A New Hope

Sorry about the sappy title, and apologies to George Lucas, but there's an odd conundrum developing in the usually pessimistic corners of my brain. On the one hand, I look at the current economic mess and wonder, "What next?" just as the newest SNAFU hits the fan. Automakers, who have for decades ignored dwindling gas supplies and rising prices, resisted the need for less polluting vehicles, and who have been feeding the greed frenzy with the likes of Hummers and other fuel-insatiable monstrosities, have suddenly decided that they need help to carry on, or the entire country is going to drown in a tsunami of unemployment and related ills.

Or the banking industry, which has fed its own appetite for luxury and excess to such an extent that its CEOs and other executives have driven venerable institutions into a quagmire of bad loans and unspeakable debt, requires us to fork over 700 billions to help fix things--and some of the companies are apparently using it for bonuses they otherwise couldn't afford, or dividends, or other payouts that have nothing to do with saving the economy, and then bitching when somebody suggests using part of the windfall to provide an antidote for some of those "toxic" mortgages that caused the industry to implode in the first place.

On the other hand, however, I find myself waxing optimistic as I watch the new administration taking shape. The world as a whole seems pleased with American's choice of president, and some of the saber-rattling has calmed down. In this country, I hear positive comments on both the right and the left at the possibility that Hillary Clinton might become Secretary of State (something, by the way, I predicted to Beloved Spouse after she conceded the nomination to Obama), and there are increasingly audible noises about a Republican cabinet member. McCain seems to be in a conciliatory mood, and pundits are welcoming back "the old John McCain"--the one who brokered deals on campaign finance across the aisle, not the one who inexplicably chose rabidly partisan Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Abraham Lincoln is back in the news, thanks to Doris Kearnes Goodwin's almost prophetic book, Team of Rivals, which Barack Obama seems to be using as something of a guidebook in deciding how to populate his cabinet. Wisdom is back in style, and intelligence has been resurrected as a badge of honor, rescued from the dung heap under which it has been buried for the last eight years. I don't mean to be crabby about this, but the denigration of the intellectual in recent years has caused me more angst than any single issue aside from the war, and has made my job --and the job of teaching in general--immeasurably more difficult.

And therein lies the rub. It's really hard to be a utopian when things are going well. But for the first time in a very long time, I'm not sure the world is going to end before I die (my 65th birthday, December 21, 2012, notwithstanding). Even my daughter, who had grown increasingly disinclined to raise children in the world as it has been, decided after the election that maybe I will be a grandmother someday, after all. So despite the economy's current downturn, I can't help but see the possibility, at least, of a rebound if Obama can construct coalitions of people who really want to save the world--or at least help the world save itself. Perhaps fear of abject economic collapse is a good thing: an impetus to finally create workable solutions.

Of course, if things really do get better, the sequel to More News From Nowhere will look a little silly, based as it is (in its planning stages, at least) on the probability of near-future catastrophe.

The discussion in New Scientist I mentioned in my last post, about the future of science fiction, is also relevant here, because utopias spring from the same impulse: wondering about what can and/or will be. Economic difficulties are not the only ones we face, of course, and Kim Stanley Robinson is spot-on when he says "we have to do the impossible and imagine the next century. The default probability is bad - not just dystopia but catastrophe, a mass extinction event that we will have caused and then suffered ourselves. That's a story we should tell, repeatedly, but it's only half the probability zone. It is also within our powers to create a sustainable permaculture in a healthy biosphere." So perhaps the task of science fiction and utopian writers alike will be to imagine conditions that either stave off or ameliorate the catastrophic possibilities.

Immersed as I am with the current academic quarter, and in working on a myth course I haven't taught in years (but get to in January), I don't have much time for writing now, anyway. But I will, at least for the moment, enjoy the possibility of peace, economic recovery, and/or positive changes in the environmental situation. And if, in future, I'm out of a job in terms of plot devices or blog fodder, so be it. I think it will be well worth the price.

