Immediately I visualized scores of people in robes singing praises to the grand protectors.
Blessed be the Mask. Blessed be the Harmony of Social Distancing. Blessed be the co-mingling of the vaccine with our blood. Blessed be the lack of heretics for what is once done is forever done. All hail the jab!
All of this being done under stained glass widow showing an angelic Dr. Fauci haloed and masked. Perhaps with crossed syringes behind him. On the right, would be the holy first shot and on the left the holy booster.
Of course, no religion would be complete without curses.
Cursed be the unvaxxed, for they shall inherit death. Cursed be the deniers, for they are minions of the evil one, he of orange hue and wicked tongue. Cursed be purveyors of treatments, for they seek to undo the will of the almighty COVID, without the blessings of the holy jab. Cursed be those who will not mask, for they shall breathe naught but the unclean air and pestilence. Cursed be the pagan ones who dance in the sunlight and bathe in the sea for they wallow in filth.
As I was picturing this insanity I realized that I was pulling some of the imagery from the movie Ultraviolet.
As movies go, it was a bit weak on the plot. The visuals were impressive and in the end, the badguy did get his just deserts. So there was a certain satisfaction in that.
Ironically, the bad guy in the movie bears a slight resemblance to St. Fauci of the Mask, only a few years younger.
I was flashing on all of this and completely forgot what the article was about.
But… It started my day with a weird bit of silliness and a smile.
I hope you have some silliness that makes you smile in the weekend ahead.
I’m thinking I’ll fire up the DVD player and see if I can dig out my copy of the movie just for the hell of it.
Gas prices are soaring. While The President tried to blame it on gouging on the part of the stations, that’s not really playing well because the price of crude is up by quite a bit. This is what happens when you have supply chain disruptions.
Let’s face it, even if you take the politics out of the situation. It is, at its core a supply chain disruption. When the government decides that pipelines can’t be completed and targets other pipelines for closure higher prices are the result.
Add to that problems induced at the ports, where foreign oil comes into our supply chain and well, the prices have no choice but to go up. It’s a basic supply / demand situation. Then if you add the apparent lack of truck drivers into the mix creating more of a supply constraint it’s pretty damn obvious that prices at the pump are going to go up.
In California we see this every single year. As California switches from the “Summer Blend” to the “Winter Blend” at California refineries there’s always a supply burp. Prices go up and rarely come down. Since California regulations prevent importing non-California gasoline, the good people of California are always under the heavy thumb of Sacramento.
The image below from Despicable Me says it eloquently. If you have any question, we’re the person being crushed.
“Welcome to my world,” to the rest of the country. Get used to it for at least the next 6-8 years. I specify that time frame because with a screw up of this epic proportion even if Biden is voted out, it will take 2 to 4 years to undo the damage.
Biden says he’s running again in 2024. I’m wondering if his next presidential run will be from a hospital bed instead of his basement.
Enough of that, here we are at the beginning of the Holiday Season. It’s supposed to be a time of family, friends, and football.
But then in my warped little brain, I see the following conversation happening in the near future.
No dear I’m not watching football. It isn’t any fun anymore because it’s not just about the football. Now it’s all about “Educating” us on the error of our ways. So this year I just want to enjoy family, friends and a nice meal.
Oh right. Family and friends must now be looked at with suspicion.
Has Grannie had her COVID booster? She hasn’t? Oh well, send her back to the old folks home. Your friend Sharon hasn’t had the vaccine? Well she’s not welcome here! It doesn’t matter if she’s already had COVID, she’s unclean!
So what, if she’s the godmother of our children and you’ve been friends since kindergarten. She’s officially unclean we can’t take the risk to our children! Tell her she can’t come. What? No-one in the family has gotten their booster shots? Well then, I guess we’ll just eat alone.
What do you mean we’re not having a turkey this year? It’s not in the budget? How can it not be in the budget? We’re having tofu? What about the pies, what about the green beans? We’re not having those either, why not? There weren’t any at the store?
What is happening?
Oh right. We all have to keep tightening our belts until the New Administration is able to “Fix” all the messes the horrible Orange Man’s old administration left behind.
Say, it’s cold in the house let’s turn up the heat, it’s 55°F in here. I’m worried that the kids are too cold. What do you mean that we can’t turn up the heat? We can’t afford that either? Can we afford to turn on the oven? What? You’re going to cook Thanksgiving dinner over an open fire, that makes no sense.
We can’t afford to turn on the oven either? Uh yes dear, I’ll go dig a fire pit in the front yard. Yep, I’ll cut down the tree in the back yard. Good thing I’ve got a chain saw. Oh I need to go get some gas for it…
What? We can’t afford gas for the chain saw? Oh, You got me an ax for Christmas? Okay I’ll get to work. Can’t we just break up the furniture? Oh, that’s for later when we’ve used up the trees in the yard.
Why are you assigning me the gender specific role of chopping down trees and digging fire pits? Doesn’t that send a bad message to the children?
Yes dear… No I wasn’t implying that you should do all the work. I was just asking… fine! I’m going out to the garage, my phone should be finished charging in the Tesla by now.
