We used to read quite a lot of 1970s novels about future dystopias. Since your humble author was born in 1975, he wasn’t even literate by the time many authors stopped being visibly high all the time, and entered a world where the ones who were really worried took some form of speed. You can see quite a visible change between, say, badly-written scifi of 1977 vs. badly-written scifi of 1982. I was busy becoming literate; I couldn’t notice at the time.
Some of the dystopian books I’ve read included these ideas:
-The entire world was ruled by doctors. No, really, truly. I think I can look it up and find it again if I try. The author feared a world that was excessively worried about health, and a medical lobby seized the opportunity, asserting that keeping everyone healthy was most important. The entire book is full of Doctors, in fine medical regalia, issuing orders, making prohibitive laws, quarantining dissenters.
-The world was suddenly ruled by race, specifically an oppressed minority. It’s pretty much entirely, “How would you like it if WE had the power and we were angry at you?” (I’m not talking about Heinlein’s “Freehold”—we’ve never finished reading it. Mr. Heinlein is a great writer, but it’s a tad embarrassing to read right now.
-We’re all pretty familiar with the optimism of 1984, which suggested that, in order to find and trap a subversive, you needed a longterm, focused campaign towards one or two individuals, whom you trap and then torture until they genuinely change their mind. This is plausible and works, but through the whole book, we see TWO subversives taken. Meanwhile, all I need to do is open my magic screen and, every day, in the real World, I’ll find a dozen notices to shun and avoid individuals, or I watch individuals who were previously revered suddenly reduced to nothing by rumors. Compared to that, the specific, individual attention from one malevolent human towards one or two others looks basically like personal care.
-Let’s be kind and not even talk about “Brave New World”. It seems very naïve.
My own tribe of Goblins spent a bit of time in the modern human world. (Yes, we had spells for time travel. It took a lot of work and time and a couple of generations to diagnose the Cabbalistic building blocks of the Universe and alter time and space to travel forward and back. They’ve been banned for a long time now, but more than that, most Goblins, no matter how curious, would no more touch Time Travel than they’d touch an angry cobra—with the difficulty being, the spell just needs candles and invocations, and cobras require an actual living cobra, which would, admittedly, be interesting. I suppose someone with proper protective gear would be more than happy, if they were really confident they were safe from bites, picking up and examining a cobra, or at least giving it a good look; they’re fascinating creatures. Whereas we avoid time travel the same way we’d generally avoid bathing in a dumpster full of trash. It’s icky.
No wonder you’re stressed! You rely on your magic screens (who can blame you? They do so much! They’re like magic, only most magic doesn’t require you to sign longterm contracts with large, faceless corporations who don’t care about you. The Wizards of this world have never gotten that organized, or that interested in ruling people vs. trying to, say, find the Elixir of Life. Those screens bombard you with information overload AT BEST (let’s not talk about the worst; why be depressing?) They know where you are. They know what you like. And in combination with the everpresent, inexpensive video of the future… you’re under semi-constant surveillance.
Most communication is via magic box, and since you have no real ability to, say, punch someone for telling the world you ate your grandmother and threw your cat out the window. You can post pictures of your cat and grandmother, but your strange invisible caste system means that if someone with enough authority will be believed over, you know, proof.
This can’t be good for you. Or your grandmother.
So you’re always watched. You’re potentially in a place where one sentence sent through the box could get you shunned. Compare that to the ancient Greeks, who needed a formal process, and a vote via the Ostracon. (Really! Look it up!) You could still get railroaded, but it was a long and difficult process.
But most of all, OH CAFFEINA, GODDESS OF ENERGY AND GOBLIN SPIRIT, the information overload involved!
No brain is meant to hold onto that much.
Bruce Lee said two things: he said both to let go of that which doesn’t serve you, and, in contradiction, he said “Be one with the disease”. By which he meant, if you can’t escape it, embrace it, but recognize you’re embracing it. Stop letting it stress you, let it calm you, but recognize that there’s a lot of pain there. If you just can’t avoid it, embrace it, but do so calmly, on your own terms.
I’m in a human hotel right now, as my bed has been destroyed by either trolls, rock giants, or the fact that it wasn’t a very good bed. It’s unknown. Three times so far, I’ve been offered something they call a “Wifi password”. I took it, and then used it as little as possible.
I’m NOT bragging. I’m just admitting the limits of my own powers. I can no more resist the fascinating things in those portable Palantirs than you can. And I know it.
So I work hard to control it. I am disciplined about not removing my screen, which means I’m suddenly interacting with humans (and, as you can see, writing). Again, this isn’t because I’m cool; it’s because I know I’m not better than anyone else. If I let the magic box get a serious hold on me, so that I want to look at it all the time, I…
…okay, confession. I got my hands on a magic box. (Yes, service providers will provide some access to the World, even in the Goblin land, which technically doesn’t have electricity. Information Overload is great for inventions, especially if there’s money in it. I admit that in this particular case, they really did cut down a lot of pretty forest to put up ugly cell towers; but to be fair, we’re surrounded by pretty forest. We need to cut it down to put up a house, even. Unfair to blame them for trying to bring us what they see as Knowledge.
