So say for the sake of argument that China and India are arguing over control of the south china sea and the sea of Japan.
China is sending a lot of their ships (including a fleet of submarines), and India is doing the same.
Now what if, China brings along their recent allies (and erstwhile enemies) the Russians (and other Baltic states that formerly comprised the soviet union) and India brings in it's current allies (the Americans) who happen to be former cold war enemies who are currently falling out again after 30 years or so of peace (just long enough to raise a generation that has no memory of the cold war).
Everyone is tense.
Everyone has nukes and bioweapons and all manner of ugliness.
And nobody really wants to fire first, though everyone is kinda curious to see what the result would be.
So basically, China, India, Russia, and the U.S. are in a Mexican standoff with each other over the sea of Japan...
You can't write a joke setup like this...
and we're all waiting with baited breath to see what the punch line will be.
So I've said for a long time that most of society (myself included) has no idea what it's doing.
We all bullshit our way through our lives, hoping nobody notices while pretending that we know what we're about.
Some of us bullshit the world
Some of us bullshit ourselves
Most of us do a bit of both.
But I was thinking about history the other day, specifically the history of myth, and the sorts of things people come up with to give themselves comfort when facing the daily grind of constant worry and uncertainty that we are presented with.
You can learn a lot about a society by studying it's religion, but religion is just the final cut; the logical evolution of base hope metamorphosing, butterfly like, into a complex set of rituals and social control mechanisms.
And popular culture rarely supplies much insight, obsessed as it generally is with celebrity and the story of the day.
But there are trends that can be observed.
Specifically trends in what sorts of things people hope will save them from the lives they live.
And I'm not referring to the quite desperation of the starving, or the abused; slaves or refuges from crumbling societies.
I'm talking about the secret hopes that the average, every day, first and second world denizens cling to in order to make it through their requisite hours of labor every week without losing hope.
The dreams, for lack of a better word.
The personal ones like love, respect, sexual gratification, company, etc.
And the (in some ways more interesting) social movements.
I'm old enough to remember when satanic cults and alien abductions were a thing people were really in to. And I remember talking with a number of folks who felt that 'the aliens would swoop down to save us before we wiped ourselves out'. (some of these sort of folks are still around, you've probably heard from them on some of the more interesting cable access channels late at night).
Not sure what it's going to be this decade, but I think we're on the cusp of a new paradigm.
And I can't help but wonder what it will be.
100 years ago it was the idea that there would be some sort of religious 'rapture' in which the Christian god would call up all his faithful before laying some bullshit on all the 'infidels'.
Lately it's been the zombie apocalypse (which, in some ways was the logical extension of the red dawn).
But the thing I can't help but notice is that our collective fantasies have devolved to more brutish and less forgiving constructs.
In the more modern narratives, the select few survivors (the people who are supposed to be us, since few people identify with the ones who don't survive) don't get a free pass.
They are condemned to an interminable period of constant struggle and brutality, while slowly their numbers dwindle and only the cruelest and meanest survive.
Kinda makes me wonder what form this generations epic social fantasy will take.
What lengths they will feel willing to go to in order to escape the day-to-day world?
Where will they go to hide from themselves?
And it really makes me wonder what religions will sprout from this particular period in history.
Which little known craftsman, standup comic, or music star will have a truly religious following in two thousand years...
Will the gods of tomorrow be built from social detritus of today?
Which of the seemingly constant supply of kings or jackals, whores or tyrants, corporate shills, con-artists, poets, doctors, beggars, thieves, saints or martyrs will it be?
Will they be famous in their own time?
Or will the rise to fame long after their passing?
Will their own words echo down the years, evolving slowly into esoteric meaninglessness with dozens of translations?
Or will their words be those of the conniving and power-mad,
the controlling and the corrupting,
the vultures and the shadows,
the players and the pimps?
Narratives agreed upon in the dark places to prop up a figurehead that the ruling class can approve of.
Stories to give hope to the little people, while at the same time keeping them subservient and productive.
Sometimes I think it's a pity that life is so short, even if I never did expect it to be this long.
Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. – Ecclesiastes 9:10 –
I do not want followers who are righteous, rather I want followers who are too busy doing good that they won’t have time to do bad. – Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk –
No one who does good work will ever come to a bad end, either here or in the world to come – Anonymous quote from the Bhagavad Gita – Work and pray, live on hay You'll get pie in the sky when you die – Joe Hill –
Arbeit macht frei (work sets you free) – written above the gates at Auschwitz –
