… is The Present. At least The Future can be changed. Hypothetically. And what is “nostalgia” really, but fear of the The Future? The Past is always better, no matter how painful, violent, humiliating, because you survived…
Doubtful that someone, anyone (or better still, a group of such ones), might summon the will and energy to raise himself or herself from our present condition — deep, deep, deep in the muck, Orwell’s boot having been stamped upon our crushed collective “human” face for so long by now the mark may never go away — and fight back.
Note: not “write back” or make a “compelling, inspirational” music video — we’ve seen how well that works. But some one or ones willing not merely to die for freedom (we’ve got lots of those folks; it’s part of the program: summon the lambs to the chopping block so they can feel heroic or something just before the blade comes down and the executioner cries, “Next!”) but kill for it…
But this is all just hypothetical, of course. A few more bytes of bloggedy-blog (“a chicken in every pot — or tofu thighs for vegans — and a soapbox on every desktop”). Talk. Talk. Talkety-talk.
No one would seriously propose such madness, not in a democracy founded on equality and free speech.
We’ll… we’ll throw a debate! That’s what we’ll do, by gosh. We’ll throw a debate and invite everybody! Yessiree, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. This’ll change everything…
Adam Engel lived for your sins -- and he lived well! -- in Fear-and-Trembling, Brooklyn, one of the last gangrenous toes of NYC not yet severed and replaced with a prosthetic gentrification device. Engel has traveled the farthest regions of cyberspace, where Dark-matter meets Doesn't-matter; and Anti-matter, despite its negative connotation and dour point-of-view, excercises rights of expression protected by Richard Stallman's GNU/Free Software Foundation and CopyLeft agreement, if nobody and nothing else. Having spent many years studying Boobus Americanus (Summum Ignoramus), allegedly the most intelligent mammal on earth -- after its distant relative, Homo Sapiens -- in various natural habitats (couch, cubicle, bar-stool, ball-game -- televised or 'real-time') -- Engel has thus far related his observations of and experiences with this most dangerous of predators in three books -- Topiary, Cella Fantastik, and I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague (the combined international sales of which have reached literally dozens, perhaps as many as seventy, with projected revenue to top three digits by decade's end! Truly a publishing phenomenon). Engel is Associate Editor of Time Capsule Books, a division of Oliver Arts & Open Press, published in limited editions for a tiny, highly specified, though eclectic, target-audience: people who actually read books. He can be reached at adam@new.dissidentvoice.org
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This article was posted on Tuesday, August 21st, 2012 at 8:01am and is filed under Philosophy.
