16 [JUST BEFORE]

“Would it be appropriate” continued the questioner at the mic… such a sing-song quality to the voice, strangely pleasant…  “to surmise that technologies have not improved human benefit, but are tools to promote these negative trends?”

Easy one. “The data clearly supports that, yes.  Technologic development creates huge market advantage and profiteering for the elite, while providing minimal quality-of-life returns to the vast majority of users and consumers.”

Big breath. “Consumer tekk may constitute the modern-day ‘bread and circuses’ of ancient Rome, something to keep a revolt of the common man at bay while bigger schemes play out. It’s ‘middle-class’ people happily I-gramming what they had for lunch while the actual power-controllers, the zero-point-one percent ruling class profits for that extravagance. The economic gap between the uber-rich and everyone else is now the widest in the history of our species. Many sociologists assert that the internet, for example, has not connected humanity in some better way for positive species growth and enlightenment, but mostly exists for profit by feeding addictions and compulsions, distributing porn, marketing schemes, hacker-theft and political partisanship.”

Why not? I went on, “The warning of Eisenhower on the joining of technology and the military-industrial business establishment has played true in each of the recent large-scale wars. Better tekk means advantages over enemies. The only thing Ike didn’t anticipate was globalization.”

The student continued, “The growth of technology is for individual profit and not species betterment?”

Damn; I couldn’t make out much by the clothing… a tunic? A faint glow around the figure? What the hell…??

I felt drawn in, something drawing me to answer honestly…. “Species betterment seems to have many interpretations. Who you are in the global food chain becomes key to that particular assessment. ‘Betterment’ is now framed by profit-gain. It’s all a non-zero-sum game, and we’re all players.”

The room began to take on a different aura. There was now a glow in the whole room… were the florescent lights mal-functioning? Wind-chimey sounds could also be heard… is this the silly Michigan weather everyone is buzzing about today?

I continued to dig my own grave, “One digression worth making.  Decades ago, Dr. Arthur C. Clarke pointed out that the technologic genie was essentially out of the bottle, and that only wise politics between peoples could keep nuclear mutually-assured-destruction from becoming a truism. In the post-Soviet, multi-national nuclear reality with asymmetric warfare, the motivation of international politics is not avoidance of global nuclear winter through diplomacy, but maintenance of a healthy global market advantage by the wealthy through any means possible. Radical, rogue states are rather poor customers in that marketplace, and don’t play well with others, especially when they have nukes. It’s basically economic Darwinism. We may be at greater risk for global destruction today than ever before.”

The microphone rustled… clearly the second figure, almost identical… lithe, tall, slender, bald… a different glow, more blue-ish, but distinct… a voice of same tone and timbre…

“Dr. Thomas, thank you for clarity. Mankind… humanity-species… deserve to survive, to continue on?”

You have got to be kidding… this is getting weird… everything bathed in swirling light coming from… somewhere… music… either the aliens have arrived, or I’m having a stroke…

“Deserve to survive and continue on? I’m not qualified to make that…”

The… being?… at the mic interrupted, “Uniquely qualified, you are, Doctor. What say you?”

The air was a thick reality, a moment I could never forget… never.

“We advance technologically, but our entire history reveals unswerving selfishness. We hurt, we kill, we take advantage of each other. As a collective species, we may never move past this state… even if given a real chance, we may not want to. We remain as we are; murderous, selfish, and aggressively self-serving. To risk using a religious term, we are fallen and contaminated.”

Deep breath, like the release forced by truth-serum, “I know not how the Universe deems the worth of our continued species existence. Even if given more time, with all things being equal, humanity does not show any inherent quality or character that would speak towards a future any different than our past behaviour.”

The mic site was abruptly vacant. The… beings… were suddenly gone Everything in the room stood still, like some amber-suspended-animation scene from a Sci-Fi show.

Oh, shit, what did I just say, and… to whom?

crisbaj

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‘The Last Last Lecture’ is copyright ©2018-2021 by crisbaj. All rights reserved. No reproductions, reprinting or reposting without express permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Contact:  http://www.crisbaj.com

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