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Blogs by Dorien Grey
Shiva
9/12/2011 4:01:53 AM
It seems the sky is falling.
*****
From Dorien Grey and Me (http://www.doriengreyandme.com
*****
It's odd how these blogs, like children's names and clothes and haircut styles, seem to go in cycles. I've noticed that I've been thinking and writing a lot, of late, about the large hand-basket humanity seems to be packing for itself for the trip to Hell.
I'm not alone. One of the most universal topics throughout the ages has been how civilization is teetering on the brink of doom, and that Armageddon is just around the corner. Teetering on the brink of doom seems almost to be a requirement for human progress. Perhaps it goads us to try to keep one step ahead of the event.
It is my sincere belief that the greatest single threat to humanity is the individual's increasing sense of powerlessness. As we become more and more dependent upon technology, our sense of control over our own destiny erodes. Every time we are put on interminable hold by some vast, faceless corporation, we are, despite their condescending and blatantly hypocritical assurances that we are very important to them, being clearly if wordlessly told that we do not matter. That we are human beings is utterly irrelevant to entities---ironically, entities which individual human beings have created---which think only in a language of bottom lines and market shares.
Walt Kelly, the cartoonist who gave the world Pogo, came up with any number of marvelous quotes, but the one that I seem always to remember is his classic: "I have met the enemy, and he is us."
It seems we are a society at war with ourselves, and we are losing.
There is an old proverb to the effect that "Those who cannot create, destroy." Shiva, the Hindu god of---among other things---destruction, would be proud of us.
At the information desk at the shopping mall where I work, we have one of those cards with "Open" on one side and with a clock face /with moveable hands and "Back at..." on the other, which we use when we have to step away for a moment. We lay it on the counter while we're gone.
Sunday, I used it when I went to the restroom. When I returned, it was gone. This was the second time in two weeks. Who in hell would steal a "Back in" card? What possible use could it be to anyone...especially since, after the first theft, the replacement card had "Century Shopping Center" printed on it. Still, someone took it. Who would do such a thing, and why? What possible reason could they have?
The same reason, I suppose, why pay phones regularly have their receivers smashed or yanked out, or graffiti is sprayed on freshly-painted walls, or any number of utterly senseless acts of vandalism. What are the people who do this thinking? Do they feel they have so very little control over their own lives that the only way they can feel powerful is to destroy something? Frustration leads to anger which, coupled with the feeling of being powerless, leads to destructive acts.
That ours is increasingly a society of the disenfranchised is sadly self-evident. And that there seem to be more and more people whose sole purpose in life centers on violence and gratuitous cruelty is not really surprising when you consider that, even if only two percent of the population resorts to destruction as a means of self-expression, our uncontrolled population growth assures that two percent of the total is still a growing number. And as has always been the case, the damage they do is far out of proportion to their number.
It would be nice if there were an answer to these problems, but I have no idea what that answer might be. I'm open to suggestions.
*****
Please stop by next Monday for another blog. In the meantime you're invited to visit my website (http://www.doriengrey.com)
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