Dystopia #1

Hey Jack,

The hospital discharged me this morning. They pushed us out, padlocked the doors, and boarded up the windows with wooden planks. I’m sitting on a cement step outside the locked facility. There’s just enough space for my frozen butt, the bitter wind whipping spits of snow at my face, hard as beach sand. I borrowed—without permission—a defunct script pad for this letter. I’ll read it whenever I locate you, whatever state of existence you’re in, dead or alive. How many years has it been? How is your mom, Mrs. Rizzo? I had a crush on her early on. You knew that, right? Sorry if you didn’t. Got into big trouble over my crushes and mother complexes, even as a kid.

So, my phone is long gone, confiscated at the start of my commitment here. My excuse for not keeping in touch. I wonder what the smart phones are like now? Doesn’t really matter. I don’t know where anyone is living or if living, nor their situation or phone number. Everything has changed.

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Extinction

“And after the Earth dies, some 5 billion years from now, after it is burned to a crisp or even swallowed by the Sun, there will be other worlds and stars and galaxies coming into being—and they will know nothing of a place once called Earth”
~ Carl Sagan

A sobering thought is that humanity may not last as long as the earth. We may be another species that evolves for a period of time, but meets its end for one or more reasons, such as asteroid strikes, the eruption of super volcanoes that cloud over the earth, the rise of superviruses more deadly and infectious than Covid, or irreconcilable differences resulting in a nuclear holocaust.

As things stand, the likelihood of ever acquiring the technological means and worldwide cooperation to escape such disasters and migrate mass populations to other life sustaining planets, is slim at best. Humanity may be limited to its own version of a lifetime here on earth, and making the most of this lifetime may be our most noble endeavor, with the hope that the human experiment and experience has mattered in some way, even long after we are gone and the earth ceases to exist.

The big one

The end of our world arrived on that day, just like the day before, during the early dawn, when the sun was a faint glow on the east horizon. We’d already packed our bags, just the basics: a few outfits, toothbrushes and paste, a bar of soap to share, medications, and one book each for me and my Mary—something to read while on the run. There wasn’t much else we could carry or had time to pack, not knowing the status of things from hour to hour. We’d find food somewhere, not a meal, but something to hold us over—if need be.

The big one was on the way, again. The message blaring over our smartphones; the whine of sirens; the emergency broadcast system counting down the minutes and seconds in high definition—repetitive instructions from a virtual voice and human appearing avatar, like a YouTube video in continuous loop mode..

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Systems versus nature

“Capitalism cannot reform itself; it is doomed to self-destruction. No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.”
~ W. E. B. Du Bois

Selfishness and selflessness anchor the opposite ends of our individual and collective human nature. Despite our most noble intentions, selfishness will always rear its ugly head to some degree, through every conceivable system and type of organization, from the most greed oriented company to the most Utopian vision of society. There is no escaping this reality.

Recognizing and managing the inherently selfish aspects of our human nature, is the key to minimizing their toxic effects. However, scapegoating the economic and political systems we’ve created as irreparably flawed, is often just another excuse for keeping the egocentric aspects of human nature in the shadows, where they inflict the most insidious forms of damage.

Ironically, it seems that our human behavior is more inflexible than the systems we’ve created to tame it. To reform anything for the betterment of humankind, we need to first reform ourselves.

Magicians of deception

When asked for the truth, many of us take the middle road, selectively revealing some facts and leaving out others; creating the impression or illusion of a bigger picture that isn’t quite accurate.

Technically, it is possible to be forthcoming about the facts, but only in precisely measured quantities and careful arrangements with other facts, so that the reader or listener is left imagining a story that is more fiction than reality. This type of creative storytelling is at the center of today’s social discourse, to be found in politics, legal proceedings, news media, social media, and within our personal relationships.

Have we become like magicians to one another, hiding important truths through the use of misdirection? Has the “white” or “gray” lie become the status quo of human interaction, priming us for even darker lies?