Rant of a Grouchy Luddite
sub-title: I Can't wait…
I shall begin with whimsy-I shall assume an identity, thereby leading you to believe that I am a grumpy individual, who is quite convinced that everything about the modern world is unbearable and disgusting, who believes that the beginning of anything, including our planet and human life, carries the implication of its eventual end, that humanity is bringing about that end at an ever-accelerating rate, and that the species likely able to survive our poisons, roaches and earwigs, won't miss us.
Before I begin my mischievous rant, I must reach back into the nineteenth century for an appropriate identity. Let us assume that I am a modern day Luddite. The Luddite movement, named for Ned Ludd, originated in 1811, and its members were craftsman who used hand looms to create garments and other useful dry goods. They were weavers, artisans who were opposed to the cheap, wide framed looms that were coming into use and could be operated by unskilled workers. The Luddites went so far as to clandestinely destroy those fiendish devices, and in the process often clashed with the British Army. (Who would have thought that a bunch of weavers could be so pugnacious?) In our day the word Luddite is used to characterize anyone who opposes technological progress by way of mechanization, industrialization, and automation.
By the way, a popular folk group of the late nineteen forties and the early fifties, the Weavers, sang songs of social protest and songs in support of labor unions. The Weavers took their name from a play which also happened to deal with the plight of weavers in Silesia (now part of Poland), and was written by Gerhart Hauptmann, a Silesian playwright. Life was apparently becoming tough for the weavers all over Europe.
I now feel sufficiently warmed-up to offer a Luddite's rant:
I can't wait until the very last drop of oil has been pumped out of the ground.
I can't wait until the people running gas-powered chainsaws, leaf blowers, and lawnmowers won't be able to purchase gasoline for their incredibly intrusive devices that, in my neighborhood, howl every livelong day.
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Rant of a Grouchy Luddite
sub-title: I Can't wait…
I can't wait until the last few drops of gasoline in the world unite with oxygen and explode in an engine cylinder, thereby marking the terminal gasp of the last operating gasoline powered internal combustion engine.
I can't wait for our streets to be filled with horse manure. We can dry and burn it for fuel, we can fertilize our gardens with it, and the blacksmithing trade will once again become a widespread and honorable profession. (Watch where you step.)
I can't wait until several camels have to be brought into service to tow the ostentatious Rolls Royce automobiles owned by oil-rich sheiks.
I can't wait for it to be impossible to cover any more land with asphalt.
I can't wait for the disappearance of all-terrain-vehicles, snow-mobiles, and speedboats from our wilderness areas and waterways. What is wrong with riding a bicycle to the woods, hiking trails on foot, paddling a canoe on still waters, sailing a boat, and sleeping in a tent, thereby removing those damnable recreational vehicles from the parking lots of our public forests?
I can't wait until so-called artists have to use hand chisels to carve busts, memorials, totem poles, and tombstones. I want a raised middle finger carved on my stone.
I can't wait until all the physicians refuse to treat patients who have health insurance, then we can return to a time of sanity when there was no such thing as health insurance. Doctors were concerned with keeping their patients happy, doctors made house calls, and doctors charged reasonable rates. As things stand now, I don't even have a doctor I can call my own; if I go to see him, chances are I will only be allowed to see his nurse practitioner (who probably is more savvy about illness than the doctor). If I do see the doctor, he writes out a prescription for some drug that a pharmaceutical company is pushing. The politicians say things will be so wonderful when we have universal health insurance. Nothing like another huge bureaucracy to create outlandish administrative costs of managing an inflated bureaucracy. What are the odds you'll get better medical care if there's universal health insurance? I'll loan you a knife if you need to remove your appendix.
I can't wait for electronic music to disappear, and musicians once again will need to confine their performances to traditional, non-electric, non-digital instruments- pianos, violins, saxophones, tubas, castanets, and kazoos.
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Rant of a Grouchy Luddite
sub-title: I Can't wait…
I can't wait for the time when stage performers no longer have the means to amplify their voices, and actors again learn how to project their voices so that even people in the last row of an auditorium can hear the words.
I can't wait for the return of commercial artists who are competent illustrators, as opposed to today's so-called graphic designers, who only know how to select, arrange, and paste pre-packaged illustrations and type fonts.
I can't wait for a time when shipping goods into the country takes so much time and is so expensive that once again factories and craftsmen in our country return to making shoes, clothes, underwear, toys, pet food, buggy whips, and buggies.
I can't wait until the primary source of power for household appliances is once again hand-cranking-a perfectly suitable power source for hand mixers, ice cream makers, washing machines, and washing machine ringers. This reminds me that we might again return to the practice of drying washed items on outdoor clotheslines. So what if they freeze in the winter? They'll thaw when you press them with the (non-electric) iron.
I can't wait until people prefer once again to sit on their front porches in the evening and chat with passersby who happen to be taking a walk to town, and the entertainment is summer band concerts, church ice cream socials, Halloween parades, hometown (adult) softball games, Fourth of July celebrations, school plays, choral festivals, tacky traveling carnivals and circuses, and Christmas pageants.
I can't wait until people are pleased to get out of bed when the sun rises-and go back to bed when the sun sets, and, if they want to read, enjoy managing that pastime by the light of a candle-perhaps two candles, or a candle lantern.
I can't wait until the time when the only aircraft in the skies shall be huge, slow-moving blimps filled with non-combustible gas, although I'm not quite sure about the fuel that would drive them forward, or, for that matter, the composition of the non-combustible gas, unless we might somehow learn how to bottle the hot air exuded by politicians.
(Remember; this wasn't my rant; this was my idea of how a Luddite would voice his complaints about modern life.)
Finally, I can't wait until I go to sleep one night, then wake up and find that it's nineteen thirty-nine again, but only if Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Joseph Stalin can be subtracted from my reawakening.
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