Are You A Weena?

Back in the early Bronze Age, when I was a kid, I was absolutely enthralled with George Pal's original film adaptation of "The Time Machine".  My teenaged heart melted for Weena and I reviled the cannibalistic Morlocks, with their blue skin and glowing eyes.

My heart raced as the hero frantically tried to save Weena from the Morlock dinner bell.  I was reviled when the dead Morlock decayed before our eyes as the hero raced through time to escape a horrible fate.  I was on the edge of my seat when Filby and the housemaid examine the tracks in the study floor and surmise that the Traveller had drug the machine inside to be outside the future Morlock cave.

I was so enthralled, I ran out and bought the box set of H. G. Well's novels.  All the greats, like First Men in the Moon, In the Days of the Comet and The Invisible Man.  Of them all, The Time Machine was my favorite.

I was comforted by the fact that none of that could ever happen.  Humans would not move underground and eventually evolve into cannibalistic beasts who preyed on the innocents of the outside world.  Humans would retain, I though, their innate desire to fight for a better world...to create a real paradise, where we all live in harmony and peace.

Until...

White House finishes mysterious underground project

Over the past couple of decades, there seems to have been a massive effort on the part of certain self-proclaimed elites to build massive underground refuges...from what we are not allowed to know, apparently.

All across the globe, governments are undertaking unknown subterranean construction projects.  They are installing enormous subway systems, bunkers in the hearts of mountains, long-rumored cities under major airports, and seed and DNA banks (often called 'arks') deep in the Arctic tundra.

As I watch with growing apprehension, it seems that Well's nightmare future is coming to life before our eyes.  The predatory elites are driving themselves underground, for whatever mysterious reason, while the ancestors of Weena...us...frolic like spring lambs in the fields, unaware and uncaring that some part of the human race is burying itself, using our money and labor, in anticipation of...what?

In 2,000 years, would we emerge from our sparkling, Victorian era time machine to find that the elites have now become slave-driving cannibals who herd us Eloi like so much cattle, until we are fattened enough to grace the dinner table with a little gravy and potatoes?

There are a multitude of stories of these elite building underground cities.  There is ample evidence that they consider us to be mindless cattle.  There's whispered rumors that they enjoy our flesh as a succulent main course.  And a visit to any elementary school will convince us that we are being trained for pavlovian response to their 'dinner bells'.  Even the title of 'blue bloods' implies an overall blue cast to their skin at some point in the hazy realm of the future.

Perhaps its time we should heed Wells' warning and begin to fight this horrible fate while we still have our wits about us.  Being forewarned by such a brilliant writer, we can act now to ensure that our future generations do not fall prey to man-eating troglodytes who are even now moving themselves underground.  We should resist with all our strength the trained responses we have been installed with to fatten our carcasses and deliver them to the elite dinner tables.

Wells' Traveller went back to the future to be with his beloved Weena and to fight the evil Morlocks head-on.  However, it might have been more effective to stay in his own time and fight the weed when it is only a seed.

Yet, as Wells points out, the people of the Traveller's own time were incredulous and thought it a wild fantasy spun by a half-crazed and overworked inventor.  But if we become the Filbys, finding solid proof that the Traveller's story was true in the tracks scratched into the laboratory floor, and the missing books from the shelf, and finally believing the wild tale spun at dinner, then maybe we can join the Traveller's efforts by working in our own time to stop the decay into such a horrific future.

When Mary (Percy) Shelley penned Frankenstein, did anyone seriously think that just a short century later, we would be battling patented life-forms and GMO crops?

Science fiction, especially the high-quality variety by such geniuses as Wells, often point the way to our actual future.  After all, 50 years ago, who could have imagined the Orwellian dystopia currently unfolding before our eyes?  Who would have thought 40 years ago that Star Trek communicators and phasers would become commonplace?  Which of us marveled at Kubrick's Floyd sitting on a space station having a video chat with his daughter?  How many people scoffed 100 years ago at Jules Verne's vision that men would climb into rockets, in Florida no less, and step out on the surface of the Moon?

It would be unwise to dismiss the musings of great minds.  Not only do they often perceive real trends and possibilities, their musings frequently become the inspiration for future generations to make real the stuff of dreams...and nightmares.

It's easy for us to be thrilled by these cautionary tales from the quaint past, and to just as easily dismiss them as fantasies and fictional adventures.  But when we see them start to take form around us, can we toss them aside as fanciful musings from an unenlightened time?

Take heed, World, fiction is often truer than reality.

The Thought Heard Round The World

"...and the rockets' red glare,
the bombs bursting in air..."

Ah, the immortal words of war enshrined in the American national anthem.  It's no wonder the country prepares to celebrate independence by positioning war ships and materiel offshore of yet more targets of unilateral aggression.  It's no wonder that country has populated the world with war drones and bathed other nations in blood and depleted uranium.

It's no wonder no one is too upset about Fukushima.  The Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya wars have unleashed amounts of radiation that will take some reactors in Japan a few more years to match.

Any more, independence day is pretty much an oxymoron, at least as far as America goes.  About the only thing left there that's still independent are the banksters and corporations that run the country.  Everything else is owned lock, stock and two smoking barrels.

