I just saw Jurassic World for the second time, and we saw Ant Man a few hours before (maybe my family needs to work on conversational skills, cuz we go to a lot of movies), but something hit me.
Just like in these movies, and plenty other popular ones, the theme is new technology getting into evil hands and this making things a destructive, horrible, reckless mess of chaos.
The T-rex who gets un-shrimpy arms because we’ve spliced anabolic DNA together tears his way through a theme park like a 2-year old let loose in Legoland. The power of a new “Pym particle” makes humans small and ants huge so that people get thrown into bug zappers and “Yellow Jackets” blow up helicopters and stuff.
Madness.
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And I realized that each of us is in the same situation. In fact it’s staring you in the face with it’s big bright eye right now. You’re touching it.
We have a lot of power in our hands right now. We can connect with anybody or order anything from across the world for good or for harm. We can record anything for praise or blackmail. We can have alternative identities to do anonymous acts of kindness, or to do undercover sinister things.
Even when I noticed my face was in my phone checking my blog stats today instead of engaging in conversation with my dad, who I came all the way home to hang out with, I realized, I’ve succumbed to the power!
Dangit! I’m the bad guy!
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So, I just want to point that out so that we can be a little more conscious of what we do with the power at our fingertips. For good or for harm. For beauty, or for selfishness. Every time I get distracted by a notification or a link, I want to get good at asking myself, am I about to push this button because I have good intentions or bad ones in my heart.
Let’s try to be the good guys.
And not get anybody stuck in a bug zapper.
Raw Spoon, 7-19-15
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