ANYONE FOR UTOPIA?

How many of you remember Star Trek: The Next Generation? That was the second version of the show that boldly went where no TV show had gone before, the one with the Patrick Stewart and his shaved head as captain of the slick, new-model Starship Enterprise, with the bar and the “holodeck” where all fantasies were made virtual reality. The Mk 2 Enterprise also came with a neat device that looked like a microwave and could supply anything from a dry martini to clean underwear just by keying in the appropriate code. In a small backstory aside, viewers were informed that, when this marvelous stuff simulator was invented, money was abolished on Earth, and a whole new social order introduced.

This was supposedly two hundred years in the future, but it would seem that from MP3s to weblogs, the situation is already with us in the contemporary arts, and the obsolescence of money becomes technically possible. Okay so the record companies sue downloaders, and techies work on encryption devices so we still have to pay to watch movies, but these are only holding patterns. Writers wonder where it will all end. Some turn tricks, others pose as Nazis. Agents cop attitudes, and don’t return calls. Drummers move to Montana where bars still pay the band to play blues for drunks. Web and print scuffle for the same advertising dollars. Chaos is virtually upon us. And yet we can hardly have a culture that is entirely driven by elves, amateurs, and the unemployable.

You may have noticed that I’ve taken a day off from Bush bashing. This doesn’t mean that I have given up on evicting the weasel from the White House, but today I started reflecting on the shape of things just a few miles further down this road. The battle is not merely to get John Kerry into the White House for nothing more than a Dem course correction. Fear of the future is rapidly becoming the 21st century malady, and when the ignorant get scared they run to daddy. Daddy, of course, in political terms, is, as cognitive scientist George Lakoff, (I don’t have a link to hand, look him up!) points out, the totalitarianism of dictatorship. That is why I am so bent on bashing Bush. I recognize, with, I hope, some accuracy that the Bush/Cheney/Ashcroft/Rumsfeld quartet and the voice of PNAC are the thin end of an Imperial American dictatorship.

Maybe with Bush currently polling five points behind Kerry, he is not so invincible as he looked at the end of last year, but what’s ahead? Can the kind of democracy formulated by 18th century gentleman farmers cope with a techno-driven social upheaval that promises to be as radical and disruptive as the Industrial Revolution and the Italian Renaissance combined? Right now half my cable channels are down, but Comcast, while trying to buy Disney, have instituted a policy of charging me $1.99 to complain to a human being. They have a monopoly on my TV service, unless I re-tech to satellite, or go back to eight channels and rabbit ears with bits of tinfoil on them. I’m not only screwed but left prostrate for further uninvited penetration. That is how corporate capitalism copes with change.

So, brothers and sisters, what are your thoughts on all this? I am not preaching doom and gloom, and ain't that a change? A golden road could be paved for our tried feet, but it will require a massive creativity. But the very survival of creativity is being choked off. I’d really like to hear from all who read this. Short comments on the absurd comments board, but longer reflections to byron4D@aol.com. They will be posted.

NOTE

How many gay weddings were there today in San Francisco? A hundred?

RESPONSE TO YESTERDAYS BECK/FARREN

from mfc
Henri LeBeque...how dare you mention mendacity and not Burl...and I think there's room for The Rifleman in there somewhere

CRYPTIQUE – Somebody say amen.