Morlock vs. Eloi

Disclaimer: I wrote this on the back of a crew log (AF Form 524) while sitting on alert, so it might not be all that great.

I'm a Morlock, but you're the Eloi.

If you've ever read The Time Machine by HG Wells, you'll know what I'm talking about. If not, take some time to figure it out. Ok, so I work underground, have a very utilitarian worldview, and provide a rather intangible product--nuclear deterrence, aka paralyzing fear. This is for a bunch of people who live aboveground, in obscene comfort (compared to any other period of human history), frequently with no knowledge or understanding of the massive system they feed through their meaning-deprived existence. While the masses live dumb and happy on the surface, I try to stay lean and hungry underground, preferring books to a mindless, Internet/TV-based excuse for culture. One simply gets more by blasting the printed word down the optic nerve. The book always beats the movie, or a music video, but fewer and fewer people bother to read. When they do, it's usually crap like The DaVinci Code, or something served up to them on a steaming pile of Oprah's Book Club.

While electronic schlock abounds, calibrated to the lowest common denominator, it's a means of control. The schlock is, at the very least, harmless and keeps the narod in line. Due to the decentralized nature of the Internet, "misunderstood nuts" have an outlet while vapid college students surf Facebook. It's all things to all people, a perfect safety valve, neatly circumventing the possibly inflammatory ends to which new media can always be used. I mean, the printing press ushered in 200 years of war in Europe. Radio and cinema allowed totalitarian regimes in the mid-20th century to gain influence. With the Internet, there's no uproar. Is it simply because, in contrast to books and newspapers, blogs and YouTube are free to use? That's not saying the "content" necessarily has value--Eisenstein and Voltaire beat the crap out of, say, Daily Kos. (who, if it wasn't for the blogosphere, would have remained the peon he obviously is, deep down.) There's no revolution, no violence, only a blind, agreeable muddling down of complex topics. Fukuyama was partially right--history may be ending, and manhood may be a thing of the past.

However, this new media is being used to fulfill the same basic human impulse--greed. The people, the great unwashed, buy from Amazon, refinance their frankly exploitative mortgages on DiTech, and load their ersatz webpages on MySpace or Facebook with colorful, security-compromising e-trinkets (and sometimes advertising). All of this benefits the old villains, the capitalists, who, in the one intellectual victory of Marxism in the US, cannot be perceived to make money without exploiting the "less fortunate" (read: dumber). These evil, selfish people tend to--guess what?--read books. Like drug kingpins, they tend to avoid using their own product.

The people-cum-Eloi are sheep. You can "do your own thing", but I like staying on top.

Works Consulted (off the top of my head):
The Time Machine (Wells)
Empire (Orson Scott Card)
American Theocracy (Kevin Phillips)
In the Beginning, There Was the Command Line (Neal Stephenson)

Comments

[MOGS]

Just remember though, the world isn't all binary Morlock/Eloi 0/1 - there's many points in between the two, and there's many people (of varying utility and worth) who inhabit those points...the entire Marxist dialect rests on the idea of "oppressors" and "victims", exploiter and exploited, whether complicit or not. There's more to it than that.

Books do a body good though.

[antitool06]

That's why I had the disclaimer. You gotta crank in a good bulls--t factor at 0100 in a bunker.