Back To the Present

Back to the Future is officially in the past. Why does everything look basically the same since the eighties?Although as people we have changed. Yoga wasn’t a huge fad until now, either was Greek yogurt. Netflix wasn’t around. There were hardly any shootings back then. Terrorism was a thing that happened in other countries.Are we more evolved or less evolved? A lot of us spend all day in front of a computer. Most of us cannot live without our phones. I sometimes exclusively get my news from Facebook and comedy central. We text each other while in the same room, we call each other on our smart phones while we are in the same house. We think going on Facebook is socializing. We think Tinder is getting out there and meeting people.There is a black president, there might be a woman president. However things are not that much better for African Americans or women. Our heroes like Michael Jackson and Robin Williams are dead. They died too young. Our favorite father, Bill Cosby, is a rapist. Superman ended up in a wheelchair.What does this all say about our culture? Are we any better off now? I don’t know. Are we worse off? Maybe…There is definitely a spiritual movement that seems new. Or maybe it’s waaay old and it just seems new. People are more concerned about the environment, and the environment is waay worse.You can binge watch a show, which studies prove can be unhealthy and lead to depression. We online date now…which is maybe good, maybe bad. I guess this future of ours is all based on the Internet. It’s funny when the Internet first came out in like the early 2000’s my boss would tell me it was weird that I never surfed it. He didn’t understand that I would rather surf my imagination than other people’s.I stare into space sometimes, and daydream. I space out. I guess this place is what we could officially call Ninaland. A lot of things have changed in Ninaland since the eighties. I used to watch a lot of T.V., now I rarely watch it. Scooby-Doo and Three’s Company were some of my favorites. I’m taller now.I like myself better now then I did when I was a kid. I have better friends. I realized I’ve been battling a mental illness my entire life.I’m more outgoing now; I was shy as a kid. I’m probably happier now than I was when I was a kid. I know kids are supposed to be happy, but for some of us that is a myth. But what is happy? Are people happier now, in the future? Did we by any chance find the secret to happiness?Are we any closer to being content than we were thirty years ago?It’s possible we are less content. Back in the day, The Cosby Show entertained everyone. Now we have 500 channels, everyone is on a different channel, watching a different show and somehow none of it is as satisfying as a good episode of Cosby. Now you can’t even watch that show without feeling sick to your stomach.But you can definitely watch news shows with all the women accusing Cosby lined up and ready to talk.Are you ready to talk? Talk about what you’ve learned in all these years. Talk about what it’s like to be alive in a future that seems like a repeat of the past. We all expected flying cars by now, GM…What exactly are they doing, isn’t that the reason the government bailed them out? So they could invent new shit. Cars look exactly the same; houses look exactly the same. Life looks kinda the same too.What exactly is going to change thirty years from now? The Internet cannot possibly get any faster. We might have 3D computers, but that’s just inevitable.What about us? How are we gonna change? Are we gonna follow our real dreams more often? Are we going to sing a little louder, dance a little longer? Are we going to be ourselves more often?Will we recognize ourselves in the mirror? Will plastic surgery be really cheap and very common? Will the Kardashians still be famous for nothing? Will they have done something by then?In thirty years I will be seventy. That is absolutely shocking to me. I can’t even think about it for too long. Will I look back on this blog post and think I am an idiot?Thirty years ago I was ten years old. I was shockingly stupid at that age. I thought sex was two people kissing for a long time. Because on T.V. that’s as far as sex ever went. I thought Family Ties was the best show on T.V. Michael J. Fox was my hero. Now he’s very sick and still my hero.Back to the Future was probably one of my favorite movies of that time, besides The Breakfast Club. Two very different movies. I’d like to see The Breakfast Club now; I’d like to see some adults trapped in a room with nothing to do but talk to each other.Now we are not as ‘futuristic’ and cool as we thought we would be. I thought for sure we’d find aliens by now, but we can’t even find our own damn selves, much less life on other planets. We found water on mars, and that was a monumental discovery. That’s all they can come up with? Water.Finding water on Mars is about as exciting as finding air on Mars.It’s still not totally OK to be gay. Transsexual is still weird and frowned upon. Black people have some of the same problems, especially with the police. Women are still not getting paid as much as men. Human trafficking is probably bigger than it ever was. Child marriage is still going on in this world. So is genital mutilation.Instead of Russia, we hate China and South Korea. Instead of the Japanese we hate Muslims. Instead of accusing people of communism we accuse them of terrorism.However, maybe we haven’t changed that much. But the millennials,, those coming of age after the year 2000, are a little different. I teach them in my classes and I’ve observed some interesting differences.(Oh Gosh, BREAKING NEWS: Michael J. Fox was arrested for insider sports betting. There we go, another hero, shattered. Just a day after we celebrated Back to the Future day. What a pity.)Anyways, speaking of the millennials, they are a little different than us old folk. I asked them to do a debate in one class about the legalization of gay marriage, one kid was like, “It’s a stupid debate; no one is against it.” So we did an informal poll, no one was against it. At least no one admitted to being against it. Same thing with the legalization of Marijuana, almost no one was opposed.I think we may have created kids who are more open-minded than our old asses. These new kids are gonna rule the world one day. Yes, they are a little more entitled then we were at their age. Yes they are addicted to technology. But they are also a little more aware of the diversity of the world.That is a great accomplishment, people.If he have anything to look forward to, it’s this new generation.nina