What do you mean the Tesla is dead? Oh right, I forgot about the wind related blackouts this month.
Hey honey? What’s this Carvana paperwork about you buying a 1965 Volkswagen and there’s something else about immigrating to Mexico?
Now, I’d just be content to hitch a ride off this rock to someplace else.
Anywhere else.
It’s not this planet that’s the problem. This world is a beautiful place. The indigenous flora and fauna are spectacular. Except for one species. Even amongst that species there are some very nice individuals. As a group though, the species, Homo sapiens sucks!
Yeah, we’re a bunch of semi intelligent, semi evolved apes. We’ve done some clever things. Our music, art, and literature, explore some interesting existential concepts. We have an interesting imagination and all. But when you come right down to it, we’re not as spectacular as we think we are.
We’ve barely left our world. We’re driven by silly tribalism, religion, and fear. If we were in a zoo we’d be seen as creatures too fascinated by our own poo, to see even a slightly larger picture. One thing we’d miss, might be that we were the subjects of clever psychological experiments.(Hat tip to Douglas Adams) Or perhaps miss the fact that we were in a zoo at all.
Give us shiny trinkets and we’ll be entertained for decades. Give us differences in religion, appearance, or politics, and we’ll entertain ourselves for centuries.
Perhaps it’s a function of growing older, lately I’m less and less concerned with trinkets, religion, politics, trends, or appearance.
All I find myself longing for is simplicity and peace. The view of cities from a distance makes me very glad that I’m not living in one. Being alone and disconnected from Facebook, Twitter, and all the rest of the social media platforms provides me more happiness than my participation in those systems ever did.
I’m no longer concerned with what people think of me, and am happy reading, working outside, or thinking my own thoughts. There are days now when I don’t speak more than a few words to anybody. I go for weeks without seeing anybody other than my dog and significant other.
When I scan the news, with few exceptions all I feel is pity, or sit shaking my head wondering how stupid can people be.
I would gladly pack a few belongings and board a starship to get away from my fellow Homo sapiens. I might occasionally long for the company of other humans if I left. I suspect however, that the next planet or beauty of the universe would be enough to make thinking about distant humanity not worth my time.
Lately I’ve found myself thinking along these lines…
All civilizations fall. If you change your focus just a little bit and look at our planet and all it’s inhabitants as a whole. Divisions disappear and you realize that our technology has unified us in what is essentially a single civilization.
Homo sapiens is not ready for that.
Instinctively Homo sapiens realizes this truth, and is actively destroying this planetary civilization whether they admit it or not.
One need only look at the growing tribalism worldwide. A tribalism that directly or indirectly states, “My beliefs must be ascendant above all others.” What comes next, we can extrapolate from history.
The “Dark Ages” lasted 500 years. During that time, almost everything that had been known was lost. Homo sapiens devolved back into small bands of people drawn together out of mutual need.
Imagine the collected works of Shakespeare used as firelighters, because no-one could read anymore. In 200 years or less, everything that we take for granted will likely become legends repeated around a fire pit.
Will the next dark age last only 500 years? I suppose that depends on how much is lost, what is remembered, and in what context. If some kind of “Green” religion took hold I could see the next dark age lasting 1000 years or more.
Imagine a religion that said something like, “Thou shalt only burn the oils rendered from the fat of thine sheep, for light in the darkness. All other light, save that of the sun, is an abomination before god,” or “Thou shalt only walk upon thine own feet. Any other conveyance is an abomination. Thou shall not sit upon thine animals, nor shall ye ride upon thy wagon, for this is a sin and thee will surely be damned to hell for all time.“
Adherents to a religion like that might take 2000 years to even begin rediscovering technology. If a belief like this were dominant, it’s reasonable to expect that heretics wouldn’t last long. It’s also reasonable to assume that any community with a different view would be burned to the ground. Such is the power of religious fervor.
Religion isn’t confined to God, Allah, Buddha, or any other pantheon of gods. Religion is about belief. Belief in anything.
Belief in and of itself isn’t the problem, it becomes a problem when a belief takes on a life of its own. When beliefs are practiced and never questioned you have a religion. The consensus of all knowledgable people once was that the Earth was flat, and the entire universe revolved around Earth.
Folks who questioned that “Fact” were murdered as heretics. Even when scholars had evidence to support that the Earth was round, and was not in fact the center of the universe, they were hesitant to discuss it with anybody.
Religious leaders in those times, insisted that the world was flat and cited their holy texts to prove it. But nowhere in those holy texts did their god ever say, “By the way, the world is flat and you’ll fall off the edge if you go too far.” Also, nowhere in those religious texts, does God discuss the blueprints for existence or the universe.
There’s the disconnect. Superstition became entwined with religion and the two formed a foundation for persecution and more importantly, a framework of control. Another example was the belief that if someone was sick, they were sick because of demons or evil spirits. Ever wonder how many epileptics were burned at the stake? Just sayin…
I suppose what’s tired me of humanity is that so many “well educated” people are so unlikely to ask questions. It’s not about the vaccines, or the death rate, versus the case rates. My tiredness isn’t about the politics and obvious efforts of politicians to aggrandize themselves by attempting to control all aspects of people’s lives. Those are factors, to be sure.
