I'm a few days away from a long road trip and it's got me thinking about the cars along the way. We have created a mechanical herd. Instead of following some invisible magnetic markers like birds, we travel along hard paths with painted lines. We follow the directions of ever changing flashing lights, even at times when it seems like their instructions are arbitrary. I wonder if animals watch us and wonder why we move along roads. It must be like when house pets watch us as we watch TV or work on the computer. Why are they just staring at that box? Maybe it's as mysterious to them as migratory patterns of birds or fish are to us.
When I was a kid I thought driving would be so wonderful and if you think about it, it's actually kind of incredible what we take for granted. By pressing a pedal and turning a wheel any idiot can travel at break-neck speeds to their favorite destination. When it was time to go and get my driver's license I was so nervous. I had practiced for weeks doing various maneuvers in the high school parking lot. Looking back I find it amusing that I thought it was such a big deal. Spend five minutes driving around and you have to ask yourself how 90% of the people on the road ever got their licenses in the first place.
While I don't consider myself to be the most courteous person, I do tend to be constantly aware of other drivers around me and don't go out of my way to make their drive time anymore of a hassle than it needs to be. It seems that kind of mentality is more the exception rather than the rule. There is this ever-present sense that people feel the need to only watch out for themselves and if someone else gets cut off then that's just too bad. If you've ever witnessed the boarding of trains in India you might get an idea of what I'm talking about. There are simply too many people for anyone to be courteous. If you let someone else ahead of you, there is a good chance you won't get on. That's not to say Indian people are by nature rude, just that they do what is necessary. Here in America there are just so many people on the road and everyone feels they are the most important car out there (and in their world I guess that's probably true) so it becomes reflected in their driving.
I mentioned before that traffic is like a mechanical herd. It's a living thing, even though it's made up of machines. The cars themselves aren't alive, but their operators are. How many times have you been driving on the highway when everything comes to a grinding halt. You're sitting there and it's just an endless river of cars in front of you and it's backing up behind you. You're wondering what could be the problem. Why are things at a standstill? It could be a wreck. In fact in my frustration in those situations I've expected there to a head in the road. That's the only excuse I was willing to accept. When the traffic clears you know what it turns out to be most of the time? Nothing. The event, whatever it was, has passed. You've been experiencing the vehicular equivalent of an aftershock. After what seems like forever (which usually turns out to be minutes) you drive by and see it was a car on the side of the road or even worse, a car on the opposite side of the road, meaning people on your side allowed themselves to be slowed by something that wasn't even in their direct path of forward movement.
When I was being taught to drive my dad told me that I not only had to drive my car, but I had to drive the cars around me. At the time I thought it was a funny thing to say and probably made a smart ass comment about it. And yes, I'm not actually driving the cars around me (if I were we'd all be going a lot faster and using our signals to indicate lane changes), but instead I'm spending a significant amount of my awareness on what everyone else is doing. A trained monkey can operate a car, provided they can reach the gas pedal. In itself it's not that difficult. Now you put 12 monkeys into cars and put them on roads together and you'll probably end up with a demolition derby. Some of the people driving today are probably worse than those crazy chimps. Which brings up the question, why aren't people required to retake their driving test every five years? I'm not just talking about making sure you understand that a flashing red light at an intersection should be treated like a four-way stop. Taking a full on driving exam and road test would ensure that people are always keeping their driving skills up to date. A driver's license should be like a heavy equipment operator's license, it must be updated at regular intervals with more than just an eye exam and address change.
