Having been unable to sleep last night, I decided to spend the night in The City. At the Hotel Congress, I met again with a detective I have mentioned previously, who was about two steps from crying into his drink.
It seems that many of our finest have become rather depressed, or even driven to the brink of madness, by the staff reductions that have eliminated all the good work they have done over the last 5 years.
"This town has been a cesspool since day one", he said, "And we'd made so much progress. Now we're right back where we started...Worse, even. It's all falling apart."
This got me thinking...And I'm still thinking about it, 6 hours later, with the clarity of mind that comes with no sleep and loads and loads of coffee...A brittle sort of intelligence that sees too much, and can't adequately explain that which is seen.
Isn't the Tucson PD a metaphor for what's happening to our civilization in general? Any other species, having climbed as high as we did, would have colonies in the asteroid belt, and would be starting to reach for the stars.
But not monkeys. No, primates are wired for self-sabotage, it seems. And just like the Tucson city government, we wussed out. We settled for gizmos and gadgets, when we could have been gods. We settled for low-rent tyranny, because freedom is scary when everybody does it. Instead of fixing problems, we look for someone to blame.
In short, we stopped improving ourselves, so we began to slide.
<tick tock>
The funniest part is, the future keeps coming, whether or not we want it...And, without the adrenaline that comes from pushing new frontiers, we are exposed to the constant future shock that comes with the increase in technology that is driven by "innovations" in communication (After all, almost all of our new technologies deal with information in one way or another).
With no excitement to filter that future shock, we are forced to bludgeon ourselves into a chemically-induced stupor to cope with daily life. That might be meds, or booze, or illegal drugs, or the fun brain chemicals you can treat yourself to via weird group beliefs.
Or, like the conspiracy theorists, you leave that stuff alone and just go crazy instead.
So we now have a choice between dulling our brains with substances, or the obsessive madness that comes with forcing yourself to believe in shit like chemtrails and reptoids.
<tick tock>
Another interesting note: London's population exceeded 1 million people in 1800. By 1837, reputable people were reporting sitings of "Spring-Heeled Jack", a figure described in various manners (dressed in oilskin and breathing blue fire, or wearing an egg-shaped helmet, or wearing a bear suit). Either the crowding was inducing group hysteria, or you have to accept a guy that could jump onto rooftops from the street. Decide.
This sort of crowd-induced insanity can also be found in China, where people just knife total strangers, and can't afterward explain why. Japan has suicide & death cults. America has the Tea Party, an organization dedicated to bringing about their own serfdom.
So, no, it's not just you. The world really IS going crazy...At least the people not rendered stupid by mood-altering drugs. You may have noticed that people here in the future are a little...Off.
<tick tock>
As I mentioned in the beginning of this essay, the usual outlet for the crazies was the frontier...Nobody wanted them, and they wanted to go (Yeah, it sucked for the people who lived on this "open" frontier, but that's another subject entirely). Now there's only one frontier, and it scared us so much that we went running home and nailed all the doors shut.
Wake up.
Don't you remember? We built this City. But, Jefferson Starship's jabbering notwithstanding, we built it on bones. A good, thick layer of bones. Native American bones, African bones, Chinese bones, and anyone else that we could force or trick into the hopper.
And now we live in this City, and we try to avoid the crunching noises under our feet. We try to pretend that we are basically a good people, that things are trending for the better, that our setbacks are temporary. We try to believe that things are, in the end, going to be okay, even if we have stopped our furious advance into the future, in an effort to hide in the past from the consequences of our deeds that we have written right into the operating code...We try to believe that things will turn out for the best.
They won't.
Okay for now.
That clock, in the quiet it sounds like the drum of advancing doom.
Some days, I almost... ALMOST... envy them, you know?
They don't need drugs to make it go away. They don't NEED booze (though some indulge in copious amounts, anyway) to hear the sound of the future coming, like the sound of a train heading toward them while they stand on the tracks, eyes wide with ofuq.
They're content in their little cocoons of "don't rock the boat," and "that's the way things are," and "everything happens for a reason."
They really DO think that the people they chose to put in charge (heh, they actually think THEY chose) will make everything come out right in the end...
tick tick
Just when you think that everything is going to be different, everything stays the same, and with a
tock tick
vengeance. It's twice as hearttbreaking each time it happens..
You're right Roger, there is no hope. And it's because we killed all hope years ago when we shit all over the constitution and everything it stood for. When we ransacked our forefather's graves for the allmighty dollar. When we allowed others to tell us that we were uncivilized and how we should be acting in our politics, laws and lives.
What has it left us? Maybe, and I mean maybe, a million people who know the truth worldwide? What is a pitiful million compared to the billions of monkeys around us? There is nothing we can do, nothing left to say and no fight to raise our swords to and battle for justice. Why? Because we flushed justice down the indoor plumbing with the first pull on the chain.
What is my hope now? That I live long enough to see it all burn.
Quote from: Khara on June 01, 2011, 07:20:40 PM
You're right Roger, there is no hope. And it's because we killed all hope years ago when we shit all over the constitution and everything it stood for. When we ransacked our forefather's graves for the allmighty dollar. When we allowed others to tell us that we were uncivilized and how we should be acting in our politics, laws and lives.
What has it left us? Maybe, and I mean maybe, a million people who know the truth worldwide? What is a pitiful million compared to the billions of monkeys around us? There is nothing we can do, nothing left to say and no fight to raise our swords to and battle for justice. Why? Because we flushed justice down the indoor plumbing with the first pull on the chain.
What is my hope now? That I live long enough to see it all burn.
The only way a sword will help now is if we all fall on our own sword. I am not so inclined.
