the importance of history

If you really think that historically low life insurance rates counts as “URGENT!” then feel free to click on the image and see the original ad, which I found at Yahoo! Groups, but I’m not posting this to promote life insurance. I’m writing because the ad, unlike the thousands of others I successfully ignore, just held me mesmerized for a good several seconds — and now I’m spending a good several minutes writing about it on this dumb blog post.

Now, I’m not a big fan of what my father calls “semantic pollution” — desensitizing us, for example, to the words Attention, Warning, and Urgent through their misuse for commercial and other promotional advertising, but what I just can’t get past in this case — the aspect of this ad that overrides all other considerations for me — is the idea that I should be impressed by this little girl’s astonishment at historically unprecedented insurance prices. If a little girl — known as they are for their nonchalance, their jaded dismissal of life’s lesser and even sometimes medium-sized astonishments — if such a creature as this can be so shocked and overwhelmed that she opens her mouth and slaps her cheeks a la young Macaulay Culkin, circa 1990, then you know that something historical must be taking place. When I’m trying to gain some perspective on current events, trying to take the long-term view, I know I tend to turn to small children.

Your mileage may vary.