Sound credit to Friend Weller.
I have always been fascinated by insects, and even as a young child I felt a deep sympathy for these misunderstood creatures. Before I had vocabulary to describe the revolving diversity I witnessed as a kid, I recall a sense of nostalgia for the moths, cicadas, bees, and butterflies who appeared in great numbers and animated various plant types around my city. Their ebbs and flows offered clues and added nuance to the flowers, trees, and a change in the weather. When I was young they seemed like part of the changing seasons, reliable and abundant, but I came to recognize how delicate and precarious their existence is, and the consequences of their decline.
After a little bird-watching and a lot of people-watching this past week, I have a scientific finding to report: Many people are oblivious to the world around them.
A sizable number of Americans, including myself on most days, are so preoccupied with our personal spheres and our digital distractions that we hardly notice anything past our own noses â unless, that is, we are directly inconvenienced in some fashion. Knock out WiFi, slow down the the fast-food line, cut off cable TV or delay that Amazon package and our world is rocked. Show us video of an attempted sacking of the U.S. Capitol building by a mob led by a shirtless guy in Viking headgear, and many of us simply yawn and change the television back to Netflix or go online and look for funny memes about the incident.