Note: just in time to help me celebrate, Wall-E is out on DVD today. For anyone who hasn't seen it, I can't say enough to recommend it. Pixar may have produced the single most hopeful film released in recent years, and this is the perfect moment for its wide release for home viewing.

Image credit: Evelyn de Morgan's Hope in a Prison of Despair, 1887, via Wikimedia Commons.

WALL-E and the Pale Blue Dot

The moment in which I actually entered the twentieth century, despite the fact that I'd already been on the planet for 33 years by then, can be traced back to September of 1980 and the day we brought home my first color television set.

It was only a 13-incher, and I would have been happy with black and white for quite a bit longer if it hadn't been for Carl Sagan, and his series Cosmos. I just couldn't imagine watching what promised to be the best astronomy show ever, in black and white. And I was right. It was gorgeous, and well written, and had me and my kids (even though one of them was only a year old) riveted to that tiny set.

A few days ago, Beloved Spouse, who's not usually impressed by much, came home abuzz about a show he'd heard on XM radio on his way home from tennis. It was an interview with Nick Sagan, Carl's son (the one whose voice was recorded on the "golden record" sent out on Voyager I, with greetings from the children of planet Earth) in which he talked about his book You Call This the Future, and (with his mother, Linda Salzman-Sagan) about making the "record." I didn't hear the broadcast, but apparently they also played "The Pale Blue Dot" (which is floating around on YouTube with quite a number of tribute videos), in which the late Sagan reminds us of the utterly amazing nature of our planet's very existence, and the fact that it may well be unique in the universe. I for one hope not, but don't expect to stay alive long enough to find out differently.

In the usual manner in which coincidences work, we finally got to see Pixar's WALL-E on Sunday, and it's now my official all-time favorite American animated film. Of course its environmental theme and its engaging, rather gentle, but nonetheless pointed exploration of modern popular culture resonated like crazy with the Sagan video. The little pale dot that is us is, for all we know, all we have. And, unlike the folks who built WALL-E and sent the Axiom out into space, we don't have a deus-ex-machina to rescue us; nor do we have time to develop the technology at the rate we're going.

After all, we don't even have flying cars yet, as Sagan the Younger points out in his book. We're still trying to figure out how to get past the internal combustion engine, making me think that because of our insoluble bonds to Big Oil and Big Power, we're stuck with an eternal, infernal combustion engine. The fires of our own human-made hell, anyone?

What surprised me about WALL-E, though, was not the way it dealt with the trashed out-planet, or even the "Buy n Large" conglomerate that runs everything (after all, I'm a Chuck fan, and the "Buy More" jokes are already part of my vocabulary). The most telling aspect of the vision of the future represented in the film was the end product of our "plug in; tune out" culture, which is now only in its infancy. But at the rate we're going, it really isn't hard to imagine a bunch of balloon-like humanoid creatures floating around in mag-lev barcaloungers sipping frankenfood ("pizza in a cup!") through a straw.

When WALL-E accidentally bumps a couple of the Axiom's inhabitants out of their chairs, they suddenly start noticing what's around them, and it's as if a spark's been lit. Wonder happens. The same wonder I'm beginning to miss in many of my students. And we don't even have flying chairs . . . yet.

Our kids already have drastically shortened attention spans (except when they're playing video games), only read online (and what they read is really problematic), socialize as if they were attached to E. M. Forster's Machine, and are becoming obese (and developing related infirmities) at an alarming rate. Our best and brightest are becoming limited by increasingly impoverished environments, even as the amount of information they're asked to process increases exponentially.

WALL-E is a sweet, poignant movie that disturbs me in ways I never expected it to. While paying homage to our pale blue dot, and reminding us of Carl Sagan's lesson, it also pines wistfully for an awakened consciousness about over-dependence on technological toys. It makes me look back on the days when I truly appreciated my tiny color TV--my only entertainment source besides a stereo, a Victrola, and a couple of pre-schoolers--in innocent ignorance of what the future had in store, flying cars or no.

Photos: WALL-E wallpaper from Pixar; Pale Blue Dot from Wikipedia.