Lately there has been a lot of talk about talking or texting on a mobile phone while driving. According to some sources it reduces the reaction time of a driver to that of a 70 year old. Unless that 70 year old is Harrison Ford, I'm betting it means you're going to be too slow to do much of anything except say "oh shit!" While I agree that texting and driving is probably a recipe for a collision (don't say accident because that implies no one was at fault), I wonder if there isn't a more overall problem with attention spans. People can barely focus on one thing at a time anymore. Everything has to do more than one thing. A phone doesn't just make phone calls. It's a music player. It checks your email. You can get instant messages. You can update Twitter the second something (in)significant happens in your life. Cars aren't just equipped with radios anymore. Now you have multi-disc CD changes or MP3 players. And to entertain those kids, some even have TVs built-in. So a minivan is starting to look a lot more like your living room rather than just a means to get from Point A to Point B. This level of comfort tends to make people forget that they are in fact not in their living room. Driving becomes the second most important thing while on the road. The moment that becomes the case it's an eventuality that something bad is going to happen. There is a saying when it comes to NASCAR: "A crash isn't something that could happen during a race. It's something that will happen given enough time." Someone driving and not fully focused on controlling the vehicle will crash. It's just a question of when. Think about that the next time you're driving. Maybe if everyone did that we'd at least see it coming.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
On Moving
When I was 18 I moved across the country to go to college. At the time my life was contained in four big boxes. They held pretty much everything I owned and for the life of me I can't remember what was in them. I am fairly certain that some of the things inside are still with me all these years later. They say home is where the heart is, but more often than not it's where we keep our stuff.
It's a strange thing to move, although really not all that uncommon. You get a chance to look through all your possessions and decide what comes with you to the new place (or back to the old place depending on your circumstances). For me it's always been a great way to shed a lot of material weight. Maybe it's hold over from that first big move where I only had the four boxes so I tend to travel light. Moving forces you to evaluate the importance of everything you own. Now you may have money. You may have hired movers. You may have nothing but time to plan and prepare. In that case maybe you don't really have to evaluate anything and instead decide to take everything, including the ice cube trays from the freezer. I tend to treat it like a backpacking trip somewhere. How much of that stuff do you really want to be carrying around with you?
It was said in Fight Club "The things you own end up owning you." You can't just move across the country at the drop of a hat because your couch needs a lift. That fantastic entertainment center has to be broken down and carried in pieces down the stairs. Once upon a time I was given a Foreman Grill. At the time I thought that I didn't need it and would never use it. For months it sat in a cabinet, where I had almost forgotten about it. Then for some reason I decided to use it. Once I did I asked myself how I ever got by without it. I wonder how often that happens. We're suddenly convinced of a need we didn't know we had until it was presented to us. How much of the things we own are around because we've come to believe that we couldn't live life without them? Now I'm not against owning stuff. I like stuff. Everything feels so temporary though. When I go furniture shopping (once a decade) I look at things in terms of not only form and function, but in mobility. Sure that bookshelf/CD rack combo is nice and will hold 500 of my favorite titles, but it's made out of the densest material known to man (pressed particle board) and will take at least three people with hand carts to move it. Then again owning furniture that's exclusively made from wicker is a little too far on the other side.
Back when I was 18 I had only lived one place, so moving anywhere was new and unknown. I know a lot of people who have never left their hometown and there's nothing wrong with that. Moving to some far off place that you've never been before isn't easy, especially if you're doing it on your own. In fact I've only ever done it twice. Since then I've been doing the cross country shuffle back and forth between two primary locations. I wonder though if location is like possessions, it owns you. Most people have a life, or what passes for a life, in their town. Friends, family, work, school, obligations, hobbies, and whatever else makes up a life. Moving means that those things are either going to be severed or at the very least drastically altered. If you relocate to another state or city you have to start the process of reestablishing all those connections. A cynical person would see it as starting the process all over again.
Given the way things are going I wonder if there won't start a trend of people being a bit more nomadic. It used to be a person would live in a single town and possibly work at a single company their entire life. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Sometimes in order to live a person has to pick up and move away because essentially they're following the food supply. It used to be the buffalo. Now it's the job market. Maybe home isn't a singular location anymore.
It's a strange thing to move, although really not all that uncommon. You get a chance to look through all your possessions and decide what comes with you to the new place (or back to the old place depending on your circumstances). For me it's always been a great way to shed a lot of material weight. Maybe it's hold over from that first big move where I only had the four boxes so I tend to travel light. Moving forces you to evaluate the importance of everything you own. Now you may have money. You may have hired movers. You may have nothing but time to plan and prepare. In that case maybe you don't really have to evaluate anything and instead decide to take everything, including the ice cube trays from the freezer. I tend to treat it like a backpacking trip somewhere. How much of that stuff do you really want to be carrying around with you?