Here is the freedom you learn as a Goblin:
Information, including way more information than you can process without breaking down or finding a liquor store, is NOT the same as Knowledge.
We Goblins serve both Eris (for Chaos) and the Egyptian lady with the wings…Ma’at, or “order”. We’re far from perfect.
But most of us have gazed into the Palantir. It’s fascinating. It’s very useful. Sometimes we use it a lot.
But Ma’at desires moderation. At first, it was no great wisdom on the part of Goblins; moderation means closing your magic box sometimes. And even when we realized the problem
(too much information)
(that isn’t necessarily accurate)
(which is controlled by OTHER PEOPLE)
(But which tries to control YOUR life. And not even to own the World, the way those old dystopias predicted. It’s a million sources competing for your attention, and they’re all pretty fascinating, and any one can draw you right in.)
This means other people (or bots, or Elves, or whatever) are running a part of your life that they don’t need or have any right to run.
And that’s CRAZY. They don’t want us to run around randomly singing any song we want. They don’t like some of the things we want to say, and since they’re trying to catch our attention, they’re watching and listening to us, but not as friends. They want to make sure we buy their stuff / think their way / look at their ads.
This is SO helpful and can be SO fun and is definitely at least as bad as being an alcoholic. (Goblins LOVE mead. We love to party, get drunk, and laugh with each other, and that doesn’t always lead to the smartest decisions. But we do recognize that if you drink half a bottle of mead to wake up and face the world every day, then another half so you can talk to people and not wonder what you’re missing on your magic box, then another half to calm down from the day, then another half a bottle to get to sleep….)
(…you’ll drink up all the mead, you jerk, and leave a lot of junk. Also, it will be terrible for you, and instead of doing fun, chaotic things, you’re likely to do really stupid things.)
What those ancient dystopias left out was the idea that not only might you be judged by your neighbors, but that you can be judged by total strangers in a way that definitely places enough negative votes in the modern Ostracon to get you shoved out of the world. A stranger on the other side of the world with a lot of friends says something bad about you at two a.m.; you wake up at ten a.m. and you’ve lost half your friends. It just doesn’t make any sense.)
I’ll state for the millionth time: we don’t avoid this because we’re smarter or better than you are. (We’re Goblins! We’re smarter and better than everyone! Or so we like to believe. Objective reality does not always bear this out.)
We want our lives of glorious chaotic freedom.
And the ONLY way to enjoy chaos among other people is to do it intelligently. Wear a provocative t-shirt? People look at you funny. Wear a t-shirt that goes against the desires of the magic box? Strangers will throw you, mostly metaphorically, into the Ostracon, and you’ll be voted into ostracism before you realize there’s a vote. And you don’t get to vote, either.
How in the world can you perpetuate glorious joy from that?
If we want to swim, we swim.
If we want to sing, we sing.
If we want to write weird, half-brag, half-lie, half-advice books, that’s 1.5 books, and this book is short. But we can do it without worrying that people who’ve never read it will criticize it through the magic box, because they CAN, they WANT to, and sometimes lots of other people will believe them and they’ll get to enjoy the many pleasures of fame and, depending, sometimes even fortune.
But they’re still slaves to the magic box.
And if there’s one thing learned from the one and only war against non-Goblins we’ve ever fought (against the Elves, who have a Palantir everywhere they go)…it’s this:
It really is better to die on your feet than live on your knees. Dying is awful, but if you’re a warrior, it’s a risk…and if you work hard, maybe the other fellow will get it.
The Elves have glorious shining cities. And sophisticated weapons. We have the advantage of total unpredictability. When they went a bit too far, we…well, we kinda stopped them in a maximal way. Which is why Elfland now contains Goblainia, which they claim is a blot on their landscape. But damn, it’s a FANTASTIC tourist attraction, even if it does tell some obviously outrageous lies about us; we don’t hire curators if they don’t have a sense of humor.
Thanks for listening, you weirdo. I’m going to check my own magic box (I’m not perfect!)—but then I’ll put it down. I hear there’s an interesting live cobra somewhere around here, and I’m going to buy some hockey gear and see if cobras really ARE delicious.
It’s weird, but it’s not crazy.
You don’t have to believe me or agree with me. That’s your right. But if you disagree, I won’t share any of my fried cobra with you. Consider yourself warned.
Hail Eris! Praise Discordia!
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If, for some weird reason, you enjoyed this, try a few more – try page 80 of JeffMachWrites – there’s a good mix of pieces there.
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