I am a child of the 70’s, being born in the early 60’s but the majority of my childhood memories are from the 70’s. Like many of my generation, I watched a lot of TV and living in Los Angeles at the time, we had a larger selection of channels to watch. I liked watching shows like ‘The twilight Zone’ and ‘The outer Limits’. I got to watch a lot of science fiction from the 50’s and 60’s like Flash Gorden, Buck Rogers, The invisible Man etc. And I came to the conclusion that these stories were warnings from the writers of what could happen in a post atomic age based on fear of ‘man’s weaknesses’ like greed and fear.

The Time Machine’ starring Rod Taylor where man had become two different societies, the Eloi and the Morlocks. Imagine a society where one part of humanity preyed on the other. One was evil and the other apathetic.

I didn’t just devour science fiction though. I watched stories like The Scarlet Pimpernel and Zorro along with The Lone Ranger, Batman, Robin Hood and the Cisco Kid. The protagonist fighting evil and righting wrongs done to the people by those in authority that abuse their power over the helpless or even the hapless. 

In each case, you have an authority figure or a group of people that set out to abuse their power in order to get more money or power and ‘Lord it over the masses’ who have become powerless and weak. Imagine a group of people who is supposed to help the populace only to hurt them in order to retain their power, authority and wealth.

A Dystopian story is one where there is great suffering or injustice to the people at large. A literary hero is born out of need in times of great depression. The Scarlet Pimpernel saving the members of the French who were being wrongfully tried and executed by the angry revolutionaries who were indiscriminately beheading those they thought were responsible for the socio=economic downturn. 

Zorro was created because of the evil alcade that raised the taxes of the poor. There had become a two class society of the poor and the ultra rich and powerful. Even the land owners were subject to the evil alcalde. Zorro, like the Scarlet Pimpernel maintained his identity by keeping his face covered and acting weak, when in fact he was strong. Following the guidelines of Sun Zsu, Act strong where weak and act weak where strong. Batman also maintained his secret identity only allowing his most trusted allies to know who he was. Alfred who was more than just a butler but someone who assisted Bruce Wayne in almost everyway. Gotham City had become over run with criminals that even the Police could not control.

In Equilibrium, society was forced to take a daily drug to suppress emotion and guarantee obedience to government. The enforcing body called Clerics enforce the will of the leader called Father by making sure everyone takes the drug Librium. Father believes that art, music, poetry are all forms of emotion and emotion causes wars and conflict. Preston is the leading Cleric who, after missing a dose of Librium, begins to ‘feel’ emotions and eventually fights authority after loosing someone he started to care about. 

In almost every dystopian story, evil starts small and grows because society neglects to stop evil when it starts, so evil gets a foothold in society. Like the frog in a pot of water, the heat is slowly turned up until evil controls everything and then it is too late and the need for a savior becomes necessary. 

As of the writing of this post, it is Christmas Eve of 2023. In America, we have allowed evil to get a foothold in our society. It started slowly with the idea of equality. Someone used language to get a foothold and grow. We heard things like ‘Hope and Change’, but we neglected to ask the important questions of “Hope for what? Change to What?” Evil actually started to grow much earlier but when evil saw a chance to make the final dash to victory, it took it. The way to conquer a society is to divide it. Abraham Lincoln said a society divided can not stand. Well, look at at how many divisions are destroying our American society. Black and white, straight or gay, Jewish or Islamic, Christian vs atheist, Men wanting to be called women, rich against poor, small business vs large corporations, pharmaceutical giants vs naturalists, Constitutionalists vs liberalism. freedom vs communism. There can’t be a savior with so many divisions in our society, or can there be?

The person to be a savior in such a dystopian society must be strong, Must be able to fight evil and save all of society, but who could possibly be able to fight so much evil? 

Recently, I started doubting myself. I started to question my beliefs. I had to ask help from someone to straighten my understanding. You might be asking who could possibly know enough to be able to help me in my understanding. There is only one person capable of healing so much division in our society and he has been chased out of our schools, courts, police stations, congress and our homes. maybe because he has been chased out of everywhere, that there is so much division. Maybe, we as a society need to invite him back into our schools, courts and our homes. As today is Christmas eve, maybe we should recognize tomorrow as more than the savior of our economy’s bottom line and recognize who he is and what he already did for us. From Headtap, Merry Christmas and may we ask him to heal our land. 

2 Chronicles 7:14

May we bring Christ back into our society, our laws and our hearts

In the early 80’s, I took night college courses because I worked during the day. My mom took an interest in one of my classes in English composition. The class was choosing a topic, researching the subject and writing a paper on the subject. One of my papers for the class was entitled “Disposable America”. I remember thinking at the time how the American societal mentality followed the thoughts and actions of the disposable products we used. I equated my generations thoughts on marriage to those of my grandparents and compared the generational thoughts of the ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ philosophy. My grandparents survived the Great Depression by saving and reusing everything. Almost nothing was disposed of if it could be reused. My grand father wrote with a fountain pen which nothing went to the landfill. The pen had a bladder which allowed it to be dipped in an ink well and the ink was literally pulled thrugh the nib thereby keeping it primed with ink. My grand mother saved almost everything that could be repurposed, even making dresses for herself and daughters from flour sacks, which at the time were of soft cotton material and had a floral pattern on many of them. My grand parents were married one month shy of 60 years. They did not have a disposable mentality. 

 

In the 1970’s, fast food was a big hit much like today. McDonalds had a Happy meal which included a hamburger, small fries and a small drink for .99 cents. A cheeseburger happy meal was a Nickle more and the food came in a Styrofoam container. In around the late 70’s to early 80’s, fast food switched to paper to protect the environment. After all, paper degraded into something more beneficial in the landfill than did Styrofoam. People were using Bic Stik disposable pens or Paper Mate office stick pens which were almost all plastic and un-reusable. There were even single use dress shirts made of a woven paper available in vending machines in the New York subways. Divorce was on the rise and planned obsolescence increased the number of appliances entering the landfill. We had gone from cloth diapers to disposable, single use diapers which adds to the trash which takes decades to break down once it enters the ‘dump’. In the 40’s almost no one had ever heard of a TV dinner, but they became a staple in American diets in the 60’s and 70’s family households for the convenience. And the mentality of the American citizen has embraced the disposable products for convenience and lower cost. 

 

Fast forward to today, December of 2023 and we see America in decline as we even believe people are disposable. Look and the false reporting of the abortion subject. The Supreme Court reversed Roe v Wade and said there was never a Constitutional Right to an abortion but that the individual states and its citizens have the right to decide whether abortion is allowed in the state. Now, some states have gone beyond what Row v Wade hade and have even made abortion legal AFTER CHILDBIRTH. Think about it, now, in some states like New York, Colorado and California, a woman can choose to have an abortion after the child is born. Talk about the ultimate disposable mentality.

 

Everything like cars, appliances, office equipment, and even electronics have become disposable. Even, I might add biological body parts. Now, men want to become women and vice versa so the body parts are surgically removed and disposed of. Talk about the ultimate disposable mentality. 

 

As America enters a new year of 2024, we as a society must tackle certain issues if we are going to survive. We will most likely enter another economic depression the like of which we have never thought of yet alone prepared ourselves for. With our disposable mentality, I fear that we will have a harder time surviving the coming economic storm because we will not know how to ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ things because we don’t value items. After all, how can you value something that you so easily throw away. The wise people that value what they have will fair better than those that so easily dispose of people, things and even themselves