It was said in Fight Club "The things you own end up owning you." You can't just move across the country at the drop of a hat because your couch needs a lift. That fantastic entertainment center has to be broken down and carried in pieces down the stairs. Once upon a time I was given a Foreman Grill. At the time I thought that I didn't need it and would never use it. For months it sat in a cabinet, where I had almost forgotten about it. Then for some reason I decided to use it. Once I did I asked myself how I ever got by without it. I wonder how often that happens. We're suddenly convinced of a need we didn't know we had until it was presented to us. How much of the things we own are around because we've come to believe that we couldn't live life without them? Now I'm not against owning stuff. I like stuff. Everything feels so temporary though. When I go furniture shopping (once a decade) I look at things in terms of not only form and function, but in mobility. Sure that bookshelf/CD rack combo is nice and will hold 500 of my favorite titles, but it's made out of the densest material known to man (pressed particle board) and will take at least three people with hand carts to move it. Then again owning furniture that's exclusively made from wicker is a little too far on the other side.
Back when I was 18 I had only lived one place, so moving anywhere was new and unknown. I know a lot of people who have never left their hometown and there's nothing wrong with that. Moving to some far off place that you've never been before isn't easy, especially if you're doing it on your own. In fact I've only ever done it twice. Since then I've been doing the cross country shuffle back and forth between two primary locations. I wonder though if location is like possessions, it owns you. Most people have a life, or what passes for a life, in their town. Friends, family, work, school, obligations, hobbies, and whatever else makes up a life. Moving means that those things are either going to be severed or at the very least drastically altered. If you relocate to another state or city you have to start the process of reestablishing all those connections. A cynical person would see it as starting the process all over again.
Given the way things are going I wonder if there won't start a trend of people being a bit more nomadic. It used to be a person would live in a single town and possibly work at a single company their entire life. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Sometimes in order to live a person has to pick up and move away because essentially they're following the food supply. It used to be the buffalo. Now it's the job market. Maybe home isn't a singular location anymore.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
On 2009
For the record, 2009 can suck it. While I don't think this past year could be listed as the worst year, it's certainly not ever going to be listed in the same zip code as some of the best. I've lost friends and family this year. People I know have also had their share of loss and setbacks. When I think about it this past year has been more about things happening around me rather than things happening to me. Considering 2009 felt like it was full of death and sadness, maybe it's not exactly a bad thing. Still, there was an undeniable sense of being idle for way too long. It wasn't until very near the end that things actually started to pick up a little bit for me. I feel like I'm standing in the eye of the tornado. For me it's very calm, but around me there is a whirling mass of destruction.
Ten years ago I was leaving this place and heading off to start a new adventure in a brand new state. I was young and eager to try something different. College had only finished the year before and it was time to leave for a new world beyond what I had known while I was in school. I often wonder what my life would have been like had I not taken that leap. A huge portion of my life would be drastically different. I don't regret doing it, but it's natural to think about the road not taken. That was then and this is now and to be honest it's really hard to tell the difference between my then self and now self. Back then I felt as though I was starting over and here I am feeling that same way. I've circled back around to where it feels like I'm starting over again. Maybe it's a good thing for me, but it's also more than a little frustrating because I have a tendency to pre-worry (a term coined by a friend of mine) about things long before I need to. So in addition to feeling like I'm living through the Pink Floyd lyrics "Ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run. You missed the starting gun", I'm worried that if I'm not careful I'll be right back here in another ten years.
Now all of 2009 wasn't bad. There were actually a lot of good things. Several family members have started new aspects of their lives, be it retiring from a job after years of service or leaving the military to try and sort out what it's like to be a civilian again. And my best friend lost her job after more than a dozen years at the same company only to find an even better job a few months later. Some relationships ended while others started and some even made the leap to that next step. I took the safe route of staying single, although I'm starting to wonder how much of that is by choice and how much is just a bad habit of not trying.
