iApocalypse

                                                                

 Special thanks to my mother who found this writing of mine from seven years ago. (You can tell it is old as I reference Myspace and the Sidekick mobile phone). Many of the sentiments in this writing are echoed in my lectures I give today. Pardon some of my more crass phrases and such.  I was more angry 7 years ago apparently.  Now that I take action against the things I see wrong in this life, I have channeled my rage into a positive force for change.  Enjoy!

 

                                                                   iApocalypse                  

                                                               By: D.Pari 05-09-06

 

You don't need a crystal ball to see the future of humanity.  It surrounds us.  It consumes us.  We are drowning in it, and paying a hefty little price tag for it as well.

 

"It", is technology.  Yes I am aware of the irony that this represents, me typing this on a computer and all.  But we as a people need to seriously look around us and ask, "what is modern day necessity and what is just modern day laziness"?

 

It is no secret that we live in a compartmental society.  Single serving chips, single serving beverages, single serving meals, and single serving desserts, …all in their own safe and easy to heat up and dispose, black plastic bowls with a little frosty cellophane wrapper snuggled up over the top like a scared child's bed covers.

 

Everyone has their own car, their own apartment, their own cell phone, their own iMac, and their own little slice of the quickly fading "American Dream".  Isn't it all just so beautiful?

 

Everything today is customized to oneself. Everything is portable, affordable and disposable.  Everything is special - and nothing is special. Prized posessions are toted about for a time and then discarded by the curb when they lose their luster or their perceived level of superiority. Loved once and despised the next.  Everything is a prom dress. Everything is a Christmas tree. Brought into your life with love and warmth. Decorated and celebrated. Then thrown out into the cold.  Everything can be obtained rather easily and thrown away even easier.  The garbage heaps that man has put forth on the face of this planet can be seen from space; …no wonder the aliens dont want to stop by for a visit anymore.

 

But not people. People are not replaceable... …and no one cares. 

 

I know that there are many advances in health care- but there are very few cures.  Mostly there are just treatments that keep you alive long enough for the hospitals and pharmaceutical companies to bleed you dry.  Let's face it- there is no money in a cure, only in the treatment of a disease.

 

So in the meantime we just keep dreaming up more and more things to make life easier for us, the creme de la creme of humanity.

 

We have speed passes, fast passes, gold club cards, and every other gimmick imaginable to make us feel like special and unique snowflakes in a global warming environment.

 

There is no need for human contact in 90 percent of the things we do on a day to day basis.  You can pay at the pump; you can eat from the vending machines, you can go to the ATM and pay your bills at the self help kiosk if you want to.

 

I have more scan tag passes on my key ring than I do keys!  Not so I can get the best bargains out there- though thats what they want you to think.  They are there so they can track my purchases for marketing evaluation and advertising interpretation.  I know this because I work in marketing and advertising.

 

Soon, when you are born, they will put a UPC symbol right across the crack of your ass so that you will have access to the best of everything that every store has to offer to you for your entire life, and they can even track when you move your bowels and send you a neat little coupon for more toilet paper.  It will be the new Social Security card of America. 

 

We have cars that talk to us.  Cars that tell us where to go and how to get there.  No one needs your maps anymore Magellan!

 

We can order everything we need to live online.  We do our banking, stock trading, travel planning, research, and masturbating by using the computer.

 

Little by little the robots of the future are paving the way, writing their own binary history books.

Look around you- people are being phased out.  Remember that little old checkout lady who used to slow you down at the register because she just couldnt scan the groceries fast enough?  She is gone!

 

The good news is now you can scan them yourself and get out of the store even faster so that you can get in your car, chat on your phone, go home to your little apartment with the fancy single bamboo stalk decor, and heat up your microwavable dinner for one while talking to your Myspace friends online, whom

you more than likely do not really know.

 

The bad news about the grocery clerk Prom Queen from 1954 who once needed to price check your condoms at the check out is that she needed that job because her prescription costs are so high and social security isn't worth squat.  And lets face it- she only has a few options for employment in her twilight years, and the competition is getting fierce to be the friendly faced greeter at the door of Americas Evil Empire, Wal-Mart.

 

This... all of this, all of which you have just read, was in my mind recently while walking in downtown Providence, and I couldnt help but notice the hustle and bustle of the crowd around me.

 

There was the oh so talented Art students from the Rhode Island School of Design plugged into their iPods, the business men walking with their laptops tucked under arm, the Ivy League Brown students tapping away important messages about the girl they tag-teamed last night on their Sidekick mobile phones.

 

And there, lying low in Kennedy Plaza, where the buses run on the hour like low-paid hookers, was the past of this country.  The ones the bubble popped on.  The Vietnam Vets, the Gulf War Vets, and countless other people that simply couldn't make their payments on time for their slice of the American Dream.

 

Now sure, I know that some of them may have either gambled it away, drank it away, snorted it away or shot it up in the small areas betwixt there toes... but that is not true of all of them.

 

The whole scene just made me sick.   

 

Here are people clinging to life on handouts and scraps, while the upper crust walks right by.

 

How is that possible?

 

Is it that the elite are simply out of touch with the dying world around them? Or is it that they are so in tune with themselves that they dont even notice?

 

There is a certain attitude of entitlement that radiates from today's society.  A true hooray for me and the hell with you type of attitude.  It is as if the iLife generation expects that good things should come to them, and those around them are undeserving of even the simple necessities of life.

 

I am watching this transpire and it is very unsettling. 

 

To see one human being not want to help another human being because it is an inconvenience to their daily routine is completely absurd.  

 

If the end is coming by way of nuclear explosion, tsunami, Bird Flu, or an asteroid from across the universe, I welcome it.  For at least in those final cataclysmic days of humanity we could bond as one to figure out what went wrong, instead of acting as if we dont even know the other one exists.

 

Right now… the robots are winning.