A 21st century american's lament(s)

Last edited Fri Jun 12, 2015, 03:37 PM - Edit history (1)

there is a film, 2001, the movie video piece on video-multimedia forum that started me thinking and remembering.

It was a great film that at the time gave me some hope(s), after having just returned from my involvement in Vietnam and witnessing and experiencing the assassination of so many great american leaders, Malcolm X included. I had hope that we could really evolve into an age of exploration that would help humankind transcend our myriad problems. That by exploring the vastness of the universe and possibly going to the stars it would cause us to enter an immense 'New Age of Enlightenment' and exploration that would meld us into the true 'melting pot' that all human beings who inhabit this planet are a part of. But, since watching that film for the first time, all those naive and idealistic hopes have been dashed on the rocks of human reality.

Here we are 47 years removed from those small and naive hopes of mine, still hating, fighting and killing each other the world over.

Why?

Race because of cultural and racial privilege, religion, speaks for itself, gender because men of all races and cultures want to keep women under foot and submissive out of fear of losing 'dominance' I think, sexual orientation because someone chooses to love another that doesn't fit into a tight, usually religious, framework, oil, because greedy and selfish people demand it for their small, medium and large moving conveyances that guzzle 'black gold' and melt a very important component of our ecology, national boundaries as petty as arguing/disagreeing, by two superpowers, over some islands in the East China Sea, PNAC instigated and justified lies on the scale of causing, in just one recent conflict, 1-one million deaths, more since it's ongoing, white supremacist thinking, murdering, executing openly resurgent in this country only because a POC was perceived to have taken 'their' White House and the reins of power from 'them'. This last lament is the depressing despoiling and destruction of our planet by many greedy and selfish people who purposefully contrived many of these problems to gain a profit from the labor of exploited humans the world over being denied enough wage to only be able to generate a bare subsistence level of surviving, yes even here in america, with billionaires fighting a minimum wage increase of a few dollars.

Like the opening segment of 2001, I feel we are devolving to the sub human creatures of that segment, if we survive that long.

And there is not one damn thing I, as an individual, can do....but with enough human voices raised against the greed and hate, maybe....aww forget it, the television and my bottle of bourbon is calling.

Just had to have a catharsis from some oppressive thoughts this day.