Sharon Leach:

It's said that Alexander the Great wept when he realised there were no more lands left for him to conquer. In other words, there was nothing new to challenge him; there was no raison d'être.

It's a laughable thought today, isn't it? The idea that we may one day not have any more frontiers to discover. After all, discoveries occur at warp speed every day. Nowhere is that truer than perhaps in the area of technology. No sooner does something come across our radar, purporting to be the Next Thing, than it rapidly becomes obsolete, relegated to the dung heap of Useless Crap we have no idea how to dispose of. You can start the year out with a state-of-the-art cellphone and, before the year is up, be stuck with an instrument whose relevance tech-savvy children scoff at. Better yet, it becomes obsolete even while it's being advertised as the Next Thing. It's insanity, really. The weird thing is this: once upon a time, you didn't feel worthless being caught with an obsolete instrument. Now we do.

Or, is it just me?

How did this happen? The idea of me browsing the Internet, searching for computers was at one time anathema. Especially if there was nothing wrong with the computer I was using. Now: not so much. I want to see what the next computer I'll own - the next phone, the next whatever - will look like. And more importantly, the kind of money it'll set me back.

Back in the good old days, I went for durability. I bought things that had a reputation for staying the course. "This can't finish for now," were always words that were music to my ears. Really? How droll. These days, I don't think long-term commitment. I'm like some guys who're with women, but still allow one eye to wander. Keeping their options open, I guess, for when the current girl outlives her usefulness.

What a way to live.

I don't know if I like this new rudderless-ness. I'm all for technology; I see how it has made life so much easier. To write this column, I don't have to go to a library and do research; with a flick of the wrist there's Google.com. Neither do I have to write it longhand. I sit at my desk (or in my bed) typing, and when I'm done, I push SEND and my copy has arrived at my editor's inbox. That's some cool sh-t right there. But deep inside, I'm my mother's daughter. My mother, who bought the school shoes a little too big because, forget fashion, what you need is a good, sturdy (read: ugly) pair of shoes that'll keep you through half of high school. I know now she was right. Where's the shame in owning something for a long time? I'm tired. I want off of the merry-go-round. I want one computer that won't get slow and virus-riddled within a year. One phone I'll still be using, years from now. One guy I can love forever.

Dear Lord, it's true: we really do become our mothers.

Change is unsettling, dizzying. But we live in an age where stability is at a premium. (How can a singer like Britney Spears have a song that crops up on an 'old-school' list?) Truthfully, sometimes my equilibrium feels shot to hell. I don't know if I'm going or coming. These days the comfort of sameness is, unfathomably, what I crave. But as the world races toward its inevitable end, it's as though we're being constantly bombarded by this tidal wave of change that, frankly, I'm not even sure is meant to challenge as much as to confuse us.

Take the new mammogram debate that's raging. For years, the conventional wisdom was that women begin screening for breast cancer at the age of 40. All hell broke loose in the US, last week, after a new report from a government task force reversing the American Cancer Society's long-held position. Mammograms, the task force found, are not needed while women are in their 40s, rather, they're more useful for women in their 50s, and then only every two years until age 75. The idea is that the unnecessary radiation from mammograms sometimes paradoxically brings about the very thing the procedure's supposed to be saving us from.

Well. I thought the reversal of the conventional wisdom on eggs and cow's milk, a few years ago, was confusing. But this feels like sand shifting in water beneath my toes. Up is down, left is right. What can we hold onto? Naturally, there are those who are suspicious of the timing of the results of the study, in the wake of President Obama's bid to reform health care. But any thoughtful woman must consider whether there's any veracity to the study's claim about unnecessary radiation exposure.

What's wrong with knowing one incontrovertible fact? How can there be multiple truths? Why does it seem like, despite this present age of so-called enlightenment, our forebears had things easier? I don't remember my mother ever mentioning a mammogram. But then, she also seemed unaware of the dangers of high blood pressure, which eventually killed her. Was she happier than I, though, I wonder? Is all this so-called advanced knowledge - change - a good thing? Or, is ignorance bliss?

At times like these, I can't help thinking about old Alexander the Great, who despite his classical Greek education under the tutorship of Aristotle, his creation of one of the largest empires in ancient history, his renown and the cultural impact of his conquests which lasted for centuries and centuries, was dead by the age of 32 and feeling as though there was nothing left. Is it true that, at some point, there really is nothing left? What are the only frontiers left to conquer? A cure for the common cold? AIDS? Death? I mean, we've pretty much covered everything else. Has civilisation as we know it reached the end and is merely flailing about, rehashing and trying to reshape history, the past? What is truth? And, please, somebody tell me, will we know it when we see it?

November 22, 2009

jamaicaobserver