Parasitic Services

Let's talk about Toys R Us for a moment. This is one of those write-what-you-know moments; I know because I used to work there. You know, before they ran themselves out of business.

One of the reasons they went out of business was their... let's just call it their fear of being taken advantage of. As such, they had very draconian return policies and spent huge amounts of time being obsessed with "shrink," which is to say theft, especially employee theft.

I was reminded of this general atmosphere, recently, in dealing with eBay. As I've mentioned before, I've been selling off old collectibles of mine on eBay. Not because I want to use eBay or love eBay or because of any liking of eBay but because they are the best parasite for the job. Sort of like eating a tape worm before going to certain countries. You don't want to swallow the tape worm, but you do it because you don't want worse things to happen.

In this case the worse thing being my garage door exploding because there's too much stuff in my garage.

In theory, eBay is a platform designed to facilitate... I don't know... selling stuff to other people. Not just tangible items, though, so it's not as simple as just selling off your beanie babies (the most popular item on eBay for years after it started). And, you know, it did start out that way. It was even a free service for a while, until the traffic on the site became too heavy for the creator to pay the fees for the upkeep without charging people for using the site.

But that was 20+ years ago. These days, eBay is violently afraid of anyone selling anything without them getting a cut of it. You know, because they deserve it in some way. On site communications cannot include any type of contact information because, you know, you might be trying to solicit sales outside of eBay and that is strictly forbidden. And nothing in an auction post can even hint at requesting communication from a potential buyer, because that could also be a solicitation for selling off of eBay. Not mention the fact that they are now auto-relisting auction posts and charging you for it and not giving you an option to not choose that.

They have become the epitome of a parasitic service that exists to suck as much money out of its users as possible while giving back as little value as possible. Let me put it another way:
I started using eBay back in the 90s, so I've been there a long time. In the time since I started using them, they have not increased the value of their "service." That's pretty much the same as it always has been; however, the cost of using the "service" has increased dramatically: Their listing fees, for example, are seven times higher now than when I first started using the site, not to mention all of the other fees that didn't even exist 20 years ago. Back in the day, it was perfectly fine for me to direct attention to my own website, so eBay could actually be used as a marketing tool (which was cool); these days, I can't even exchange an email address in private communication.

I could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea.

To say that I have been annoyed by all of this would be an understatement. But it did start me thinking about the general tendencies of "platforms" to become parasites. Lyft, Uber, Airbnb, all platforms that started out as a cool idea with the idea in mind to help people, just like eBay, until someone, often not the creator, realized they could make a lot of money from it without really doing anything. Just hang on like a tick and get fat. [I wanted to use a picture of a tick for this post, but the one of the mosquito being so full of blood that it was dripping out was too gross to pass up.]

Then it occurred to me that this is the same thing that Trump (#fakepresident) is doing to the United States, right now, turning it into one big tick to feed him and his cronies. Not that this has not being going on, especially among Republicans, for a long time, but Trump (#fakepresident) has been going about removing any pretense at all of giving any value back. Because, you know, the government is supposed to be symbiotic with the people (that would be us): by the people, of the people, for the people and all of that. Evidently, Trump (#fakepresident) believes that the only humans who count as people are rich, old, fat white guys. Which we already knew, but it's so blatant... so blatant... All you have to do is look at his proposed budget to know how little value he wants to return to "the people."

None of which has anything to do with where all this started out, but this is the way my brain works. Or something.
And you might be saying, "Well, don't use eBay, then." Or any service that acts as a parasite, but, really, it's not that easy. Or it is that easy as long as I'm okay with having all the stuff in my garage, because there is no real better option, and that's how they get you.

No, I don't have any solutions. I feel like this is all a big trap we've gotten ourselves into as a society, including insurance companies, which may have been the first big corporate parasites, companies that want to take in as much money as possible but do everything they can to avoid paying out. Or maybe it just all goes back to the elite, ruling class living on the backs of the serfs, and we're all just still serfs who haven't figured out a way to get out of that tyranny yet. At any rate, it's these kinds of thoughts that allow me to understand the growing hate of capitalism by the young.

And they may be right. Maybe service companies shouldn't be allowed to be "for profit."
No for profit hospitals.
No for profit prisons.
No for profit insurance companies.
No for profit platforms that exist only to suck the profit out of other people's work.

No for profit government.
Or government employees who are only there to make themselves rich.

We've been living by the laws of greed for... a very long time. Maybe it's time to try altruism.

