Going to the Dogs
The future, in my mind – and, no doubt, in the minds of a growing percentage of humanity – does not look shiny bright, nor rosy, nor pregnant with promise and possibilities. It has taken on a dystopian appearance, an unreal feel, as if it were a futuristic science fiction plot. And it does not look good: its aspect is unwieldy, frightening, too much to cope with. A destiny controlled by the wrong entities: the narcissistic and sociopathic megarich, whose agendas revolve around wealth and power. Moreover, separating the wheat from the chaff – that is, fiction from non-fiction – is time-consuming, ofttimes disheartening, and requires a more ample knowledge base, more free time, and more common sense than most of us possess. Truths I view as clearly evident are met with round negations by my interlocutors, who show no desire to dissect, and analyze, their different facets. They sheer off into distraction mechanisms, repeating popular clichés, and beliefs, ad nauseum, not realising that beliefs are simply what you believe: hence, an expression of feelings, and one’s need to negate the untenable, the disturbing, the seldom heard. Beliefs can be a far cry from the truth, simply justifications for remaining stock still, intellectually speaking: warm and cozy, immersed in your comfort zone. But you cannot change what you refuse to acknowledge, and that human tendency to sheer off into fuzzy falsehoods, and doctored reality, while scapegoating the innocent, or peripheral, leaves us unable to recognize, and alter, even flagrant errors of judgment. Which, currently, abound.
I live in the midst of an admixture of cultures. Its hodgepodge oddity attracts documentary filmmakers in surprising numbers, but I do not think that any of their number would consider mo-ving here. Distinctly deleterious trends begin, or escalate, here: The opioid crisis. The rise in diabetes. The drop in longevity. Obesity. There exist glaring problems: appalling tooth decay; meth abuse – the twitchy brigade, I call them; poverty; and dysfunctional relationships. Sandwiched between the vacation homeowners, seasonal hunters, the observatory employees, Mennonites, infamous local alcoholics, native Appalachians, fundamentalists and other Christians, as well as a few periphery blow-ins, are those, like myself, seeking succour from cell phone towers due to a sensitivity. to certain electromagnetic fields. Not necessarily the most comfortable of cultural milieus, and those behind the camera lack the wherewithal to formulate the kind of questions which might elicit enlightening answers.
The electrohypersensitives are not precisely a community: we are a group of disparate souls raised in a culture emphasizing competition and individuality rather than cooperation and community: a culture of egocentricity, entitlement, and illusion which ill equips one for living in an environment very much not of one’s own choosing, and which could well be defined as hard graft. We compete for the services of skilled workers with long waiting lists to repair our houses and socialize minimally among ourselves. Many of us suffer from chronic maladies, while the outer world daily becomes a less tenable place to live. What to do? Die of loneliness, like prairie dogs, having fled from each other? Or – find consolation in pets. Increasing numbers of us – apart from the exclusively feline fanciers – go to the dogs. Their capacity to love seems greater than that of our fellow species, whose ability to love – and feel compassion – appears to be salaaming downhill. I watch what appears to be the wreck of humanity on Spaceship Earth while clinging to the life raft of my dog – and repairing to the faithful pen.
Clover Kreger
Dunmore
