DYSTOPIA NOW!

DYSTOPIA NOW!  (originally posted January 26, 2013, the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting  was December 14, 2012) 

An Andrew Rambling Tirade

“Stick around while the clown who is sick does the trick of disaster.”

Neil Young – Mr. Soul

Maybe it’s the winter.  It could be age.  It’s certainly the times.  Regardless of what is occurring, overstimulation and our growing resultant indifference is quickly moving to blow the roof off of everything we have ever known, loved or cherished.  The world has changed and for our soft little species with our enormous crinkly light grey brains, there will be no return to the way it was before.  Before, when we listened and cared about what we heard.  Before, when a picture saved our memory.  Before, when we spoke in words face to face. Before, when music was in the foreground and books were physical entities with presence.  Before, when we enjoyed the company of our own kind.

One month ago genocide occurred in a kindergarten class.  In one more month it will all but be forgotten.  Forgetting is a gift.  It’s a gift that is more overused with each smart phone release, every “added” fake friendship and every stock dividend we earn without lifting a finger.  On a daily basis, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that we’re just not designed for the world that is unfurling before us.  We’re meant to be a certain way, but certainly not adapted to thrive in this world, which we inadvertently or accidentally created.  The information flow we all experience daily is crushing to most.  The pace is unrelenting and unmaintainable.  We can’t seem to remember anything.  Then again, why should anyone remember in the first place?  The new “Humans” just don’t do that anymore.  Just get it once, click, save or add, and our brains are free to focus on our new species wide addiction.  It’s not drugs; it’s not sex, and it’s not money.  This growing habit which is making us truly different for the first time since we went from being homo erectus to homo sapiens is truly new to the human race.  The little “game changer” for humanity has ultimately turned out to be silicon chips.  Little slices of cooked sand that have given rise to the electronic society, the false reality that now dominate our consciousness, our communication, and our community.

EXACTLY WHEN DID THIS BECOME A PART OF MY BRAIN?

 Not long ago, we were human.  We created in the physical world.  Sometimes a letter written with smeared ink on a sheet of paper conveyed our thought to another or a group.  Sometimes when the conveyance of this thought was complete the letter would be saved as a memento or testament to the thought that went into its creation.  Let’s just ask this question.  Who ever through away a love letter?  Yes, there was once such a thing.  And they were arguably the most beautiful bits of information our species was ever able to convey in any format.

“Click” was the sound of memory.  Twenty-seven chances at most were all you had on each roll of film.  The silver coated filmstrip captured a moment in time.  What that moment was, was and unknown until all the exposures were shot out and sent away for developing.  Many came back to us as blurred rectangles, but most of the time they were kept anyway.  Mementos of a time and a place, even if they were less than perfect representations of our outer selves, were put in an album and cherished by their subjects, while being cheered, jeered and laughed at in later days.  Now only the best is retained.  The imperfect, the unflattering are wholly discarded.  Today’s snapshots have somehow become more valueless representations of what we keep telling ourselves is a more perfect world.

I remember, wait, no I don’t.  I don’t have to.  The HAL 9000 lost his mind when David Bowman removed his memory cards way back in 2001 A Space Odyssey.  We are losing our minds by supplementing our neurons and synapses for SD Cards.   These days, I personally know approximately 20 phone numbers.  I once knew more than a hundred.  “I forgot.”  This has become an acceptable excuse to the Millennial Generation!  This has been taught to me by my 13 and 15 year old sons.  Why I just could not accept the legitimacy of their claim was beyond me.  But now the reality is starting to shine down.  I think they did in fact forget, because it’s becoming true.  They don’t remember.  They don’t have to!

2001: THE GOOD OLD DAYS, WHEN YOU COULD JUST TURN IT OFF.

We talk and talk and talk.  Everyday we have more ways to talk and fewer people to converse with.  In fact most conversation has become less interaction and more regurgitation, recap and reiteration.  People are just so uninteresting, when I can know everything they know just by false fact checking their statements on Wikipedia.  Human beings speaking with one another was once the ultimate interactive experience.  It was informing and stimulating.  We built bonds with speech and resolved conflicts.   We learned from one another and grew together.  The new reality is that speech almost solely conveys information.  Our new habit is to ignore the other participants in a conversation and try to wait for our turn to blurt out some predetermined platform.  Sometimes we do show an interest in what the other participants are saying, but only so long as we find them entertaining or amusing.  Sadly, the noise and the babble is just another addiction that we can’t stand to be without.  When was the last time any of us rode more than 2 miles alone in the car without putting on the radio.  In quieter times, a very wise friend once said this just after switching off the car radio; “You know, ya don’t always have to have it on.”

It’s time to check our heads.  They’re anything but empty, but they are becoming more impacted with crap by the hour.  The term for coveting unnecessary material items was once thought of as worshiping “False Gods.”  We worried and prayed for the things we needed.  What has arisen in our time is the empty reality that everything we need is simply a list of “wants.”  Maybe it was the generation that came before mine that changed want to need.  The two are certainly no longer mutually exclusive.  I’m afraid that objective and speed have suffered the same fate.  The processes of our lives and society’s endeavors have deteriorated into a blend of these two factors.  It no longer matters how a thing gets done, just that it does get completed, and completed quickly at that.  Evidence is everywhere.  Just look up at a building facade the next time you are walking the streets of any city.  The buildings of a century ago were completed by Artisans who put their talents into ornate expression of individuality in every piece of architecture they laid their hands, chisels, and hammers on.  In that world the means certainly justified the ends.  Now, the only beauty on a new structure was prefabricated in China and glued into place by a Beta human, not fit for a skill or existence equal to that of society’s “Makers.”  Even the makers would have to admit that for the most part, they themselves are detached observers of their lives in this new world.

The facts are in….  read ‘em and weep!  We have become our own spoiled brat children, entitled to the point where there is no longer any true desire to want.  There is no need.  All that remains is stagnation.  Maybe that is the roll of the new humans.  Just exist and forget every previous day, even when those days contain a weeping procession of thirty-six inch long caskets.