At 108 years old, Mr. Sestak could barely hear the tone that announced an arriving autohover. He slipped his xglass over the bridge of his nose and looked at the north wall of his living room and saw through it to the bright green autohover that was his great-great-grandson Sail's. The autohover roof lifted and Sail jumped out waving at the outside of his grandpa's house, not seeing in but knowing that Grandpa would be looking at him. When inside he hugged the old gentleman for a long time knowing that his Grandpa probably only had another ten years left if he lived to the normal age expectation.
"Sail, what do I owe the honor of this pleasant surprise?
"Grandpa, I was hopin' that you could help me out with a project I have for school." Sail was 16 years old and graduating in a month from community school before entering his "required" four year Public Service Volunteer time.
"Well, It would be a privilege young man. Just what kind of project is it"? Sail shifted his feet while looking down, "Well, Grandpa, I know it's somethin' that you never talk about. A lot of people your age don't like to talk about it."
Old Mr. Sestak knew immediately what the topic was. "Sail, how did you happen to receive a project on this? I know the mentors don't like this talked about in school"
It was my idea and they said that I could do it as long as I didn't keep any of them"
Grandpa Sestak looked heavenward and shook his head. "Oh, they are "sooo" dangerous. Sail, I don't like to talk about it because it brings back memories, good memories, but memories of something that is no more."
"I know Grandpa. Quazr says that you once had a store that sold them and when they took them away, you never were the same." Quazr was Sail's father and old Mr. Sestak's great-grandson.
"Well, Sail, what shall we do for the project?"
"Thanks, Grandpa, I have the video obelisk right here." He pulled the three inch, tapered, four sided shaft with a small, barely visible lens, out of his shirt pocket. "I will ask you questions for ten minutes and that's it. I show it to the class and my final year project is done!"
Mr. Sestak's eyes appeared sad as he thought of a final year project that could be done in a few minutes, but that was the way the schools educated in this age.
Sail had set the video obelisk on the table where they were sitting and pointed it at his Grandpa.
"Grandpa, you own some now, don't you?"
Yes, Sail, I have fourteen that I was allowed to own as keepsakes."
"Were you ever hurt by one?"
Grandpa laughed. "Oh yes, when I was your age , I took a hit or two, but once you know them better, they are one of the greatest gift's that God gave to us."
"Why did they ban them then if they were so good?"
"Men were, and are, afraid of them Sail, if you just play with them and don't take them seriously at all, they can do more damage than good."
"Can I see one?"
Mr. Sestak looked over at the locked cabinet and stared for a few seconds. He had not had one out for a while. He walked over and reached on top, searched a while before pulling down a key. His fingers fumbled a little while he negotiated the lock and then opened the door. Sail was leaning forward on the edge of his chair, he had only seen pictures of them on his video monitors.
Mr. Sestak slowly pulled one out and clutched it with both hands so as not to drop it. There was no dust on them for he had cleaned them every so often. He held it out in front of him and walked towards Sail.
"Sail, I'm glad that this is your project. I should have showed you these years ago. Maybe some day, Lord willing, they will relax their restrictions and we once again can make great use and take great joy in them." He stretched out his arms and offered it to Sail. Sail took it, forgetting that he was on video or he would not have looked so boyish. He felt around the edges and looked up at his Grandpa.
"Go ahead Sail, open it."
"Wow!" Then remembering his classmates will be watching, he took on a more sober look.
"This...is a...book!" He lifted the cover... "THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS."
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Our son and his lovely wife live a few hundred miles away and like other parents in this situation we really enjoy visiting them or when they come back home. At some point in that visit I think he knows that I'll make at least one comment on Facebook. On our last visit it was the simply "Facebook is a scourge upon America and the world!" I can't help it. Facebook is so impersonal, so fake, so narcissistic and so potentially dangerous in so many ways that I won't let up on it. If like me you sometimes just sit and wonder how we in America got ourselves in the mess we are in, you can start if you want with the devolution of the sermon in America, move on to television, and later come to Facebook and social networking, Twitter et al. I'll recommend two very good books for you here. The first is The Vanishing Word, The Veneration of Visual Imagery by Arthur W. Hunt III, and the second is The Shallows, What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr of which I wrote a review on November 7, 2010.
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N...E...W...P...A...R...A...D...I...G...M
Rummaging through an old file cabinet, a few sheets of paper fell out, an essay I had written some years ago about a futuristic society. I thought that I might use it as one of my blogs:
The following is a futuristic essay on the demise of the "word" in favor of the "image." My contention is that Postmodernism is a "trojan horse". Outwardly, it defends the rights of the "marginalized" and the "other." Inwardly, it is rebellion against truth and anything that proclaims or relays it.