Trump's Economic Plan: Hydraulic Mining

These past few weeks, I've been talking about this trip through gold country that my wife and I took at the beginning of May. It was an enlightening and educational trip aside from the fact that it was just a lot of fun. I mean, I didn't even talk about how we made sourdough pancakes roughly based on the way miners' would have eaten them (evidently pancakes were kind of a thing because sourdough was fairly portable) or any of the other food we made (all amazing!) or any of the places we ate at. Of course, I also didn't talk about the mosquitoes, which reached a horrible peak the night we stayed at Indian Grinding Rock.

And I'm still not going to talk about any of that stuff:
1. Because I don't want to talk about the mosquitoes.
2. I don't have pictures of any of the food, and I probably wouldn't remember all the things anyway.

But I do want to talk some more about hydraulic mining and how Trump wants us to return to those days.

I mentioned that we stayed a couple of nights in a miners' cabin in North Bloomfield. North Bloomfield which now has a population of 8-12 (yes, that's actually what the sign said). However, at one point, North Bloomfield had a population of something in the 2000 range and was a "thriving" mining town. I say "thriving" because, obviously, it was only thriving via illusion. So let's talk about that...

The town of North Bloomfield was settled as a mining town, which means all of the industry there revolved around gold mining. Gold mining for "the Man." Let's just be clear about this, this was not a town settled by "small business" miners working for themselves and making a living at it. This was a town run by the North Bloomfield Mining and Gravel Company. The miners worked for them, and the miners made shit wages. The miners made shit wages while the owners of the mining company got rich. Super rich.

And remember, this is what the area looks like more than a century later:

Of course, at the time, none of the trees in the foreground were there. Everything below the treeline in  the background was wiped out by the hydraulic mining. Remember, this is a picture I took to be "attractive;" I didn't take any of what's left down in the canyon where it's still full of scummy water and piled rocks. Most of this area will never fully recover. [How do I know? Because there are similar areas to this where the Romans did the same kind of thing to gold mine more than 2000 years ago, and that land still hasn't recovered, either.]

But jobs, right? The destruction of this land supported the jobs and livelihood of 2000 people. But, you know, the government got involved and made hydraulic mining illegal and, so, today, North Bloomfield has a population of 8-12.

By Trump logic, though, we should strike down that regulation against hydraulic mining and put those miners back to work! Put them back to work making their shit wages so that the Mining Corporation could continue to get fat and rich (like a tick) off of them. But, you know, jobs!

Now, let's look at why the state of California stepped in and shut down hydraulic mining, because it wasn't because they wanted to flex some government muscles and put people out of work.

A view across some of the gravel piles and sparse vegetation on the edge of the "pit."

All of this hydraulic mining was happening up in the mountains, and it used a lot of water. "A lot of water" is an understatement. I'm talking about millions of gallons of water a day. All of the water and everything it carried with it went... down. Whole towns got covered in mud and rock and there was devastating flooding in the Sacramento valley, the most fertile area of California and, possibly, the whole United States, considering how much of the nation's food is grown here. Farms and lives were destroyed. Food that was being grown for broader consumption was destroyed so that a few corporation owners could get rich. And, you know, pay shit wages to their employees.

Some of what was coming out of the mountains even made it out into San Francisco Bay, causing even more environmental damage.

So, sure, there were 2000 people in this one town benefiting from the mining and a lot of those people had jobs related to the mining. And there were some other nearby towns that had jobs dependent upon the mining, like Lake City, which existed to upkeep one of the water reservoirs they used to power the water cannons.

But the environmental damage was extensive, to say the least, and the lives affected by the damage they mining corporation was causing was way more than 2000. Seriously, did you get the part where there were whole towns buried in mud due to the runoff from the mine? And entire seasons of crops were lost due to the flooding. So, yes, the State of California stepped in and made hydraulic mining illegal, but it wasn't without a legal fight because the corporation owners didn't want to quit. They didn't care about the damage they were causing because they were getting rich. Richer. They were getting more rich.

When hydraulic mining was made illegal, people moved away from North Bloomfield. Lake City doesn't even exist anymore. Yes, jobs were lost. Those people, though, went on to other things, because that's what you do. So, sure, jobs were lost, and I'm sure that was horrible for those people, especially the shop owners who suddenly no longer had enough business to stay open. But the net effect was tremendously for the good. Incalculably for the good.

