6/28/09

A Flash of The Future (1 of 2)

I believe in change. That's not the words I stole from Harvey Dent or Obama campaign: I believe it myself. And in my perspective, the world hasn't change much today. Despite every stem cell implantation that worked, every cloning attempts that succeed, every new equation in mathematics and physics world, every new location named in brain by neuroscientists, every new words added to dictionary, actually we haven't moved much from the past era.
Something stopped us. Something made us stagnate here. And that 'something' was the old thinking.

The old thinking. Yes, those Olde-Worlde filth that stay within us to this very day. Old thinking believed in saving the world, saving the earth--and they took it literally. For the old minds, saving the world meant to save it biologically. Save the globe, save the forest, stop global warming, stop animal hunting, stop eating meat and so on. You're all welcome to attack me right now, but I believe: global warming isn't that devastating. Mass media blown it up, made it to something so frightening and unavoidable. Take a look at our past: even at our worst and most destructive, we would never be able to render this planet lifeless. Not even with our superior nuclear program, not even with our unhealthy lifestyle we can ever stop the life on earth. It goes on, you know. Don't ever stop it. It's the old thinking way, to stop something from happening, awww, that was so hundred years ago!

Saving the world can’t mean preserving the world as it is right now. Saving the world can't mean to stop eating meat, stop pollution, oh fuck that, saving the world can't mean staying in status quo. That may sound like a nice idea, but it’s also out of reach. Even if the entire human race vanished tomorrow, the world wouldn’t stay the way it is today. We will never, under any circumstances, be able to stop the change that happened on this planet. So how is it to save the world? Well, that's a wrong question. Let me correct it: who is it that's going to save the world? It can't be us, not the people of today. Why? Because our minds are the old minds, and the old minds--like I said before--believe in 'stopping'. Here’s how old minds think of stopping us. They think of stopping us the way they stopped poverty, the way they stopped drug abuse, the way they stopped crime. With programs. Programs that have been implanted in our minds for too long, for centuries or maybe millenniums. When the rainforest numbers are declining, governments made a programs to stop it, when poverty exposed in some area of the world, we made programs to feed the poor, when child abuse happened, we launch a program to prevent it. Programs, programs and more programs. Programs never stop the things they’re launched to stop. No program has ever stopped poverty, drug abuse, or crime, and no program ever will stop them. And no program will ever stop us from devastating the world.

Programs make it possible to look busy and purposeful while failing. If programs actually did the things people expect them to do, then human society would be heaven: our governments would work, our schools would work, our law enforcement systems would work, our justice systems would work, our penal systems would work, and so on. When programs fail (as they invariably do), this is blamed on things like poor design, lack of funds and staff, bad management, and inadequate training. When programs fail, look for them to be replaced by new ones with improved design, increased funding and staff, superior management, and better training. When these new programs fail (as they invariably do), this is blamed on poor design, lack of funds and staff, bad management, and inadequate training. This is why we spend more and more on our failures every year. Most people accept this willingly enough, because they know they’re getting more every year: bigger budgets, more laws, more police, more prisons—more of everything that didn’t work last year or the year before that or the year before that. Old minds think that if we're failing this year, we gotta do MORE on the next year. If we're failing a class this year, we gotta learn MORE the same subject next year. If the stop AIDS campaign is failing this year, put MORE budgets and MORE publications next year. Bullshit. Why didn't try this: if it didn’t work last year, let’s do something ELSE this year.

Then, the next question you may raised is this: If not programs, then what?



(The answer is on the next post)

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