The police cruiser pulled up to the curb. There were no markings on it as it was only identifiable by its colo,s as were the uniforms of the officers. The license plates were holograms that could only be discerned by the hand held scanners carried by most citizens. Immediately, two officers emerged from the car and spray painted over the obsolete and illegal, five-foot graffiti letter "R." scrawled on the wall of the city newspaper, the Image. The "R" did not stand for anything in particular for "words" were no longer in existence in written form. The year is 2040. Ten years had passed since alphabets, words, and any symbolism other than images, were banned. Anarchists were active but dwindling in number and would occasionally paint a letter or a number on walls to show disdain for the new society of the "image."
The cataclysmic cultural change came under the headline of "evolving paradigm." The beginning of the 21st century had seen a religious awakening of immense proportions. Traditionalists battled New Classers in the political arena and lost. The "written word" of the religious was deemed the culprit in slowing the evolution of the new paradigm. Had the battle been relegated to words, the Traditionalists would have won. The New Classers, with the help of the media and Higher Education, forced the venue of argument to images. In what may have been the biggest mistake of any ideological conflict, the religionists acquiesced and entered the arena of the image. Television and film captured the sparring between the two sides. The religionists were no match for a debate of images, whether actual film footage or dramatized productions, for the human mind could only go so far in analysis of images. Their most powerful weapon, the written word, sat impotent and useless. The"Image Party," as they were now called, controlled the Congress. The most powerful cabinet position in the Executive Branch became the newly formed Department of the Academy.
There was a celebration of power going on among academics who were widely viewed as liberators of the mind. It took years, but books were gradually replaced by instruction players of all kinds. New technologies made it possible for instruments the size of a pack of gum, to not only voice instruct, but send a beam of instructive film footage on any blank wall. There was no evening newspaper, rather a slide that fit into any inexpensive player and gave all the news with pictures and commentary on the living room wall. One would choose a certain spaghetti sauce by the picture of either ingredients or a graphic chosen for the taste. They would press the red "instruction dot" on the package to hear directions for preparations. Traveling upon the highway, one might see the image for Pittsburgh or Buffalo on signs. They would travel at a speed indicated by the color of signs. If stopped for a violation, they would produce a drivers license that spoke to the officer.
That transition had not come easily. Multitudes rebelled at first but the power of Higher Education relegated those who clung to the written word to servile jobs. Even the most staunch Traditionalists encouraged the children to seek the "best" in life. Children ten years old and younger had no idea what the alphabet was. Teens would watch their favorite football team and discern who the players were by the personalized images on the jerseys. A request to turn on CBS would fall on deaf ears for it was simply Columbia. They no longer associated a "letter" with anything. Numbers existed but as sounds. How did one add or subtract? They simply spoke into a "cypher recorder" and it spoke back. America led the way and the world followed, happy that this former bastion of patriotism and religion had transformed itself.
Problems with the "new image" paradigm first occurred in the courts. To the unindoctrinated observer, a jury trial would seem normal as it progressed, save for the lack of paper in anyone's hand. The problem was in the mind of the juror. For ten years, the power to analyze remained dormant. They would initially beam with interest as the trial proceeded but when the time for deliberations came, they would sit befuddled. Their inability to analyze could not scratch the surface of intricate problems. they could not easily come to any decisions whether guilty or innocent. Such decisions were becoming rare. Mistrials were flooding the courts and crime was practically impossible to punish. The Image Party countered by doing away with jury trials in many states and letting judges decide the matter. Judges experienced the same problem as juries and convictions increased only because quotas were imposed on judges and they arbitrarily met those quotas.
Academia squirmed in their chairs over this problem. they were already beset with "grading" problems since no letters remained. Diplomas had to resort to waxen images of the institution. The "great advances" of the New Class had returned society to the imprimatur of the Roman Caesar. The sciences fared no better, The first generation of scientists under the new paradigm took technology to heights not even previously imagined. The second generation could use the new technology but expand upon it not one iota.
The family suffered the most. There came to be no distinction between father and mother. To begin with, same sex marriages had increased to half of what traditional marriages were. No one could explain adequately to children why they should be obedient. Even the former president of Harvard, now the Secretary of the Academy, wept openly as one of his students received a Rhodes Scholarship for his work on "the Future Possibility of the Eradication Of Human Conception In Favor Of Satellite Wombs."
The officers returned their spray paint cans to their sacks when a man emerged from the shadows and began to shout "A...B...C" The officers immediately pounced upon him and dragged him to the car. "D...E...F" he continued. They threw him down before the magistrate who said "You are being charged with speaking letters." How do you plead? "G...U...I...L...T...Y" he answered. He was held for trial but acquitted for the judges quota had already been reached. The government did not stop at this and he was incarcerated anyway. He appealed. The Supreme court had one more case to fill their docket and he was the last petitioner. The case, "The Government vs the Letter" made nightly news. Television cameras surrounded the justices as both parties squared off. The petitioner chose to represent himself and spelled out every word of his defense. The Government objected but the court, whose average age was 37, could not agree as to if the defense procedure was admissible. The petitioner continued. Americans watched on their screens as letters were brought fresh to their memories. the court received millions of pieces of mail in the ensuing week. Most of these were not made with oral messaages of the day but deliberately scrawled letters forming words. The judges sat in their chambers reviewing the case but could not block out the sound of thousands of people outside shouting "A...B...C...D."
