LIFE AFTER MAN | 2009-09-30
"Life After Man" hints that man disappears from the earth because of a catastrophe. I wrote an article about the end of the SST (Supersonic Transport) but I forgot to explain WHY I wrote it. This relates to the likelihood of man disappearing from the earth, not with a bang, but without any noise at all.
It also relates to primitive islanders who believe that dreams are just as real as waking life. Social anthropologists and psychologists for a while thought this was a Great Insight.
One major reason dreams are not the same as waking life is that you can dream of destroying the world and it won't make any difference when you wake up. Cut to the nub, this means that dreams are real to YOU, but they are not real to me. In other words, the big difference between reality and dreams is actually a matter of COMMUNICATION.
Historically, reality has been moving faster, among other things. Since the beginning of flight daredevils and test planes would break a speed barrier, and in a decade or two that new speed would be routine.
Until the SST. The SST took passengers across the Atlantic at a maximum speed of 2.2 times the speed of sound, a good three times as fast as jet aircraft did routinely. But instead of becoming routine, as speed records has been before, transoceanic aircraft went back to the 500 mph speed they had had for decades and there is no sign anyone is looking for anything faster.
The reason for this goes back to the fact that reality is primarily a means of communication. The reason ocean liners were replaced by planes was because people needed to get across the ocean in less than a week or two. But there was not adequate need for human beings to get across in a few less hours.
If you need to communicate with somebody that fast, you use light speed communications.
All those cities that "Life After Man" showed collapsing exist simply because people NEEDED to be near each other. Note the past tense. A century ago the central city was the place of the future because the inevitable future of industrial society required people to live close together.
Actually one phase of Life After Man was here over a generation ago. Harlem, which was a very upper class area when the New York Metro was build often looks like what is depicted a century after Man disappeared in the documentary. The area around the University of Chicago turned into the same kind of ruin from being totally upper crust in the same period.
In fact the main reason we have any trace left of worrying about where anybody is because computer speeds are so low.
Let's take a concrete example. It used to be that a detective wanted to be on the scene." Now being "on the scene" means very little compared to getting photos and samples for the lab. Eye witnesses used to be everything. Now photos are essential and far more valuable.
In fact, the trouble with Big Foot is that we have eyewitnesses but no photos, and all the eye witnesses on earth are no substitute for one photo. Photos don't take psychedelic drugs like shamans. Photos don't get schizophrenic and have voices talking to them
Above all, photos have no imagination at all. They are pure communication, at least as compared to what we used to think of as pure communication. If someone takes the SST to Europe to talk to somebody, you can bet he will insist on recording what is said.
Spending a fortune to talk face to face is not much use if the results will not be believed unless they are recorded. It is easier to record light speed communications.
In the 1950's the epitome of Modern Man, "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit," lived in Connecticut. Every morning He got up at the break of dawn, put on his coat and tie, drove some miles to the train station, took the train to Grand Central Station, then took the subway many miles to his place of work.
Every day he walked from his office to the subway, took the subway to the train station, and spent an hour or two going back to Connecticut, walked to his car and drove it back home. He got home in time to hit the sack.
Dawn to late night, every day. Very few people do that today, though I am sure many still do. When "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit" was written, this was considered the Way of The Future.
When computer speeds get to a certain level, you will be able to see, smell and taste at long distance, with the sort of advantages a photo has over a memory. Where would "we" BE then?
I cannot predict where our physical bodies will be then. They probably won't be in any tall buildings.
This is a continuing theme of this blog. "Progressivism" depends absolutely on a PREDICTABLE Future. And the LAST thing the future ever is is predictable.
Actually that is not strictly true. History shows that the future of a BROWN civilization is as predictable as the life span of an ant colony. Every time you look at the ruins of a civilization that went down and stayed down the people there have brown skins, black hair, and brown eyes, which is what we call Diversity. There are no such places in the white world.
If the progressives have the future they demand, it WILL be predictable.