selling ourselves short

Societal collapse.

An interviewer said of Miyazaki:

He's a big critic of our dependence on virtual reality—computer games, TV, and animation, too. He complained, when I met him, that so much in our culture is "thin and shallow and fake." He's also an environmentalist, of a somewhat dark and apocalyptic variety. He's said, not entirely jokingly, that he looks forward to the time when Tokyo is submerged by the ocean and the NTV tower becomes an island, when the human population plummets and there are no more high-rises.

credit: Tokyo Genso

On a semi-related note, worth looking up is Ran Prieur's essay "Where Was Luke Skywalker on September 11?" I'm not totally down with the first half... because I tend toward being one of the unicorns he discusses as not existing (people who feel equally badly about the suffering of people they do/don't know)... but I do agree with his assertion that most people (including me) felt on some level good about 9/11. I felt the same thing about Oklahoma City and I was just a kid. And then there's post-apocalyptic art...

credit: unknown

What do you feel when you look at it? Frightened? Angry? Disgusted that people would make such depictions? Sad about the people who died? Bored?

Excited?

credit: Lori Nix

I love books a little too much to be entirely comfortable with that last one, but I do get excited about art depicting the ruins of modern cities. I feel hopeful. And when there are vines and other plants covering the ruins, I feel peaceful.

I don't want anybody to die or to be hurt, but I don't want this either. I don't want what we've got going on. I don't want my kids to grow up and be schooled in the art of being a cog--or, worse, the art of using and abusing.

Sometimes I take my sons to the little forest that remains protected near our home. Sometimes when they're there, they run through the leggy branches and roots of a certain cluster of tender, young trees I don't know the name of, and they play at being like Mei and Satsuke, searching for Totoros. And--being the grown-up--I'm Totoro.

When I think of desires like these (all of these--Miyazaki's remarks, children loving the forest, post-apocalyptic longings conveyed through art), I always think of Ted Kaczynski. Did you know that when he was a tiny baby, he was hospitalized for a severe allergic skin condition? He was taken from his parents and isolated, not allowed any human touch or visitors outside of a narrow window of visitation time. This was done repeatedly over a period of eight months.

From CNN:

He was pinned down in a spread-eagle position for an examination. Someone in the hospital took a photograph to record the baby's symptoms. It showed an infant's eyes brimming with terror.

That's not unusual. That's how medicine thought of babies back then; they also operated on preemies without anesthesia. Ten thousand years ago in Europe we were routinely making human sacrifices. In the past 48 hours we killed over __ people in Somalia with drones, the majority non-targeted civilian casualties*. (And that's just drones, just technological barbary, the tip of the iceberg--how many kids were beaten to death by their own parents yesterday all over the world?)

What's my point?

I guess I'm rambling. I originally wrote some of this for my October 31st post on Miyazaki, but it didn't seem to fit right there.

I have no illusions, really, that capitalism, technology, or corporatism are what makes us terrible. The plants and the animals eat each other, after all (neat cover, btw). We were killers always, long before bombs.

But I don't really want to be just an animal. Do you?

And even if those aforementioned cultural constraints aren't what make some of us cruel, they do seem to wound us in other ways, removing from reach some of our key human needs. Look how we react. Look at our fatness, our depression and OCD, our cutting, our mindless television viewing, our drugs, our listless self-destruction... we're like caged rats pulling out their own fur, pushing the coke bar.

Look at the difference in skin clarity and eye brightness between people who set their own schedules and can afford to go skiing and hiking on the weekends vs. people who must work full time at Wal-mart and take care of relatives on the weekends. Or Mormon mommy bloggers (who believe that God is going to set them up with a cooler place after this shit is over) vs. the average middle class office grunt.

Where's the future going? What do you think about it?

What forms do you think transhumans and AI will take, in the real world, if we survive until then? If you were the world's benevolent dictator, what would you decide? Can we get ourselves out from under the nasty, uncaring sorts of people who currently rule us, or will they be the ones who craft what's to come? Or will our future technology bring nothing more high-minded than sexbots and police surveillance?

I keep thinking, too about this quote from Derrick Jensen:

Every morning when I awake I ask myself whether I should write or blow up a dam. I tell myself I should keep writing, though I'm not sure that's right.

I'm not sure, either. Not anymore. Let me be very clear, here: I won't ever be blowing up anything, personally, nor supporting such things verbally, financially, or in any other way. I have too many ties and responsibilities for that. Furthermore, in practice it's probably nigh impossible to avoid hurting innocent people and my own moral code makes collateral damage unacceptable.

But, theoretically speaking, I'm getting afraid that Gandhi doesn't really win. That he can't.

Nature itself often rewards the brutes (although there is usually room for other strategies as well). And our current economic and political system is set up to reward outright psychopathy. Even popular uprisings tend to favor corrupt and forceful agents, not the gentle (you can see this happening in #OWS, even, if you're watchful).

Not depressed over this at the moment, though. More just waiting to see if the outcome of all this unrest surprises me. =)

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*I removed the figure, as it's looking like the news report I read may have been inaccurate. I think my wider point still stands, even if this particular incident turns out to be untrue.