If  God lived  on Earth,  people would  break his  windows.
(Jewish proverb)

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We appear to be gradually entering  a dystopia like the ones I read
about  in novels  by guys  like William  Gibson back  when I  was a
teenager. I  recall in  one of those  books a  character mentioning
that  horses had  died  out  - obviously  a  detail  to drive  home
that this  world, despite  having takeout  food in  white cardboard
containers and coffee and a lot  of things that feel like our world
had  also gone  wrong in  some fundamental  ways including  serious
environmental damage.


Somewhere  out  there  in  our  not  so  distant  future  lies  the
extinction of a  species that people identify with  and really care
about, maybe  horses or tigers, or  the bald eagles that  we pulled
back from the brink of extinction.


Philip K. Dick's novel 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' is set
in a bleak future in  which we've thoroughly irradiated and trashed
the ecological systems of the  Earth. Many people have ditched that
Earth for colonies  on other worlds to escape the  wreckage and the
characters of  the novel are  trapped in the  kipple-infested world
trying to make sense of life  there or at least distract themselves
from how  awful it is in  the nuclear dustbowl that  our planet has
become.  Escapism in  the form  of a  new religion  (Mercerism) and
acquiring rare  pets (since so  many species are extinct  or nearly
so) take  the place of  having something  real to look  forward to.
People still  play the stupid  games of status symbols  and showing
one another up.

I  feel  like  we  may  be  slipping  gradually  into  that  future
sometimes, one tiptoe step into the  water at a time. Frogs may not
boil in a pot without realizing it but we appear as a species to be
proving that particular myth 'confirmed' for us instead.



                            NO CARRIER