"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
It's tempting, if you're a person dedicated to the idea of personal growth, to reject the notion of people having "formative years" because it's dismissive and defeatist to think of our personalities as things that have been set in resin, hardened into an impermeable shell, deflecting unfamiliar and uncomfortable ideas. I like to think that we all grow all of the time.
But, I've audited the play counts in my iTunes and I've noticed which movies I tend to surf to and watch to the end. It's hard to discount that something's going on. A lot of us are still feeding on the popular culture of our early adolescent selves.
This idea has been whispering from the back of my mind since recently noticing something about my own adolescence, which happened entirely within the cold war 1980's -- a time I remember as being evenly sprinkled with television movies about World War III. As it turns out, all of those fear-mongering pieces of Emmy bait were actually pocketed into a tight little 23 month period between January 1982 and November of 1983 which, if I had to guess, might have been my own developmental DEFCON 4 in terms of the various psychological, and hormonal systems being, to use a phrase neglected by people who study neurological growth with any seriousness, ready to launch.
The when-not-if proposition of nuclear war had become the background noise of not just political discourse, but popular culture. Four television networks, half of my teachers, untold numbers of best-selling authors and my church's youth program all came at my peer group really hard with the opinion we could expect vaporization at best, but more likely, a slow and tortuous death by radiation sickness and severe burns.
The net effect this has had on me is that I don't care much for post-apocalyptic books or movies. Unless they're funny. For me, the Mad Max films have always met that qualification.
The world depicted in Fury Road, which I was recently free to contemplate without the distraction of dialog, seems too stylized to be taken seriously, and so watching feels like honest escapism. The film's supposition is once that traditional civilization has been scorched away, humanity will revert to its most base nature -- which is, for some reason, a society ruled jointly by performance artists and welders. The whole of human conflict, thousands of years of warfare, treaties, dissolutions and empire building will be reduced to conflicts among warring factions who are, in principal, locked in combat over control of vital resources of water and fuel, but each of whom is really vying for superior theatricality -- i.e., Tactical Razzmatazz.
The experience of watching this from the other side of a language barrier pushed forward a lot of questions that I'd never considered since my introduction to the Mad Max universe.
The ongoing contemplation of likely human destinies (which is achieved now just as it was when I was still a cold war teenager, by staring at the ceiling above my bed and often forgetting to blink) has never been especially insightful. Days after seeing Fury Road, however, I think I've felt a shift in perspective for maybe the first time ever. I've reluctantly reached the conclusion that yeah... this is actually what our post-cataclysm world will be. Like, even down to the hair dye and flamethrowing guitars.
I've made something of a loose hobby out of watching prepper YouTube videos (suggested search terms: "hide," "guns" and "SHTF"). And it's obvious that this future, with its overwrought survival drama and hyper-modified big block engines, is the future they are preparing for. Everyone who has dug a bunker (suggested search terms: "DIY," "panic room" and "coming to get you") has seen every Mad Max movie. They've scrutinized every frame. They've looked at that world and decided to devote their lives to living in it, should fate be so kind as to give them that chance.
We, the complacent smirkers who disregard the BDSM-themed monster trucks that roam the waste-scape of these movies (and who will subsequently be swallowed whole by the unnamed thing that removes us) are what stand between these people and their dream of tearing up the barren countryside with the custom-built all-terrain military/NASCAR hybrid vehicle that they've been sketching on the backs of their notebooks since middle school. The end of civilization is nothing less than the beginning of a decades-long, full-contact, high-stakes LARPing session. And why wouldn't you, under those circumstances, build a truck almost entirely out of war drums and speaker cabinets?
In short, no one constructs a subterranean lair because they are dreaming of really going hard and deep into a life of agriculture.
You might remember that The Doomsday Clock, lingering at four minutes to midnight since Reagan's 1980 election win, got scooched ahead to 23:57 in 1984 when the president stepped up his "the only way to end the cold war is to win it" rhetoric and policies concerning nuclear proliferation. Scary times.
Yeah, well pop your collars and roll up your jacket sleeves. We've been at three minutes to midnight since 2015. But the global crisis mindset of my youth is serving me well in middle age. I'm more at peace with the idea of an en masse grand exit than I am with a world where every living person insists on running at maximum RPM's with open pipes.
Until the fireball, take every moral step to find your happiness (suggested search terms: "Bionic Woman blooper reel," "sexy magician assistant" and "animals dressed like the Mythbusters").
Albert Einstein,"We should be so lucky."
(1949)
My personal addendum,
(Several times this week)
It's tempting, if you're a person dedicated to the idea of personal growth, to reject the notion of people having "formative years" because it's dismissive and defeatist to think of our personalities as things that have been set in resin, hardened into an impermeable shell, deflecting unfamiliar and uncomfortable ideas. I like to think that we all grow all of the time.
