The Third Choice

Why do people always apologize after the fact for what they say when they are drunk? This is completely unecessary. Perhaps my own personality affects me enought to say something like this, but usually when one is drunk one speaks something of the truth, whether it is hurtfull, crass, fatuous, or incoherent, it is still an idea that sprang forth from the life of the mind. Why do people blame alcohol as a factor which has driven one to say the conventionally unsayable? For instance, if I told someone how I feel, let's say in terms of romantic love, how is this something to apologize for? Is there any credit in honesty in this world? Apparently there is scant, if any. With the advent of technological wonders like cds, MDs, ipods, from analog to digital, mono to stereo, etc. etc., people nowadays barely listen. They are too busy being absorbed in an image of what they fascinate themself or the world to be. Perhaps I am a bit maniacal in my reversion from technology, but what really do these new techniques offer us?-- more things to buy, more incoherences, problems, maintainence, further translation, further loss. Concomittant with the mammoth increase of memory in this computer age is the equally grand and devastatingly irrevocable loss of memory. Are we finding ourselves taking the perfect drug to celebrate this loss of memory, this loss of responsibility, this loss of tradition?

So people are more and more lazy these days, myself included. Maybe our capacity to remember is not affected, but instead of memorizing folklore, histories, poems, names, events, faces, we now remember logos, slogans, brand names, commercials, etc. If this is a repetition of the work of many well-read writers, so be it. I am trying break out of my own incredibility--in the pejorative sense of the term meaning unable to believe. Let's try the third choice between the two extremes.