As usual there seemed to be a lot of celebrity deaths. Several of which were surprising at the time. Others may have not been shocking, but were still sad. This year we lost a dirty dancing roadhouse bouncer, one of Charlie's Angels, a prisoner, a man who told us the rest of the story, the king of pop, Khan himself, and the one who said that's the way it is. And to add to all that we lost another Karl with a K when we live in a world where it seems like there are simply too few. It seems like a lot and it probably is, but it's probably not all that different from years before as far as numbers are concerned.
The thing that's strange to me is that we're about to enter 2010, the year we make contact, and yet it feels like we're still arguing over the same old issues for the sake of arguing. Social and scientific issues are still being debated to the point that nothing gets done and the conspiracy theorist in me wonders if that's not exactly how someone wants it. In some ways I wonder if we're not going backwards in some aspects. People are fighting battles that were "won" more than 30 years ago. And some people are fighting battles that should have ended 30 years ago. Having had my fair share of arguments and all out fights about things, I've learned that sometimes it's no good to win the battle if you lose the war. It seems it many cases there are those who would simply rather fight because they see any kind of compromise as a lose-lose situation. Or at the very least they had to give up something. There was a social experiment where a person is given $100 and are told to share a portion of the money with a second person. They can offer any amount, but if the other person refuses they both get nothing. Depending on your logic you may say that the most likely acceptance would be a 50-50 split of the money. Others might think that the second person should be happy with any portion of money because no matter what percentage they get it will still be 100% more than they had. More often than not the people making the laws are willing to walk away with nothing if they can't keep all $100. There's a reason why the acronym for mutually assured destruction is MAD.
Overall 2009 felt like a year that you just had to survive. Anything beyond that was just a bonus. I'd like to be hopeful for 2010, even if it's only because the year itself sounds much better than any of the 00s, which no one found a good name for in ten years. Do I think things will be drastically different than the last year? Maybe not, but I'm still looking forward to what it has to offer.
Ten years ago I was leaving this place and heading off to start a new adventure in a brand new state. I was young and eager to try something different. College had only finished the year before and it was time to leave for a new world beyond what I had known while I was in school. I often wonder what my life would have been like had I not taken that leap. A huge portion of my life would be drastically different. I don't regret doing it, but it's natural to think about the road not taken. That was then and this is now and to be honest it's really hard to tell the difference between my then self and now self. Back then I felt as though I was starting over and here I am feeling that same way. I've circled back around to where it feels like I'm starting over again. Maybe it's a good thing for me, but it's also more than a little frustrating because I have a tendency to pre-worry (a term coined by a friend of mine) about things long before I need to. So in addition to feeling like I'm living through the Pink Floyd lyrics "Ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run. You missed the starting gun", I'm worried that if I'm not careful I'll be right back here in another ten years.
Now all of 2009 wasn't bad. There were actually a lot of good things. Several family members have started new aspects of their lives, be it retiring from a job after years of service or leaving the military to try and sort out what it's like to be a civilian again. And my best friend lost her job after more than a dozen years at the same company only to find an even better job a few months later. Some relationships ended while others started and some even made the leap to that next step. I took the safe route of staying single, although I'm starting to wonder how much of that is by choice and how much is just a bad habit of not trying.
As usual there seemed to be a lot of celebrity deaths. Several of which were surprising at the time. Others may have not been shocking, but were still sad. This year we lost a dirty dancing roadhouse bouncer, one of Charlie's Angels, a prisoner, a man who told us the rest of the story, the king of pop, Khan himself, and the one who said that's the way it is. And to add to all that we lost another Karl with a K when we live in a world where it seems like there are simply too few. It seems like a lot and it probably is, but it's probably not all that different from years before as far as numbers are concerned.