Kind of a shame, too.  It was a great idea.  Those founder guys imagined a land where everyone was educated to the hilt.  They foresaw a new Golden Age based on enlightened citizens spending summer afternoons arguing the finer points of Plato, Descartes and Bacon.  They dreamed of a nation that incorporated Rome in its glory mixed with Atlantis, populated by philosopher-kings whose realms were loosly confederated into an absolutely egalitarian society that would lead the world in moral, ethical and intellectual pursuits.

Oops.

Looks like things got derailed somewhere around Lincoln.

I suppose the dream could be recaptured, but it would take at least a century, since that's how long the Prussian model schools have been indoctrinating the nation's youth.  It would take at least two generations just to undo all the damage caused by psychiatry and social workers.  It wouldn't be easy, either.  People being deprogrammed tend to react badly.  Just ask Tom Cruise.

Look at the great hordes of folks that, despite 60 years of evil unleashed by Washington, America is the "greatest nation on Earth" and the least corrupt, most lawful nation with the highest standard of living and the best of everything.

It's not.

It's just another empire, like all the empires that have come before, and the ones likely to follow.  The most probable legacies of America are fast food and nuclear weapons.  The most enduring empire in history is the Roman, and it had to disguise itself as a church and religion to do it.  That's about the only thing Washington hasn't tried yet, but they are certainly trying, if you listen to the holy rhetoric coming from the sacred gobs.

America could take a lesson from Indonesia.  You see, here the politicians and bureaucrats simply ignore the law, much as they do in the States.  The difference is, the Indonesian people follow suit.  They figure if the lawmakers don't abide by their own laws, why should we?  You end up with a kind of beautiful mildly controlled anarchy that works just fine, thank you.

No need to worry, though.  It seems, at least from listening to the news and various prognosticators, that everything is about to change in rather profound ways.

Naturally, the PTB are fear-mongering because that is what they do best.  They use fear to manipulate not only people, but the very fabric of time-space itself.  All we have to do is follow Douglas Adams' advice, and Don't Panic!

The ninnies that imagine themselves in charge of everything have built themselves extensive underground caves to hide in, because the first rule of using fear to control is that the user must also be very afraid of losing control.

What will happen, most likely, is that we will realize in a couple of hundred years that H. G. Wells was right after all.  The PTB will retreat to their caves like good little troglodytes and try to run the world as they slowly mutate into Morlock.  Our job, as the Eloi, is to make sure we don't end up as food stock for them, but rather help to seal them in and forget about them while we rebuilt our planet into something much more interesting and sane.

I've worked pretty hard to do just that.  At the Junior Far Side World Headquarters, sitting 1,290 meters above mean sea level, I've installed a water well with a hand-pump, and I'm in the process of getting a solar array up and working.  The house is located just a couple of miles from our 7-hectare farm, which is even higher up, and currently growing teak wood for building materials.  It's isolated, has a cool breeze all the time, and a year-round growing season.  In true Far Side tradition, whichever way the PTB are going, I'm going in the opposite direction.

It's time to give up on the world as it currently exists.  I see little hope for it all.  More often than not, I have found Mark Twain's advice to always go against the common wisdom to be most beneficial.  One spends a lot of time being ridiculed, but the part I hate is that by the time I can say, "I told you so," everyone already thinks it was all their idea in the first place.  By that point, I'm already going the opposite direction again, anyway.

No, I'm not a rabid contrarian like the guy in Little Big Man.  I don't wash with dirt and dry off with water and ride horses backwards.  But if I see a mass of people rushing to one side of the boat, I figure it's prudent to go to the other side.  At least the waters will be less crowded with panicked people when we all end up in the drink.

What it all boils down to is this...as you celebrate independence day, think about all the ways you are dependent and try to figure out a way to reverse that problem.  Seize your heritage and become a subversive in any of a hundred different and quiet ways.  Become passive-aggressive.  Appear to appease the glory-eaters, while chipping away at their control structure a little at a time.

You don't have to go head-to-head and fight an open war.  The best way to fight an overpowering enemy is the classic hit-and-run.

For instance, install a solar water heater and take your old gas or electric tank off the grid.  If you have a smart meter on your house, put a lead box around it so it can't communicate with the grid.  Get an FTA satellite system and cancel your cable subscription.  Join with your neighbors and buy a cow every couple of months, have it butchered and share the meat.  Turn every open patch of ground around your house into a food-generating piece of dirt.  Grow veggies and medicinal herbs.  Buy, sell and trade for everything you can using co-ops and grey markets.  Don't buy anything new.  Watch the classified ads for things you want and only pay cash.  Keep your bank account with a minimal amount of money in it.  If you get paid by check, cash it.  If you have direct deposit, withdrawn the whole amount every payday.  Buy a safe and keep your money at home.  Close your safe deposit boxes and put your import documents in the safe, as well.  Get a passport and let all your other ID expire (passport numbers change every 10 years and you can use them in any country).

See?  No violence.  No big show of subversion.  Just a thousand little ways to extract yourself from their game.  If five million people figured out a way to keep $1 out of the hands of the system each month, look how much fun that could be.

For independence day, declare yourself independent.  Fight back without throwing a single punch or even an angry word.  You'd be amazed at how powerful you feel even doing these little things to slap the supposed owners of all they survey.  You'll notice too that these little suggestions don't take a lot of effort, and they can fill time that would otherwise be given over to TeeVee indoctrination.  Heck, the kids can even get in on the action, and the experience will teach them some valuable skills, as well as the importance of self-sufficiency.

And none of it is illegal...yet.

This revolution stuff can be so much fun!  Happy independence day!