Going Down the Railroad Tracks

[Daveparts still]

Going Down the Railroad Tracks
By David Glenn Cox


There was a time growing up where I read dystopian fantasies. I first became intrigued by the genre after I read a copy of H.G. Wells' “The Time Machine.” It made me ask the questions about where we as a species are going. Then it was “Fahrenheit 451” and then “1984” and Huxley’s “Brave New World.”

Each author gave his own vision of the future based on his current times and the political philosophy of the day. Orwell feared the rise of authoritarianism and media manipulation. Huxley saw a population drugged into co-operation in a rigid class structure. Ray Bradbury envisioned a world dumbed down to ignorance through television and the abolition of books.

Interestingly enough in all of these dystopias ran a common theme that the people willingly gave away their freedom. They submitted out of loyalty to the state or to Big Brother. The characters all felt guilt for going against the wishes of the state. I know that I, too, am a thought criminal. Since turning off my TV I see the world with different eyes. I can no longer watch the insulting commercials with their annoying little jingles written on the intellectual level of a fourth grader.

Winston Smith’s job was to rewrite the news and that, of course, is no longer fantasy; that is fact. Most of the news that he wrote was about wars being fought in far away lands. Huxley was concerned about industrialism and in his rigid class structure were Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons. The Alphas and Betas did the thought work and lived in comfort while the rest lead lives of only work periods and rest periods. Bradbury wrote about the perpetual entertainment culture through television, alcohol and drugs.

Throughout my life I have had snapshots where these novels came back to me. I was in a car accident and the doctor prescribed anti-depressants explaining that it would help my brain recover more quickly. I took one at bed time and my mind raced the rest of the night. It was like fireworks going off in my head; I awoke numbed and emotionally flat and creatively drained. I thought to myself, “How will I know if I’m getting any better if I can’t feel anything at all?” I flashed back to Brave New World where Bernard said that he didn’t like taking Soma, “Because he’d rather be himself."

My doctor felt that I was being uncooperative. I wouldn’t take the anti-depressant drugs and I wouldn’t go to rehabilitation therapy, which is a gym where you pay fifty dollars a session instead of twenty dollars a month.

My nephew was about to graduate from high school. After he passed his final exams I offered up that he had the sword of Damocles hanging over his head. He answered, “The what?”

“You know, the Sword of Damocles?” Cricket sounds, this straight A student had no knowledge of mythology or classic literature. “The three fates? Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos?” His school year had been rescheduled to start earlier in the year so that his standardized tests could be given before the Christmas vacation. It was discovered that when the tests were given after the break too much of the information had been frittered away with TV and video games. Our children are being taught to learn the information on the test, not to learn for the value of learning.

No child left behind has become no child allowed to shine. Mythology and classic literature take up too much time with too many hard to pronounce words. We have become the Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons.

Today we have huge, big-screen TV’s, ala Bradbury, and now HD TV and 3-D TV, but for the savages such as myself there is nothing to watch. I feel myself becoming like John the Savage from "Brave New World." I don’t belong in either society anymore.

Bradbury and Orwell both glossed over the world of the unemployed. Huxley wrote at length about “the savage reservation,” a world where people live in dirt with minimal healthcare and minimal education. They don’t even have any Soma to take. It is a world of minimal survival without any chance of joining the society of “The Brave New World.” Sound familiar?

Throughout all of these novels runs the theme of personal relationships, and through different twists human relationships are stunted. In "1984" unauthorized sex is criminalized. In "Fahrenheit 451" it is used as a distraction to keep from having a meaningful conversation; instead have a drink or take a pill. In Huxley’s vision sex became a public affair. Promiscuous sex was encouraged from a young age and sex was a drug to keep people from having meaningful relationships.

When we look at our own hyper-sexualized society it makes one wonder what a normal relationship really is. Is a normal relationship even possible? Is it a coincidence that when couples struggled on the prairies or on farms or in the third world that they were dependent on each other for survival? Many marriages fail for financial reasons or sexual reasons, but primarily there is no dependence on each other. They want a replacement for momma or daddy and when that partner doesn’t work out they eject them like a spent shotgun shell and start again.

Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame made a brilliant film about a comic dystopic society. The film “Brazil,” made in 1985, describes an autocratic and bureaucratic society obsessed with terrorism, choking on its own incompetence. The wealthy attend parties and have plastic surgery to stay young while the poor live in dark, gray, dingy apartments and commit crimes. Since everything is a crime it becomes only a question of getting you to admit your guilt, and for that society uses torture. Yes, quite definitely a film ahead of its time.

It would appear that all of these authors were correct, that free society will degenerate into an authoritarian, militaristic society with a dumbed-down populace that has no concept of the wars that its nation fights around the world. This will produce a populace obsessed with sex and all things purient, or mind-numbing melodramas that all promote corporate thinking. Educational systems will rush the children down the halls, teaching the minimum basics and abhorring the fundamentals that the Western world was built upon. The children are taught to remember but not to think.

I think what frightens me most is that Wells was most correct, that we are headed for a brave new world where humanity doesn’t burn its future but eats itself. A world of Eloi and Morlocks, where the elite live apparently peaceful lives. The Eloi live in childlike simplicity with all their needs provided for them. It would appear that the Eloi had reached nirvana, except that the Eloi were the food for the Morlocks.

So as I go through my days surrounded by armed security guards and paying for my goods by sliding money through slots or into machines, I realize that I have become John the Barbarian. I am an alien in this society where all things are illegal. Where my government owes me only what I can pay for and I owe it whatever it says I owe. A place where relationships are based on what you can supply rather than what you can offer. A place where your mind is for counting money or dreaming about sex.

Our inner cities have become the caves of the Morlocks where the Eloi would find themselves quickly devoured. The Eloi live in gated enclaves of brave new worlds to keep themselves insulated from the reservations of the barbarians. While millions upon millions of Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons believe that they live in a free society, when they are nothing more food to be exploited. They march and organize against the thought criminals and would never, ever be caught reading a book, unless Sarah Palin had paid someone to write it for her.

I’m running down the old abandoned railroad tracks looking for a brave new world, where people matter more than money and relationships more than sex, where the government protects the people rather than the people protecting the government. Where Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons fight for the right to be Alphas and Betas instead of expressing their pride in being less than Alphas and Betas.

[Gman2]

1. I too, am a man without a country. Or culture. Mans choices have become all too clear to me.

I study Bonobos, and chimps. The artifice of human choice, becomes but a layer of instinct, no more advanced than the animals.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. I wish I could argue with your analysis.

Instead I am forced to applaud it and forward it to the very few like minded people in my world.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. Freedom isn't about being sold out as much as it is about buying in.

"Freedom is the absolute right of all adult men and women to seek permission for their actions only from their own conscience and reason, and to be determined in their actions only by their own will, and consequently to be responsible only to themselves, and then to the society to which they belong, but only insofar as they have made a free decision to belong to it." Mikhail Bakunin

[DemReadingDU]

4. These are interesting times