What better way to end the year then with a rant about how the quality of life and the hope for the future has been forsaken for our own amusement and entertainment...

Ren's Rants

December 31st, 2005
"Lost Reality..."

This rant was inspired by a string of events. First was an observation made by me while at the local drug store, second was a conversation I had with another member of The FC staff about how in art of Indpendent Film Making might be ruined by people addicted to making Fan-Films and can’t make up their one characters and back ground stories, and third; how a production company turned around and changed their minds and desided not to do the right thing and are keeping their website open after all…

(I will be writing more about fan flims later, that is a whole rant in itself...)

Celeberties and Geeks...
Few months ago I was at the local CVS and something struck me as odd, on the covers of all the magazines there at the counter were celebrities. Then I noticed that there were obviously many people with bags full of bottles with their prescriptions filled. Then I was struck with an epiphany…

Why aren’t there any magazines about medical science on display out front? How come we know every intimate detail about celebrities, but we fail to know anything about the people whose work DIRECTLY effect our lives? Where were the displays for "Science" or "Discovery" magazines that used to be up there?

Why isn’t there anything about the people and companies who have dedicated their lives to helping others? (I won’t get into the debate about the high cost of pharmaceutical drugs or if those companies are gouging the customers this time…)

A pencil-neck geek with a lab coat works long hours dedicated to finding the cure for cancer or the common cold or flu, and that man lives a life in obscurity. Meanwhile, Brad Pitt breaks wind at an awards ceremony and Entertainment Tonight or People Magazine has all the coverage… “all the info you MUST know!”

As if somehow what's going on "Days Of Our Lives" or "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" or "Sports Center" is more important then what's going on in the news. People who literally save lives or change the world are denied the notoriety that is now reserved for celebrities.

Dick Rutan, the modern day equivalent to Howard Hughes and the real “Buck Rogers” did the impossible with “Space Ship One” and it’s pilot, Mike Melvill… and hardly enough people know their names or what they did.

At the end of every civilization, people were more concerned about celebrities then they were about actual heroes. Our civilization is no different.

To elaborate: January 1st, 2006 was supposed to be a huge day for true Science Fiction (SF) fans and Space Exploration aficionados everywhere. It was supposed to be the day when another nail was going to be hammered into a dead franchise’s coffin, and more attention would have potentially been given to the REAL space program or other subjects like Astronomy, instead of the make-believe that's generated behind the gates at 5555 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles.

On Sunday, Paramount Pictures was going to shut the door, turn off the lights and lock the door on the official website: Star Trek.com. Hopefully, people would follow the advice given to them by William Shatner in the now famous and legendary Saturday Night Live spoof and “Get A Life…” and move on to what’s really going on in the space program and maybe even get involved.

Alas, it wasn’t to be. People with nothing better to do took the time and flooded the home offices with cards, e-mails, and other garbage begging them to keep it open. The Paramount bean counters and executives relented… changed their minds and have announced that they’re keeping it open.

When the government is about to make a radical mistake and cut the budge for NASA or short change a project that will contribute to our greater understand of the cosmos, do the same people make the same fuss? I hardly doubt they notice since they’re obviously too busy writing impassioned messages back and forth to each other about which “Voyager” Character they would be, the deeper meaning to the “Trouble With Tribbles” episode, or what it would really be like to meet Spock (no... not the actor Leonard Nimoy... but the character he plays. )

No, closing the main website would have actually be a good thing. Perhaps maybe the people who obsess about the fantasy that’s generated in Hollywood would finally focus more on what’s real.

Obviously, my criticism so far has been directed towards the sycophantic fans who actually believe that it’s perfectly fine and normal to live vicariously through something made up by some folks in Hollywood and convince them selves that it’s real. But my concern deals with a larger part of the world who have gotten the false message that it’s ok to permanently check out from the rest of the world and live for something that’s just for entertainment and pure escapism.

The people who genuinely concern me are those who know every intimate detail of their favorite TV show, movie franchise or sports team, but seem to be clueless when it comes to what’s going on in their own neighborhood. Most people complain about how things are and changes the government push through, but they just can’t seem to show up to town meetings or vote once every other year.

That’s just a reoccurring theme of mine – Society, Science and the Government goes too far, too fast and in too many wrong directions while society has a “Bread And Circus” mentality and do nothing to change what’s going on besides complaining. Complaining didn’t win World War II or send Neil Armstrong to the moon… although I bet we could propel a space capsule into Earth Orbit with a lot of the hot air that’s coming out of Washington and Hollywood.

Who cares, anyway? What’s really is important is that people from all over the world will soon be able to download their favorite episodes on to their I-Pods if they haven’t been able to do so already! And who cares enough about politics unless there’s a scandal or controversy to get worked up over... but only when it’s been sensationalized by someone else in the media with an IQ slightly above room temperature. Then Politics becomes entertainment, fodder for idiot “documentary” film makers and slacker song writers - then and only then do people get excited enough to do something but with only a radicalized and once sided perspective.

Obviously, the vision of what the future held by those who lived during The Golden Era is hardly our reality today. Sure, we have incredible advancements, on all of our desktops we have a device that is beyond the comprehension of those who lived so many decades ago. Each of us have a hundred if not a thousand times more computing power of those computers used during the Apollo program or the probes sent out to the gas giants during the late 1970’s. And what are we doing with that power? “Free Cell” or “Solitaire?” or surf for more entertainment.

With all these new advancements in technology and our over-indulgence in entertainment, what would Winston Churchill say? I would his comment would go something like this: “Never before have so many, who have so much, done so little…”

I'm well aware that we all need to escape from reality once and a while and take some time to be entertained. There's nothing wrong with enjoying what's on TV or on The Internet, but for so many of us it's become what we live for. I would like to believe that there would come a time when we would use the tools that we have and take greater pleasure in getting things done rather then use them only for our amusement.

What would happen in the world if we put our tools and our ability to find any information to better use and applied our time and energy towards making things we fantasize about into reality? Imagine what would happen if the people who were rebuilding the bridge of The Enterprise in their mothers basements would actually join forces and either help or compete with Dick Rutan in making real vessels to reach orbit? Imagine the armature programmers who write code for games would spend more time working on the navigation systems for those spacecrafts built by other fans.

Imagine if the people who fight and argue about politics on line and think they would do a better then those already in office would actually run and campaign themselves... or just tried to become better informed voters, then what could happen? (Do the people who actually whine and try and prove that ridiculous conspiracy  theories are true actually vote? I have my doubts...)

Unless something drastic happens to shake these people up, people are just going to continue to live their lives vicariously thought fantasy and what ever else is on television until society and civilization degrades to the point where our toys and tools become unusable.

Further Reading...
E Commerce Times Study: Men and Women Use Internet Differently,” By Jennifer Le Claire.
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More articles from Ren can be found here: The Rant Archive