The whole nation awaited the court's decision. Where had the New Class gone wrong? They had successfully obliterated letters and books. How could such an immense groundswell of support for a return to this archaic paradigm exist? The man who had initiated this furor sat in a pew. His was one head in hundreds looking to the man in a pulpit wearing a black robe who preached from the Bible. Not from a book but from God's computer chip of the mind, the memory. He would recite verses and the people would complete the verses from memory. The church was packed with journalists standing around the back in order to see the petitioner when the Supreme Court came down with the decision. A snippet of the service was played on the national news. Academics from across America sat and watched and nearly to a man and woman, it became clear to them that they had failed to silence the most powerful conduit for Traditionalist thinking of all. They originally thought "Go ahead...preach. what good will it do without the antiquated corresponding symbols?" They had miscalculated. The power was obviously in the preached word, not the symbols. Fear enveloped the New Class as they watched this demonstration.
Letters were being shouted across the land. Automobile drivers would stop at red lights and yell out their windows "S...T...O...P" and then "G...O..." when the light changed. Cashiers at grocery stores would say "S...E...V...E...N...D...O...L...L...A...R...S...P...L...E...A...S...E" and customers would reply "T...H...A...N...K...Y...O...U." The populace was revolting. Word was in that a decision had been returned from the Supreme Court. It seemed that the whole world was tuning in. Supreme Court Chief Justice Katlyn Jones stood and glared at the media present. She then said "In the case of "The Government vs the Letter".....we find in favor of the.....P...E...T...I...S...I...O...N...E...R." Celebrations took place in every city and small town in America. Masses of people rushed their municipal buildings and state houses. not with guns, but with books long since secretly stored in dusty attics. Thus was the fall of the New Class and beginnings of a new hope.
The following is a futuristic essay on the demise of the "word" in favor of the "image." My contention is that Postmodernism is a "trojan horse". Outwardly, it defends the rights of the "marginalized" and the "other." Inwardly, it is rebellion against truth and anything that proclaims or relays it.
The police cruiser pulled up to the curb. There were no markings on it as it was only identifiable by its colo,s as were the uniforms of the officers. The license plates were holograms that could only be discerned by the hand held scanners carried by most citizens. Immediately, two officers emerged from the car and spray painted over the obsolete and illegal, five-foot graffiti letter "R." scrawled on the wall of the city newspaper, the Image. The "R" did not stand for anything in particular for "words" were no longer in existence in written form. The year is 2040. Ten years had passed since alphabets, words, and any symbolism other than images, were banned. Anarchists were active but dwindling in number and would occasionally paint a letter or a number on walls to show disdain for the new society of the "image."
The cataclysmic cultural change came under the headline of "evolving paradigm." The beginning of the 21st century had seen a religious awakening of immense proportions. Traditionalists battled New Classers in the political arena and lost. The "written word" of the religious was deemed the culprit in slowing the evolution of the new paradigm. Had the battle been relegated to words, the Traditionalists would have won. The New Classers, with the help of the media and Higher Education, forced the venue of argument to images. In what may have been the biggest mistake of any ideological conflict, the religionists acquiesced and entered the arena of the image. Television and film captured the sparring between the two sides. The religionists were no match for a debate of images, whether actual film footage or dramatized productions, for the human mind could only go so far in analysis of images. Their most powerful weapon, the written word, sat impotent and useless. The"Image Party," as they were now called, controlled the Congress. The most powerful cabinet position in the Executive Branch became the newly formed Department of the Academy.
There was a celebration of power going on among academics who were widely viewed as liberators of the mind. It took years, but books were gradually replaced by instruction players of all kinds. New technologies made it possible for instruments the size of a pack of gum, to not only voice instruct, but send a beam of instructive film footage on any blank wall. There was no evening newspaper, rather a slide that fit into any inexpensive player and gave all the news with pictures and commentary on the living room wall. One would choose a certain spaghetti sauce by the picture of either ingredients or a graphic chosen for the taste. They would press the red "instruction dot" on the package to hear directions for preparations. Traveling upon the highway, one might see the image for Pittsburgh or Buffalo on signs. They would travel at a speed indicated by the color of signs. If stopped for a violation, they would produce a drivers license that spoke to the officer.
