What’s to be said tonight that hasn’t already been said before? I’m feeling rather melancholy at the moment, pained by a second bout of irritation in my right side/kidney area that flared up again this afternoon, oddly enough, right after receiving a new email from my mother. Wish this didn’t stress me. Wish it didn’t matter.
Life is more worth living now than it’s ever been. This deserves repeating daily, lest I make the mistake of forgetting and become bogged down in whatever comes along.
I’ve tried keeping this past week light and fluffy, free of agitation and guilt. Went shopping and ordered beauty products online, taking it as easy as possible. And here we are, like always, back to wondering what it’s all supposed to be for beyond the small pleasures and comforts.
Today feels slightly emotional and began that way this morning. Don’t know why. Maybe it’s hormonal but something tells me that’s not it. Began reading Brave New World this evening, a book my father is also reading at the moment. Haven’t gotten past a few pages where Aldous Huxley is going on about fertilization in science labs and a method for splicing one zygote into several, going far beyond the octuplets aired in the news recently.
But times are strange nevertheless, even if predictions from Aldous Huxley and George Orwell haven’t come into fruition exactly as their texts described. We must remember that they weren’t claiming possession of powers akin to Nostradamus’s – they were imagining possible outcomes if we were to remain on the path observed during their lifetimes. But so much happened between then and now, things that couldn’t be predicted. Like, for example, the rebellion of the ’60s. That changed history for about 20 years and breathed new life into the populace, even those not taking part in the hippie side of the movement. Do we ever stop to wonder if the rebellion of the 1960s hadn’t taken place where we might be now as a people and a nation? And it’s not just we who were touched by the fervor surrounding the Vietnam War.
Then we look at another wild card, the late ’80s and ’90s when technology boomed and the Internet flickered into existence in households all across the U.S. and Europe. With this new frontier came the “techy cowboys” and their fierce independence and boundless creativity. They fight to keep the Internet free and open, with the Linux crews still carrying the torch and spreading technologies comparable to those put out by the Microsoft monopoly and their affiliates for a fraction of the cost. They raise awareness about Net Neutrality and our right to privacy online, which in turn serves to fuel those of us who believe in a right to greater privacy in all areas of life.
These are the variables of time. Never know what wild card might show up at any given time. Never know what will set off the next rebellion or how that rebellion may be carried out or what its impact will be. Seems to me that in any given situation there are both positive and negatives outcomes, most of which are unforeseeable. I’d like to say this is a universal truth but someone may prove this wrong, as in the case of a family losing a child to a horrific crime (what good stems from that?), so we’ll just say it applies most of the time. Even from terribly negative events some good may spring, some positive change may follow even if it’s powerless to undo the past wrongs.
So when people criticize the works of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and the like, I’m prompted to remember that they couldn’t possibly have predicted what variables lay in store. They were working with what they had before them, along with a heavy dose of imagination, but something as crazy as the ’60s would’ve probably looked far-fetched to people of the 1930s-40s. This tells me to never underestimate the power of human ingenuity and also that shared, intrinsic, unconscious will to swing the pendulum of social changes back the other direction when taken too far, forever in search of a sustainable balance. Indeed, they would have to breed this inborn characteristic out of every human on earth if ever a global conspiracy to achieve and maintain power were to succeed.
Hence one purpose for warfare: to take out those ferocious enough to pose problematic to some such scheme.
This brings me back to a topic of frequent interest lately having to do with the “domestication” of people. That’s what I call it, drawing a comparison to the domesticated pet dog (particularly the tiny varieties bred specifically as pets that are utterly incapable of serving a useful function in nature aside from being easy prey – Shih-Tzus come to mind). The more time I spend with dogs, the more the parallel seems obvious. It’s not the dogs’ fault obviously, so this isn’t a condemnation of specific breeds; just humorous how many people desire dogs so small and fragile that a misplaced foot might kill them.
This brought on thoughts of Homo Evolutis, a term discussed by Juan Enriques. The link is posted elsewhere on the blog, but here’s the video again of his speech at TED – mentioned in the 18th minute:
He describes Homo Evolutis as: “Hominids that take direct and deliberate control over the evolution of their species and other species.” A bit unnerving when you consider the full implications, making the imaginative prose of Huxley and Orwell seem simultaneously primitive albeit ahead of its time in their speculations on what someday may be. We laugh and scoff, but the reality is that science will bring so many variables we can’t yet predict, not knowing if this next stage of evolution will serve mankind in a useful way or if it will render us as absurdly impractical and dependent as toy dogs.
Makes you wonder. I keep thinking we’re on the cusp of great change, though my focus remains primarily on the social front and how this impacts our interactions with one another.
Ya know, it also makes me sad how often we get bogged down by in-fighting between the so-called political “Right” and “Left,” making fun of people who object to stem cell research on the merit that it’s essentially “playing God” or those who resist what they deem tyranny by their government. People laugh at them because it can be difficult understand the root concern lying at the base of their arguments, underneath the religious veneer. We dismiss them as traditionalists when really they’re aiming to slow things down, fearing that changes are coming too rapidly without enough thought given to the consequences. Whether they be Republicans or Libertarians or whatnot, it is a truly conservative mentality to tread lightly and stick with what’s been proven to work, allowing changes only when proven necessary. It’s this essence that causes me to refer to myself as conservative, especially in terms of financial matters.
Liberal is throwing caution to the wind and speeding forward into the unknown, in hopes of reaping benefits. There is a time and place for this as well, though I’d argue aside from occasional blips and uprisings to bring about greater equality among people and sustainable agricultural practices, this best serves us in small doses when it comes to the management of a country and government. There is a balance somewhere to be struck as I don’t believe any of us could be defined as strictly belonging to one “camp” or the other since they aren’t camps at all, but instead attitudes on how to manage life and its various aspects.
Always go back to those definitions since it seems we’ve become terribly divided in seeing one another as being on one “side” or the other when no sides truly exist. Just shades of gray, like with most things. Evolution apparently is nothing more than shades of gray too. Technology has changed life on this planet in many ways for the better but also for the worse, and many of us won’t be well-adapted for the changes to come. Frankly, I don’t believe I’m meant to adapt to it – it’s just too far beyond me. Not even 30 yet and I can see this clearly.
Sure, it’s a little disconcerting, but c’est la vie, right? I shudder to think what 20 years will bring whereas my predecessors looked to the future wearing shades, thinking it would be bright and glorious for all. Amazing the difference a decade can make these days. Retirement will likely never be an option, investments appear to be little more than gambling, so we come up living for ourselves, today, nevermind what the future has in store. We become obsessed with our material possessions, our youth and vanity, sex, and escapist entertainment. In many ways, we already are thoroughly domesticated, dependent, and individually helpless.
First came designer dogs, then designer children…
Who breeds the most among us, our best and brightest? No.
And on a sidenote, it should be said that the biggest drawback to in vitro fertilization, aside from the octuplet incident, is it creates less need and desire to adopt children who already exist. No one ever mentions that, so I had to. Another unintended social consequence to a scientific breakthrough. Many more will follow, and maybe a wild variable will show up in the shuffle.
Newsvine
