@22:41 28/8/94
@01:17 11/8/94
Those of us in our 40s were the last generation to have our childhood storytelling continue into our adolesence. When television began it mirrored not the real world but the world of books, and of all the books it mirrored, the chief one was The Bible.
Every TV program was either morally neutral as in light entertainment, the weather, etc. or morally correct, as informed by Christianity.
The stories were simple and mirrored childhood storybooks - good and evil, black and white, good always triumphs, evil is always defeated.
This is what our parents taught us. If we do wrong we will be punished - always. We soon found out that that wasnŽt always true.
In our teens we saw a colourful world of innocence on TV and at the movies. It mirrored our moral upbringing too - the world of our hopes, our dreams and our fantasies. The only thing that wasnŽt mirrored was the real world.
Approximating the real world comes with high production values. This began to happen in the late Sixties. Rebellion against the strict but sweet morality began.
Easy black and white answers were rejected in a quest to allow the real world in. Plays were broadcast which incorporated gritty realism. Religious discussions were broadcast where anti-Christian or at least non-religious vews were expressed.
Previously banned body parts began to be seen on screen and in print.
Information on the real problems being encountered in the world began to reach us. Ecology, Wars, Pollution, Disease, Poverty, Capitalist exploitation, Communist suppression, etc.
This devastated many of our fantasies based upon the good-always-wins principle.
The information about the real state of the world has by the Nineties permeated to the core of all our dreams. We see the world now more closely as it really is. We see the politics of it, the corruption of it, the big business control of it, the injustice of it, the waste of it, the unfairness of it, the helpless madness of it, and, most sadly, the incurability of it.
We now recognise that there is no solution that will make everything alright. No Lone Ranger, Cisco Kid or Superman ready to come over the hill and set the world to rights. No Second Coming either - Millenium or no Millenium.
We see the world more clearly but we are less happy. We are cynical now of people who tell us they have a solution which will change everything. (This is one positive change I admit.)
We understand many of the complex forces at work in the world today and we see that any new forces will only have marginal effects on trends that are inpenetrably deeply entrenched.
Yes, the information age will radically change the way we do things, but not, I think, what we do, or most importantly, what motivates us to do it.
If only world resources could be distributed according to need....if only. But this seems the hardest of all things to achieve. The powers that be seem to want to do anything else except this - too many careers would be put at risk.
Scientists exploring space and military chiefs fighting wars in their head seem able to receive whatever they want. Academics get billions for theorising.
But the people of the world having their basic needs of adequate shelter, heat, light, food, medicine and education met? This doesnŽt seem to be a high priority or even a goal. Space shuttles, telescopes and ancient history all come first it seems.
Ignorance was blissful to us in the West. We had a wonderful proliferance of goods starting in the early Sixties. We kids had some money for the first time. We were filled with hope by our parents, who had just survived WWII. They were suffused with positive dreams for the shining life ahead for them and their kids.
The idea was: Everything is going to be okay now. The lessons have all been learnt. No more wars. Everything will only ever get better and better.
They tried to protect us from the harsh world they had seen in WWII. They wanted to cocoon us in a vision of a bright new tomorrow. They believed it. And it did seem to be coming true. Holidays in the sun. New house, car, radio. TV. Ice cream and holidays forever and a heart as light as a feather.
Then the world crashed in on us. This time through the magic window that had been created for our pleasure. Television.
Until the late Sixties it had kept us snugly in our soft little cocoons. But with reality pouring through the TV in our plushly carpeted living rooms, we would never be the same again.
As production values rose, as informed talent realised they could be employed to write, produce and direct, as budgets allowed for foreign travel, as international telecommunications improved - so the real world was more and more accurately approximated and our blissful ignorance fell away.
Our fantasies started to shatter. Our naivety, our innocence, our perpetual childhood - was all taken away. Soon, sometime in the early Seventies simple fun started to drain away too. The world was seen to be more and more deadly serious. (It always had been of course - but, out of sight...)
About then a few more black waves seemed to hit - strange diseases appeared and secure jobs disappeared. Prices rose. Pollution, toxins, waste, crime, drugs, perversion, abuse, insanity, genocide, corruption, greed, envy, sleaze and countless more maladies all made themselves known to us. They had always been there. But now we knew it. And through an endless information flow we knew it - right to the deepest heart of our soul.
The tide of information told us all about it. All about the problems all over the world. The real world and the real problems. All the storybooks had been wrong. All the religions - wrong. All the politicians - wrong. All the teachers - wrong. All the employers - wrong. All our parents - wrong. Almost all our friends - wrong. All our thoughts/feelings/emotions/knowledge - wrong?
And on top of all that, everything suddenly seemed to be more and more wrong and faster and faster and faster.
Stability was eroded in so many subtle and subconscious ways and fell away. No more heroes - no more cowboys in white hats to come to the rescue.
The Eighties, Nineties. Everyone, suddenly it seemed, was out for themselves. The great innocent heroes - Batman, Superman, Jesus, all started to look pretty much out of place and nerdy.
Now in the late Nineties there seems to be hardly a place for our dreams and innocent fantasies (unless we join the hedonist rest and deny all the crap around us). Keeping our heads in the sand perpetually is pretty difficult now. We love information and entertainment too much.
We are hooked. We know too much. But know no way back. How do we live with dignity in this viscious age? How do we live, look and also smile?
Is there a way to grow, make a change, be adult and yet feel at ease?
No way back to the egg. No way back to the womb.
@01:44 21/2/95
IŽve got a theory about why a whole lot of us suddenly appeared in the Sixties wanting a new way. Just suppose for a moment that what more than half of the people presently alive and almost all those that ever lived, is true. That we live many lives. That reincarnation is a fact.
Imagine if we were all killed in Imagine we then spent a while "upstairs", hanging out with friends and learning some stuff we thought we might need. Then we came back "down" with fire in our bellies determined to do something about all this war crap and to begin a new kind of life, a fresh, clean life of freedom and peace.
If we did this what age would we have been by the time of the mid Sixties? Right! In our teens (depending on when you were killed, how long you spent up top and when you decided to come back).
Could it possibly be? I just wondered...
(I imagine like me you wondered from time to time back then why we all sort of felt the same way about things. And why we probably still do).
I am 49 by the way. I was 17 in 67. :)
@15:15 2/2/99
Maintenance of...
Your Lifestyle.
Your Grannie.
Your Pension.
Your Home.
Your Roads.
Your Hospitals.
Your Children.
Your Mental State.
Your Unemployment Benefit.
Your Airflight.
Your Health.
Your Entertainment.
To maintain the world of consumer products will eventually cost more than their initial production cost day by day by day. (Their real total cost - to our time, to the environment, etc., etc.)
The ongoing cumulative decay and death of products will begin to be a constant due to sheer numbers. A kaleidescope of decaying goods. A kaleidescope of new worthless stuff.
Ever spent some time on a rubbish dump? This is Future Earth.
@18:52 18/4/94
Click here for Dog-Eared Diaries Page 2
Return to Homepage
