when I was young, I grew up in a small town. In that town everyone knew everyone, there were no secrets, no places to hide, and certainly less crime. You bought real food at the store, TV was black and white - if you had it at all, and most of the time, you were amused by friends coming over and playing card games with the parents of your friends, your friends, and of course, your mom and dad.
There was no "back talk" to mom or dad, you were grateful for all you had, and for the most part, the most difficult thing was sleeping in the south with only an atic fan to cool the house. When you answered the phone, it was usually in a common room in the house, and the parents could listen in, so you kept it clean. Dates were either school dances, or a movie followed by a stop at the Dairy Queen or some other local hamburger joint (McDonalds was only a limited chain). The government was only then dosing folks with LSD, and other psychidilic compounds, making soldiers walk into the atomic mist created in Nevada and Utah. Watson and Crick had just discovered DNA's role in genetic processes, and tomatoes still tasted like tomatoes. Seems we had fewer diseases and allergies, but more a problem with keeping clothes clean and our writing pens from clogging. Fear? we had none cause we knew that if we just got up when the fire drills went off and put our heads under our desks, the missles from Cuba could not hurt us, even though Cuba was less than 300 miles away. When you pulled up at the gas tank, men came out, washed the windows, checked the tires and oil - and pumped the gas. And gas was $0.25 a gallon, and only then were a few roughnecks headed for strange sounding countries to drill for oil. One night, my dad came home, and said, there's something going on over near China because Mr. Smith's son did not come home from a battle half way across the world... only parts of his body. Then I remember one afternoon, someone came up to me and said "they shot the president." It was, at that moment, Childhood's end - to quote Mr. ClarkIt gave me fuckin' goosebumps reading that...
In school, they taught about the Doppler effect... but in reality I learned about it from lying in my grandma's front bedroom, with the windows open on a warm summer eve. Cars would speed down the highway, the sound getting higher pitched as they approached, and then lower pitched as they departed our vicinity... Same was true for the train on the other side of the highway.... all us cousins, male and female, young and old, piled upon the homemade quilts.... sad, no one these days knows what a quilt is, all we have a comforters.... somehow they are not as comforting as their name.
I wonder what the next 40 years of surveillance, DNA gathering, mining our phone calls, texts and e-mails, to say nothing of blog sites.. will bring? Will we even be human?
Watch out for the day they start passing out the SOMA.... back in college (late 60s) I would muse that you cannot turn off the damn phone! that there was always the possibility that they were "listening" and my friends would chortle... BSD (this was before I obtained my super powers so they called me by my fake name) there you go again, no one cares what you say....
Well, they shouldn't chortle anymore, cause obviously someone cares enough to gather the data and put into place a program to monitor what is said... As in Walden II (Skinner, of Skinner box fame) how you feel about all this depends on which side of the one way mirror you sit.
Childhood's end it is, more than 1984, animal farm or brave new world...
What will the end of our childhood portend?? The beast which slouches forward... or better?
One by one, we give our liberties and freedoms away, all in the name of a false security - for who are we asking safety and security from???? why it is clear, those who enslave us with cheap entertainment. has been done since the Romans discovered lions.
Today’s verdict by the SCOTUS hobbling the voting rights law gives further disillusionment, and further lessens hope.