I try to be grateful every day for the good things in my life, of which there are many, and even the absence of bad things, ditto. Reading Anil Dash’s blog entry about the recent Michael Richards fiasco reminded me that I’m probably extremely unaware of just how many bad things I’ve missed out on from being a white upper middle class American. So thanks, Anil.
Recent issues of Analog have featured quite a few stories that seem to be just this side of metaphorical hammer smashing on head propounding the idea that humanity is reaching/has reached a critical point in our collective social/psychological development–and if someone as dense in this regard as me is picking up on this, they really must be doing it intentionally.
The message I get is we ought to realize that humans have accomplished an incredible amount of good over the millenia of acculteration, despite being emotional, imperfect beings and yet we still depend on the imposition of outside force to avoid our worst natures. That force can be physical, police or military, or psychological, laws or religious teachings or etiquette or group pressure, but without them we’d almost certainly be back to the behaviors of our pre-historic forebears.
In fact, we need to realize this positive aspect and rid ourselves of the reliance on outside control very soon or else. Stories in science fiction magazines rarely position the danger in the form of present-day specifics, using aliens or setting the story in the future, and often tell the tales with a heroic protagonist securing a positive outcome but real world events and forseeable developments are not so easily scripted.
Perhaps I’ve read my own thinking into these authors’ intentions. Maybe I see too much news about North Korea and Iran developing nuclear weapons, the prospect that marine life will die off within 50 years, warring tribes in the Sudan continue slaughtering each other, huge sections of the Antarctic ice caps are calving off and more of the Greenland and Artic ice are melting an not refreezing each summer, children being held captive by sexual predators and the absolutely poisonous political atmosphere here in the USA.
Perhaps all that negativity is exacerbated by my own psychopathology and the reality is that scientists will develop technical solutions to the worst of the potential ecological and military catastrophes. That leaders will finally come to the fore with convincing platforms that bridge the gaps between Republicans and Democrats and Arabs and Jews and rich and poor nations, at least enough to make longstanding conflicts managable.
Perhaps; I certainly hope so. In the meantime I’m thankful for living where I do, as I do and with who I do.
BillSaysThis 