one of my favorite sci-fi authors, david brin, is writing these great essays on his blog, wondering about the notion that we might actually be living in someone’s star trek holodeck scenario. that this fucked up insanely unrealistic world that we’re living in, and by extension, us, aren’t real at all; we’re just figments of the combined imagination of some computer and some lucky person living in the future. but WHO?
…let me weigh in on what I consider to be the worst possible catastrophe of them all. One that would explain every stupidity in the world today. That we are living in a very poor simulation….
All right, then, folks. Can YOU see anybody around you whose life we must clearly all be revolving around, in his personal holodeck program?
All right, some of you guessed… (and some had heard it before).
I think Bill Maher had it right. “The real exit strategy for the US in Iraq has already begun. Not because the war is won. But because W has begun to get bored with his latest Fantasy Job.”
And what that implies may be the scariest possibility of all.
Come on! A youth spent in unbelievable frat boy party-stupor mode, with plenty of geeks to write your term papers while you get to torment em unmercifully.
Then… jet pilot! Wearing a snappy uniform and silk scarf while screeching over the Gulf, taking free flying lessons as you bravely defend your land from… Fidel! And each evening sipping margaritas by the beach, while a million other sons go off to battle Charlie in Nam…
…till that got boring. So then there came a series of other fantasy jobs: political operative, cowboy, oil man… oh!… and then baseball team owner! (The fantasy can’t be baseball player, since that’s real work.)
…then governor of the great Lone Star State of Texas. Yee haw! (Especially the way it starts, by putting down that Ann Richards bitty, who said all those mean things about people who are born with a silver foot-in-the-mouth. Here’s my silver foot, Annie. Yeah!)
All right, so each of these jobs palled after a while. So each time you move on to something else, it means that you leave a train wreck behind you? A trail of steaming failures for others to clean up? Isn’t that what nerds are for?
