Depending on one's current condition and temperament; the future is either going to be awesome, horrible, or at least... something. Some people slather their futures with science myths to justify their current conditions. We've built the rockets, space stations, clones and computers that look like lovers, we're still looking for the next invention that will somehow give us insight into our purpose. Alternately, some see the future as some sort of projection of self. "I will live w, and marry x, have y kids and work as a z." To this frame of mind, changes in circumstance are unimaginable. Both models are pledged to a deep, yet essential aspect of irrationality.
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REALLY BAD COMEDY ROUTINE
ReplyDelete--And another thing, he said in his twitchy persona, where are all these flying cars we were promised? When we were kids, they said we’d all have flying cars in the future. It’s the future now, motherfucker and I want my flying car! Am I right, folks? Am I right?
No one laughed. We all sat there, eyes shifting nervously from left to right, wondering who was going to make the first move. I slammed my gin and tonic glass on the table and wiped my lips on the back of my hand. The comedian looked at me and began to back away. I could feel the crowd shift in their seats as I made my way up the stage steps.
Hey, uh, no one’s supposed to be on stage, he said. Security? Can I get some security?
This got some laughs from the crowd, because it was a comedy club and the only security they had was a fat guy in a long-sleeved Hawaiian shirt who stood at the door and took our tickets. I snatched the microphone from his hand and looked into the crowd. It was a good looking crowd, a lot of couples. You could see that a couple of the men always left the toilet seat up and a few of the women always asked their men what they were thinking. You know the type.
A few single women who’d had a little too much to drink and swayed like palm trees. I looked at the comic, who stared at me nervously. Then I hit him in the face with the mike. The crowd cheered as he curled into a ball and I swung the microphone down on the back of his head over and over again.
He started to cry as a few others from the audience joined me and the stage. Two guys stated kicking him, flailing their arms like DeNiro in Goodfellas when he was beating the shit out of the shinebox guy—You know, Phil from the Sopranos. The red light flashed, telling us we had one minute left on stage, so we held him down as the rest of the crowd got on stage and took turns raping him.
A tired joke about flying cars. I mean, really! Anyone who makes a joke like that deserves what they get.
Am I right folks? Am I right?
'You Are The Future'
ReplyDeleteIs there a future? The only thing we can be certain of is the past, having touched, tasted, talked and travelled through that passage of time, formulating memories that assure us of existence.
Sometimes, I ask myself, where are those memories now? In the future, awaiting recollection? In the brain, anchored to the hippocampus by chains of neurotransmitters that fire through the data-exchange system of neurons and synapses? Considering the sheer abundance of information processed by a human mind in one year, this environmental and biological knowledge must be condensed to the tiniest packets at a near-quantum level in order to fit into the small regions of grey matter. To me, the likelihood of memories existing physically seems remote. Not impossible: remote.
Remote in the sense of being so far away in time that we can never change them, in the sense of being so close we can almost touch them, in the senses but not in the body. Accessible, programmable, unalterable. How can this contrasting set of conditions be credible?
Energy. The human body is built of it, atoms of too huge a number to fit neatly in a sentence. The weight of a body at rest, its mass, has a corresponding measure of energy. This is explained in the most beautifully simple equation in science, Albert Einstein’s mass-energy equivalent, instantly recognisable as E = mc2, the quota of energy calculable as weight multiplied by the speed of light and squared. Every form of matter contains vast reserves of energy at an atomic level, immense levels of power compressed and bound together in sublime structures. Energy is infinite. It can be transformed, channelled and manipulated but never destroyed. Any quantity of energy that disappears from one state must appear somewhere else in perfect symmetry. Dark energy makes up 74% of the mass of the universe, while ordinary, tangible matter accounts for less than 5%. Always and forever existent, the concept of time is meaningless where energy is concerned. There is always a past but only ever the potential for history.
Even at rest bodies emit radiation in the form of heat as electric charges pummel their way through nerves and muscles, blood streams in a constant flow of kinetic force. As brains process the constant torrent of information, could it be that our thoughts and impressions of life become entangled with the energy we expend? From the moment we breathe air until the final gasp, everything is being stored and yet, can be recalled at a speed that is the envy of machines. If all energy is converted into matter and is infinite, could emotional energy be the building blocks of life in another dimension - the dimension of the self, a place where every work of art, book, movie and song combine, every friend and foe transmute, sights and sounds sculpt the landscape, each wish, dream, desire, fear and angry notion vent like noble gases into the atmosphere of a world we’ve never visited but know better than any place on Earth?
One theory about dreams concerns the belief that we visit our future selves. Is this completely implausible? As the body suspends conscious activity can the mind, free of physical restraints, revert to a state of pure energy and pass through the ether to pair with its metaphysical twin? One aspect of quantum entaglement is ‘spukhafte fernwirkung’ - the quantumn non-local connection. In this state, two objects are intrinsically linked and any observations upon one are immediately reflected in the other. Quantum teleportation has been successfully exhibited in scientific laboratories - an electron can be moved from one point in spacetime to another. Sleep, that gateway to the parallel universe in which we doubly reside, conducts our experiences there back along the entangled paths, those coiled transmitters of energy and emotion, back to the receptive brain which, devoid of thought, blankly awaits instructions. It feels good to be alive.
Nay:
ReplyDeleteThumbs up +1
touched, tasted, talked, and travelled: +1
Paragraph 2, I would lose the entire phrase starting w/"Albert Einstein...as" because E=mc2 is sufficient.
I've always loved the phrase noble gases and feel it isn't utilized enough: +1
It feels good to be alive: +1
+4 Total
Damn I never came back to this. Sincere apologies.
ReplyDelete