” seem everyday.

If you don’t see the change, maybe you’re not looking closely enough. Nowadays, people prefer to create stupid words rather than resurrect perfectly useful old ones. Like “Lenoxology.” Only a tone-deaf ad agency would foist “Lenoxology” on us. So terribly ironic. You can mow Edith Wharton’s lawn, re-paint her house, and try to entice the tourists to visit her Mount, but I guarantee you she’s been screaming at night in the Salon ever since she’s heard her beloved Lenox linked to “ology.”

As for more change less better: take privacy. Once it was important to people, especially conservatives. They fought to preserve privacy. Against the unnecessary, inappropriate intrusion of government into our private lives. Now we dispense with privacy in a heartbeat just to be “safe.” From “illegals,” “criminals” and worst of all, from “terrorists.”

Can you believe the government listened in on the private telephone calls of our servicemen and women calling home from Iraq and Afghanistan. That corporate watchers surveil the emails and browsing habits of all those who take a moment to remember they have a life that exists beyond the cubicle. God forbid they indulge the impulse to buy a blender on Amazon. Or cancel a dinner date on company time.

We surrender privacy just to able to tote around our smartphones. The “they” that you don’t want to believe is out there, can if they care, find exactly where you are just by accessing your smartphone. Think of your iPhone as your own private, pocket drone. With texting. So not only do “they” know where you are, but what you’re thinking. Because we’re all so quick to spill our guts either on the phone or by tapping our little secrets on virtual keyboards. Last year, law enforcement agencies got telephone companies to access your private communications 1.3 million times.

Privacy is as dead as the dodo bird. Why else would the Kardashians display their sad lives without hesitation to everyone who can afford cable TV? Always comforting to know that as bad as things are in Teaneck, New Jersey or Indianapolis, Indiana, they could be worse. Like Bruce Jenner, you could win an Olympic Gold Medal, have your face re-done, and invite the public to Kardashian hell.

At coffee shops everywhere, strangers routinely invade the public space with their private cellphone communications: complaining about husbands and wives and parents and children, their friends, or moving their money, or scheduling doctor’s appointments.

So while the best of our words slip slowly into oblivion, the commons is filled to the brim with what by and large are the most banal of other people’s secrets. Do I really need to know Marsha no longer enjoys sleeping with Stephen?

Not to mention public safety perpetually threatened by large numbers of stupid drivers transfixed by their smartphones. The other day I watched as a family almost lost their lives to a woman chirping into a cellphone held lovingly to her lips. She just barely slammed on the brakes before barreling into the crosswalk.

And then there’s George who died on June 24, 2012, the last of his species of giant tortoise. Gone. That’s change you better believe in. Because the more things change, the more things change.

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You can read more about government requests for information about cellphone calls, texts, and email by clicking here to read Eric Lichtblau’s story in the New York Times.

WASHINGTON — In the first public accounting of its kind, cellphone carriers reported that they responded to a startling 1.3 million demands for subscriber information last year from law enforcement agencies seeking text messages, caller locations and other information in the course of investigations.