Let's not mince words:

Trump's plan for coal, for bringing back coal mining jobs, is the same as if he came to California and made hydraulic mining legal again. There's still gold in them there hills. Billions of dollars worth. It wasn't a lack of gold that made people stop mining. It was the environmental cost.

And the environmental cost of coal is just as high. Climate change is real. The flooding and the droughts and the effects on our ability to produce crops is just as real as the flood waters and debris coming out of the Sierra Nevadas to cover the Sacramento plain and destroy... everything.

The best part is this:

He doesn't care about the jobs. He wants to pay shit wages, too. He's one of the corporation ticks wanting to suck you dry while he gets rich. And I hear you, "But Trump doesn't own coal mines!" (Actually, we don't know that since, you know, he won't release his tax returns.) Sure, Trump doesn't own any coal mines, but his buddies do, and, with them, it's all about scratching each others' backs.

Do I feel bad for the people who will and are losing their jobs because of the dying coal industry? Sure, I do. But I also believe the cost is too high to support the metaphoric 2000 jobs of a few miners at the expense of the rest of the world, because, yes, it is the rest of the world. For the moment, though, why don't you go to south Louisiana and talk to the folks there who are losing their coastline due to climate change. People who are having to move due to the destruction that other people are causing so that a few (a few!) can get rich. Richer. So that a few can get even more rich.

The monster in the mountain. (Doesn't it look like a Pac-Man ghost?)

LIFE, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness (Part 2)

Okay, so, we're talking about the Declaration of Independence and how it laid the foundations for what came after it. It itself is not a legal document, but we refer to it as a foundational piece of our history, our ideals, and, yes, our government. Last week, we were talking about the pursuit of Happiness, and how we, culturally, have messed that all up, but, really, you should just go back and read last week's post. This week, let's move on a bit and, by doing that, go back to our first principle: Life.

Let's look again at the Declaration:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...

 So... Let's reaffirm the Rights we're talking about. There are only three: Life, Liberty, and the PURSUIT of Happiness. Jefferson is saying here that these three things in particular (there could be more than three, but these three in particular) are innate. They have been created within us and the Right CANNOT be taken away. The thing itself can be taken away, but the Right to have it cannot be. To safeguard these Rights, mankind (humankind) institutes Governments, and those Governments only exist through the consent of the people.

The very first Right he lists is the Right to Life. [Remember from last post, I'm talking about adults. There is nothing Pro-Life in any of this. That's a completely separate matter.] Yes, I'm going to talk about healthcare.

See, we have these Rights, and we institute Governments to make sure that the things themselves that we have a Right to are not taken away from us by someone stronger or more powerful than us. Including that government itself. What that means in this context is that the government, our government, is here to protect our Life and our Right to that Life.

Which is what makes it so insulting when a GOP asshole, a member of our Government who has been mandated by the fact that he is a part of that Government to protect our collective Right to Life, says something inane like, "Nobody dies because they don't have access to healthcare." That was Raul Labrador, by the way, part of the Right-wing Nutjob sector of the government defending the new death warrant the GOP call the "American Health Care Act," a bill which clearly favors the insurers over the insured and the very wealthy (who don't really need the help) over the average citizen. It is, in short, a bill that says, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." Way more equal.

The GOP has clearly demonstrated that they have become "destructive of those ends" of securing our Right to Life.

In fact, the GOP has been clearly demonstrating that for, well, decades, what with their destructive environmental policies, their stance against safety net social programs, their support of hazardous industry over the welfare of communities, their support of the NRA and "stand your ground" laws, and their general willingness to assume that if a cop shoots a black man, even an unarmed black man, he must have had good reason. The whole healthcare thing? That's just them spitting in the faces of the people who got them where they are and saying, "No, we don't like you either."

Government to the GOP has become about how to make a profit and no longer has anything to do with securing our "unalienable Rights." Their Form of Government has become destructive of those ends which secure for us our Right to Life; as such, "it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it." We are "the People." "We the People."

Look, the Republicans continue to say that healthcare is not a Right but a privilege. It's that stance which allows someone like Labrador to say things like nobody dies from lack of healthcare, but people die from lack adequate healthcare ALL THE TIME. In fact, it's the lack of access to healthcare that causes people to die from preventable or manageable illnesses. They can't afford to go to the doctor until it's too late. And, no, I don't have the numbers for that, but I don't really think I need to have them.

