Embracing The Future

The following rant was provoked by someone somewhere blaming the fashion industry for the 'end of fat-as-beautiful', which gets the causality arrow all tangled up. (But that's another post for another time.)

I know it's oh-so-fashionable to be doom-and-gloom about modernity and industrialization and all that, but frankly it's boring, totally old-skool (in a not good way), and it makes people sound like their parents, grandparents (again, not in a good way), or religious whackos.

I'm all for preserving traditions that work in modern contexts, but knee-jerk allegiance to nostalgia can leave the knee-jerker looking out of touch and, honestly? -- hostile, desperate, and somewhat pathetic.

I usually keep this opinion to myself, but I'm getting so tired of hearing people's inner fears about the future projected out as 'objective factual info'.

I like modernity; I like progress; I like electricity and computers and space travel and technology and modern notions of human rights (and clothing) and most especially I like public sanitation and modern plumbing.

I know too much history to ever want to go back.

And don't even get me started on how lacking it is in personal responsibility to blame things on the fashion industry. (Or the media, or government, or whatever . . . . . . Enough with the blame games.)

Death, Jealousy, & the Future

It is completely normal, even expected, for any given mortal to be jealous of those who come after given the reality that things are getting better all the time. Just as it's an ordinary part of human experience for parents to be jealous of the better lives they've worked so hard to give their children. Hard, but true.

I've recognized for some time that a fundamental truth of life is that we get to have sex until we die, & then the future happens. (All too often the sex was the best part.) & I recognize my own jealousy at all the good stuff that will happen after I die. I was hoping for a lunar colony in my lifetime; at 43 this is not looking like it's gonna be.

So. The point of this is that this systemic jealousy, however unconscious, can result in a cynicism about the future which is unjustified by the evidence. In combination with the saturation of depressive suicidal ideation found in the extremist apocalypsism so prevalent in all manner of folk, optimism can feel like an uphill slog in high gravity. But if we can get past our excessive & unfounded sadness & pessimism, the future's so bright I gotta wear shades.