Twilight Zone
THX1138 Lucas films
Zomo bot ©JWDesign, 2010
ZOMO BOT
VS. PEDESTRIAN
(zoh-moh baht)
Of gods and men, so of robots and pedestrians. Ray
Bradbury's first short story made it into my eighth grade
lit book. I dreamed that the story would end up on Twilight Zone.
After that introduction to eerie glimpses of future worlds
there was no stopping. I knew what my life's calling would
be. Though I never set out to intellectualize my
interests, for whatever reason, Sci-Fi started me off on a
quest for universal truth and knowledge of the ways of the world. Sci-Fi,
like symbolism, like art and poetry, all got the wave off
from society at large in my day, THAT BALONEY. That stuff will rot your mind!
Well, so far I'm not detecting
any rot, just a need for vivid imagination and speculation
about our seriously disturbing future.
I refer to Lucas's robot
cops as Zomo bots because they remind me more of the Polish Zomo
(riot police) during the communist occupation. Yes, there were
actual Polish individuals in my living room narrating and
translating the news stories of the eighties just as they
happened. How else do you think I learned Tarot and
Astrology? I was, indeed living with Gypsies and refugees, of course.
They like my parents generation were not too thrilled with
Sci-Fi metaphor and symbol - but the youngster was already
reading Russian Sci-Fi.
I'm sorry to mislead, but this essay is not just about me. I want to reveal
to you, the
true movements of political twisting and manipulation of
symbolism that goes on in the world. And, of course, it's not just the
politicians who do all the manipulation. Enter the dragon:
DEMOGRAPHICS, the science of population studies which covers
the wants and dislikes of everyone in a cluster of
communities that shares something in common. It should
really be called cluster-fuck-ology, but I will not
elaborate.
There is a somewhat new terminology called 'image tribe'. It
sounds like a throwback idea, but in reality, it IS apropos,
meaning:
recently re-triballized or triballized people who have
a similar image of themselves. Re-triballization is a
Marshall McLuhan term which applies more and more to
the trend of the new socialization that goes on in the
modern world. Also note: Gary Snyder's - NEO-Tribalism,
which is
the ideology that human beings have evolved to live in
a tribal, as opposed to a modern, society, and thus
cannot achieve genuine happiness until some semblance of
tribal lifestyles has been re-created or re-embraced. People
tend to see themselves as part of a clan or tribe rather
than as "the public" or "society at large", there really is
no "everybody" anymore. There never was an "everybody". But,
these image tribes pretty much run the world. A good example
of such tribes are such groups as "MySpace", "Face Box",
blog sites, websites galore, and to say: "they rule", is no
exaggeration.
What does MySpace and Demographics have to do with police
robots or the Zomo?
Again, there is no everybody, but the concept lives on.
Supposedly it is up to everybody to run the world. This,
however, is not happening. The World is being run by
symbolism and the political regime that takes control of it.
Your sense of symbols tells you what to do, and the local
politicians decide what you are going to do when they wrench
the local symbolism to their will. Yes, they put the screws
to you by tightening your sense of symbol authority. Symbols
have always told you what to do, how to behave and what to
feel when the authority of the symbol speaks to you. Talk
about your collective unconsciousness, this is it! Symbols
of authority as crowd control. If there is an everybody,
THEY are using it and using you to run stuff.
Some say the world is a collection of scared people, spooked
by intellectuals and hippies, and who are further egged on
by terrorists and mobsters. The scared seek a protectorate,
a police or an army or both. The volatility is more obvious
abroad than in the US, the give and take more newsworthy.
Where ever you go there are confused markings, and
territorial lines. While the US symbolizes homogeneity of
borders and equality, the reality is far from realized. The
experiment is doing better than other places, but there is
much work to do.
When robo-cops takeover it will be the final authority
figures running and ruining our lives. They will be
unforgiving and non-Christian. They will do what they do out
of a global need to control the overwhelming population
surge. Laws will serve an absolute ideal without regard to
democracy. Of course, we in the U.S.A. have the political
machinery in place to prevent this, but, true to form, such
things never become an issue until it is too late to do
anything about it. When I saw Michael Rene and his robo-cop,
Gort, stop the world, I thought, "Oh, how simple". Give us
an enemy everyone hates, and we'll do the right thing. War
will be abolished. Aggression will be a thing of the past.
Global aversion therapy will save us from ourselves.
Here I am shooting myself in the foot by touting the powers
of occult symbolism and Sci-Fi, but these genre have a new
if not misplaced nostalgia for modern 21st century human
beings. These media have an authority by virtue of a movie
going crowd that speaks to everyone. These are the EVERYMAN
media of today's world. Though the price is more than "a
pretty penny", it is an affordable admittance according to
the demographic experts. Were we not so upward and mobile a
people, the boom and bust economy would devastate all of us.
But then, we expect everyone in the U.S.A. to pick
themselves up by their bootstraps. That's the symbol
everyone obeys.
In the book, GEN 13, an analogy of generation X, it is
pointed out that the baby boomer's children of the 60's and 70's
have always done everything for themselves without any
expectation of help from anyone or any institution. That
seems too ideal to be true and is probably only a partial
reality. The American symbols are at least, hard at work
here, but the truth is more mundane. As the Bible says,
there will always be poor people who need help. The question
is whether they need it or want it. A symbol such as
American independence and power of the individual is one
which energizes generations to release great amounts of will
power and stamina to achieve their goals. Independence at
such a price may take its toll and cause a breakdown -
similar to the Communists breakdown of political and social
will in 1989.
Don't call me a harbinger of doom for the U.S.A. and our
lovely societal democracy.
We ARE strong, as too many Presidents have proclaimed. Sarah
Conner has not seen her 7th seal broken. The end is not
written on the wall. The Temple Mount is well guarded. And,
the end time scenario is not really unfolding, as much as I
truly enjoy listening to Jack Van Impe say it is. Hark, it's
all these symbols being evoked and being manipulated by both
politicians and church leaders that has the world in its
grasp. Pay attention: many of the squabbles that are taking
place in the world have been going for more than 7000 years,
maybe even longer. Every now and then something takes place
in the world that no one caused or had anything to do with,
yet somebody somewhere decided to blame it on someone else.
This is a synopsis of world history. If you become part of
that misdirected symbolism you should not overreact.
Politics is the science of not overreacting. We have a good
system.
If you are young and pissed off, please, go into politics.
Use symbolism to inject good will amongst men. Even our
global warming fiasco can be averted if there is a new
belief in the power and capability of Science to help save
the globe. We may not need a Gort or his messenger to avert
disaster. The ship has already landed. Since 1970 the
message has been getting through. I got it in 1951. It may
only be a matter of overcoming laziness and apathy.
Put that wrapper where it belongs. Put that can where it can
be reused. Energy is neither free nor something you can
ignore. Of course, there may come a day when energy is free
again, then what? I trust you youngsters will come up with a
new image or metaphor to teach the world how to behave.
Robo-cops not withstanding.
So How DOES Symbolism Work?
