Living Science Fiction

…or the good, the bad, and the ugly of the advancing, technologically and politically charged world.

I feel like I’m living in one of those science fiction dystopias right now. If you had told me that I would live to see a new civil rights movement as politically charged as the African American movement rise from the ashes of ignorance, I would have told you that you didn’t know what you were talking about. Yet here we are with millions of people across the country protesting the assault on homosexuals. I’m living in a time I never thought would exist; it never occurred to me that there could be such a vicious battle between religion and the other or such a divide between our peoples–a divide that has relegated one group of people into the position of “second class citizen” because a majority says it’s right.
In some respects, I don’t know how to take all of this. I grew up making fun of homosexual men while sharing the common masculine mentality that allows homosexual women to be reduced to sexual objects. It was never really brought up that saying “that’s gay” or “you’re such an f*g” were actually derogatory phrases that shouldn’t be said. Yet here I am, looking into the face of hatred and finding myself almost unable to cope. How do you fight hate?
Then only a week or so ago we saw violence spring up yet again between Israel and Hamas. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised and forgive me for being naive, but I don’t understand the necessity for violence from either end–I understand that hatred exists, but it seems utterly illogical and pointless to me (couldn’t they just spend the time ignoring one another?).
But not all is bad, right? Sure, there are those dystopic moments where things really look down, but there are good moments too. We elected the first African American President, Barack Hussein Obama, in the United States, for one. And what about all those fantastic scientific discoveries/inventions in the last year or so? The Australians discovered a genetic link for transsexuality, the Large Hadron Collider went online (and then broke, for now), cell phone use has increased at a massive rate, eBook readers have started to take hold in the market, and Space X, a privately run space company, had a successful launch of its Falcon rocket (which, I imagine, helped earn it a launch contract with NASA). It seems like we’re inching closer and closer to that point where we can send non-astronaut folks into space–hopefully for pleasure.
With our global society grasping so readily at technology, it’s no wonder why it feels like we’re living in a science fiction story. I said at the beginning of this post that it feels like a dystopia with all the darkness surrounding us. Maybe that’s because I’ve paid too much attention to the dark and not enough to the light.
So, despite all the bad, at least things are looking up in some departments, right? The economy might have taken a dive, but other things are rising up from the ashes. Ten years ago I never would have thought that I would have the opportunity to see space with my own eyes; now it looks like it might actually happen within my lifetime. Should I be happy for our successes or concerned over our failures? Can you be both?