Sci-Fi Reality

This is scary as hell.

Science fiction is now on its way to being science fact, and unfortunately, it’s not in any of the super cool ways the 80’s and 90’s movies with their Heuy Lewis and the News Soundtracks promised. No deep space exploration, no flying cars or time travel—to hell with wanting my MTV, I want my Star Fleet Federation.

Instead of campy 80’s sci-fi movie promises, what we’re getting is more a taste of things like Nineteen Eighty-Four, with people seriously pushing for cameras on the street that SEE THROUGH YOUR CLOTHES, just like what they have in the airports now, and Minority Report, with Advertisements that recognize you by name (these are already in place in some cities) and know exactly what purchases you have made.

Equilibrium, one of my favorite sci-fi flicks ever, primarily because of its theme of the human spirit triumphing over a transhumanist agenda to suppress the very core of what we are, to the extent of banning and burning literature and censoring all but the most sanitized of government propaganda, has itself become eerily more relevant today.

They have found a vaccine for stress, to give us a “focused calm,” and I suppose for those who don’t have an easy time managing stress in their lives through more natural means of diet and exercise, or maybe those already turning to medicated solutions such as Prozac, Xanax or any number of other BandAid chemical solutions out there, this may seem wonderful. To me—and to anyone who has been watching the gradual progression of vaccines being created and then those vaccines, and then the compulsorily use of those vaccines being put into law—it just sounds like we’re all about to go through a phase of our history where we may end up cattle. I’m not saying we’re going to be eaten (hopefully Soylent Green will be a sci-fi flick we dodge), but I am saying we may very well be heading for a period of forced “focused calm.”

I don’t believe it will last long. I think as a nation we are waking up to the idea that we can’t really trust those people charged with the office of protecting our welfare as much as we once gave them credit for. Parties are irrelevant—Democrat, Republican, it’s all the same guy in a different suit; when you get past their campaign promises, all you get are the same lies, the same self-serving BS, the same middle finger to the people they are meant to be serving. And that is really what it comes down to. We elect people to represent and serve us. Serve—this is a keyword that I think every politician and citizen of this great nation would do well to remember.

Politicians are public servants. They are not celebrities. They are not our lords and ladies. They are not monarchs. They are neither our gods nor our mommies and daddies. We do not need to ask their permission to live well and pursue happiness, and we do not need them holding our hands to do so. We are a good people, we are a hard working people, and we will take care of each other without Big Brother watching over our every move telling us how to do so and when to do so, and I firmly believe that the people of The Matrix are waking up to that fact more and more every day. They are unplugging from the TVs and from the factory style auto-tuned crap that seeps in through the stereo, and as hard as it is (with all the outside influences today) more and more parents are telling their children no to sodas of ANY kind and drawing a hard line that shall not be crossed between their children and processed foods, candy and yes, the often life-sucking video games.

Granted, with the crap put in our food and water supply (aspartame, corn syrup, pesticide, herbicide, mercury, fluoride, etc) and the way they continue to push psych drugs as a quick fix for everything from ADD for a child who seems a little too hyper and strong willed, to depression for every housewife who has a bad day, and the mind numbing crap that pours through the TV on a regular—Twilight, Jersey Shore and anything that involves a Secret or Real Life of anyone—there are a whole lot of people out there right now who just don’t give a damn. Many Americans are content to eat their McDonalds burgers with a side of Zoloft, a three-liter of Mountain Dew and a bag of Cheezy Poofs and just suck down all the garbage the magic TV box can pour into their living rooms. In a way, I can understand, at least to some extent, letting the toxic cocktail numb away the fact that they have no life and no intention of getting one—I just can’t support it. I’m not talking about those people right now, though. I’m talking about the ones who read the news (not TMZ), who get angry when they see injustices done, when they see our liberties stripped away, and who actually do something about it…and there are a whole lot more of us these days than there are couch potatoes.

That’s not to say I don’t like any TV anymore, or sci-fi either. The new Battlestar Galactica was one of the most thought provoking political dramas of our time—but doesn’t it frighten anyone that the new thinking combat drones literally embody Cylons in almost every way? All I am saying is, if life has to imitate art so completely when it comes to the realm of technology, why then can’t we get a move on the whole Star Trek cure for cancer thing? Why does it have to be more the way of Gattaca and Idiocracy, rather than Back to the Future II? I say, screw the cloning and Island of Dr. Moreau genetic engineering BS, and bring on the flying cars!