Clowns from Amsterdam
11 years ago
Friday, July 11, 2008
Post-apocalyptic dystopia
Disillusioned, due to the slow pace at which we are trying to do something against the Co emissions, climate change and the post-apocalyptic consequences of our present behavior in about 20 tot 50 years, I picked up Ben Elston's Blind faith set in a distopic, disease ridden London after the city shrunk, in a time called ATF: after the flood. (In that era they wouldn't know how to read a long sentence like that because books, real books are forbidden.) The title of the book refers to the kind of bleak urban society that evolved: nudity and sex, entertainment, vast social electronic networks, faith and no privacy, even an obligation to you-tube your life and to blog every action, pervasive chat screens and camera's in one's home and cctv everywhere. The state, the inquisition and the policy spy, secrets are forbidden. It is a fast, funny, read that makes one think because the faith based society that Ben Elton describes resembles the fundamentalist evangelicals in the US, the black stockings congregations in Holland and other mixes of Christianity, new age and absolute power. It is a chilling vision of one of our possible, yet undesirable futures. Being different, just small defiances are noticed, thinking, looking for understanding and reason is subversive and ignorance is wisdom... The big floods are not caused by melting icecaps but were send by the wrath of Love (god) to punish humanity for their arrogance... Almost too close to home is the longing for celebrity, the public lives people seem to think normal. I believe as one of the characters I can blog and be 'unknown' since nobody reads all the stuff that is on the net anyway. Thumbs up for this picture of a dystopic now.
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A good Eco-Move, to help stop the ravagement of Planet Earth, would be for all of us to get together, and pray. Yeah, even the atheists, agnostics, and other non-believers could join in this (we could except the US Republican Capitalists on non-compos-mentis grounds).
ReplyDeleteSo we hold a global prayer meeting, and humbly offer up to the almighty,
'Oh heavenly father, we your earth-children, have gathered together to praise you and thank you and also beseech you, with all due respect, to consider urinating on something other than Earth.
'You may be too busy with other things, or perhaps your advanced age is beginning to tell, and you just don't realize that your pissing on the ice caps is having a deleterious effect here on the planet you designated as The Center Of The Universe.
'In fact, 'God', things are getting so bad so quickly that even the morons you designated to represent you here on Earth, once their flood of 'Love Gifts' dry up due to the horrific effects of Global Warming, may start to curse you under their breaths, even as they pump away in their 'Holy Services' with their assorted paramours, concubines, and pre-pubescent 'Children of the Evening'.
'Thank you, Oh Lord, for hearing our plea, and in the event that this is all caused by your becoming incontinent, how about you 'Wishing Upon a Star' for an eternal supply of Depends, or having your prostate removed? (It couldn't hurt, you're probably not getting much anymore, anyway).
Muddy, perhaps you should alert any of your readers who are US citizens that in the 'Land of the Free', the Department of Defense and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have formed a Joint Task Force to force all Librarians to reveal the records of all readers of Ben Elton's works, under threat of secret arrest as 'Contributing to the Aiding and Abetting of Terrorist Sympathizers' and deportation to Guantanamo.
ReplyDeleteThe revealed Elton readers have their Driver's Licenses, Credit Cards, Voter Registrations, Passports and Citizenships immediately revoked, and those deemed 'Habitual Eltonites' are subject to 'Patriotic ReEducation Training' after 'Extraordinary Rendition' to Egypt, Lower Romania, or Haifa.
'Reader Beware' warnings are now being posted in all underground US libraries, with a hopeful expiration date of 1/20/2009, the expected date of demise of the Bushites.