Historical Hysterical

Sylvia Shawcross

Anyways…. I was thinking about history again. I’m thinking maybe “they” are right. The ones who live in a perpetual future and only spend their present tearing down, deleting, rewriting and burning the past for the creation of a golden tomorrow. I mean, what the hell good was and is history anyway if for some reason, not having learned a darn thing, we seem to be repeating or are about to repeat every single bad thing that history has experienced? And all at once?

War, Famine, Pestilence, Climate Change and Economic downturns aren’t enough however. On top of that we have the bonus of ever-evolving technological horrors enrapturing the mooing herds to the point of lunacy, redundancy, and triviality and then developing psychopathically to the point that it will replace us all anyway. You have to wonder why they that create such things bother entertaining us if we’re going extinct really.

What good was all that living of all those generations anyway? The stories, the struggles, the lessons… They who passed down so many things so that we could end up in… well… Dystopia. It is a cruel thing. A disgrace. But what is disgrace nowadays anyway? That’s another old-fashioned idea that was most certainly decidedly gone when they invented twerking.

It seems like the only thing history seems to have given us is psychological and behavioural atavism where we fight ancient wars over and over and worship pagans cavorting outside the original Garden. Some are even resorting to physical atavism and inserting horns in their head and tails on their bums and fangs and body parts where body parts never were.

I don’t know if history actually did that to us but it probably gave them all the ideas, don’t you think?

Well, if it is nothing else, it is entertaining in a dark and dreadful and grimaced-smile kind of way. That kind of smile that hisses and make your teeth crack so you have to go to the dentist where they can do 3-D images of your zygomatic zone now and you think, sitting there hopelessly if not helplessly drooling and looking at a screen of your skull, well maybe it isn’t all so bad—this technology.

But it is. In most cases anyway. But then, how would you know that, forgetting as we are what life was like before this. It was better. We had bell-bottoms and telephone booths and tiddlywinks. But never mind all that. The point is history is for the individual. Really it is. Because it is only history that teaches us how to be brave when we would rather make pancakes and play pretend.

It is only history that teaches us how to be feisty when the bad guys are winning and we’d rather believe they are nice so nobody’s feelings get hurt. It is only history that teaches us how to negotiate needs when we’d rather do that mayhem, murder, or torment the enemy thing.

It is only history that teaches us as individuals how joining our fellow humans en masse can change the world.

It is above all only history that teaches us consequences. And it is consequences we are now facing. And they are on “this side” of the golden tomorrow. We have to live them first. Those of us who make it. And as much as the great waves of history can wash us all to sea or strand us on foreign shores or raise us above the fray, it is the individual that lives it. In detail.

As we do. But we mooing herds need not despair because without history happily we can ignore all those consequences we, having erased history, no longer know are coming. There is only the golden tomorrow. Which reminds me of something I actually did sit down to write but of course I digressed onto another train track on another planet there for a minute.

This is what I want to know because I’m pathetic enough to realize that writers sometimes can only ask questions instead of providing answers and this question is a why… or maybe a what if. What if instead of scaring us to death over everything they actually told us what was wrong and showed us both sides of everything and then explained how “we” were going to all do this because it was a good thing and heaven forbid asked us what we wanted? Given the circumstances.

I mean if they had actually done this instead of, for example, scaring the crap out of us about carbon emissions and then starting wars and blowing up pipelines and refineries and delivery systems and banks, they could have explained what the choices were.

Instead of creating horrific divisions in everything and at every level? Do they not think that most people given dire circumstances occurring would then in a spirit of “rah rah rah, we can do it” would comply to their craziness without question because we trusted our leadership? And would follow? And we’d do that because we’d get progress reports and rah rah speeches. Instead of obfuscation and silence and fathomless mutterings on podiums.

But no, generalized terror, contrived divisions and punitive measures prevail in western style democracies. Relentlessly. So my question would be, why did they decide to tell us rather than ask us? We the mooing herds whom they expect to send tax-money to their causes, fight in their wars, eat their crickets, deliver their pizzas, clean their houses, repair and make their things and drive 20 miles an hour? Why in fact did they create all this divisiveness so that we end up “us” and “them?” Why I ask you? Why?

One can only suppose it is because we would have to decide something they wouldn’t particularly want for themselves or to which we would never agree to. I don’t know… maybe depopulation or slave-labour or something equally awful.

I just want to watch reruns of M.A.S.H. At this point, nothing matters. Until the next time a rant is required.

I understand I can’t use clips from YouTube anymore. I hate censorship. So as an earworm I leave you the option of making up your own. Which one do you choose?

“It is no achievement to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”