The Sound Of Silence
The Reverend Wilbur
The American family is on the eve of destruction. Forget the Waltons! Little House on the Prairie is under a mall. All human endeavor, learning, dreams, and history has been reduced to a little screen populated by quotes from the “Hock Thua” girl! Are you not entertained?
When home computers came on the scene the promise was more acceptable information for common people that would push the evolution of man up 300%! But there was an assumption. Since time immemorial somebody in the crowd had to be able to read. And for those who couldn’t read there were priests, scribes, and town cryers that would read to them, the point being, the higher thoughts of the elite would eventually filter down to the not so elite. But time marched on.
Was it perfect? Of course it wasn’t. It was far from perfect. The opinions of the readers seeped into the works to thinkers, making the words of the deep thinkers a bit shallower for the shallow minds that ground the wheat. By and large, the masses were satisfied with the bread they got.
Now, what do we have. C’mon! You’ve seen them. Kids with their noses glued to a phone screen without enough survival instincts to look for traffic on a busy street. The ever-present finger in the air letting you know that they have something important to check out before they can finish their conversation with you. And you can test this. During your next interaction, if you see them scrolling, or checking their phone with fleeting glances, just stop talking and see if they even notice. Or give you the common courtesy when they return from La La Land to even ask you what the conversation had been about. Like you were never there. Because in their dimension, you weren’t! Those complete strangers behind that screen were there though. People of dubious character who picked their face from a filter who have the answer for everything. Oh my, how did the world get along without them? We developed eons of learning from human endeavors and understanding that has now been eradicated by a little piece of plastic with flashing lights.
The Baby Boomers are the last of the actual human race that strives to uplift the human condition through time worn reflection and struggle. From 1984 the graph goes downhill. And the momentum is only increasing. Given enough time the words of the song In the Year 2525 ring true. Our arms will hang limp at our side. Already seventy percent of available American youth cannot pass the test to enter the military. The Chinese don’t have that problem. But they all know Fortnite! Onward mighty warriors!
America has come apart at the seams. The great mixing pot has become Mulligan Stew. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not make everyone equal, it just made some equaler than others. Add Food Stamps and a little free housing and a splendid time is guaranteed for all. Well, maybe not all. The Vietnam Vet begging change on the corner is still there. The old lady, evicted from her family home is still there. The little girl in the cotton dress in Appalachia is still there and the new, improved national debt is still there. But a thirteen-year-old girl got thousands of views on Facebook making fun of the President.
And what does the American family have to counterbalance all this? Nothing. Oh, wait! There was this one guy, but he got shot in the neck while discussing gun control. The family has been reduced to components. Not black families. They’ve been reduced to nonexistent. The Great Society was great for the oligarchs. Not so great for black fathers who had to hide so their children’s HUD didn’t get canceled. Slavery was supposedly ended in 1865 but really the government just put a lien on the title. Where “massa” once owned the slaves, the government has title on them now. With the rest of America thrown in for chips and grubs.
So how do you get a population to submit to control of their very soul. Every thought, every understanding, everything that makes them what they were raised to be. Well, to be fair, you can’t impose it on the generation in place when you begin. They’ve been through too much, seen too much, too set in their ways. So, you start with their kids. Now these kids don’t swallow the whole thing but in youthful rebellion they take a little sip. Tastes good, goes down easy enough. What can it hurt! All the while you’re letting the original generation age out in the nursing home where their voices are not so loud. And those voices become fewer and fewer until only a few are heard. By this time their kids have kids. To them the originals are colorful, not useful, but colorful. Creeping onto the scene now are phones that are not attached to the kitchen wall. With little TV screens so what is read is considerably smaller. So cut back on the words. New terms appear. Sound bites. Algorithms. Designed to make a simple point. Simple points for simple minds. And convince the last generation that they are some sort of evolutionary leap because they can poke dots on a screen. A dot gives a meme or a sound bite, and the final generation takes all this as informative wisdom. And language is reduced to “67!” And the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls.
The American Family sits in a living room where nothing lives, enveloped by the sounds of silence eating their bowl of Soylent Green.
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