This may seem a bit pessimistic, but there was something I glanced over that pretty much led me to what I'm about to say. It was a MSNBC headline that said "China plans to have man on moon by 2024." My pessimism is not based on that China is moving to have a man on the moon, but that since the first feet have landed on there, if China's timeline is accurate to the final year, it will have been more than 50 years since any human has set foot on that orbiting body.
Last week I saw a trailer for the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?, and the history behind the demise of what we would now call an ingenious vehicle for our times. Combine that with the news of China's plans, and it makes a sci-fi fan, such as myself, hang my head at the future we could have had.
Granted history has shown that for every step forward, there have been one or two steps back. In some instances, however, we have seen two steps forward that have helped negate the step back. The discoveries of Newton, the creation of our nation, the abolition of slavery, the New Deal, and the man on the moon are all examples where we have taken two steps forward. In almost every instance, there has been someone wanting to take one step back, but that wasn't enough to stem the tide of change.
However, likewise as history has shown, times have moved a lot faster it seems during our recent generations than in the past, and our minds are more accustomed to that line of thought. Maybe that is why I have grown pessimistic at our current plight. The actions we have come to know or are just beginning to know are discouraging to many people such as myself, bringing out a cynicism that pales in comparison to what our past generations have experienced.
It wasn't until a week ago, when I saw that Electric Car trailer and the film An Inconvenient Truth (which everyone should see) that I asked myself, "Yeah. Whatever happened to those electric cars we talked about, or the vehicles that took us wherever we wanted to go without us steering?" Whatever happened to those ideas? I mean, the no-steering vehicle idea is at least 20 years old. Surely someone must have created that contraption.
Maybe someone did - and then someone else killed it.
Which brings us to the problem our generation will face over the next 25 years. So many of us are living in an age where we must work all the time and have no spare time to dream or even think. They say that our lives cannot be offered that luxury, for the result will be nothing but wasted time. I now ask the question: "Have we all been nonetheless wasting time?"
Some may criticize me because, they say, I'm in a field that does nothing for the good of mankind. One thing though that my job as a musician has offered me has been the ability to dream, to be creative, to think. I can't think of a greater freedom than to be able to think for myself and be creative. Creativity spurs art and music, yes, but it can also spur developments that aid yourself as well as mankind.
Think of the sewing machine as an example. Someone had the gall to think of creating a contraption that made sewing that much easier and quicker. While most people credit Elias Howe as the inventor of the sewing machine, he was the American inventor. The first machine was created by a French tailor, Barthelemy Thimonnier, in the early 1800s before Howe achieved his patent. But here is the kicker: Thimonnier barely got out with his life for other French tailors rioted and burned down his shop because they feared unemployment and loss of business due to his new machine. Gee, that sounds familiar doesn't it?
It's been over 30 years since we last put a person on the moon, so long now that the myth of the entire moon-landing being staged has gained traction. Why has it taken so long for us to "move forward" with this discovery? Have we as a race become complacent in our own little worlds, or have we all just grown so bitter and reactionary that we no longer strive to better ourselves as a people but rather go out and get what's ours?
Sadly, it is increasingly looking like we have moved toward the latter.
Those French rioters feared their own losses and possible unemployment, and endeavored to cancel any advancement of that technology. Thankfully, for many of us, they didn't succeed. In addition, the tailor industry didn't disappear either - it just got more sophisticated and adopted other skills to fit the profession. That clearly parallels where we find ourselves today.
There is a dim but visible light at the end of the tunnel. Our generation appears to be coming to a point where there are ideas, products and dreams we want so badly, that sooner or later, whether it is here or in another country altogether, they will be realized. High gas prices have already forced the development of cars that use less gas. And, just as today's dealerships have tried to stop the development of such technologies (like the French tailors), it has found its way to other countries (Japan).
And guess what? We are buying their cars, and our American dealers are losing money. Their own self-serving greed and need to hold on to what they had has made them poorer, and likewise has made Toyota, Honda, and Nissan richer.
That last point however applies to all of us. If there is one consolation, it is that progress goes on. But of course they nay-sayers always respond with, "Don't even worry about that - it will never happen." Sure, it will never happen. It will never happen that we will create a contraption that will get us to one place faster than any ground device could. We will never create a vehicle that allows us to fly. We will never find the means of escaping this planet, much less even land on that big circle in the sky. We will never achieve the means of communicating to someone else more than 20 feet away without yelling. More so, we will never build a service that will enable people to send letters to each other, across country borders, across oceans, without needing to send a piece of paper.
And how ironic that in those lines of thought, we have people today who say they couldn't imagine the levees breaking, they couldn't image people would fly planes deliberately into skyscrapers, and even today, by our VP, that we couldn't anticipate the strength of the insurgency.
As long as we have people in positions of power, be it public or private offices, that refuse to see outside the box, and who only wish to cling onto what they have and own and to hell with everyone else, then the ingenuity we dreamed about in school, in textbooks, and elsewhere won't happen. And that's where my pessimism lies - there are so many folks like that now, both in positions of power and not, that the apathy and cynicism may be so great it could take a generation before real creative thinking takes hold.
Thankfully, it appears that people are getting sick of this, and are demanding real change. It may come with the Democrats, it may not, but one thing is for certain - people are hungry for change, and that may be the one thing that will save us and grab that ticket for the progress train before it leaves the station for good.