That transition had not come easily. Multitudes rebelled at first but the power of Higher Education relegated those who clung to the written word to servile jobs. Even the most staunch Traditionalists encouraged the children to seek the "best" in life. Children ten years old and younger had no idea what the alphabet was. Teens would watch their favorite football team and discern who the players were by the personalized images on the jerseys. A request to turn on CBS would fall on deaf ears for it was simply Columbia. They no longer associated a "letter" with anything. Numbers existed but as sounds. How did one add or subtract? They simply spoke into a "cypher recorder" and it spoke back. America led the way and the world followed, happy that this former bastion of patriotism and religion had transformed itself.
Problems with the "new image" paradigm first occurred in the courts. To the unindoctrinated observer, a jury trial would seem normal as it progressed, save for the lack of paper in anyone's hand. The problem was in the mind of the juror. For ten years, the power to analyze remained dormant. They would initially beam with interest as the trial proceeded but when the time for deliberations came, they would sit befuddled. Their inability to analyze could not scratch the surface of intricate problems. they could not easily come to any decisions whether guilty or innocent. Such decisions were becoming rare. Mistrials were flooding the courts and crime was practically impossible to punish. The Image Party countered by doing away with jury trials in many states and letting judges decide the matter. Judges experienced the same problem as juries and convictions increased only because quotas were imposed on judges and they arbitrarily met those quotas.
Academia squirmed in their chairs over this problem. they were already beset with "grading" problems since no letters remained. Diplomas had to resort to waxen images of the institution. The "great advances" of the New Class had returned society to the imprimatur of the Roman Caesar. The sciences fared no better, The first generation of scientists under the new paradigm took technology to heights not even previously imagined. The second generation could use the new technology but expand upon it not one iota.
The family suffered the most. There came to be no distinction between father and mother. To begin with, same sex marriages had increased to half of what traditional marriages were. No one could explain adequately to children why they should be obedient. Even the former president of Harvard, now the Secretary of the Academy, wept openly as one of his students received a Rhodes Scholarship for his work on "the Future Possibility of the Eradication Of Human Conception In Favor Of Satellite Wombs."
The officers returned their spray paint cans to their sacks when a man emerged from the shadows and began to shout "A...B...C" The officers immediately pounced upon him and dragged him to the car. "D...E...F" he continued. They threw him down before the magistrate who said "You are being charged with speaking letters." How do you plead? "G...U...I...L...T...Y" he answered. He was held for trial but acquitted for the judges quota had already been reached. The government did not stop at this and he was incarcerated anyway. He appealed. The Supreme court had one more case to fill their docket and he was the last petitioner. The case, "The Government vs the Letter" made nightly news. Television cameras surrounded the justices as both parties squared off. The petitioner chose to represent himself and spelled out every word of his defense. The Government objected but the court, whose average age was 37, could not agree as to if the defense procedure was admissible. The petitioner continued. Americans watched on their screens as letters were brought fresh to their memories. the court received millions of pieces of mail in the ensuing week. Most of these were not made with oral messaages of the day but deliberately scrawled letters forming words. The judges sat in their chambers reviewing the case but could not block out the sound of thousands of people outside shouting "A...B...C...D."
The whole nation awaited the court's decision. Where had the New Class gone wrong? They had successfully obliterated letters and books. How could such an immense groundswell of support for a return to this archaic paradigm exist? The man who had initiated this furor sat in a pew. His was one head in hundreds looking to the man in a pulpit wearing a black robe who preached from the Bible. Not from a book but from God's computer chip of the mind, the memory. He would recite verses and the people would complete the verses from memory. The church was packed with journalists standing around the back in order to see the petitioner when the Supreme Court came down with the decision. A snippet of the service was played on the national news. Academics from across America sat and watched and nearly to a man and woman, it became clear to them that they had failed to silence the most powerful conduit for Traditionalist thinking of all. They originally thought "Go ahead...preach. what good will it do without the antiquated corresponding symbols?" They had miscalculated. The power was obviously in the preached word, not the symbols. Fear enveloped the New Class as they watched this demonstration.
Letters were being shouted across the land. Automobile drivers would stop at red lights and yell out their windows "S...T...O...P" and then "G...O..." when the light changed. Cashiers at grocery stores would say "S...E...V...E...N...D...O...L...L...A...R...S...P...L...E...A...S...E" and customers would reply "T...H...A...N...K...Y...O...U." The populace was revolting. Word was in that a decision had been returned from the Supreme Court. It seemed that the whole world was tuning in. Supreme Court Chief Justice Katlyn Jones stood and glared at the media present. She then said "In the case of "The Government vs the Letter".....we find in favor of the.....P...E...T...I...S...I...O...N...E...R." Celebrations took place in every city and small town in America. Masses of people rushed their municipal buildings and state houses. not with guns, but with books long since secretly stored in dusty attics. Thus was the fall of the New Class and beginnings of a new hope.
