(no subject)
The tear through books on peak oil was followed by similar tears through the debt based economy and global warming. Now I’m nestled in books detailing corporations sucking out the marrow of the Constitution. Spoon in daily accessed doomster bookmarks, tinnitus, a little unemployment and isolation and I’m somewhere between full fledged aluminum foil lined baseball cap wearing conspiracy theorist guy and just the really severely depressed guy on the couch from Gumby Summer Fun Special #1.
Even as economic implosion seems imminent (more so than the return to the simple life promised by peak oil), I worried a little on a walk yesterday that the sprint of all our technological gadgetry toward a single source - the computer/phone/tv/movie theater/stereo dealiebob - would ultimately result in a single device with a single corporation delivering content - mesmerizing users to the point of complete disregard for the world but for the satisfying interactions with a narrow breadth of infotainment. Already blogs and forums and Flickr and iPod playlists give people the tickle of control, celebrity, and importance, reflection revering paralysis onset years before the real mindfuck of slipping in and out of avatars in the worldwide consensual hallucination of cyberspace (Yes. Cyberspace. Dust off the term, dust off those mirrorshades).
I was relieved to realize that future is far off and likely may never be. More and more likely we’ll all be living in collectives, trying not to starve and freeze, and hopefully executing any and all fascist oriented turds the moment grabs for power become apparent.
A total breakdown of things might be best rather than the slow steady slip of that endangered species the middle class into third world nation status. The needed storming of the gates will never occur because people are too goddamned busy trying to stay above water, but also because we all want to be the rich. I keep going to LOTR for analogies and I don’t know why. Frodo doesn’t want to flip the ring into the lava for the same reasons we aren’t ripping the government and corporations down at the knees - the lure, the promise, the possibility of the golden shining good life is easier to bear than its destruction and absence.
Not that I think decrementing the counter back to zero is the sure deal either. It’s inevitable that desire will always cut in line in front of altruism.
Even as economic implosion seems imminent (more so than the return to the simple life promised by peak oil), I worried a little on a walk yesterday that the sprint of all our technological gadgetry toward a single source - the computer/phone/tv/movie theater/stereo dealiebob - would ultimately result in a single device with a single corporation delivering content - mesmerizing users to the point of complete disregard for the world but for the satisfying interactions with a narrow breadth of infotainment. Already blogs and forums and Flickr and iPod playlists give people the tickle of control, celebrity, and importance, reflection revering paralysis onset years before the real mindfuck of slipping in and out of avatars in the worldwide consensual hallucination of cyberspace (Yes. Cyberspace. Dust off the term, dust off those mirrorshades).
I was relieved to realize that future is far off and likely may never be. More and more likely we’ll all be living in collectives, trying not to starve and freeze, and hopefully executing any and all fascist oriented turds the moment grabs for power become apparent.
A total breakdown of things might be best rather than the slow steady slip of that endangered species the middle class into third world nation status. The needed storming of the gates will never occur because people are too goddamned busy trying to stay above water, but also because we all want to be the rich. I keep going to LOTR for analogies and I don’t know why. Frodo doesn’t want to flip the ring into the lava for the same reasons we aren’t ripping the government and corporations down at the knees - the lure, the promise, the possibility of the golden shining good life is easier to bear than its destruction and absence.
Not that I think decrementing the counter back to zero is the sure deal either. It’s inevitable that desire will always cut in line in front of altruism.