What I'm saying here is that the GOP is just plain wrong on this. If we're going to refer to the Declaration as one of our Founding Documents (and the GOP loves to claim how they stand by our Founding Documents), then you can't really get around the fact that it proclaims that WE ALL have the Right to Life. That is, after all, why hospitals can't send anyone away. And, at one point in time, that was the best we could do, but it's not anymore.

And here's the thing, we don't have the right to the best healthcare we can afford; that doesn't work with all men being created equal. If the wealthy have access to better healthcare, that means that we are not being treated equally. The Truth is that we have the Right to the best healthcare available. All of us, all the time. The kind of healthcare you get should not be dependent upon your wealth. That is NOT equality in our Right to Life.

Seriously, it's time for us, the People, to alter our Government. We have a Right to equal healthcare and equal Life. If gaining access to that means abolishing the GOP and their stagnant and destructive ways, well, that's what needs to happen. I do not consent to be governed by the assholes currently holding the reins of power, and it's time we took them back.

"Freedom of Speech" and Why You Sound Dumb Saying It

One of the hallmarks of the ridiculously stupid and the inanely ignorant is that they will toss around words and phrases without actually knowing what they mean. Of course, they think they're using the words or phrases correctly and, sometimes, the people around them do, too, because they're under a kind of mass delusion of meaning. My favorites, right now, all have to do with the Constitution, and my very favorite are the Conservative jutnobs who keep yelling about their "freedom of speech."

So let's talk a little about "freedom of speech" and the 1st Amendment and what it means and does in regard to that freedom. But just a little, because it's a big topic with lots of small parts that we could talk about for... well, for far longer than I would hold your attention, I'm sure.

The first thing you need to understand is that the "freedom of speech" being granted by the 1st Amendment is a protection being granted to the individual. A protection from the government. See, in many countries, criticizing the government or a religion can get you thrown in jail. Or worse. Having just emerged from the tyranny of a government that had no problem punishing people for things they said, the founding fathers wanted to protect people from thin-skinned assholes who would abuse their power by throwing people into jail for saying bad things about them or just for disagreeing with them in general.

Here's the thing: "Freedom of Speech" does not mean you have the right to say whatever old thing you want to say. That was never the intent, and we have many laws dealing with the kinds of things that are not protected. Of course, the popular one is about how it is illegal to stand up in a crowded theater and yell, "Fire!" Then there's yelling "bomb!" in an airport. Your "freedom of speech" argument isn't going to get you very far in either case.

What the 1st Amendment does allow is that you can go out on any street corner and protest against the government or a religion or, actually, be as racist as you want, and you can't be arrested for it. Well, as long as you're not promoting violence. Because, see, the promotion of violence is not protected.

The problem with all of this is the misconceptions.

First, your right to say whatever it is you want to say does not in any way obligate me to listen to you. Also, it does not in any way validate whatever it is you're saying, meaning your right to an opinion does not make your opinion correct. People (mostly on the Right (though those anti-vaxxers from both sides are pretty bad, too)) seem to be under the misperception that they are having their "freedom of speech" violated if I don't want to listen to them, which is just another asinine assumption those people like to make. Further, if I tell them they are wrong (and from me, generally, that means their opinions are based on no facts whatsoever) and that I am no longer going to engage with them on the (or any) subject, they tend to froth at the mouth and tell me I'm violating their "freedom of speech."

But let's go back to that street corner I mentioned earlier. See, the 1st Amendment does indeed give you the right to stand on that street corner and pontificate as much as you want about "illegals" and "swinging dicks" and your right to own as many guns as you want (which is a topic for another time), but I don't have to stop and listen, nor does anyone else. We are all free to walk right on past you and leave you shouting at the air. Not to mention the fact that that same 1st Amendment right gives me the right to pause and tell you what an asshole you are and how all the things you're saying just prove how ignorant and uneducated you are. You use your freedom of speech the way you want; I'll use mine the way I want, up to and including letting you know just how big of an ignorant asshole you really are.

Second, the 1st Amendment does not give you the right to exercise your word vomit anywhere you want to. Which takes us back to the street corner. The public street corner. Because that's what's protected, public spaces. I'm not going to get into the nuance of how that applies to businesses because that can be very different depending on the type of business, but your freedom of speech does not extend to other people's private property. That means that if you are in my house and you start saying things I don't like, I can tell you to stop and you're pretty much obligated to do so. You are not protected by the 1st Amendment. You either stop or you leave.

