Astride Two Ages
\n\u00a9 Copyright, Frank W. Andres, 1983., 2012, 2015, 2018.
\nAll Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n
I feel like a man astride two ages. The present is harsh, unbearable,
\ncruel. There was the American Dream…and with cheap oil we were able to
\nrealize much that we had wished for… We were able to become nobility with
\nour own tracks of country side. We became nobility with mechanical
\nservants.. But this was all fraudulent…the subdivisions became deserts of
\nalienation, loneliness… lives full of monotony, mediocrity…and three hour
\ndrives to work, each way. Now cheap oil is gone. Now what?<\/p>\n
Then there is the future…The future is one of my highest hopes and
\ngreatest dreams. It is the dream that goads me onward. Yet with that dream
\nlies a danger. I am becoming acutely schizophrenic… actually exhibiting a
\nmulti-personality…. as I devote more and more of my life to that dream, to
\nthat fantasy. Sometimes I find myself caught up in that magical crystal ball.
\nI actually begin to believe sometimes that I am living in that far off age, that
\nall is well… all problems have been solved. In reality the bulk of the work
\nlies ahead and this fact plus the exigencies of the work goad me all the faster
\ntowards the fantasy.<\/p>\n
However, I am a man who is ultimately firmly committed to
\nreality…and to my mental health. For in fantasy there is no more joy than in a
\ndream. Joy comes from creation, but creation must change and impact the
\nexternal world. The dream of my creation can be one of two things. It can be
\nmy hope. It can be my escape. If it be the first, then it is a tool which can be
\nmost useful in a perplexed and caustic age. ..a first step towards the future I
\ndream of. If it be the second, then drugs would be the cheaper, more
\nefficient path to take… nay, suicide would speed me towards the destination
\nthat road does lead.<\/p>\n
I am a child of my age and the father of the next. And in the end I shall
\ndeny neither. My work is here and now and no burden shall I shirk. For the
\nlabors of the present, and only those labors, shall give birth to the future. In
\nthese labors I shall not be content to stand upon a large boulder and cry forth
\nupon the multitudes. Such cries are rife today and most will quickly die as
\nthey reverberate through the vacuum of space.
\nInstead I must become a part of the world around me. I must be wed to
\nthe world. I must not be afraid of the world. For in the end, the world,
\nsociety, culture in which I live… is the earth… is the soil from which my body
\ndidst spring. That world is my parent. It is my past, my source. And I must
\nlive through that past, and shape, mold, lead, and move that past, an inch at a
\ntime towards the future. I must help create new tools. I must do this to
\npreserve my dream, otherwise will it lose meaning and fall to dust, it will
\ndissipate into fantasy and condemn me to isolation from life. I must do this
\nto preserve my sanity and my species.<\/p>\n
But what is the need for action? Is it not foreordained for these things
\nto pass? When one considers man’s past and his basic nature, when one
\nconsiders the Enlightenment and the power of the human mind…is not the
\ndream, the beautifully perfect world I foresee, inevitable? If this world is
\ninevitable, why then must I act?<\/p>\n
Man and woman are animals bearing tools. They bear tools for the
\nwork at hand. Tragically, they also bear tools from the work of yesterday.
\nIronically, many of the tools which were valid, which did allow progress in a
\npast age… now are chains which restrain. Hence are man and woman
\nhistorical animals… too often, too securely chained to a past of their own
\nmaking.<\/p>\n
Why is this? Why are obsolete, constraining tools allowed to persist?
\nThe reasons are these: avarice, fear, complacency. The greedy man may keep
\nthe past if it feeds him surfeited… even if the good of society, which
\npreviously sanctioned the works, no longer is served. Fear of the new
\nparalyzes many who might act. Complacency and sloth bind the rest. The
\nworm which does not crawl forward flounders in its own excrement. The
\nshark… master of the sea… which does not swim forward… drowns in its own
\nfurious frenzy. Man and woman are tool bearing animals…but this implies
\nthat they have in the past been…and in the future they must continue to
\nbe…tool creating animals.<\/p>\n
The logic of tools points thus and so. But logic is a tool of man and
\nwoman. And they now must act, by means of physical tools to implement
\nthat logic. So it is obvious…that it will not be those with beads and flowers
\nwho will build this world. The man and woman of the future must be at
\nhome with tools, they must embrace them. They may live apart from them
\neventually, but they will always be of them.
\nThis is the fight I urge. It is an individual fight. It is each person
\nlearning all, developing all… creating as much as he or she is able. It is the
\nultimate fight. It is the greatest fight.
\nOnly by means of such effort will man and woman continue to progress.
\nPhilosophy is necessary…but it must be seen for what it is…the first ste;p in a
\nscientific process…sitting around puffing smoke rings and lamenting the state
\nof the world is all right…but only if those same people then stop, read, learn.
\nWhere have the problems come from?…How can we make things
\nbetter?…Man and woman have stopped evolving…and their tools are evolving
\ninstead…Well, in a way…the truth is that tools do not evolve…As I have
\nsaid…they are created…by man and woman’s minds…We cannot just sit back
\nand think…and relegate critical steps to others…We must take more and more upon ourselves…and of course we already have other jobs…Too bad…there is no one else…we must do all we can to move through as many of the creative
\nscientific steps as possible by ourselves…with our friends…We must use the
\nnew technological resources at our disposal…to work with others and truly
\nmove the world…There is only a fifty percent chance that humanity will
\nmake it through this century…Only by means of such a concerted, continual,
\nand all inclusive individual and community effort…will we… as a species…
\nendure.<\/p>\n
This is the end of the Flashers from my book, Omicron Blue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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