Comparing George Orwell’s “1984″ to Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” Postman then added that, “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.”
Social media offer us two choices: Orwell’s hell, or Huxley’s, MarketWatch, September 7, 2022
I’m Team Huxley all the way.
People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. – A. H.
Anyway…
I can thank Donald Trump for at least one thing: That is, being the impetus behind my decision to abandon just about all social media and forsake you all here at my website.
For the most part I’m a better man for it because Trump and all his idiotic minionscultish worshippers political supporters were driving me on the fast track to dark, warped places I had no desire to visit.
However, two years or so on, I do miss journaling* regularly here.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to re-engage with it like I used to.
But I’m trying.
At least I think often about trying.
Anyway…
I don’t really blame social media for all our societal ills like so many do.
As I see it, we will always look to blame who/whatever we can for the ignorant/dumb things we do that only we, ourselves, can possibly be responsible for doing.
Such as hating.
Or not accepting the truth.
Or even avoiding the truth.
Et cetera.
Et cetera.
Besides, we have allowed technology to debase and dumb us down at least since the invention of the printing press.
And there’s no turning back now.
And once our A.I. Overlords are in complete control, brains will no longer be optional.
They will be unnecessary.
Superseded.
Yeah…
Pun definitely intended.
*I still cannot reconcile myself to the word “blogging”.
When I first began articulating this post in my head, it was framed around the question, “When will it all end?”
But after just a few seconds of contemplation around it I quickly realized that question is quite ridiculous.
Obviously, we are no where near a point in which we can even begin speculating about the end to all this madness.
And after last night’s shootings, I am quite sure we are actually at a new beginning.
A tragic new beginning with an ancient foundation of seemingly immovable hate.
Not just for the other’s race, or the other’s politics, or the other’s finances, but a hate from where all other hate stems.
A hate for ourselves.
We Americans are like the spoiled, bully rich kid who, because he’s always had everything given to him, it is impossible for him to see that everything is all there is.
He wants more and if he can’t have it he is going to whine and kick and piss in his pants and make it a living hell for anyone and everyone around him.
We Americans have it all.
But it’s not enough.
Guns in our society are a problem. But they are not the problem.
The most common type of gun confiscated by police and traced by the ATF are .38 special revolvers, such as this Smith & Wesson Model 60 .38 Special revolver with a 3-inch barrel. (“S&W 60 3in“. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.)
First off, I’m not anti-Second Amendment (if you’re an American (of the U.S. persuasion) and you don’t know what the Second Amendment is then that’s a problem)…
See, I live out in the sticks and I had to call 911 once because I thought there was a gas leak somewhere in my house and all I got to say about that experience is that our military overran countries faster than it took the emergency responders to get to my house.
It’s not their fault – I just live out in the sticks.
Heck, I found out then that I can’t even call my 911 operator direct. My 911 call goes to somewhere across the border and that operator has to re-direct it back into my state to a different operator.
I can only wonder what would have happened if that 911 call wasn’t for a gas leak (a false alarm, fortunately) but for a home invasion instead?!
You can feel me, right?
So yeah, I’m all about owning a gun as a means of protection of last resort.
But then again, I’m a nice guy.
I can be trusted with a gun.
When I say I am a not a gun-slingin’, trigger-happy nutjob with “adequacy issues” you can take my word for it…
But as for the rest of you all…
I’m beginning to wonder.
What the heck is going on out there?
Unfortunately, it has become my unfortunate belief that we, as a nation, are now just too mean and too rude and too disrespectful and, most dangerously, too short-tempered (what’s up with all the road rage?) to have so many guns – both legal and illegal – locked and loaded and at the ready out there, just itchin’ to mediate our every issue and altercation, however slight.
Something has got to change.
I mean, come on… There were over 11,000 murders committed with a gun in 2013 (according to the Centers for Disease Control (via Wikipedia)).
That’s a lot of humans made dead from mean assholes with guns.
So if we, as a citizenry, are so danged mean and so danged armed, just think what it must be like to have to try to police all of us in an effort to maintain good order and discipline in a society where that kind of anachronistic, Mayberry-like behavior is now shat upon.
Nowadays, it must be pretty darned scary to be a cop.
No wonder they all jack themselves up like Special Forces operators gone wild.
Have you seen some of these Rambo cops?
In-f’n-tense, they are…
It’s hard to believe – and even sadder – that it takes so much firepower to patrol our streets.
Seriously, we have an Intra-Arms Race going on between we angry civilians and the feeling-threatened-and-under-fire Po po, you know, the overly-aggressive-stoppin’-and-friskin’, tank-drivin’ Five-Oh.
Geez…
And then when you throw race into the mix of a messy situation where the police are a majority of the time of a majority skin tone and the citizenry they are bringing their good order and discipline to are of a minority skin tone…
These days someone usually ends up shot.
Just like last night at the protests in response to the first anniversary of the Michael Brown killing.
Look, I’ve written about these things here before and, like then, I don’t have any answers.
But when it comes to race and racism, I do know, despite what my Merriam-Webster dictionary app says, racism is all about power and who has it.
And the fact is, White male Anglo-Saxon Protestants have and, for the foreseeable future, will continue to have the power in this country.
For the record, here is what my app says racism is:
1: a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
2: racial prejudice or discrimination
Now, I don’t disagree with what the app says, but in the national grand scheme of things, whose racism is going to hurt more – a WASPy dude’s* or a Black female’s?
Sure it may hurt our WASPy dude feelings that others not like us don’t like us just because they don’t look like us because they are racists of the first or second order, or both. But overall that’s all their racism will do to us – hurt our Privileged and Guilt-ridden White feelings.
Unlike our racism, theirs won’t keep us out of a job.
Or out of a loan.
Or out of a home…
Their racism just doesn’t have the power to do all that harm like ours does.
And sorry to burst your bubbles white racist females, you may think you’re superior to others because of your skin tone, but thanks to our historically patriarchal and sexist society (a subject worthy of a post of its own), you just don’t have as much “clout” to harm as we WASPy dudes have.
Man**, this is depressing.
What is most depressing about it all is how it all feeds off of each other…
The racism increases anger.
The anger increases violence.
The violence increases fear.
The fear increases gun sales.
The gun sales increase death rates.
The increasing death rates increase police presence.
And on and on…
Like I said, I have no answers.
But I do have a voice…
And, for what it’s worth, here I am using it to, if not provide solutions, at least discuss the problems.
Anyway…
This entire unfortunate, depressing post reminds me of that intense scene from the movie Grand Canyon, starring Danny Glover and Kevin Kline, where Glover’s character, a tow truck driver, comes to the aid of…
Ah, what am I trying to explain it for? Just go ahead and watch it…
Peace, y’all…
And remember, Being Nice is a skill that, to be effectively employed, must be continually practiced.
