Webs

Is a valid measure of success in this world the number of people that come to your funeral? The number of people that you've touched strongly enough that they take time from their lives to see you in the end seems somehow meaningful. I saw a show about American heroes in WWII which had a segment on their lives after the war. One man had over two thousand people attend his funeral. He ran his own construction business.

There are many people who are in construction, yet I imagine few have touched as many people as that man did. There is something here that alludes to the way people connect, become meaningful to one another, cross and join paths. I think society is evolving such that these mechanisms are becoming harder to discover and experience in the large scale. Relationships are becoming fewer, although perhaps more intimate, and the web of societal interconnections is becoming sparser. Perhaps this is the real source of the so called "moral decay" problem. As people become more isolated, they become more indifferent.