The other day I came across an interview on the Internet that I had the good fortune not to have chosen to watch. It was on the comical question of why the genre of science fiction has become so singularly "grungy." Think the incongruity of marvelously advanced technology coupled with a culture that is quite barbaric. (Sound familiar?) What is the message?
"Back in the day" (oh how I hate that phrase) of cold war the object of the "intelligentsia" was to prevent at all costs the rising tide of scientific optimism in the post war population. (Iron curtain "meme" and all that, you see.) So, what better way to proceed than by the newly re-minted method of doublespeak. So the CIA/MI6 project (perhaps better denominated as an excretion) called the Congress of Cultural Freedom was hatched. Freedom, you see, was the freedom of the irrational will. (Nietzsche had been given a bum rap by that "ruffian" Hitler. His philosophy needs must be rehabilitated.) Thus was modern "art" and all its ugly and pessimistic sequelae in so-called popular culture, including "science fiction" oh so "democratically" complotted against the very purpose of the experiment of the founding of the United States.
Thus we have had nearly a century's worth of a surfeit of pestilential ugliness, when what is needed is a "surcease of sorrow." I believe it is well past time to get back to the future of truthful optimism, and stand with the spirit of Beethoven's "Nicht Diese Töne," dear reader. Don't you?
Eratosthenes first measured the circumference of the earth from the shadows cast by the sun. Today, humanity's fitness to survive will be measured by our ability to conquer that same thermonuclear fusion that casts those shadows. Thus, Prometheus will truly be unbound.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
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