Quote from: Charley Brown on June 01, 2011, 07:23:23 PM
Quote from: Khara on June 01, 2011, 07:20:40 PM
You're right Roger, there is no hope. And it's because we killed all hope years ago when we shit all over the constitution and everything it stood for. When we ransacked our forefather's graves for the allmighty dollar. When we allowed others to tell us that we were uncivilized and how we should be acting in our politics, laws and lives.
What has it left us? Maybe, and I mean maybe, a million people who know the truth worldwide? What is a pitiful million compared to the billions of monkeys around us? There is nothing we can do, nothing left to say and no fight to raise our swords to and battle for justice. Why? Because we flushed justice down the indoor plumbing with the first pull on the chain.
What is my hope now? That I live long enough to see it all burn.
The only way a sword will help now is if we all fall on our own sword. I am not so inclined.
I really hope I didn't come across as meaning anything like that..... :?
Quote from: Khara on June 01, 2011, 07:32:43 PM
Quote from: Charley Brown on June 01, 2011, 07:23:23 PM
Quote from: Khara on June 01, 2011, 07:20:40 PM
You're right Roger, there is no hope. And it's because we killed all hope years ago when we shit all over the constitution and everything it stood for. When we ransacked our forefather's graves for the allmighty dollar. When we allowed others to tell us that we were uncivilized and how we should be acting in our politics, laws and lives.
What has it left us? Maybe, and I mean maybe, a million people who know the truth worldwide? What is a pitiful million compared to the billions of monkeys around us? There is nothing we can do, nothing left to say and no fight to raise our swords to and battle for justice. Why? Because we flushed justice down the indoor plumbing with the first pull on the chain.
What is my hope now? That I live long enough to see it all burn.
The only way a sword will help now is if we all fall on our own sword. I am not so inclined.
I really hope I didn't come across as meaning anything like that..... :?
Oh no, just my warped mind racing to a logical conclusion.
THAT one gave me the shivers. Especially the last 2 paragraphs. Wow.
Horrible tr00f, it stings, it burns. And yeah, I try to see the setbacks as temporary...but the breaks just don't keep a-comin...hard to keep that up. :x
Excellent, Rog.
Quote from: Jenne on June 01, 2011, 10:16:19 PM
THAT one gave me the shivers. Especially the last 2 paragraphs. Wow.
Horrible tr00f, it stings, it burns. And yeah, I try to see the setbacks as temporary...but the breaks just don't keep a-comin...hard to keep that up. :x
Excellent, Rog.
There's nothing quite as unsettling as watching a homicide/vice detective try not to cry.
This is all 100% true. I can hear it coming. That rushing sound... that's the roar of the Empire burning.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on June 01, 2011, 10:18:51 PM
Quote from: Jenne on June 01, 2011, 10:16:19 PM
THAT one gave me the shivers. Especially the last 2 paragraphs. Wow.
Horrible tr00f, it stings, it burns. And yeah, I try to see the setbacks as temporary...but the breaks just don't keep a-comin...hard to keep that up. :x
Excellent, Rog.
There's nothing quite as unsettling as watching a homicide/vice detective try not to cry.
*shudders*
As an aside, Springheel Jack was said to grope women. When some guy in the crowd grabbed a handful of ass, it was blamed on an otherworldly being with glowing eyes or whatever, who could leap 40 feet. Now the aliens are traveling across galaxies to probe fat suburbanite genetalia. Same shit, different day...just worse this time.
Stella, that's one thing that I think we tend to forget amidst all the so-called progress humanity makes generation after generation. We may have better hygiene and are able to live longer, but that doesn't mean our minds or our id is any different. What we on PD call "monkey brain" hasn't really changed.
For this reason alone the OP of this thread rings the tr00f of a thousand death knells.
This got me thinking about my favourite childhood album, "The Future," and I've come to the conclusion that Doktor Howl is the reincarnation of Leonard Cohen.
Jenne - it's part of the reason I got so interested in Anthropology. To understand 'people' to understand what exactly is instinct, what is cultural... A desperate struggle to maintain the illusion that maybe it's just parts of our culture that are evil, that there's the utopia out there where everyone acts decently. But no, we're all just a bunch of fucking apes who can barely see past the fumes of our waste as we stomp around, beating each other and our environments with the Ugly Stick and subjugating everything and everyone we can. The only different between us and Koko the Gorilla is that we can drive.
We in the west have an odd sense of time. It's pretty fucked up when you look at the various ways how everyone else in the world looks at.
We have this End Point, the End of History. It's a religious/culture thing, because you look at various other cultures with more or less complicated views of time and they turn out to be cyclical, or dependent on lots of wheels turning in a bizarre harmony, or even dissaccoiating time from reality.
Not us. No, we have one "logical" step in front of the other. We have this funnel view, where everything is coming to a head at some point, and that point is always "soon" and whoever is deciding where the focus is is ultimately affecting us on a very deep, subsumed, cultural level. We fear the End, but we are told that some of us will get the good shit at the End, and so we anticipate it. I don't mean just Christian Eschatology, though that's part of it. Think of all the crazy Sci-Fi sounding shit about technology becoming more perfect than we can imagine, various singularities, super Political Unions between nations...
We have a place in History, and every generation since the beginning of time has been petrified by History. Why do good/bad things happen to us? What happens when we die? Is life something more meaningful than burning adenosine triphosphate?
Events suck, and we'd like to End now please!
The problem for us, as Discordians et Allied, is that we are in theory more likely to look outside the funnel vision. We can witness the Terror of History more clearly and in full psychovision 3D hi-def as the primate races suck themselves ever further down the tube.
Tucson lies at the bottom, ground zero. And horrified or otherwise, if we want to keep getting our yuks in at the expense of our hairless ape cousins, we're going to folow them in.