The thing that's strange to me is that we're about to enter 2010, the year we make contact, and yet it feels like we're still arguing over the same old issues for the sake of arguing. Social and scientific issues are still being debated to the point that nothing gets done and the conspiracy theorist in me wonders if that's not exactly how someone wants it. In some ways I wonder if we're not going backwards in some aspects. People are fighting battles that were "won" more than 30 years ago. And some people are fighting battles that should have ended 30 years ago. Having had my fair share of arguments and all out fights about things, I've learned that sometimes it's no good to win the battle if you lose the war. It seems it many cases there are those who would simply rather fight because they see any kind of compromise as a lose-lose situation. Or at the very least they had to give up something. There was a social experiment where a person is given $100 and are told to share a portion of the money with a second person. They can offer any amount, but if the other person refuses they both get nothing. Depending on your logic you may say that the most likely acceptance would be a 50-50 split of the money. Others might think that the second person should be happy with any portion of money because no matter what percentage they get it will still be 100% more than they had. More often than not the people making the laws are willing to walk away with nothing if they can't keep all $100. There's a reason why the acronym for mutually assured destruction is MAD.
Overall 2009 felt like a year that you just had to survive. Anything beyond that was just a bonus. I'd like to be hopeful for 2010, even if it's only because the year itself sounds much better than any of the 00s, which no one found a good name for in ten years. Do I think things will be drastically different than the last year? Maybe not, but I'm still looking forward to what it has to offer.
Words Fail Me
I need a word that describes the feeling you get when you watch a movie or TV show with someone you consider to funny that's so painfully unfunny you seriously question the reason why you ever laughed at anything they've ever done.
Monday, December 14, 2009
On Time
I'm starting to think that I'm operating outside of time. I seriously no longer have any concept of time. Days of the week mean next to nothing to me, which tends to be a problem when I try to go somewhere only to realize that it's actually Saturday and everyone else is out and about too. For over two years I had nothing that even came close to resembling a schedule. I woke up when I was no longer tired and there were several times where I found myself awake for 24-48 hours in a stretch. The whole thing has left my internal clock flashing 12:00 over and over again. And to make things even more confusing I've started a job where my schedule feels like the opposite of everyone else. I'm going into the office hours before the sun will rise. It's before the rooster would think about waking up. Add to that working those same hours on weekends means that Friday is my Monday. So I typically have no idea when I am.
It seems that a lot of people are just killing time. The problem with that is they're killing time while looking forward to nothing. Sure they may be waiting for the weekend, but how different are the weekends from the weekdays? When you're waiting for a movie to start or sitting in a doctor's waiting room you're looking for ways to kill time because something is about to happen, you just have excess time on your hands. If you're killing time every day then maybe it's a sign that you need something to do. What's the point of always watching the clock while you're at work just so you can go home and watch the clock until it's time to go to bed so you can do it all over again?
Which makes me wonder if time isn't running in a line at all. What if it's all sort of circling back on itself over and over again? I mean if we can remember the past then how come we can't remember the future? If you believe in the idea that all time is always happening then it would stand to reason that events that haven't happened in our perception should be remembered as well as those that have already happened. Is that what Deja vu is? Just a brief glimpse into something that's already happened and we're remembering it somehow? If time is always happening then it would be nice if we could get some insight to things up the road so we can make some changes. Kind of like holding your finger on a page while reading one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books. You choose to go right. You were eaten by a bear. With that knowledge you flip back and decide to go left instead.
I guess the trick to time is not thinking of it as something that you need to kill in order to get to the next thing. They say time flies when you're having fun and that's because you're not thinking about how much time is going by, but instead of thinking about the fun itself. So the moment you start seeing time as something that has to be counted you've already partially defeated the purpose.
Often I've wondered how people spend their time. When I was younger I thought for sure I'd be given some kind of knowledge of what to do with myself when I was older. Apparently I never got that memo. So I'm always asking people what they do with their time. Turns out my time spent isn't all that much different from most people. Even when someone has kids there's just a lot of almost empty calories as far as time spent is concerned. Watching television. Surfing the internet. Playing games. Reading books. Chores. Other various hobbies. I'm not saying any of those things are necessarily bad, but all can be treated as things done just to get through a few hours before something else happens.
We've created all these gadgets to save time. All these processes to be more efficient. We've done all this and yet we're still always busy and it feels like there's less time than before. So is there really less time or are we just terrible in how we spend it? It makes me wonder what we'd do with ourselves if we didn't have to do certain things. If we didn't have to eat what would we do with the time we'd save by not having to gather food or money to buy food? No matter how advanced we think we are, there are always going to be the basics of survival that take up a majority of our time. We'd like to believe that we're above the lion, who spends its days looking to eat. We're not that far ahead of them when instead of hiding in the grass waiting for a slow gazelle we're stalking through some office waiting for our paycheck so we can buy a steak.
