Lockstep.

Though I am well-educated and what we call today a "life-long learner" (we used to just call people 'smart') I think most of the knowledge I've amassed through my long life I acquired when I was supposed to be doing something else.

Two of those learnings I learned in Hebrew school, though today I hardly know an aleph from an olive from an Olav from an Oyl.

The last thing I wanted after a day of elementary school was to spend more time in school. Especially where I knew none of the other kids and the glorious days of what we used to call Indian Summer were sparkling on the other side of the plate glass. In fact, the whole time I was in Hebrew school, I don't think I made one friend, or had one teacher whose name I knew. 

But I learned.

Because while I sat in the back hoping not to be called on, I opened one of the prayer books that were strewn about the classroom. There I found pages and pages of memorials, stories, poems, essays and literature about the seminal event in Jewish history. Not Abraham almost killing Isaac, but the Nazis and their millions of accomplices (99-percent of whom were never punished and never owned up) who killed six million Jews. Persilschein.

Had there been one class--one measly lecture--titled 'why we should believe even though god was absent when we needed god most,' I might have paid attention or even given some small dram of respect for a religion that in many ways chased me and millions of others a way. 

But, trying to understand, trying to find an answer I could reckon with helped me learn and learn and learn some more. I've read maybe thousands of books on the holocaust. As a friend once said about me, "George has two kinds of books in his library. Books about the holocaust. And the other one."

The other thing I learned was about social dynamics and the invidious power of groups that divide the world into "us and them." (Which is the very definition of what groups do.)

I noticed that just about every year during the High Holy Days a dozen or so pronunciations changed. One year we would be told to put on our yarmulke. The next year, yarmulke were called keepaaaah, the next year kip-ah. 

All this finagling I realized was a way of separating people. Some were "in." Most were "out."

Fred my old brother tells a joke about a Jewish man who after 30 years alone on a desert island is finally rescued. Before he leaves the island, he decides to show his rescuer around. The marooned Jew shows his rescuer the synagogue he built. A moment later he shows his rescuer another synagogue. The rescuer says, "you were alone on the island, why are there two synagogues." The Jewish man said, "well, there's my synagogue. And then there's the one I wouldn't be caught dead in."

You see this bifurcating mechanism at work all over the world today. Having a different belief, or a different standard, or a different perspective on anything makes you an enemy to about half the people who at any given time think about the same topic in a different way. Worse, so many people are so bent on not being different that they lurch like a ship at sea and start parroting the latest dogma so as not to be left out of a trend--and most trends are almost wholly made up. 

For the life of me I can't think of a single ad that's influenced culture for more than twelve seconds. I've seen some ads generate a catch phrase, or impel people to do something silly, but influence culture? Frankly, I don't even know what that means. 

AT&T is using characters from The Office, which went off the air in 2013.
Somehow it is "of culture." Even though the writing sucks.

As for AI, though every third item on social seems to be about its "taking-over-ness" I can't articulate one way AI has made my life better. Customer service is worse. Search is not as good as it was when we had the yellow pages. And getting an accurate answer is harder today than yesterday, and much less good than when we had encyclopedias nearby or could call a researcher at the New York Public Library.

Yet,

I'd rather they spent $1,800 per person on a good rye bread.

Omelettes for everyone!

But, we live in a "you're either with us or against us world." And more often than not, you're persona non grata if you have your own opinion.

And it's worse if you work for an agency.

If you can find one.