But, I've audited the play counts in my iTunes and I've noticed which movies I tend to surf to and watch to the end. It's hard to discount that something's going on. A lot of us are still feeding on the popular culture of our early adolescent selves.
This idea has been whispering from the back of my mind since recently noticing something about my own adolescence, which happened entirely within the cold war 1980's -- a time I remember as being evenly sprinkled with television movies about World War III. As it turns out, all of those fear-mongering pieces of Emmy bait were actually pocketed into a tight little 23 month period between January 1982 and November of 1983 which, if I had to guess, might have been my own developmental DEFCON 4 in terms of the various psychological, and hormonal systems being, to use a phrase neglected by people who study neurological growth with any seriousness, ready to launch.
The when-not-if proposition of nuclear war had become the background noise of not just political discourse, but popular culture. Four television networks, half of my teachers, untold numbers of best-selling authors and my church's youth program all came at my peer group really hard with the opinion we could expect vaporization at best, but more likely, a slow and tortuous death by radiation sickness and severe burns.
The net effect this has had on me is that I don't care much for post-apocalyptic books or movies. Unless they're funny. For me, the Mad Max films have always met that qualification.
The world depicted in Fury Road, which I was recently free to contemplate without the distraction of dialog, seems too stylized to be taken seriously, and so watching feels like honest escapism. The film's supposition is once that traditional civilization has been scorched away, humanity will revert to its most base nature -- which is, for some reason, a society ruled jointly by performance artists and welders. The whole of human conflict, thousands of years of warfare, treaties, dissolutions and empire building will be reduced to conflicts among warring factions who are, in principal, locked in combat over control of vital resources of water and fuel, but each of whom is really vying for superior theatricality -- i.e., Tactical Razzmatazz.
The experience of watching this from the other side of a language barrier pushed forward a lot of questions that I'd never considered since my introduction to the Mad Max universe.
- Did modifying cars and driving fast contribute to the survival of the remaining humans -- or are those things that just emerged naturally because no one has to get anything inspected anymore?
- Why are some people shirtless while others are wrapped in layers of leather and canvas?
- Why has a world with such progressive views toward people with physical disabilities yielded adaptive medical equipment which seems so inspired by the Hellraiser films?
- And, seriously, would there even be a shortage of gasoline if each vehicle wasn't designed to ejaculate a geyser of flame every time someone shifts gears?
The ongoing contemplation of likely human destinies (which is achieved now just as it was when I was still a cold war teenager, by staring at the ceiling above my bed and often forgetting to blink) has never been especially insightful. Days after seeing Fury Road, however, I think I've felt a shift in perspective for maybe the first time ever. I've reluctantly reached the conclusion that yeah... this is actually what our post-cataclysm world will be. Like, even down to the hair dye and flamethrowing guitars.
I've made something of a loose hobby out of watching prepper YouTube videos (suggested search terms: "hide," "guns" and "SHTF"). And it's obvious that this future, with its overwrought survival drama and hyper-modified big block engines, is the future they are preparing for. Everyone who has dug a bunker (suggested search terms: "DIY," "panic room" and "coming to get you") has seen every Mad Max movie. They've scrutinized every frame. They've looked at that world and decided to devote their lives to living in it, should fate be so kind as to give them that chance.
We, the complacent smirkers who disregard the BDSM-themed monster trucks that roam the waste-scape of these movies (and who will subsequently be swallowed whole by the unnamed thing that removes us) are what stand between these people and their dream of tearing up the barren countryside with the custom-built all-terrain military/NASCAR hybrid vehicle that they've been sketching on the backs of their notebooks since middle school. The end of civilization is nothing less than the beginning of a decades-long, full-contact, high-stakes LARPing session. And why wouldn't you, under those circumstances, build a truck almost entirely out of war drums and speaker cabinets?
In short, no one constructs a subterranean lair because they are dreaming of really going hard and deep into a life of agriculture.
You might remember that The Doomsday Clock, lingering at four minutes to midnight since Reagan's 1980 election win, got scooched ahead to 23:57 in 1984 when the president stepped up his "the only way to end the cold war is to win it" rhetoric and policies concerning nuclear proliferation. Scary times.
Yeah, well pop your collars and roll up your jacket sleeves. We've been at three minutes to midnight since 2015. But the global crisis mindset of my youth is serving me well in middle age. I'm more at peace with the idea of an en masse grand exit than I am with a world where every living person insists on running at maximum RPM's with open pipes.
Until the fireball, take every moral step to find your happiness (suggested search terms: "Bionic Woman blooper reel," "sexy magician assistant" and "animals dressed like the Mythbusters").
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