Friday, February 14, 2014

Sterile Does Not Equal Peaceful

You know how, in bad science fiction movies, everyone seems to be wearing plastic and tinfoil uniform jumpsuits? Maybe that was a more apt metaphor for the direction of our world than it seemed at the time (or that the filmmakers intended, consciously). I say "metaphor" because rather than a prediction that people would actually dress like that, maybe the art designers were subconsciously reflecting the direction in which they felt the world moving in terms of its mood.

Cold. Metal. Plastic. 

Ray Bradbury, in an interview many years ago, said he was out to "prevent the future." Near the end of his life, when asked about that, he said, "they didn't listen to me."

It feels to me like we are distilling everything; attempting to move toward a perfection of social interaction that we can never achieve and that we are attempting this by sterilizing every dynamic of human intercourse. 

I am empathetic to the idea of trying to create Utopia. Really. But, if Utopia means the total absence of varied viewpoints; of natural sexual dynamics; or, if it means that the average (groupthink-oriented) mind is going to continue to try to "interpret" the statements of others and find within those interpretations evil thoughts, I don't want to live in it.

We really have not listened to any of the sci-fi writers the way we should have. 

Well, I'm not putting on the silver suit. 

And when the flags are flying over the Utopian, clean-white and problem-free city of impossible, forced harmony, there will always be a horrified child in the basement crouching in a puddle of its own excrement. Because that's what pretending does, in the end. 

We need to talk and feel and discuss and argue and fight. The rest is just building facades. 

3 comments:

  1. As I was reading the first few paragraphs, especially the line by Bradbury, I thought "well doesn't everyone want to create the Utopia we thought we once had?" Then it became an echo.

    Some days I wish science had stayed in bed.

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    1. Sorry, I regret that I've missed the fact that this post was a reflection on group think as well; in which case, I still think science should have stayed in bed.

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