Some people think I attended college shortly after the Chicxulub disaster. If so, I have witnessed
much of the evolution of Homo sapiens.
Just think … we are the only extant human species. Fascinating.
We owe both the Planet Earth and the Universe a high degree of thanks for that privilege, with homage to
the dinosaurs for stepping aside, albeit unwillingly.
Anyway, we had learned to read by the time I sought higher
education. I wasn’t an English major but the girls who were didn’t catch the
eyes of fraternity men in some cases, so it gave me a chance at chasing after
female companionship. Consequently, I sort of minored in it … English that is.
What might be termed “End of Civilization” literature was
hot in those days. At the top of the list stood 1984, Brave New World, Lord of the Flies, and much of the work
of T.S. Eliot. Oh, and there were the comic observations of Catcher in the Rye.
Of course, I read all of them diligently. And of course, I re-read
them in no less than five-year intervals. Then, for relaxation on a simpler,
but equally terrifying note, I speed through Apocalypse Now, On the Beach,
and the work of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Anyway, it’s fashionable these days to regard 1984 as the most prescient of the works.
Certainly, our descent into a non-reality paradigm bears witness to Orwell’s
predictive powers. Our president’s creation of a private police force bears
witness as well to a “Big Brother” future. As for “Hate Week” or the daily “Two
Minutes of Hate,” welcome to Orwell’s world, now called “tweeting.”
Yesterday, however, I had an epiphany. Its seed sprouted
when I read where the so-called “Doomsday Clock” was now set at two minutes. (That
means we should start storing our favorite unhealthy food and drink, or get started on that book we’ve always planned to read).
After the seed had germinated for a full day, I happened upon
the 1963 film adaptation of Lord of the Flies
by Peter Brook, the best adaptation so far.
Oh dear.
Watching that film and thinking about the book, while powerful
forces are actively disassembling the foundations of our society, scared the crap
out of me. The worst part is that our brave band of Homo sapiens now (according to
a recent study) goes back only some 180,000 years. By geological clockwork, that’s
far less time than it took the boys in “Flies,” abandoned on a deserted island,
to revert from normalcy to a primal and violent tribalism.
During our time, our society advanced from primitivism
upwards to Mozart, Shakespeare, Rembrandt, and Isaac Newton, then downward to
Donald Trump. Only now, it’s not “kill the pig,” but “kill the truth.” It seems
only a matter of time before real, not verbal, spears will be sharpened for the
members of a free press, next its advocates.
What can we do? Watching the sun trying to peek through a
rainy sky, and listening to a Hayden symphony, I’m thinking that today will consist
of whatever I make it.
I don’t intend to start fashioning spears. Think I'll read The Sermon on the Mount instead
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