Both technology and religion are found to have transcendence as a common motivation. -- Susan George, Religion and Technology in the 21st Century, introduction.
I remain diffident about following Justina Hadnott's account. Oh, the grooming and poise take work, and she wouldn't be caught dead in my static bubble guts environment, but I am too familiar with the smooth moving love joy routine of her less dazzling lard hindered sisters. My disposition is far too acerbic to love each day like it's my last. I've fought every day as my last, from calcified fecal matter buffering my hip spike cast on the ward (destroy them!) to my most recent calamities with having parked the Jazzy too far back to extend my bad arm to sit up on my concave stained mattress, and instead of giving in, calling 911, then getting a memo from Trudy Richardson asking why I did not contact the office. Well, because Lanishea the receptionist barely bothered to make a note to ask maintenance to bring up my new phone, and so I was left without the 5s until late Saturday, then the guard on duty did not respond to my pull cord signal for over six hours. This is minority competence in the inner city, hardly the pop corn comfort of Terrence Howard's scheming in prison issue orange.
The problem is temporarily solved, driving in so close to my milk crate bed stand that I endanger my pivot onto the toxic bedding, not that days cannot be numbered unexpectedly. Dave Goldberg's rather amusing treadmill demise is actually a perfect argument against mercy killing, since we never know, in the assurances we use to go on with our day, whether or not our propulsion driven tin cans will turn us into victuals for Elijah's ravens.
Airplanes are marvels of physics, and have been used in warfare since their manufacture became practical, and of course a passenger jet is still safer than most motor vehicles, but the post 9/11 environment has seen a dramatic change. We do not stop to think. Not necessarily that Airbus 321 may have been destroyed as an act of vengeance for MH17, (and if it was Putin is hardly chastened by conscience), but that we're rapidly losing control of the complex environment we've created. Cold War disinformation, the worry of my generation, is an outmoded tactic in the age of Goggle's amoral, if playful efficiency, and Obama's occasionally daring foreign policy insights ineffectual. Democracy is a shell game, and Communist central planning leads to the Orwellian cruelty of black children.
What does freedom mean in this context? We all have to game the system. We could mitigate it, on our own terms, but who does that anymore?
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