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The DKMU Vault / Re: Soul Anarchy V (5th journal of paradoxes/possibilities by me)
« Last post by Ringtail on January 06, 2020, 09:36:34 pm »751. Time loops might build roads.
My mother used to ask after dinner, "Who's going to build the roads?" as our dissociative nightly feast on the fruits of capitalism wound down and our mouths turned their action to circular debates. She would be exhausted, the way she was always exhausted at the end of the day with little space left in her brain for questioning the status quo, having numbed herself all day in labor not of her design. "You have to have someone giving the orders, or no one's going to do the dirty work," she'd argue as she spread lotion on her cracked hands from some endangered plant in an exploited third world country. And I would try valiantly to explain how her sense of normality was skewed in a way that would be invisible until after escape; I made analogies with victims of domestic abuse and described models of how an alternative might work, but each of these she shot down with a competing possibility. She could not see how these possibilities themselves fed on the dream of freedom, that they were evidence not of limit but of limitlessness, like a few closed doors standing powerless amid an open field, where the only walls in existence are those built of our fear.
Alas, my mother did not live to see the turning of history. She passed on from heart failure after missing the bus one day and attempting to sprint. A 55 year old body that had forgotten how to run and leap, fed up with confinement and the toxic air, finally staged its own private revolution and took her to the earth, where the alien machines could no longer reach her. I took my anger to the streets the day we burned the capitol building, was there for the day of impassioned speeches that followed, and for the endless meetings and forums and debates and restructurings that filled the weeks to come.
At first, the question of who would build the roads solved itself. Everyone was filled with enthusiasm and compassion for the common good. Those who knew how to build, built with a passion, and came home to gratitude and warm meals for all. So what if city planning went a little by the by, and predictable grids of avenues became a thing of the past. I, for one, prefer the meandering cul-de-sacs and quaint shortcuts that make our towns unique and ever-changing. But as the years wear on, I admit, the dirty work has became a bit of an obstacle for our relations. Never would I have traded it for the previous set of conditions - nay - yet, many of the younger folk butt heads against the system of ethics that we try so hard to inculcate. We say to ourselves this is also good, because they go into technology to find solutions to this most ancient human problem, the problem of boredom. And if the direction of research has moved away from practical applications and into more theoretical zones, I would say this is always the case with science, that you never know how it's going to be useful until its usefulness jumps out at you.
So here I am, shoveling gravel to fill in potholes so that the next generation can get to where their vocations lead them. I don't mind at all, though I work as hard as I ever did. I fill the endless hours with thoughts of our free society, where great ideas face no social barriers. Why, just recently a physicist told me about the incredible things they have learned about the structure of space-time, and how it can be bent into a loop the way we used to envision in science fiction movies! They say that soon, all our repetitive chores could be compressed into an hour, freeing us forever from the burden of drudgery. If only my Mom and Pop could have heard this. I can still hear their voices in my memory, and that question, "Who's going to build the roads?" my mother used to ask after dinner, as our dissociative nightly feast on the fruits of capitalism wound down and our mouths turned their action to circular debates. She would be exhausted, the way she was always exhausted at the end of the day with little space left in her brain for questioning the status quo, having numbed herself all day in labor not of her design...
My mother used to ask after dinner, "Who's going to build the roads?" as our dissociative nightly feast on the fruits of capitalism wound down and our mouths turned their action to circular debates. She would be exhausted, the way she was always exhausted at the end of the day with little space left in her brain for questioning the status quo, having numbed herself all day in labor not of her design. "You have to have someone giving the orders, or no one's going to do the dirty work," she'd argue as she spread lotion on her cracked hands from some endangered plant in an exploited third world country. And I would try valiantly to explain how her sense of normality was skewed in a way that would be invisible until after escape; I made analogies with victims of domestic abuse and described models of how an alternative might work, but each of these she shot down with a competing possibility. She could not see how these possibilities themselves fed on the dream of freedom, that they were evidence not of limit but of limitlessness, like a few closed doors standing powerless amid an open field, where the only walls in existence are those built of our fear.
Alas, my mother did not live to see the turning of history. She passed on from heart failure after missing the bus one day and attempting to sprint. A 55 year old body that had forgotten how to run and leap, fed up with confinement and the toxic air, finally staged its own private revolution and took her to the earth, where the alien machines could no longer reach her. I took my anger to the streets the day we burned the capitol building, was there for the day of impassioned speeches that followed, and for the endless meetings and forums and debates and restructurings that filled the weeks to come.
At first, the question of who would build the roads solved itself. Everyone was filled with enthusiasm and compassion for the common good. Those who knew how to build, built with a passion, and came home to gratitude and warm meals for all. So what if city planning went a little by the by, and predictable grids of avenues became a thing of the past. I, for one, prefer the meandering cul-de-sacs and quaint shortcuts that make our towns unique and ever-changing. But as the years wear on, I admit, the dirty work has became a bit of an obstacle for our relations. Never would I have traded it for the previous set of conditions - nay - yet, many of the younger folk butt heads against the system of ethics that we try so hard to inculcate. We say to ourselves this is also good, because they go into technology to find solutions to this most ancient human problem, the problem of boredom. And if the direction of research has moved away from practical applications and into more theoretical zones, I would say this is always the case with science, that you never know how it's going to be useful until its usefulness jumps out at you.
So here I am, shoveling gravel to fill in potholes so that the next generation can get to where their vocations lead them. I don't mind at all, though I work as hard as I ever did. I fill the endless hours with thoughts of our free society, where great ideas face no social barriers. Why, just recently a physicist told me about the incredible things they have learned about the structure of space-time, and how it can be bent into a loop the way we used to envision in science fiction movies! They say that soon, all our repetitive chores could be compressed into an hour, freeing us forever from the burden of drudgery. If only my Mom and Pop could have heard this. I can still hear their voices in my memory, and that question, "Who's going to build the roads?" my mother used to ask after dinner, as our dissociative nightly feast on the fruits of capitalism wound down and our mouths turned their action to circular debates. She would be exhausted, the way she was always exhausted at the end of the day with little space left in her brain for questioning the status quo, having numbed herself all day in labor not of her design...
*** 