Lots of Thoughts

I'm feeling particularly philosophical today. Where to start?

I don't even know, so I'll just go where my thoughts take me, okay? The other day, I watched "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" for the umpteenth time -- I actually enjoy that movie, even though it was roundly tarred as a flop, so much junk, all that. But I think, for blockbuster fare, it's got a great style to it. I'm sure that stems from its "Steampunk" qualities, which I've always enjoyed even way back in the time of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's kinda dry "The Difference Engine" (which imagined that Charles Babbage's "Analytical Engine" -- his mechanical computer, actually worked, bringing the computer age into Victorian times). I enjoy speculative spins on history, and I enjoyed what they did with "The League" (I'm a fan of Alan Moore's work, even though he gets very pissy about film adaptations of his works). But what strikes me most about that story is the sense of hope that was still with humanity in the 19th century, before the darkness of the 20th century snuffed out our souls.

There's a scene in the movie where the villain Moriarty's master plan is unveiled, showing 20th century innovations like tanks (WWI-type, primitive) and armored battle suits with flamethrowers (complete with exposed rivets, as if Jules Verne had been kidnapped by Nazis to design them), and so on, and I thought with horror how people in the 19th century didn't know what they were about to stumble into in the 20th.

Now, I'm no Neo-Victorian wannabe, but I think it doesn't take much imagination to realize that, on the whole, no human century was bloodier or more brutal than the 20th. Look at all of the innovations: corporations, political police, secret police, WWI, chemical warfare, Fascism, totalitarianism, Stalinism, Nazism, WWII, genocide, total war, firebombing, nuclear weapons (and accompanying annihilation), military-industrial complexes, permanent war, death squads, terrorism, televangelism, environmental degradation, global warming, genetic engineering, overpopulation, bioterrorism, and so on.

I feel like humanity disgraced itself in the 20th century, and we're still living in the shadow of that disgrace as a species. Sure, good things came out of it, too, but as a species, we've never really lived down what happened in the 20th, nor come to terms with it. Somewhere in that bloody century, humanity lost its hope, lost its way.

Back in the 19th century, people still had hope for progress, for humanity, despite all of the problems they had then. They could still look to the horizon and hold out hope. WWI was really the first tolling of the bell, when those old values came into a stark collision with the new technological world. Now, it feels like humanity is just waiting to die, whether through a bang or a whimper, and hope has died. All of the old verities are dead, and only nagging uncertainties loom in the corner of the eye, and we face a clash of cultures all over the place -- the fundamentalist versus the secularist, the biotechnologist versus the naturalist, the corporate versus the individual, the fascist versus the progressive, the nationalist versus the internationalist, the anti-intellectual versus the academic, the American versus the rest of the world, and so on.

It's like we've broken down into disparate tribes, the Hobbesian war of all against all, without a uniting principle, or perhaps even the possibility for such a principle. Raising two children, I think about it a lot, like what kind of a world will my boys come into. Sure, every human era has its problems, but so many of the problems humanity faced had solutions, didn't they? Bad drinking water? Hello, sanitation! Revolution? Hello, suffrage! And so on.

Where's the hope? This 2008 political election in America looms, and I fear for our country's future, feel like what's being offered by both parties is too little, too late. The GOP is simply wrong in what they're after -- that is their answer; and the Democrats aren't really after anything coherent. So, the "choice" is between a group who stands for the wrong things (what I'd really call un-American things), and a group who stands for nothing really at all (except saying "Oh, we're not like THEM!"). Bogus. It's insulting.

The only thing I find that I can stand by is honor. I'm honorable and fair, even when I end up getting screwed over for it -- because the alternative, being dishonorable and unfair, is repugnant to me. The straight and narrow is that way for a reason, isn't it?

Watching "Pan's Labyrinth," I thought it was interesting how the actor playing the Captain brought humanity to his monstrous character. It was a great portrayal, and I found it revealed the horror of fascism that this otherwise human being was so polluted by his ideology that he'd lost what humanity he had -- he was as much of a victim of his ideology as the people he killed. This blinkered, emptied soul, this guy with his pocketwatch, marking time, keeping schedules, taking lives without a blink of an eye. Unhuman, inhuman, he can't possess empathy -- it's been taken from his world, he's cast it out. He's become a monster, deserving only death, for redemption is simply beyond him.

I was reminded of this while filling out a consumer marketing questionnaire (for $20); the reduction of a human being to a pile of preferences and choices, "you are what you buy" -- holy crap, is that ever dehumanizing. Economic Man depresses the hell out of me; I get depressed when the CTA disembodied voice calls us "customers" instead of "passengers" and when the news calls people "consumers" instead of "citizens." Is this the future for us, consumers and customers all, reduced to open mouths and empty hearts and minds, shallow and devious, craving and yearning, without any grander existence? Christ, it's depressing. I get scared that I think human rights are being eclipsed by property rights, where if the authorities have to choose, they'll take the latter and screw the former. That way leads back to Auschwitz, humanity reduced to property. I saw the other day that 10 million children die worldwide every year. That's astounding and horrifying.

Where is the nobility in the human spirit? Where is the honor? I try to be noble, to be honorable, to be just and honest and kind and compassionate and fair -- these are values that matter to me, but they're not values that are truly venerated and cherished in our society. I see people around me who are duplicitous and manipulative and ruthless and corrupt, and they thrive. But I won't and can't be like them, because that would mean an end to me, the emptying of my heart and soul.

This is just a long ramble, sorry; all I can do is try to teach my boys to be honorable and true, and hope that it's enough to help them survive, and that people rekindle human hope, rediscover honor, and banish the long shadow of the 20th century once and for all. We need something new, and something better. Something altogether kinder and cleaner. Something that recognizes that this world is all we've got, and we have to be our own cavalry, we have to rescue it from the tyrants and the butchers and the maniacs, and make it a better, worthier place. So that we'll be worth it as a species, worth preserving.