Imagine a world, Talon permitted me, imagine a world of absolute apathy. Imagine a world where the people think not for themselves, but as a collective. They think as they are permit, about what they are told to, and only about those things. These people are happy, they are content, and they want for nothing of true value. Their desires are prescribed, and in this way their goals are eventually attainable, and they know this, and this soothes them. In this world, there is no creativity, no unorthodoxy, nothing abstract and no-one unusual. Such things are heretical, and there is no deviance from this monotonous bliss.
Rebellion is a lost word, long forgotten. For who would wish to rebel against the simple life, Talon asks. Nobody has time for such disturbances in their lives in this world. Such a distraction would only cost time that could be better spent on their personal objectives. Objectives that cause no change to the lives of others, or in truth to their own, but are everything to these plugged-in drones. These people do not crash into one another, do not meet, do not convene. They interact through a method of impersonal social networking, making contact but never emotionally bonding. This method is simpler, more time efficient and less committal. It is everything to them, and they follow one another through persistent updates, never touching but never out of touch.
The leaders in this world strive only to keep things the same. Nobody ever meets them, but they influence entire nations, creating minor points of interest that only register as blips on a spreadsheet of meaningless data fed to the people through a virtual drip. True events of real importance are never exposed, though when they were, the people here would glance over them with the same indifference as they do the glut of other information at their disposal. The knowledge of centuries is at the fingertips of these people, but they do not even spare it a moment of their time, for its accessibility makes it axiomatic, its volume overwhelming, and its content irrelevant to the lives of these singular beings.
Somebody would rise up against this, I reason. But what is one individual inspiration, Talon counters, when millions are lethargic. An army is not raised from a mass of peoples indifferent to their own surroundings. A call to arms bears no meaning on a populace concerned only with its own daily grind. There is no problem as they are told there is no problem, and they are told there is no war to be had. They wake and they sleep, they do not question why. One voice is drowned by many others.
We can only be glad no such world exists in this way, I surmise.
Talon says nothing.
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A brave new world? Interesting
ReplyDeleteAnd an interesting muse at that
ReplyDeleteEventually he spoke. Perhaps it does not, he said. Yet the truth or falisty of a proposed world matters little. What is important are the questions that we ask of it. I ask what he means. Talon explains that when we propose a world view, it does not matter whether its content aligns with our own. What matters instead, is whether it answers the continuous question that plagues us. That question, of course, is of power. But a particular type of power, not necessarily the power of governments or of corporations. At least not directly, Talon adds quickly.
ReplyDeleteThe quesiton here is one of human authenticity, he states. In this world where entire nations are slaves to apathy, what is humanity? I say that humanity has become a collective. But is this humanity, Talon interjects? There is a lack of will and a lack of determination there. The people lack the ability to commit to deeds that confirm their individuality.
An authentic human is not one who follows the flock, but one who can stand alone. One who can be unbroken by the pressure about him, and who can change the world as he changes it. In the communal world there can be no such heroes, no such individual flair. Humanity is little more than chattel prized as a labour force. One step from complete slavery, naught but chance allowing the rare person to remember what is lost.
But where I ask, with a sense of despairation, has this authenticity gone? I point you to the past, Talon states. Those centuries past where people rose with strength to break bonds of oppression, and people tasted the power of their thoughts. Then the world was reordered; the powerful were cast down. A state of equality that could not last. People remembered that knowledge was the cause of this power, whilst forgetting the taste of the power. New leaders made knowledge commonplace. The measure of human authenticity became knowledge for its own sake. Worse still, it then became equality; all were to be respected equally.
Apathy soon followed. And so will die the authentic human, Talon concluded.
We can only be glad no such world exists in this way, I surmise again, weakly.
Talon says nothing.
It's a few thousand years or more ago.
ReplyDeleteTheir ancestors planted the fields, and you should see the infinite fruits they bear. Their ancestors wrote the books, built the libraries. Infinite knowledge is at their fingertips. They don't care. They go to the fields, they reap the rewards of a rote task, and return to the houses built by their forebears. They eat well. They live long. They have the luxury of free time.
They're bored. They're afraid things will never change, that they cannot be measured against the passion and inspiration of their ancestors.
They have forgotten that nothing stays the same forever. They have forgotten that even a smattering of quiet human voices sets up a resonance capable of toppling mountains.
They are their ancestors, they are their descendants. They have fallen prey to the notion that people are different in different places, in different times.
They have forgotten that people are machines, that people are animals, that people are passive as a herding herbivore, and, perhaps more importantly, savage beyond any predator ever known.
If they are quiet, they are not motionless. Even through their apathy, their absence of feeling, they built our world.
Tell them thanks. Thanks for not caring. Thanks for being human all the same.