And just to make the point: That extends to my blog and to my facebook page. For all intents and purposes, those are "my" spaces. What that means is that if you post something on my FB wall or make a comment on my blog and I don't, for lack of a better term, approve of it, I can remove it, and I have not violated your "freedom of speech." In fact, when you start telling me that I have, that, again, just shows how ignorant and uneducated you are. And, certainly, you should not start citing something that you actually have no clue about, because it proves you're talking out of your ass, and no one wants to see that. If you feel the desperate need to say the things you are trying to say in my space, please feel free to go to your own space and say them all you want. That's what your "freedom of speech" gets for you.

[Just to be clear: "My" space on this blog or on facebook is not actually my space. It is only my space insomuch as google and facebook have allowed me to use them. They own the spaces and could at any time decide that they don't like the things I've said and take them down. That goes for pretty much everyone using those spaces. But, still, as google and FB have granted me the privilege of using their spaces, it is an extension of me, and your "freedom of speech" does not extend into it.]

Not to go all Princess Bride here, but, when you start spouting off at the ass about your "freedom of speech" any time I say I'm not going to discuss a topic with you until you actually get educated about the subject, I want to say, "You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Which is to say, "I know that it doesn't mean what you think it means." Which is to say, "Here's another thing you should really go educate yourself on before you start making statements about it."

Not that education is going to remain something that is accessible to the "common man" if Trump and cohorts get their way.

Repeal and Replace

The Republicans have been talking a lot, lately, about "repeal and replace," not that they have any good plan for that. It's just all about their rabid drive to undo everything the black man did while he was in the White House. They're really a sad, pitiable lot, but I'll wait to pity them once they're no longer in control of things, because, right now, they're rampant destruction of everything good needs to be stopped. [Seriously, it's a government BY the people and FOR the people, but Republicans seem intent on handing everything over to corporations and greed.] Okay, no, I will probably never pity them just like I don't pity anyone who was a Nazi during World War II.

Okay, I'm getting off topic...

Now, just a little more than a week into Trump's presidency and all of the horrible things he's been doing (seriously, he's turning us into the playground bully, and Mexico is his current target to punch on and steal lunch money from (except he calls it "wall" money)), I think it's time for a new approach to Trump's administration.

See, what I've been seeing is people starting to focus on the 2018 midterm elections, and that's good! But I don't think it's good enough or soon enough. Trump's first week was a disaster, and, personally, I'm not into waiting two years before we can begin to mount an effective campaign to stop him. So I think it's time for us to have our own "repeal and replace" strategy.

Before I go on, yes, I know I live in CA and that I'm getting off easy with this idea. I mean, California is THE state setting itself up to be the opposition force to Trump and his agenda. And, well, we have the weight to do it as the 6th largest economy in the WORLD and being a state that gives more to the federal government than it gets back. HOWEVER...

It's like this, the thing that our congressmen, especially those in the House, want most, generally speaking, is to be re-elected. They spend, especially those in the House, inordinate amounts of time on that rather than just doing their jobs. Especially Republican congressmen considering they've spent most of the last decade almost literally doing nothing. So, while starting now on campaigns to get Democrats into office during the 2018 elections is a really good thing, that's still two years away, and incumbents tend to have an advantage during elections.

I don't think we need to wait. It's time to "repeal" some of those congressmen. That sounds so much better than "recall," don't you think? "Sorry, Ted Cruz, you've been repealed." Wouldn't that make such a great headline.

The hitch is that there is no mechanism for that... and it has never happened before. BUT!

Hey! Don't turn away from this just because it sounds impossible. Our government is still, theoretically, by the people and for the people, so, if we the people want a thing done, if enough of us get behind having that thing done, it should be possible to have that thing get done. That said, it's time for a movement to put into effect a recall mechanism, a repeal mechanism, for members of congress.

Some of you are thinking at this point, "Why don't we just go straight for the President?" Two reasons:
1. I think that would be much more difficult and wouldn't produce the desired result.
2. If Trump gets removed from office, that will leave us with Pence, who is possibly worse than Trump. No, he wouldn't spend his time trying to build an implausible wall; he would spend his time doing horrible things like funding conversion therapy.

Wait, wait! What's the desired result?

Well, the ideal result would be putting a mechanism into the Constitution to repeal congressmen. And, yes, that would take a long time, I'm sure, but, in the short run, it would let some Republican congressmen, especially those in the House, know that we are really, REALLY serious about opposing Trump and opposing the whole Conservative agenda that's set to turn our country back more than half a century, destroy the environment, and, possibly, involve us in some major confrontations if not all out war. Republicans who want to get re-elected are going to start listening to their constituents rather than toeing the Republican line. In fact, some of them might start doing the equivalent of grovelling to try to keep their seats.

