The intensity and speed are forcing us to consume into the void. Rational, critical, thinking is slowly taking a back seat.
A good reference to this is the Time Machine. A film about a scientist who invents a time machine that allows him to travel through time itself. Where in the film, he decides to travel 800,000 years ahead into the future.
The mad scientist, as described by his friends, note the word mad, as the madness can sometimes drive one into a sphere of brilliance. When one is labelled insane, sometimes it can clearly point to some truth or idea but so far into the future their thoughts maybe, that no one can truly understand their ideas, and the rational describe them as crazy within the sphere of “now”.
Back to our film, our mad scientist travels into the future from the 1910s.
💸 Rat race
The scientist takes the time machine’s lever and pushes it into the future, stopping on August the 18th 1966. He starts to hear sirens around him, he gets out and looks around to see what is happening. He meets the son of one of his old friends, who he himself is in his late 60s now. They have a discussion about going underground because of the impending war.
Now, this is one of the signs we are already seeing in real life. War is pulling apart our countries and we’re heading at a fast rate into the destruction of our civilised world. Money, greed, and lack of abundance are factors driving us against each other. We are trapped into debt and a constant loop that changes our mindset and leaves us with a perfect excuse for not doing anything.
🥑 Veganism
When our scientist notices all the explosions around him, he rushes back to his time machine. He pushes his lever hard into the future and ends up in 802,701AD, where humankind has changed completely. Rid of all technology and ego. He meets a new race, Eloi, a society of elegant childlike adults. They live in small communities inside large and futuristic yet slowly deteriorating buildings — not working and only eating a raw vegan diet of fruits.
Now, are we crazy enough to say that some of this is already happening? There have been many cases of people, ridding themselves of the stresses of city life, to go live in small communities or live off the land with basic needs. This was highlighted in the TV series “Kevin McCloud’s Escape to the Wild”, where several families break away to live in remote areas, totally abandoning civilised life.
The idea of raw food is making its way into our world through documentaries and food bloggers — a good example is the documentary: Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead. Now, I’m not saying that these are bad — I myself live off a plant-based diet and I feel the benefits of not eating meat and dairy. But I’m saying that the comparison of where we are heading to, is very canny with the film’s future.
I see the results of excessive economical growth damaging our minds, our bodies and the environment to try to literally push us into a different way of thinking. Whether that is good or bad, we don’t really know at the minute.
🙉 🙈 I hear or see nothing
The film might lead most to think the idea of self-destruction won’t reach our generation or generations of generations. However, what a great misconception. Our route clearly points to the era, where humanity loses control of thinking and embraces the idea of pure experience.
In the film, we see the Eloi have no idea of what is going on when a girl is about to drown. The two boys just sit there and do nothing. Ergo, no empathy.
Now, if we compare this to modern society. We clearly don’t want to help others who are in danger or need our help because we have made suing each other so easy and the laws of helping others so complex. We have become afraid of doing anything. We are starting to see a society that forces us to live without empathy. We would rather follow rules than use empathy to understand and apply compassion to others.
🙅 Learning less
There is another scene, where the scientist walks into their library to only find that the books crumble in his hands. The Eloi, have no idea what the books are and what to do with them. This points to a generation that doesn’t read and show no regard for the consequence of passing down knowledge.
In our case, our language is being trimmed down, words are becoming abbreviated and shortened to the level of three or four characters. The dictionary is always taking out words every year and adding useless nouns that have no right to be there. A lot of us are constantly glued to our phones and forget the world around us. Using social media to teach us to become obsessed with our own self-interests.
I love this quote used from Plato’s Phaedrus as it reminds us of the current “Google” generation:
“This invention of yours will create a forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. …[your disciples] will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without its reality.”
🤲 Acceptance
We are a species of an extremist bond to polarisation. We tend towards embracing one ideal at a time while rejecting anything else. Science vs. Religion, Vegan vs. Meat. We are at a constant struggle with finding balance. It has never been found in our spectrum of life, yet. And clearly that is the problem, not the rat race nor pure experience, but one that may sit deep inside the very fabric of our souls. Pushing us to fill that void with a zero or one but we may feel peace if we learn to embrace the void with balance.
References
Rat race
Excessive economical growth
IAMGOD movement
- https://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/addiction-selfies-mental-disorder.html
- https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/selfie-addict-took-two-hundred-3273819
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2167696812466548
Made suing each other so easy and the laws of helping others so complex
Cutting down words and dumbing our language
- Why Oxford Dictionaries are right to purge nature from the dictionary
- 35 Modern Words Recently Added to the Dictionary
Science vs Religion
- https://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/science/conflict.htm
- https://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/overview-faq.htm#2
- https://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/science/faith-science.htm#i
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religion-science/
- https://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/31/world/after-350-years-vatican-says-galileo-was-right-it-moves.html
- https://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/books-lh.htm
- https://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/mn-lh.htm
- https://www.quora.com/How-can-one-believe-in-science-and-religion-at-the-same-time?share=1
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