Ch. 23 Rip Van Winkle's Total Lack of Surprise

 "The only way to fight the darkness around us is to light a fire within us."

Seth Adam Smith,

Rip Van Winkle and the Pumpkin Lantern

Rip Van Winkle, a short story published by Washington Irving in 1819, was the tale of a fictional villager in colonial America. When he runs into some mysterious Dutchmen, and drinks some of their strong liquor, he falls asleep for 20 years. 

Just for fun, let's reimagine his story. Let's say he fell asleep for 60 years instead. 

If Rip Van Winkle fell asleep in 1878 and didn't wake up until 1938, he would be living in a radically different world than the one he left behind. 

There would be machines flying in the air, people talking to each other across the world with devices they held up to their faces, and television screens where he could watch shows like Spelling Bee and Comedy Cabaret!

If, on the other hand, he were to fall asleep in 1939 and wake up in the present, the world would certainly be different... but not nearly as much of a shock. 

He would have a concept of what airplanes, telephones, television, and automobiles were, for example. He would probably also at least be familiar with the concept of computers.

Progress has stymied a bit for the human race, and most of our progress happened before 1939.

It’s mind-boggling to think about, but true. 

In 1968, we were smack dab in the Moon race with the Soviet Union. 

2001: A Space Odyssey came out that same year, and presented what turned out to be a rather ambitious vision of the future in terms of technology and societal advancement. 

Fast forward to the present, even twenty-three years after the fictional projections of that movie, we still don’t have any AI as sophisticated as HAL. How many comics, movies, etc., have predicted over the years that we would be in flying cars and using jetpacks by the year 2000? 

None of that has happened yet. 

So, the question is, why? Why has progress stymied so much?  And why are we still locked into the Second Industrial Revolution? 

We’re still using fossil fuels for most of our power, driving gas powered cars, and we’re still operating by hierarchical corporate structures. This system is inefficient, expensive, and fragile, and yet we are locked into it.

Why?

This may as well be a rhetorical question. We all know the answer. 

Because the powers that be, the capitalist elites and their enablers in the corporate media and government, have kept us stuck in the name of TRILLIONS in profits that they have hoarded for themselves. And yes, it's really that simple.

There are better, cleaner, safer and more efficient ways to power and move things. 

And we are going to talk about all of that.

But first, in order to understand how urgent it is that we change this system, you the reader must get crystal clear about exactly how ridiculously expensive and wildly inefficient our current Second Industrial Revolution energy system is before our society can truly begin to take corrective action.