Trump came into office on this whole idea of change and shaking up the establishment, something he's done NOTHING of. In fact, he's done the opposite by making the government even more establishment and by handing even more of it over to corporations. Now, it's time for us to be the change and to cause the change. It's time to stop Trump, and the best way to do that is stop Republicans. And it's time to do it now.

Zombies: A Cultural Metaphor

Society has changed in the last four decades. This is not to say that society isn't always changing, but the change that has occurred recently (recent being a relative term) is one that we've never seen before. Technological progress, throughout the ages, has always been seen as a good thing. I don't mean scientific discovery, which has not always been viewed positively, but the actual trinkets of technology that scientific progress has made possible. Mankind has always had an innate sense that he could do no wrong. That belief has dissipated like morning mist.

Four decades ago, a zombie was still just a zombie. A re-animated corpse. Slow. Stupid. No will of its own. It was something created by man that man controlled. The only exception to this rule was Frankenstein's monster, but the Frankenstein monster became a special case and has never really been viewed as a zombie. Even though zombies could be controlled, they were still dead things. Just animated. They had no more need of sustenance than does a marionette. They did not hunger. They did not want. They only obeyed.

That all began to change in 1968 with the release of Night of the Living Dead. For the first time, the dead, en masse, rose up against the living to devour them. It was the first use of zombies to symbolize that man might, just possibly, be playing around with forces he didn't understand.

The 80s arrived and, with it, a culture of teenagers that didn't believe they would live to be adults. Post-apocalyptic literature/entertainment hit its stride. Not that it hadn't existed, but, prior to the 80s, (and I am now going to lump all of this together into the dystopian category) dystopians had really been isolated events.
And I mean it when I say we didn't believe that we would make it through high school without nuclear holocaust being thrust upon us. In middle school, for a Christmas door decorating contest, my homeroom did a whole Nuclear Winter theme. We even re-wrote several popular Christmas songs with lyrics like, "I'm dreaming of a nuclear winter."

However, the cold war ended, and we don't really believe an actual nuclear holocaust will happen anymore. No, now, we believe man will destroy the Earth in much more subtle ways. Like a zombie apocalypse. Zombies have become the representation of our fear that mankind will, ultimately, be unable to control the technology that he plays with. Zombies have evolved. They are no longer re-animated corpses. They're fast. They're smart. They're hungry. They want to destroy us. Destroy life. They're smart, but they are unthinking. Their intelligence is applied only to achieving their goal. Devouring us Destroying life. Hmm... somewhat like the single-minded way in which corporations pursue financial success.

In short, zombies have become a cultural metaphor for all the ways in which technology will destroy us.

However, that's only  the metaphor in its simplest form. The obvious one. The one that has to do with our nightmares over what secret things governments and corporations are doing in the dark. It lives off of our fears that we'll wake up, shivering and drenched in sweat, and find out that society has collapsed. No rules. Only chaos.

The deeper part of that fear extends down to where we believe that technology is actually turning each of us into zombies. Especially the generation that's growing up around us. The generation of technological zombies. You know it's true. People refuse to be detached from their technology. People that grew up without it and know it's possible to leave home without a phone and still survive refuse to go without, so how do we show the (little) people who have never known life without cells that it's possible to go without? It's with us everywhere. And it's scary. But, still, we embrace it. We can't help it.

Despite the data that the use of cellular devices, in whatever capacity, while driving is more dangerous than driving while intoxicated, we choose to believe that we can handle it, and we don't have the excuse of impaired judgement that intoxication brings. Despite the new warnings by WHO (the World Health Organization, not the Doctor. Or the band.) that cellular devices bring a greater risk of brain cancer, especially in children and adolescents, we will go on using our bits and pieces of technology and deal with any consequences later. Despite the continued statements of desire to connect with people in actual face-to-face contact, we will, more and more often, forsake physicalness in favor of a virtual reality that we can "control."

We are becoming the zombies that we fear. Soulless creatures walking through life but only seeing things through the tiny input devices we hold in our hands. And just wait till they can actually put that stuff right inside our skulls. Is it any wonder that we have become so incredibly fascinated with zombies? After all, vampires could be defeated. How do we defeat ourselves?