On Sunday, I was sitting back in Macy’s in Flagstaff, the coffee house where I discovered what musicians experience in hell.
Sunday’s entertainment was a retarded young hippie espousing hippie wisdom to the hippie girl whom he was trying to hippie impress so that they might hippie screw. He bemoaned the terrible state of the world, and expressed many pieces of canned hippie philosophy on peace, love, freedom from chemicals and technology, and a virginal Earth, without presenting any actual plan for how to achieve these ends. For example:
“All those angry men with weapons, we just need to take their weapons away and give them plastic toys to play with.”
That is goddamned brilliant. The belligerent and armed are always thrilled to hand their weapons over to unarmed ultra-pacifists. Perhaps they will let you touch their guns after they finish clubbing you to death with them. But this was the show-stopper:
“I don’t understand Viagra. Are we really so sexually fucked up that we need all these pills to help us get it up? I mean, what did we do before Viagra when we got old?”
If I am not mistaken…WE DIDN’T FUCK.
Hear my words, retarded hippie dipshit.
This is not a perfect world. The exploding world population is an ever increasing problem, and our global resources are being depleted. Urban sprawl spreads onto arable farmland we will eventually need. We have not figured how to turn most garbage back into usable resources, and it is piling up at a disturbing rate. Nuclear weapons cannot be un-invented, and there is always the possibility that they will be used. We have real problems.
Nonetheless, things are pretty fucking awesome, here in the western world. 200 years ago, slavery and a second-class status for women and non-whites were considered perfectly normal. Today it is taken for granted that these institutions are vile and unacceptable, even if the process of eliminating them isn’t complete. We still have war, genocide, torture, rape, and religious fanaticism…but we have had these things continuously for at least as long as recorded history, so it isn't as though things are worse...and we at least have a general consensus across most of the civilized world that these things are bad.
The woman in front of me at Safeway the other night buying groceries with food stamps walked off with a cartload of food that would make real poor people shit themselves blind, and went back to some warm shelter with a television and fridge. Even with our fucked-up health care system, her diet, health, hygiene, and general standard of living would be the envy of most European nobility up until just a couple hundred years ago.
9/11? FUCK 9/11. During World War II, entire CITIES were leveled to the ground, two of them by nuclear weapons. Remember what it was like to have a competing superpower with a gigantic nuclear arsenal pointed at us and ready to go at any second, like we did just a few decades ago? The last major war between the European superpowers is almost outside of living memory.
Compared to the broad scope of history, we live in a time of remarkable peace and prosperity. We have a long way to go, but there is no prior time or place in history I would rather live than right where I am: western civilization in the early 21st century, where we have instantaneous access to the collective knowledge of mankind on our bitchin' new iPhones, and we live and fuck past 60. And I would rather live 10 years ago than 30, 30 rather than 60, and 60 rather than a 100. I think that bodes pretty well for the future.
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6 comments:
Sweet.
nicely said!
i get so sick of people talking about the modern age as a dark time... as though the past was some how nicer or safer.
i always included the example of sabertooth tigers creeping into the cave, or your local noble upping the feudal taxes beyond your means of survial, in addition to the soviet nukes.
I don't know Jeff, this is one of the few times that I largely disagree with you. True, those of us in the 21st century developed nations have it pretty sweet, but I would rather be an upper class Roman 2000 years ago than a modern Congolese, for example. I think that trends in human history show pretty well that while now is generally a decent time for some of us, someone is bound to fuck it up for everybody, and sooner rather than later. My guess is that President Palin will do it in about 3 years. Gene Roddenberry type models are obsolete, and I'll tell you why I think so. Science fiction, with the notable exception of Blade Runner, has done a terrible job of preparing us for a dim future. By dim, I mean, can't see a fucking thing. Compact florescents and LEDs are going to drive people to the brink of madness. I was recently in an environment lit entirely by LEDs, and while it was a "well illuminated" enclosure, I could see better when the lights went off. That horrible white light washes everything out. This, is why I predict the end is nigh.
Admittedly, I find myself fall into the hippie or the pessimistic mindset from time to time, but "you don't what have until it's gone".
To quote Robert Herrick:
"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
Old time is still a-flying
For this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying."
iPreparator- If someone is bound to "fuck it up sooner or later" than would it logically make any difference what time period ANY of us were living in. Realistically, what you say is true, but that doesn't make the world "bad" nor would I jump the gun and say the Roddenberry or Carl Sagan vision is obsolete. We're a young species and I think we need to be tough but not overly critical to the point of personal pointless pessimism. "Live everyday like you'll die tomorrow and learn as if you'll live forever."
By the way, I agree with the notion that it's utterly idiotic to claim today is worse than the past. In the midst of the negativity that too many folks focus on, we've made some pretty substantial process. I think we might actually one day make it to the stars. And the only way to prevent things from growing worse is to LEARN FROM THE PAST with your eyes set on the present to create the desired future. It can be done! Don't lose hope for life and our species!
That should be "Progress". Stupid typo. :P
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