It's So Complicated!

This is Reverend Doktor C. Sarian, voice of the Mid Coast Sub Church of Paranoia, with a special paranoid report:

It’s all so complicated! It’s a conundrum! Everything turns out to be something else than what everyone expected. It seemed like a good thing not to eat fat, but now they say there’s nothing wrong with it. Who knew?

It’s a dangerous world, no one can hope to defend hirself against crimes of all kinds. So police, to protect and serve. Police see themselves as protecting not only citizens, but society at large, from a host of ills, not necessarily just crime in the traditional sense. Because their training, and moral rectitude, whether at work or at play, on the job or off, at their own homes, in the homes of others, or on the street, police believe the solution to any situation is to hit someone. Today in many towns the worst crime problem is police who hit, taser, shoot or kill someone. 

It used to be if the house were afire or burglars breaking in, one had to look up the local number to call for help. Dumb, right? Enter the 911 system. Today from any phone in any location, a quick 911 call connects directly with authorities. What’s your emergency? It could be anything because now the 911 network is a snitch hotline by which anyone can drop a dime on hir neighbor. In fact, no dime needed! A 911 call can be made on a phone that has been disconnected! Dog barking, baby crying, naked swimming, rock n’ rolling – call 911! As officials intervene, another conscientious idiot can sleep soundly, assured of being a good little citizen.

The telephone was once a heavy, clunky thing attached to the wall of a building with a stout cable, and all it did was allow conversation with a party at another location. Today’s phones do just about everything besides making phone calls – take photos, record sounds, make notes, send documents, keep track of the kids. There is something else the new portable phones do: they watch and listen to everything going on around them all the time, automatically sending all that data back to central for compilation, storage and analysis. Billions of “smart” phones worldwide are the sensory tentacles of the digital dragon. The celephone network is the closest thing to Skynet they have invented yet.

Before the advent of the new millennium, nations used to declare war on behalf of their citizens, to repel invasion or acquire new territory. When war aims were met, war was declared over and the victors enjoyed the spoils. No more do nations fight against nations. Today, with the terror war, humans are the enemy - nations form coalitions to fight each other’s populations in war without end.

To primitive humans, the biggest problem was not enough people to gather food and defend against predators. The loss of a skilled hunter could mean extinction for a Paleolithic tribe. So they went forth and multiplied. It turned out that program was too successful. Today, with 7 billion plus humans on Earth the problem is too many people to gather food or defend against predators. The life of an individual has become the cheapest commodity. As governments identify citizens as the enemy, so does the biosphere. Humans are the only species which when removed from an ecosystem, that ecosystem flourishes. People are now regarded as the greatest threat to their environment, but they are determined to stop climate change and build sustainable communities for further population growth.

So what would be more humane? Enabling them to proliferate? Or allowing them to kill each other off?

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