Signs of the Times...

I wonder fairly often what future anthropologists will have to say about our current time period. There area always certain aspects of an era which seem to solidify it and, in many ways, define it. Examples may vary (greatly) with one's own personal tastes - e.g. one with a musical bend may remember the 1960's in the U.S. for the British Invasion just as easily as one with political interests may think of the ongoing Civil Rights movement - but things generally tend to run together, or at the very least may swirl around the recognition of a similar general sentiment. The development of civilizations, overthrows of leaders, technological revolutions, the words of great thinkers, wars, and collapses of societies all bring to mind what a particular time period means to us, and what we can learn from it. What will they take away from us?

I suppose one might dismiss this curiosity, and perhaps rightfully so. My generation will likely be old and over with by the time any solid conclusions are drawn. My point, however, is that it may be difficult to point to any one thing, or even any group of things, that can be said to define this era. The "war" in the middle east will probably come to be widely recognized as the faux-witch-hunt exercise in futility that it really is. Politically, the U.S. is divided as if with a scalpel, though people are deviating from the extremes...perhaps we'll see the re-emergence of a formidable third party. The political systems of many states have had power shifts occurring faster than the citizens could learn the new leader's name. Pop culture has spiraled out of any sort of control, becoming one gigantic cluster-fuck of increasingly banal modes of entertainment (the same can largely be said for music, though it's seen something of an upswing in the past several years). In the words of Bruce Springsteen, "Fifty-seven channels and nothing on." Where's the cream filling? The goddamned substance? (And speaking of substance, there aren't too many of what one might be inclined to call "thinkers" expounding any particularly substantial ideas at the moment.) All in all, cultures around the world are losing their sense of identity and meaning. American culture seems to have this loss built into its very system, with its "melting pot" emphasis. Maybe this is a good thing, even to a great extent, but the expansion of the global economy and the supposed global community has made us as human beings, regardless of nationality, feel far more alone than adjoined. And I think it goes without saying that the internet isn't helping any of this.

Technology comes to mind, and will be the likely answer, though (to be a bit of a cynic) perhaps not in an entirely positive sense. With every technological advance comes the unspoken fear that we're coming only that much closer to being able to "play God." No one except iron-willed naturalists will put up much of a fight against, say, nanotechnology and advanced experimental procedures in curing and treating illnesses, but there are other areas of research which seem to incite the wrong kind of curiosity. As I understand it, the biggie here is genetic manipulation (e.g. cloning). There are certain moral dilemmas we find ourselves faced with: though I doubt many would picket a lab growing cloned tissue for a skin transplant, we've got serious ethical snags with replicating an entire human being. From the spiritual (does it have a soul?) to the secular (is it a person?), tough questions clutter the entire issue of cloning. Even cut-and-dry genetic manipulation causes a good deal of furrowed brows here and there - what sort of implications does it have that we might be in a position to select the genetic features of our children? I, for one, am largely indifferent as to what any mad scientist type breeds and cage-fights in his laboratory. He/she(/it?) can have at it, and even sell tickets if he/she(/it?) wants to. But even a more or less live-and-let-live sort such as myself can take issue with the last example: when and if we begin crafting super-humans, cherry-picking the wants and don't-wants toward ideal human beings, will not the very "humanity" vanish from us? What meaning will "human being" then take on? If our entire species becomes an enormous laboratory experiment, we flirt with violently upsetting the evolutionary forces that brought us here, kicking and screaming, from shape to shape, trait to trait, for millions of years. I'm not suggesting that we would not weigh these consequences (some certainly more carefully than others), but expressing my doubt that we would, in the heat of our excitement and self-importance, take them quite seriously enough. What do you think? Are we too far along, too smart, too highly-evolved to bury ourselves with such an obvious blunder?

Just look at how much of the planet we've managed to cover in our trash in a mere century.