Maybe some day we will evolve beyond what we are now and we'll look back at all of this with different eyes. It makes me think of the closing lyrics for an old song.
"Now it's been ten thousand years, man has cried a billion tears for what he never knew. Now man's reign is through, but through eternal night, the twinkling of starlight. So very far away. Maybe it's only yesterday"
It seems that a lot of people are just killing time. The problem with that is they're killing time while looking forward to nothing. Sure they may be waiting for the weekend, but how different are the weekends from the weekdays? When you're waiting for a movie to start or sitting in a doctor's waiting room you're looking for ways to kill time because something is about to happen, you just have excess time on your hands. If you're killing time every day then maybe it's a sign that you need something to do. What's the point of always watching the clock while you're at work just so you can go home and watch the clock until it's time to go to bed so you can do it all over again?
Which makes me wonder if time isn't running in a line at all. What if it's all sort of circling back on itself over and over again? I mean if we can remember the past then how come we can't remember the future? If you believe in the idea that all time is always happening then it would stand to reason that events that haven't happened in our perception should be remembered as well as those that have already happened. Is that what Deja vu is? Just a brief glimpse into something that's already happened and we're remembering it somehow? If time is always happening then it would be nice if we could get some insight to things up the road so we can make some changes. Kind of like holding your finger on a page while reading one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books. You choose to go right. You were eaten by a bear. With that knowledge you flip back and decide to go left instead.
I guess the trick to time is not thinking of it as something that you need to kill in order to get to the next thing. They say time flies when you're having fun and that's because you're not thinking about how much time is going by, but instead of thinking about the fun itself. So the moment you start seeing time as something that has to be counted you've already partially defeated the purpose.
Often I've wondered how people spend their time. When I was younger I thought for sure I'd be given some kind of knowledge of what to do with myself when I was older. Apparently I never got that memo. So I'm always asking people what they do with their time. Turns out my time spent isn't all that much different from most people. Even when someone has kids there's just a lot of almost empty calories as far as time spent is concerned. Watching television. Surfing the internet. Playing games. Reading books. Chores. Other various hobbies. I'm not saying any of those things are necessarily bad, but all can be treated as things done just to get through a few hours before something else happens.
We've created all these gadgets to save time. All these processes to be more efficient. We've done all this and yet we're still always busy and it feels like there's less time than before. So is there really less time or are we just terrible in how we spend it? It makes me wonder what we'd do with ourselves if we didn't have to do certain things. If we didn't have to eat what would we do with the time we'd save by not having to gather food or money to buy food? No matter how advanced we think we are, there are always going to be the basics of survival that take up a majority of our time. We'd like to believe that we're above the lion, who spends its days looking to eat. We're not that far ahead of them when instead of hiding in the grass waiting for a slow gazelle we're stalking through some office waiting for our paycheck so we can buy a steak.
Maybe some day we will evolve beyond what we are now and we'll look back at all of this with different eyes. It makes me think of the closing lyrics for an old song.
"Now it's been ten thousand years, man has cried a billion tears for what he never knew. Now man's reign is through, but through eternal night, the twinkling of starlight. So very far away. Maybe it's only yesterday"
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
On The Apocalypse
Well I suppose it has to happen at some point. The end of the world as we know it. No not the end of the world because in most cases Earth will continue to be here long after we're gone. It bothers me when people say the end of the world because short of our planet being totally vaporized into space dust, it's going to keep spinning around the Sun whether it can support life or not. There is the the chance in about 12 billion years that humans are still on the planet when the Sun finally runs out of hydrogen to fuse and then goes through helium fusion and becomes a Red Giant, where it expands out to the orbit of Mars. Even then it would take awhile before Earth felt some lasting effects. Long story short it would take so many billions of years for that to happen that man as we know it will have become something quite different than what we are now.
