Dregs of Yore

The world is growing more and more “humanitarian” every day. In fact, being a “human” has taken precedence over being a man or a woman or a citizen or an Asian. It is on a cosmopolitan plane that the modern man in search of his soul seeks his identity. Anything on a less macro level is seen as a “label”. A label to be put on as a costume at will, or ripped off like you would a bandaid, as an act of liberation, even if it takes some of your skin along with it.  The usage of the word ‘human’ has risen consistently since the 1900s. I pinpoint the start of this to the Industrial Revolution. After reaping its gains in productivity, for the first time in the history of mankind, we saw the possibility that resources that had been scarce as long as man knew, could perhaps be in surplus one day. At least some of them. I wouldn’t say all of man’s desires can be satiated by increasing production, but man certainly thought so. At least then. In a sense, ‘the machine’ freed the human. The ‘us v...

The flame of creativity flickers dangerously. Prometheus’ punishment, was it all in vain? This is the information age. Information, information, everywhere. Constantly assaulting your senses. Information is mainstream. Access to information has never been higher. But it is not the same as access to knowledge. A lot of this information is actually anti-knowledge.  The advent of the search engine led to an explosion of information available to the everyman. As did social media. A hundred extraneous details about the lives of people you know far too little, and like even less, are now buzzing around in your head, even if you do not want them. Irrelevant trivia about the number of goals scored by a certain athlete in a 1972 game, or the affair between a prominent celebrity and his stepdaughter. The random useless things you end up google searching on your everyday train of thought. Just because you can, you know? So much so, it’s become impossible to shut out. Art is fading away. Where...