Warp Watch - Our Watch

Yesterday nigh I watched a Charlie Chaplin’s movie The Dictator, filmed in 1940. I was surprised how brutaly true it is. At the end of the movie Chaplin gives a speech to a large assembly of soldiers which made a grate impression on me:

“I am sorry; I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; yew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We want to live by each other happiness not by each others misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there’s room for everyone and good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned man souls. Has barricaded the world with hate, has goose stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and fell too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More then cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities life would be violent, and all would be lost. The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men. Cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world. Millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men thither, and imprison innocent people. To those that can hear me I say; do not despair; the misery that is upon us is just the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. So long as men die, liberty will never perish … You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are MEN. You have the love of humanity in your harts. You don’t hate, only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural … in the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written; the kingdom of God is within men, not one man nor a group of men but in all men. You, you the people have the power. The power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure … Let us use that power, let us all unite, let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give a men chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By promise of these thing brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfill that promise, they never will. Dictators free them self, but they enslave the people, now let us fight to fulfill that promise; let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress would lead to all men happiness … Let us all unite.

… Look up Hanna, the clouds are lifting, the sun is breaking trough. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world, a kindly world, where men would rise above their hate, their greed and brutality. Look up, the soul of man has been given wings and at last he is beginning to fly, he is flying into the rainbow, into the light of hope, into the future, the glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us.”

Charlie Chaplin would be disappointed if he know that people today have unimaginable power at their disposal but choose not to use it. In fact they fear it and present it as something that can't be understood. By not choosing to exercise the power that was given to the world it allowed individuals to control world’s future.

Consumer society is a direct result of capitalism and mankind’s inability to grasp the implications of technology. I am a big fan of technology, and I consider it as driving force behind progress, but technology has been mismanaged. It was used to wage wars, commit genocide; to install fear, and was made into a new kind of logical religion.

Utopians have almost always seen technology as an instrument of giving people more time to concentrate on more important issues, like betterment of one self. Instead, a bell curve, a statistical expression of dominant population distribution seen everywhere in the nature presents it self in a new light.

Bell curve tells us that there is a small number at the beginning of the curve that make up of poor performers, fallowed by a large number of average performers, and at the end again small number of overachievers.

Let’s review what was given to the humanity in the last century in regards to technology. First and most important discovery was the alternating current (AC current). It allowed for electrical power to be transmitted over great distances, and today it powers the world. When radio appeared it was predicted that it will fail but even today we can’t imagine the world without radio waves. They travel though ether, filling our skies and our being. It is probably the only medium that was used and is used correctly. It has the ability to convey ideas without the need to fully involve the listener. Radio ushered a new era, the globalization era. Ideas and news from all over the globe could be transmitted, and shared. Not only ideas but it also entertained the listeners with music and talk shows.

Television is a fluke of human nature. It is so close to our trail of thoughts that it needs only 30 seconds to emerge us into its world. Beta-endorphin levels increase and bring the viewer in a state of trance where his logic is suppressed, and pleasure released. The television set in your living room and bedroom is doing a lot more than just entertaining you. (The battle for your mind, by Dick Sutphen) Television is the most mismanaged technology to date. It has a great potential as a learning tool but, is not primarily used as such.

The Airplane, now even space travel presented an unprecedented speed and mobility to the world but under capitalism only privileged and wealthy can afford such mobility. Democracy and law tells us that we are all equal but capitalism comes in as hypocritical brother in-low that creates casts according to wealth. The step in the right direction I see with the onset of Internet. In 1990, when Internet was in the beginning of its adolescence, as was I, the Internet held a promise of quasi space popularly called cyberspace free of regulations and control of any single nation present today on Earth. But it to be grasped by capitalism which developed it into a tool for massing unimaginable sums of wealth in extremely short time. The promise of freedom if not in the real world but in cyberspace was loosing its zeal. It looked like freedom was an idea that doesn’t exist except in the stories of the old. After the change of century and the fall of house of cards that made up the capitalistic Internet a new life was given to the Internet. Today, 16 years after the creation of World Wide Web the Internet has passed its teenage experimentation and can now start to contribute to the reshaping of the world. There are still issues to be addressed for it to assume this function.

Internet today is less capitalistic then in its beginning, but not yet free of its grasp. A large population of the world is still not introduced to the benefits of Internet, or is introduced but controlled as example of China shows us. There is also a large population of people that do not see Internet as something that can benefit them. Everything that is created by men is understandable to men. It only requires effort to understand it. It is much simpler to watch television and let it emerge one into it world of fiction then to understand world around oneself.

There are many ways this can be done, one can be chosen but not on expense of others as all of them are required to partially understand and better ourself. There is religion as most primal of all; religion has been with us in one form or another since the down of men. By saying religion I do not imply explicitly the study of Holy Scriptures but to the spiritual exploration of human existence. Philosophy is similar to religion in its way of trying to understanding the world and us. The science is yet another way of describing the world around us and us self. It represents methodical research that has to pass peer review, proven and checked numerous times to become acceptable. Science is one unlike religion, but has many fields that resemble different religions on earth, along with disagreements between them. It is a world of numbers and formulas that are not easy to understand and no one fully understands everything. The same is true about religion; we can try to try, success is not guaranteed and this could be the reason that people do not even try.

Democracy is a failure, maybe the biggest along side Communism. Both are ideas to be pursued but not yet. The world is not yet ready for them. What is troubling is that all of this is known but nothing is done by the people to change the situation that we found ourselves in, not to say that it was us the people that brought this upon our selves. We have all became “stress resistant”, we passed the psychological barrier that is designed to help us recognize when something is wrong. In other words we became insensitive to the world around us, we have all became individuals, another modern development. The purposes of such Ideas are diluted in the masses. Democracy has become a word just like any other. It no longer expresses an Idea or Ideal to fight for as no one really knows what democracy is. Solidarity is gone and hypocrisy is the main meal of the day.

What can be done today to set the world on the right track back from this path that is evidently taking us to doom? Much can be done but the problem is that people do not control the means by which they can take control. People of the world gave away that power to individuals, to the capitalist, to their elected officials, in promise of fare treatment and betterment of their lives. But they lied. Dictators are not gone from the face of Earth, they evolved.

Labels: Editorial