Anyway pick your ending. Zombie invasion, hit by an asteroid (or meteor), global climate meltdown, or good old fashion nuclear winter. According to most science fiction there are really two ways things can go in the future. Either there will be an apocalypse and the world will be turned into burnt out shell where people fight to survive and it's questioned if mankind will burn out as well. The other option is that civilization turns into some kind of utopia. The caveat with option two is that often times you have to go through option one to get to the society of bliss.
In most of the disaster movies there are only about twenty minutes worth of signs that something is wrong. And the only ones to notice it are the quirky scientist guys that are amazingly smart, but somehow aren't reputable enough for anyone to take their work seriously until the core of the Earth has stopped spinning or The White House is covered in an ice storm that won't end for two years. The more likely scenario is that the events that are leading to the end of the world (as we know it) have already been set in motion. It's not going to be everything fine one day and the next we're in a panic because the sky is raining fire. Even when the dead rise from their graves there's always going to be a couple days of reports that corpses are running amok. So try to watch the news at least once a week to get a heads up on those sort of things.
The part that interests me is how people will react in the face of such an event. Some will be in denial that anything could be happening. The scope of the event will be just too large for their brains to handle. And it's hard to blame them because of the constant barrage of things we're told we should be afraid of. While I don't believe H1N1 is going to be a pandemic that will wipe out humanity, I do wonder if people think H3N3 could be. Beware of Captain Trips. Then you have the other group of people. These are the ones who see what's happening and just deal with it. Maybe they stock up on canned food and shotguns (which is probably a good idea anyway). Maybe they're just quick enough to avoid the initial wave of undead and get setup on a nice fortified island of safety. These people will do whatever is necessary to survive.
The really depressing part about surviving the apocalypse is that's all you're doing. You're just surviving. In most of the stories about the end of the world the people in it are just trying to make it to tomorrow. There aren't a lot of spare moments spent on hopes and dreams. Maybe that's how things were a few thousand years ago. Less time was spent on worrying about your feelings or if your company will sell another dozen widgets and more time was spent on finding a clean water source or where your next meal will come from. I'm not saying that things were better back then, but it was a much simpler definition of wants versus needs.
Maybe all the survivors are doing is surviving because they know how far things have been set backwards. If you think about it, this is the most advanced our society has ever been, to our knowledge anyway. That means we have so much farther to fall should some catastrophic event happen. If something were to kill all electronic devices in 1879 the biggest hit would be the first commercial power station in San Francisco. At least as far as regular people could tell. For the most part it wouldn't be a lasting setback to the future of man. You kill power today and the effects are instantaneous. Our reliance on electronics makes us even more susceptible to drastic reversals in progress as a society. Imagine what life would be like if an EMP hit most of America. Even if we were capable of replacing the electronics that were destroyed, the time that we're down could lead to chaos. If it happened in the summer you'd lose people in the south. If it happened in the winter you'd lose people in the north. A week without lights, or phones, or the blessed Internet and society as we know it could start to crumble around the edges. The longer we spend in the dark, the more feral we become.
And that's just an electromagnetic pulse. Imagine if at the start of the industrial revolution there was a cataclysmic event that set everything back 200 years. Would things progress the same way that they were going in the first place? I know life finds a way to survive, but how does it find its way to progress beyond just survival? What happens to a society that is forced to go backwards and start over? Do we learn from the mistakes we made? Maybe there will be those who look at technology as the root of the problem and prefer we go back to a more nomadic existence. Maybe we rebuild and in time we get back to where we are now. New York City is built on the remains of the old city. So it is possible.
There are so many things that could finish us off that if you thought about it for too long you might go a little crazy. People like to think we have the means to change the world, but really we just have the means to change things enough that we can't live on the planet anymore. So we can create our own apocalypse either with weapons of mass destruction or through the inadvertent creation of some super virus. Personally I think the Large Hadron Collider has some potential to warp all matter as we know it. The Earth itself could have some global problem be it climate changes or killer trees. And if that's not enough you have other outside forces (think meteor, not aliens). I guess it just comes down to enjoying what you have while you have it because we could be already on our way to the end of things and just not know it yet.
