Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/1999/01/13/ramageddon_ram_murali_muses_on_the_milennium.php
Wednesday, January 13, 1999
I was dreaming when I wrote this, so sue me if I go too fast.
It's finally 1999. The year of my graduation. The last year of the Milennium. A word so huge, you have to Capitalize it. I for one am sick of hearing the grand analogies and cheesy metaphors. The only thing more annoying than people talking about how this is the last year of the Milennium are people who point out that the new Milennium is actually not until 2001. But the Milennium is not the subject of this column. Rather, this column is about a more pressing concern.
According to Nostradamus, a famous dead prophet, the world is going to end this year. And not just because I'm graduating without a job or any prospects in the world, but because...well, he actually doesn't give a reason.
Of course, I was skeptical when I first heard this. 'Nonsense,' I said. I pointed out that most of Nostradamus' prophecies are so vague that what he says could either mean 'The world is going to end' or 'People will eat more chicken.'
But since then, after having four weeks at home where all I did was watch television, I'm starting to get scared.
I'm seeing signs wherever I go that the world is going to end. Metaphorically, we are at the end of civilization. How much further can we go? Things have started to get weird. I had dinner at Panda House and they didn't keep my water glass filled. Does anyone else think that email is sick? And have you seen those Performance Fleece ads?
Sooner or later, everybody gets theirs. And theirs has been a long time coming. In the Middle Ages, no one ever did anything bad, or interesting, because they had the fear of God in them.
These days technology has given us an explanation for everything that used to be divine. Who needs a God when you have Netscape? Information, and explanation, are at your disposal and there is no need for a higher authority. I mean, who's going to argue with evolution?
Maybe science has beaten God as a viable explanation. Not to say that that a higher power doesn't exist, but if one does exist, he/she/it is probably getting pretty annoyed at our lack of faith.
I'm not saying that God is going to come down and end the world. I don't believe in organized religion. Organized religion is organized just in case. I mean, do you know God? Does he call you at home? Karl Marx is wrong though. Religion is not the opiate of the masses; television is.
I think the blame for the incipient armageddon goes to television. Thanks to MTV, there is an entire generation, of which I am firmly a part, that knows all the lyrics to every Madonna song but fidgets after being made to sit still for five minutes. These days, hyperactive kids are sedated into an ideal. After the MTV generation, the Stepford generation. Ritalin killed the creative child. I could go on. But, unfortunately, in order to keep your interest, I have to change the subject of this column every thirty seconds.
Whatever, I've decided. I'm from the New York metropolitan area and I am so not going to be there for the next New Year's Eve. If the world ends, that's where it's going to begin. I have to find someplace nice and quiet. Like Nepal. Though that's a little severe. Actually, if the world ends I don't know if I'd want to survive. This body is not meant for a pioneer lifestyle. But if the world ends, what's going to happen next? Have you noticed that movies about the future are really scary, and often really bad?
But our present is equally bad. I would have to live in a place with plumbing, but modernity is overrated. The problem with modernity, as far as I'm concerned, is the need to share everything about yourself with anyone who will listen.
Catharsis through pop-psychology and Jerry Springer, whom I'd like to implode. I don't want people to know things about me and am sometimes made to feel like a weirdo for that. Is it a societal advance that I know my next-door neighbor worships Satan? People did not share things in the middle ages, to my knowledge. Then again, it wasn't a real party era because, I mean, how much socializing can you do in Latin?
This openness, this need for sharing, invariably leads to a lack of respect. How much respect can you have for someone who admits having sex with sheep or who's taking Miniversity Stained Glass? I like it when people are themselves, but I like it much better when themselves are cool.
Do you know what scares me most about someone? When they say 'Pulp Fiction' is their favorite movie. I mean, it's a good movie. But your favorite? So, I guess you're really into brains in your back seat, anal rape, and overdose. That's a real conversation stopper.
We need a little bit more social control. Stop the deviance.
Everything in the world today is about choice. You can read what you want to, watch what you want to, eat what you want to, and this surfeit of choice leads to boredom and lack of determination. Why stick to something you don't like, when something you like can be a few pages away?
If you didn't like reading this, you could have just turned the page. Switched me off. Changed the channel. Life imitates art, and television has become life. You can turn on Fox and watch an anorexic lawyer dance with babies, you can flip it back to MTV and see an out-of-shape Canadian naked on the subway, or press the button that takes you to the WB, where you can enjoy four oversexed teenagers with attitude problems. The lives of television characters are so much more interesting than your own. And if they're not, press channel-up.
Maybe this constant choice, this constant influx of images and ideas in the brain, this overload of information, leads to innovation and exploration of new ideas. If you can concentrate long enough to get anything done.
But I think this lack of concentration, this constant choice, this overload of information, this changing the channel, this inability to deal, this need for stimulation is the beginning of the end of the world. Unless the world has already ended, because humanity is over. You can be perfectly happy these days without any real human interaction, thanks to the iMac. Everyone's like 'It's so cute!' IT'S A MACHINE.
Maybe the Amish are right. Too bad I can't call them up to ask.
If the world doesn't end, we are all going to get tied to our computers to the point where we cease to exist. We communicate through and with them, without even a voice or our handwriting, but only through words. When we get an email from someone, we think we're talking to them. Perhaps the computers will cease to need us to input the words and will just come up with an appropriate response on their own.
Computers will run the world while we watch the death of the shockingly androgynous Leonardo DiCaprio for the eightieth time on DVD.
Computers take care of airplanes, nuclear weapons, television broadcasting, and our personal lives. And the Y2K dilemma shows that even they are not immune.
I'll toast the end of the world with my head high, laughing, and my glass filled with Dom Perignon.
2000 zero zero party over oops out of time.