What if, tomorrow, society fell and everything that we took for granted went out the window? No microwaves, no TV, no Wal-Mart, no newspapers, no aircraft, GPS, cellphones, manufacturing, shipping, soap, Wonder-bread; all of it gone? What would those of us (or them) who work in a rarefied environment where they are no more than over-specialized drones who type away in cubicles, sifting through 'data', crunching numbers, and endlessly trolling through databases? What happens when the only data that's important is 'what are we going to eat'?
Were we better off as primitives? Does society make our lives 'easier' and if so, IS that better? Or would the fall of industry and technology foster a return to 'Eden', so to speak? Often called the 'cozy catastrophe, it's a common premise in post apocalyptic novels, particularly those of British science fiction writers after World War 2 (Thank you, Wikipedia).
But is it a valid idea?
Consider this; There was a passage in a book I read (A Mote In God's Eye) that explained how a 'civilized' organism stops evolving. By the time we develop a civilization, we protect the sick and the weak, everyone is given an equal chance to procreate and contribute to the gene pool. There is no more 'survival of the fittest', Darwinism no longer applies.
And what have we lost? Men and women still have urges that they strive to satisfy. The boy seeks acceptance of peers through competition, men seek status and power through their job, the stock market or the conquest of women.
Girls play with dolls and create cliques with their friends. Women estimate men in correlation to their current fertility as much as the males material resources. They even 'nest' when pregnant.
These urges and drives may be seen as anachronisms, out-dated, outmoded, no longer relevant to modern society and in the case of those I have ascribed to females, misogynistic and chauvinist. Yet, deep inside us, these urges still boil beneath the veneer of 'civilized' man. We attempt to placate them through sports, acquisition of possessions, gender amplification and a youth obsessive culture.
Materialism and consumerism are both extensions of the need to hunt and conquer. Men seek better 'toys' and material wealth to reap sexual rewards from women seeking to better their position and their access to resources. Most of this happens at a subconscious (or semi-conscious) level. None the less, those who eschew the norm are ostracized to lesser positions of society and become, by extension, less 'desirable'. This occurs even at the earliest stages of gender interactions, but begins to become most obvious at the High School level.
We desperately attempt to fill that hole in our lives with money, status, and power, but they are fleeting, illusions brought on by the artificial environment of the ‘Modern World’. We are not as strong nor can we endure as those who came before us have. To be certain, we have brought forth astounding technologies, plumbed the depth of the atom and pierced the shadowy veil of the Universe to glimpse the very edge of time; achievements and wonders that would bring the Ancients to their knees, groveling in terror and awe. Yet, we stand on the shoulders of giants. The average man knows how to WORK a piece of technology, but not HOW it works, much less WHY it works. Long ago, it was the man, alone, who won glory and honor through pain and perseverance as much as with guile and cleverness.
Early Man, for all his savagery and brutishness, is the template on which we base the ‘Heroic Being’. He defied nature, persisted, thrived, wrenched his existence unapologetically from the world, while you and I order pizza by telephone, entertainment streaming in from around the world at the touch of a button all from the comfort of our cozy little homes, heated or air-conditioned, depending on nuanced preference and coddled desire.
Yes, our technology is splendid and magnificent, yet it pales in comparison to standing on the frozen plain, wind biting through hand-sewn pelts, grasping a spear of yew and flint, eyes narrow, feet planted, body braced to meet the raging beast thundering towards you, hunger and blood lust steeling your nerve. You and your tribe will eat tonight or you will die!
What is a Big Mac or even a fillet mignon compared to the salty, savory flesh, still warm and steaming in your hand, cut from the animal you and your brothers laid low not moments ago? A great creature, revered for it's strength and the sustenance that it now provides. You will sing song to him tonight, paint your face in his blood to gain his strength, wear his teeth around your neck to honor him and drape his furs around your children. This mighty creature will live forever in your memory and that of your tribe.
What is the sterile glass tower to the giant monuments of stone, shaped by flesh and bone, sweat and blood? Tens of thousands of hands beating, pulling, lifting together, hewing goliaths from bones of the Earth that dwarf all around them?
Structures immune to storm and sand, earthquake and flood or war and famine. The will live beyond every soul you know and can possibly conceive of and they will fill those who come after with awe and reverence at your mighty achievements.
What good is the ability to debug thousands of lines of code versus the knowledge to conjure fire, to knap flint into a celt or to carve an atlatl? An iPhone may be an amazing piece of technology, but it's genius is nothing compared to that of the first arrowhead or hand ax. Today we rely on thousands of years of cataloged knowledge to create, we, as I have said, stand on the shoulders of giants. How can this even compare with the cold and hungry primitive, sitting in the wilderness, who, from nothing but stick and stone, gave birth to all technology? What supreme inspiration, what magnificent insight, what sheer brilliance. All that we are, every achievement and advance, we owe to this nameless benefactor, yet we muddle along in a over saturated media fog, witless and impotent, striving for nothing more that the next digital fix.
What will our descendants think of us, perfumed and pampered, fat and indolent?
I wonder.