Anyway pick your ending. Zombie invasion, hit by an asteroid (or meteor), global climate meltdown, or good old fashion nuclear winter. According to most science fiction there are really two ways things can go in the future. Either there will be an apocalypse and the world will be turned into burnt out shell where people fight to survive and it's questioned if mankind will burn out as well. The other option is that civilization turns into some kind of utopia. The caveat with option two is that often times you have to go through option one to get to the society of bliss.
In most of the disaster movies there are only about twenty minutes worth of signs that something is wrong. And the only ones to notice it are the quirky scientist guys that are amazingly smart, but somehow aren't reputable enough for anyone to take their work seriously until the core of the Earth has stopped spinning or The White House is covered in an ice storm that won't end for two years. The more likely scenario is that the events that are leading to the end of the world (as we know it) have already been set in motion. It's not going to be everything fine one day and the next we're in a panic because the sky is raining fire. Even when the dead rise from their graves there's always going to be a couple days of reports that corpses are running amok. So try to watch the news at least once a week to get a heads up on those sort of things.
The part that interests me is how people will react in the face of such an event. Some will be in denial that anything could be happening. The scope of the event will be just too large for their brains to handle. And it's hard to blame them because of the constant barrage of things we're told we should be afraid of. While I don't believe H1N1 is going to be a pandemic that will wipe out humanity, I do wonder if people think H3N3 could be. Beware of Captain Trips. Then you have the other group of people. These are the ones who see what's happening and just deal with it. Maybe they stock up on canned food and shotguns (which is probably a good idea anyway). Maybe they're just quick enough to avoid the initial wave of undead and get setup on a nice fortified island of safety. These people will do whatever is necessary to survive.
The really depressing part about surviving the apocalypse is that's all you're doing. You're just surviving. In most of the stories about the end of the world the people in it are just trying to make it to tomorrow. There aren't a lot of spare moments spent on hopes and dreams. Maybe that's how things were a few thousand years ago. Less time was spent on worrying about your feelings or if your company will sell another dozen widgets and more time was spent on finding a clean water source or where your next meal will come from. I'm not saying that things were better back then, but it was a much simpler definition of wants versus needs.
Maybe all the survivors are doing is surviving because they know how far things have been set backwards. If you think about it, this is the most advanced our society has ever been, to our knowledge anyway. That means we have so much farther to fall should some catastrophic event happen. If something were to kill all electronic devices in 1879 the biggest hit would be the first commercial power station in San Francisco. At least as far as regular people could tell. For the most part it wouldn't be a lasting setback to the future of man. You kill power today and the effects are instantaneous. Our reliance on electronics makes us even more susceptible to drastic reversals in progress as a society. Imagine what life would be like if an EMP hit most of America. Even if we were capable of replacing the electronics that were destroyed, the time that we're down could lead to chaos. If it happened in the summer you'd lose people in the south. If it happened in the winter you'd lose people in the north. A week without lights, or phones, or the blessed Internet and society as we know it could start to crumble around the edges. The longer we spend in the dark, the more feral we become.
And that's just an electromagnetic pulse. Imagine if at the start of the industrial revolution there was a cataclysmic event that set everything back 200 years. Would things progress the same way that they were going in the first place? I know life finds a way to survive, but how does it find its way to progress beyond just survival? What happens to a society that is forced to go backwards and start over? Do we learn from the mistakes we made? Maybe there will be those who look at technology as the root of the problem and prefer we go back to a more nomadic existence. Maybe we rebuild and in time we get back to where we are now. New York City is built on the remains of the old city. So it is possible.
There are so many things that could finish us off that if you thought about it for too long you might go a little crazy. People like to think we have the means to change the world, but really we just have the means to change things enough that we can't live on the planet anymore. So we can create our own apocalypse either with weapons of mass destruction or through the inadvertent creation of some super virus. Personally I think the Large Hadron Collider has some potential to warp all matter as we know it. The Earth itself could have some global problem be it climate changes or killer trees. And if that's not enough you have other outside forces (think meteor, not aliens). I guess it just comes down to enjoying what you have while you have it because we could be already on our way to the end of things and just not know it yet.
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