Modernity

I fear modernity will prove to be pernicious. We will eventually discover what we have lost. But it will be too late. We would have lost our intellectual capabilities to the ravages of time and progress. We will be physically weak, dependent on medicine, damaged by surgery. We will be at home between layers of poisonous air. Unable to hear softer sounds, touch the paper books are made of. We may never watch our children play on real green grass. Look at their little feet bristle against the tiny green blades. There is too much to lose. Too much pain.

A few I spoke to, told me that this has been the concern of many 'sensitive' individuals throughout recorded history. I do not disagree. What I find surprising, is that in spite of knowing this, people continue on the same path. Their faith in modernity grows with each passing day, and instead of heeding the warnings of those who have had clearer vision, they dismiss them as exceptions, or as a paranoid minority. What these same people also fail to understand is progress(technological) such as ours is exponential. The damage we have done to both mother nature and ourselves in the past hundred years is nothing compared to what we may do in the next few years. And its impact on nature and human society is non-linear. That is, the risks pile up, and one fine day explode.

But beyond all this, my concerns are mainly aesthetic. How can an entire generation sit before a computer screen in a sterile corporate office? Do they not find it revolting? Or have their aesthetic senses undergone such a drastic transformation that they actually like it? All that is fascinating about human life, and society, they are willing to miss out, for some money to buy exactly those things they themselves produce in those sterile offices. It is downright hilarious. And it scares me.

Our ability to fool ourselves scares me. Our ability to show extremes of faith in illusions scares me. What scares me most in all this, is the ease with which we are distancing ourselves from beauty.