Guest Ranting Bastard writes:
Today’s post is brought to you by Krimsonlake, who needs no introduction, because more of you probably read her blog than read ours. Bastards.
Every time I'm forced to consider the future I either picture head exploding animations or a blank wall lack of ideas. I'm no Orwellian genius thinker, or Gates money making future technological innovator.
Sometimes I like listening to REM's It's The End of The World As We Know It while pondering the future with a goofy smile on my face.
They could nuke me now and I probably would feel fine. It's that bleak futuristic outlook teamed with an odd sense of nihilistic optimism. We're so busy arguing morality that we've lost any real connection to it. But that's ok, we're learning not to care so much.
That's the future folks. Refined beyond simple carpet bombings and towers falling.
Sometimes I see the future in snippets of imagery.
Predictably I get flashes of Middle Eastern countries imitating Hiroshima with American flags flying. Flashing words. Land. Brave. Free.
That doesn't bother me as much as the concept of computerized books. I can accept the inevitability of war, but I'm terrified that I'll end up having to read my beloved fiction on a computer screen. No more paperback covers bent from curling up and absorbing words on paper. My stomach crunches with fear when I picture the bright screen in a dim room, and the migraines to follow.
Flash again and I'm in a world where tobacco is illegal because it's bad for you. Protect your lungs, you may need them! But Speed will be legal, as our capitalist utopia demands 100 hour working weeks, parenthood, relationships, fun, all at once. I barely have the energy for now, so I think I'll need handfuls of uppers and a padded room. Maybe we'll be so tired we won't notice the periodic bombs, or have time for books on our computer screens.
And again the world conscious political whore in me flashes in again. We'll always have a Third World, but imagine if that world becomes the White world. Wouldn't that be amusing? Or it will stay the same, players changing slightly as tiger economies grow and die. Cyclic.
Some things are for sure. Celebrities and fashion, art, TV shows and
bad movies, music. We'll always have our bread and circuses. We'll refine our entertainment. We'll take more drugs. We'll either earn more money or understand the meaning of real poverty. We'll become increasingly bored with imagery of dead war children. We will always have our heroes, our despots, our terrorists. Our good and evil. And we will collectively remain confused as to who is who, what is what, and wallow in our moral relativism. Until one day we just stop throwing around morality and relativism as manners of defence and attack, because we really just don't care anymore.
And we will feel fine.
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