001_ what is the show

This is an excerpt from the audio introduction of the podcast _bandwidth: coast to coast

Do you ever wish it would all just quiet down?

All the chatter, noise of the world, ever wish one day you’d wake up, go to your platform addiction of choice, and find that the world just isn’t on fire anymore?

You find out, that all the worries about all the things constantly streaming into you.

The Gross ignorance of fundamental problems with our society, economy, way of life.

Entrenchment of ideologies, ever more sinking into a tribe of your choosing.

Drug abuse, gluttony, attention seeking.

All if it, one day just stopped and went away.

What if that happened?

Sure seems to be what’s going to happen if i just buy whatever is being sold by my team.

“Look all we need to do is just get them out, collect ourselves and it’s all gonna be fine. This is the new normal, but we’ll get back to normal. It’s gonna all be fine.”

Maybe it’s due to my less than typical life experiences, and upbringing, but I’ve thought about this question a lot before the pandemic, really all my life.

The fuck is normal?

Seems to me that the ball is always moving on what’s normal, don’t ya think?

How long ago was it that when two people with matching sets of the same chromosomes wanted to be married, it wasn’t considered normal?

I was working in an office when the supreme court ruled gay marriage legal federally, and i sat not but five feet away from a colleague who felt the need to keep his orientation under wraps.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t care if someone is gay or straight, if I need to know that information or not. But what I do care about, and what I cared about when my colleague told me, was that they felt the need to be quiet about it.

They felt the need to have a hushed tone, speak softly, and try to hide their excitement at being able to openly express to someone who they are.

That, was not that long ago folks.

And things are changing faster still, than they ever have, and our culture and law, like I cited above, is only one part of the equation.

Technology, and the pace of moral conundrums that it brings, is only getting faster, more complicated and harder to see.

Kennedy gave his Rice University speech was from 58 years ago, how much has changed since then culturally, technologically and governmentally?

Hell, Kennedy refers to the whole species of homo sapiens, as man. That’s not something we would do today, but that doesn’t take away from the truths he spoke.

Here’s two things that are strange, but real:

The Truth, the real capital T truth, almost never really exists

It exists, as long as you are satisfied with the assumptions made at whatever point you choose to stop.

For as long as you are ok with stopping, and no longer asking, well why does that happen?

The sun rises every day.

That satisfies it. Every day that any Sapien has been alive, the sun has risen.

What if we dive deeper than that, what is the sun rising?

How long has our collection of elements been circulating around this nuclear reactor?

Well, in one very real dimension, the Truth is, the sun won’t rise every day, it hasn’t always and one day it will end.

Here’s the other half of that duality; when the Truth does exist in the sense that you’re allowing it to, it exists concurrently with multiple other facets, many often in conflict with another

One can be happy, and sad at the same time. A benefit over here, can be a degradation over there.

Hell, this is being recorded right now in no doubt the best time to be a sapien from both a safety and ease of living than ever before.

It is also, outside of times of extreme climatic events, the most depressing time to be a Sapien. Anxiety, depression, despair, in the long tail course of the life of our species, this is an incredibly saddening time to be alive.

We have more ways to be connected, but never felt so alone.

We have all the world’s knowledge at our finger tips, but we find compelling videos on trending topics more worth our time.

30 years ago if you wanted to learn anything from an instrument through gardening, your best bet was a friend, instructor or the damn library.

Now? You go on youtube and someone can learn just about anything.

You can watch any show, movie, game, or watch someone else watch a show movie or game — you name it.

Dicken’s tale of two cities has never had more data to back it, up zip code by zip code, than now. And, the pace of all of this, culture, technology, conundrums is only getting quicker.

And that’s not even to say that it will continue, because nothing says it will.

Things can all change in an instant- And. They. Frequently. Do. When something does radically change in an instant, the result of such an outcome probably was ever present, or building for some time.

With the truth lying within some combination of both, neither and numerous other factors, it doesn’t make for an easy narrative.

Whats the way out? What is there to do?

Well, I’ve been working on something. Something to call the game out, set the board, explain the pieces, how they intertwine, pressures, levers, incentives, decentives…

Been working on this project for a bit… but it’s not ready.

So, what I’m going to do is a bit of a rolling build.

I need to gather all the pieces together, get my knowledge up, and why not bring whoever else wants to come along a seat at the table.

While I’m producing this podcast, I hope to do only one thing, spark curiosity in those that are listening.

Here’s the path of what I’m interested in, what I’m curious to learn more for the work i’m doing, and Ihope you find new things to be curious about as well.

The show is going to be broken up into three types of episodes:

Interviews, where i’m talking with an individual on a topic looking to learn more.

Conversations where I’m letting you all in on a chat I’m having with someone, no real agenda, just someone else with me seeing where the conversation game takes us.

And, audio essays where i walk you through an idea, concept, background or way of thinking.

I have a big bold plan with this, and all things only exist in motion, so welcome to the start and thank you for coming along.

-J.R.

This was an exerpt from the intro essay to _bandwidth: coast to coast. If you’d like to learn more, or tune into an episode, follow this link to find it streaming on your platform of choice.