We are so fascinated by the technological magic that ties us to reality and, increasingly to one another, that we forget that the mythology of the past can pierce the technological veil and unite us in our common humanity. There is something about a story being told around a fire after the booze and weed and food have run out that takes us back to our simple Savannah roots. Gazing up at the vastness of the heavens one feels dwarfed by the immensity of a universe in which we are but a small and rather insignificant part and recalls that it is only our reliance on one another that enables us to cope with a creation beyond our ken. That is preindustrial magic.
Biggest problem with that is my absolute hatred of the outdoors. My idea of "roughing it" is a hotel without Wi-Fi. You can pretty much take it on faith that I don't know how to start a fire or field dress some unarmed critter that some one just shot to fulfill some incomprehensible need to prove to them self that we are still the dominant predator on the planet. Heaven forbid if you ask me to set-up a tent, I can't even program the Tivo. And, please don't even get me started on personal waste elimination in the great outdoors. Seriously, how long would the outdoors remain great if every unsullied part of nature looked and smelled year-round like Chicago after the snow melts? Our innovative foremothers and forefathers sweated and suffered and thought and created so we wouldn't have to put up with shit. And, I, for one, thank them.
Another problem with getting back to nature and reuniting with our common humanity, reforging the bonds of brother and sisterhood amongst others of our species is that I really don't like people. Simple truth is I have a whole lot better relationship with my bicycle and my laptop than I do with most of humanity. Maybe that's because my bicycle and my laptop aren't as prone to committing gross acts of dumbfucktitude as the rest of humanity. I mean my laptop never opens car doors across the bike lane. And, I have never seen Shannon (that's my bike, Shannon) stare right at me then step off the curb directly in my path while sipping a latte and talking on her iphone. People however do this all the time.
I have a theory about our collective dumbfucktitude, about its source. And, like our own history it is based in preindustrial magic and the development of technology. I am a recovering Catholic and as such the daze of my youth were spent being inculcated with dogmatic rules and regulations about what I could eat when, which words I could not use and, once I was a adolescent, what would happen to my eyes and hands if I continued to spend so much time in the bathroom.
It wasn't until I got to college and in a fit of pique brought on by too much existential agnosticism, actually read the Bible that I got some real insight into people-kind's essential dumbfucktitude. We can leave aside all the wonderful and holy rapes and murders, all the sacred acts of incest and adultery, we can leave the sodomy of Sodom and the gonorrhea of Gomorrah to those who see end of days in the election of a black president or a Cubs world series victory because the root of the problem goes back to the very beginning.
In the beginning, the good book tells, us this god person created the heavens and the Earth, placing upon that Earth two people with strict instructions to be fruitful and multiply. Which they did. Multiplying twice, the product being two sons. Now I ask you to apply a little modern science to our collective mythology and tell me, who are the viable breeding pairs?
Obviously, the sons cannot couple with the mother. Nor does the Bible make any mention of daughters born to the original sinners and even were there daughters with whom do they couple? The only available males in all of paradise are their father or their brothers. And, you cannot argue that all these people were in some state of grace and thus immune from the ravages of genetics. The parents had tasted of the fruit of the forbidden brick god left under a hat and therefore knew good and evil, they tasted of the tree of knowledge.
Nope. Doesn't fly. The conclusion is inescapable: If I buy into the Biblical story of creation, the only explanation for our modern day dumbfucktitude is inter-breeding. So when I speak of preindustrial magic tying us to our essential inter-relatedness, I am being quite literal.
WSE
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