(no subject)
For waking up at two and fighting off hunger so I can continue to be too lazy to do anything, today has been a peculiarly productive day. I watched a video on Ted Talks of Al Gore talking about reducing carbon emissions to 20% by 2050; that 20% reserved for developing countries. The initial responses to this video consisted of filthy mouthbreathers regurgitating conspiracy theories about Bill Gates trying to euthanize the third world through "vaccinations" and then people trying to defend Bill Gates by posting links to studies showing that people breed less when there are less things to kill their children and then the original posters saying things like "I DONT EVENKNOW WHAT TAHT EVEN MEANS", as if not fully understanding something is justification enough for your vapid, complete shit beliefs (note: the previous applies to most things).
But I digress. I started reading Transmetropolitan again a couple days ago and found the parallels disturbing. The comparisons in the late 90s/early 2000s are manifold but take on a completely different tone fastforwarded ten years down the road, most probably because Warren Ellis has done a terrific job predicting the future thus far. In the world of Transmetropolitan, the air is clear, energy is clean, and there's no such thing as an impure water source or acid rain. While this has created a lush world full of animal reserves and clear skies and oceans all we see is the inside of an ambiguous megametropolis called "The City". It dawned on me, in the midst of a total lack of productivity, that this is perhaps one of the few works in the post-we're not fucked anymore genre. There is no big daddy of imminent doom, and death and discomfort have been defeated for anyone willing to grab it, and yet everyone is suffering. In a world that has been created anew and resources have become limitless we see a horrifying dystopia. A dystopia that humanity is, in the real world, trying to build. We're trying to cast off the shackles of accountability and limitation. The "singularity" is really just the quickly realizing dream that we can all unleash the most horrifying parts of our unconscious frivolously onto each other. This is so that any disparity between human (or post-human) beings will be created by only truly arbitrary means. We think that technology will lift us out of God's purview but we're only manifesting the hell of the human unconscious. But the world does not contain one vision, it contains all visions. I hope that in the midst of our self-delusional stumblings into the future there is still a home for those of us who don't lust after doom.
But I digress. I started reading Transmetropolitan again a couple days ago and found the parallels disturbing. The comparisons in the late 90s/early 2000s are manifold but take on a completely different tone fastforwarded ten years down the road, most probably because Warren Ellis has done a terrific job predicting the future thus far. In the world of Transmetropolitan, the air is clear, energy is clean, and there's no such thing as an impure water source or acid rain. While this has created a lush world full of animal reserves and clear skies and oceans all we see is the inside of an ambiguous megametropolis called "The City". It dawned on me, in the midst of a total lack of productivity, that this is perhaps one of the few works in the post-we're not fucked anymore genre. There is no big daddy of imminent doom, and death and discomfort have been defeated for anyone willing to grab it, and yet everyone is suffering. In a world that has been created anew and resources have become limitless we see a horrifying dystopia. A dystopia that humanity is, in the real world, trying to build. We're trying to cast off the shackles of accountability and limitation. The "singularity" is really just the quickly realizing dream that we can all unleash the most horrifying parts of our unconscious frivolously onto each other. This is so that any disparity between human (or post-human) beings will be created by only truly arbitrary means. We think that technology will lift us out of God's purview but we're only manifesting the hell of the human unconscious. But the world does not contain one vision, it contains all visions. I hope that in the midst of our self-delusional stumblings into the future there is still a home for those of us who don't lust after doom.