We are living in dark age, we have technology without wisdom. We have information without ethics. The term Dark Age wasn't an afterthought. During what was considered the first dark age learned men looked upon Roman roads, aqueducts and architecture and understood they did not possess the capacity to reproduce these things.
In the 1970's the United States had the capability to land men on the moon with nascent computers but vast testicular fortitude. To harness academia with manufacturing, attaching financing with congressional will. To build out of thin air a technology which did not exist and to create our modern world. From a contract issued in 1963 for a lunar flight computer weighing less than twenty pounds we have achieved the ability to have nearly any desire delivered to our door. From floor lamps to pharmaceuticals, hookers to automobiles from groceries to erectile dysfunction drugs, seven days a week.
Ah, it is an agoraphobic's dream, only alcohol, tobacco and dispensaries requiring our physical presence. All based on electronic funds transfer, sorry, cash not accepted. All dependent on income, which for the vast majority of Americans has been flat for decades. Creating a two-tiered society where the affluent need never rub shoulders with the penny stinkers.
A media encapsulation so vast that the Big Brother we want is the Big Brother we get. A Christianity which is pro-war and anti-poor. A generation of Eloi which hears of war but knows not of it. Sound bites of war, sound bites of sound bites. Sound bites regurgitated and taped together and euphemistically called music. This wind tunnel of money and information as information is money. Corporate awards shows, corporate quality awards, corporate sporting events. Odd Isn't it, in an era of multiple cameras, of stop action and instant replay suddenly the most heinous calls by field judges in memory. Games which are never a blowout. Games which are spectaculars, where second half advertising revenues must be protected.
An era where leaving a dog out in the cold can get you arrested but leaving a human out in the cold is their tough luck. Disciplining a child is abuse while putting thousands of children in cages and camps is an imperative necessity. We have contemplated our navel and lost our minds. Humanity sinks in an ocean of its own waste unable to save itself from itself. I recently heard a media impresario make the claim that moderate (Corporate) political candidates hold an appeal to middle America. I laughed until I cried. The idea that Corporate Democrats could join hands with Trump's Republican party and sing Kumbaya is Charlie Brown kicking a football. A media fiction, maybe if we send enough candy bars to Russia they won't interfere in our elections.
Science tells us we are on the verge of a sixth mass extinction in our planet's history. Insect populations collapsing, sea birds dying off due to poor diet due to over fishing. Glaciers disappearing, weather extremes and a President who doesn't know the difference between weather and climate. But hey, I can watch reruns of Seinfeld on my mobile phone while peddling my Peloton in my million-dollar penthouse! The Chinese have built one of the largest hydro-electric dams on Earth capable of generating 1,000 terra hours of electricity. Costing $22.5 billion and using enough steel for 63 Eiffel towers. It offers flood control to the Yangtze river, but the source of its water are glaciers high up in the Himalayas. Glaciers which are shrinking and whose loss will one day make the Three Gorges Dam a vast monument to human stupidity.
How do we escape this conundrum of human evolution? Where sane and insane thought are simply relative opinions of truth. Could a massive cigar shaped object hurtling through space be a probe sent by extraterrestrials to spy on us? Or is it perhaps just a massive cigar shaped rock hurtling through space? Does the Vatican control all the telescopes on Earth? Are the actions of the Trump administration crimes against humanity worthy of a Nuremberg noose? It's all relative isn't it? It all depends on who you ask isn't it? Overloaded by inputs distracted by fictions and fantasies, pretty flashing lights lulled by Madison Avenue jingles. You may have already won! Maybe someday you'll be rich!
Facebook, Google, Microsoft and a host of others have become the Tech billionaire class giving them power far in access of any medieval King. But what are we building, where does this Roman road lead us? What good are the vast amounts of information if it enfeebles us? Two plus two is five Winston, a congenital liar is plagued by "The Deep State." Polar vortexes, massive forest fires in California and New Zealand, record floods in Australia conjoined with record heat waves could be signs of climate instability. Or it could be caused by sun spots or maybe alien interference in an internet world where all facts are equal, and everything becomes a matter of opinion. All that really matters is my Amazon delivery.
In 1957, Neville Shute wrote the novel, "On the Beach." A sad tome of the last days of humans on Earth. Nuclear war in the Northern hemisphere has left a deadly cloud of fallout headed for the last bastion of humanity in Australia. It is dark and depressing for those poor lost souls had no Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh to tell them it was all a con job by the liberal left. Corrupt scientists out to line their pockets with research grants to study cigar shaped rocks hurdling through space.
Could it be the massive global migrations from Africa to Europe from Latin America to North America are trying to tell us something? Is it their desire for an electric light, a fast car and a big house in the suburbs or is it the decline of living standards at the margins of humanity? Reducing us to building walls and concentration camps unable to see what is before our eyes. Living in a dark age" on the beach.
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