Cat Stevens -- Where do the children play?

For a Saturday, another fan-created music video. This is a great song about the dehumanizing nature of technological progress ("I know we've come a long way/We're changing day to day"). It also speaks to the pointlessness of limitless consumer choices ("get what you want to if you want, 'cause you can get anything"). It reminds me that Carl Rogers' father was a civil engineer ("Well you roll on roads/over fresh green grass"), as was the father of Albert Bandura. It also makes me think about Ernest Becker's "immortality projects" ("Well you've cracked the sky/scrapers fill the air"). And of course, it raises the issues of preimplantation genetic diagnosis and age-based health care rationing ("Will you tell us when to live, will you tell us when to die?").

That the writer of this song subsequently converted to, and remains a devoted follower of, one of the world's great monotheistic religions is completely unsurprising to me.



Where do the children play?

Well I think it's fine, building jumbo planes.
Or taking a ride on a cosmic train.
Switch on summer from a slot machine.
Yes, get what you want to if you want, 'cause you can get anything.

I know we've come a long way,
We're changing day to day,
so tell me, where do the children play?

Well you roll on roads over fresh green grass.
For your lorry loads pumping petrol gas.
And you make them long, and you make them tough.
But they just go on and on, and it seems that you can't get off.

Oh, I know we've come a long way,
We're changing day to day,
so tell me, where do the children play?

Well you've cracked the sky, scrapers fill the air.
But will you keep on building higher
'til there's no more room up there?
Will you make us laugh, will you make us cry?
Will you tell us when to live, will you tell us when to die?

I know we've come a long way,
We're changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play?