The main thing is that so many people refuse to see or interpret the facts before them. So many people have abdicated their personal responsibility to learn in favor of a 20 second blurb about the world around them from a talking head on a screen. They don’t question what they hear, then these folks call themselves “well informed”.
At a family event recently, one of my relatives was haranguing me about vaccines and COVID. I’d ignored him on the matter for three solid days.
Finally, I asked the questions, “Would you take your umbrella if there was a 2% chance of rain? If there was a 98% probability that you’d win the lottery wouldn’t you bet the farm on it?”
After several other family members present busted up laughing, the matter was closed. This particular family member stomped off and said nothing more about COVID. The sad part is that he is, or was, a scientist. In point of fact a lot of my knowledge of scientific proofs and objective evaluation of fact, I learned from him. I found it very disconcerting that he of all the relatives was not asking logical questions and thinking for himself.
He’s not a bad person, I choose to believe that his haranguing was coming from a place of care and concern for members of the family. That’s admirable, but his method was all wrong because he wasn’t providing proofs or facts. He was simply repeating the same message CNN had been spouting for more than a year.
Perhaps my expectations were too high. I’d expected a scientist to be armed with facts and proofs. I would actually have welcomed that. I’d have asked questions and asked to look at, and evaluate the data as he’d taught me to when I was a young man.
I suppose I’m still dealing with the shattering of my illusion that this family member was about the reality of scientific process.
Science can teach you a lot. Often, science will teach you that your preconceived notions about the world are wrong. Pure science challenges your beliefs. It doesn’t take sides and cares nothing for your feelings.
E=mc2 Works. The equation is dispassionate. It contains no inherent moral judgement. It’s up to the individual to decide if they will use the resulting energy for destruction, or to generate power that lights a city.
Superstition on the other hand is nothing but beliefs. In a revival tent, those that the faith healer can’t heal, didn’t believe hard enough. It’s the unhealed, who are at fault. They’re told to go home and pray on it then come back next week. “The donation box is by the door, leave as much as you can and god will know. Perhaps he’ll heal you next week.“
That’s the way this past couple of years appear to me. It’s like we’re all living in a revival tent.
The problem for me is that the revival tent has been growing around us for a decade. Science, truth, facts, are being replaced by beliefs and superstition. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ve reached apogee in this phenomena yet.
I don’t want to be on this planet when we do.
Here’s a thought experiment.
Imagine yourself with your car, manufactured goods, and all your digital devices suddenly appearing on a street in Barcelona during the inquisition.
Witch! Demon! Unclean Spirt!
You’d be dragged in chains to the grand inquisitor before you even had a moment to take stock of what had happened to you. You’d be summarily executed too.
Imagine the same scenario, but this time you appear in 1947 near an army base. You’d find yourself in a military prison. You’d be under “protective custody” and interrogated about the technology you were carrying. The military would recognize your car, as a car, with internal combustion engine but 99% of the circuitry they couldn’t conceive of, nor could you explain. You’d die in prison as a national security asset or risk. Imagine trying to explain your navigation system, or iPhone or computer. Even a Chromebook has more computing power than all the computers extant on the planet at that time.
Now imagine that scenario but you move forward 100 years.
We like to think that the future is all bright and shiny. We’d like to think that appearing in Los Angeles in 2221 we’d be accepted as a quaint relic. Our antiquated technology would be museum pieces and we’d have to learn everything that happened in the intervening 100 years.
But suppose instead we succumb to superstition and abandon true science, individual thought, and freedom.
What would be the outcome?
Would it look like Spain during The Inquisition, or would it look like Kandahar today?
I don’t want to know. I sure don’t want to live it.
Which leads me back to wanting to hitchhike off this planet. I’ve lost faith in humanity.
I seriously think that at our current rate of decline, we’ll be using candles for light and fire pits for cooking inside 200 years.
If I could hitch hike, I figure a quick jaunt to Betelgeuse and back, should be just about right to miss all the messiness on Earth.
There I go, trusting in Einstein’s math (Science) that states time slows for a ship traveling at or beyond the speed of light relative to Earth.
For me, 5-10 years might pass. For Earth, maybe a few hundred years pass.
If I come back and the planet is still a hot mess, I could head out to Alpha Centauri with side trips to other star systems that are interesting.
Either way, I get to keep on learning new things.
I don’t want to live in a world where knowledge is suppressed based on its potential to upend politics, religion, superstition, or beliefs.
If I was to find a way to leave, I’d do my best to grab digital copies of our Science, Art, Music, Literature, and History. I’d stick it all on some kind of storage media and take it with me. I figure I could trade copies of my archives for food or transport while I was away. If I returned the Earth, I’d have an archive that could help fill in the blanks.
We all know history, is being rewritten. It might be nice to have a collection of unedited data for comparison sake 1000 years into the future. I’m under no illusion that our history as recorded is pristine. But for comparison it might be useful.
