Strange collection of groups you have there, Joe ...

nobody@flickr.com (Monday Never Comes / Joseph Dunphy) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 09:24:43 -0800

Monday Never Comes / Joseph Dunphy posted a new topic:

Oh, not at all. Astronomy and other science, pure natural science; history groups; a whole lot of political groups that seem to focus on poverty and civil liberties ... what's the connection?

A simple answer would be that those who entered the sciences in the recent past have tended to end up poor, inescapably poor, that the poor get trampled, and so what I'm showing you is the world of the downwardly mobile academic. That's a tempting answer, and sometimes it will be a true answer. It will, however, not be a complete answer.

When I show you pictures of other worlds, or of the beautiful remnants of our world's history, I would try to do what the subject matter should tend to do - inspire a sense of wonder in those that behold it; ie. try to do my subjects justice. The world can be an incredible place, if we let it be, but for the last few decades, it's been evolving into anything but. There's a universe out there for us to explore that only becomes more remarkable the more of it that we see, but rather than growing in knowledge and evolving into the kind of society that can reach out and explore at least a little corner of that cosmos more fully, we've sent those who'd make such things possible over to Starbucks, to work as baristas, when they're lucky, and then tried to seriously argue that what resulted wasn't stagnation. There is the artistic heritage stretching back for millennia to be found in this place or that, that is being wiped away, regional cultures being wiped out, architectural treasures being thoughtlessly destroyed to make way for parking lots and office towers that could have been built almost anywhere else, the loss coming so rapidly that one should wonder if the heritage will outlive the rash generations so intent on its destruction for the sake of a few dollars or worse, for the sake of their pride.

There is a common thread in this, the abandonment of the best that is in man and in life for the sake of that which is least admirable. Greed, for the lack of a better word, is not good. It is the instinct that was people once thought more worthy of pigs than men, but now, it is the instinct that seems to rule all decisions. Let us turn our backs on the knowledge we could gain, the beauty we could have enjoyed, and even the decency we once showed each other, all for the sake of the short term enrichment of those who were already overcompensated, hoping to catch a few crumbs as they fall from the overfilled tables of our semi-literate elite. Let us end all progress, creating a society in which the high school dropouts have made a reasonably sensible choice in life, so a few billionaires won't have to wait an extra few months for an extra yacht here, or another 300 million dollar plywood house there. Let us forget everything that ever inspired us to connect to something greater than our pettiest ambitions.

The common thread to all of this is that I'm reminding you of just how much Man is squandering, in exchange for so little, how precious some of these things are, even if a balance sheet says otherwise. If somebody should find such a thought elitist, let him rant on as we notice that he's defending changes that have transferred wealth from the many to the few. Where is the sense in trading so much that makes life special for wealth that one doesn't even get to keep? What's so egalitarian about that?

We should be better than that, or at least smarter.

Monday Never Comes / A Sketchbook

Strange collection of groups you have there, Joe ...