are you afraid of the dark?

by Eli

i always get excited when the power goes out. it’s the unexpected, followed by uncertainty. out come the flashlights and candles, the TV stays off, the internet doesn’t work, and neighbors discuss things: usually the power being out, but maybe other things as well.

the power went out for about 8 hours on the Steig’s block the other night. i was on my way outside to take pictures of our dark block surrounded by city lights when the power returned. i was bummed, to say the least.

that got me thinking, of course, that eventually the lights will go out for good. whether it’s in 50 years or 1000, it’s going to happen. all the light bulbs and computers and refridgerators and TVs and cars will go lifeless and we (whoever we are when that happens) will have to live without all that stuff, again.

i’ve noticed that this possibility has become a bit more real in the past few years, and not because of some new development in peak oil news. no, it wasn’t the internet and it’s “conspiracies” that has peaked my attention again; it was hollywood, and two blockbusters to be exact: Rise of the Silver Surfer and Live Free, Die Hard.

a key component to both of these new movies is the “power going out,” followed by at least one of the characters saying something like, “we need to get these lights back on.” part (or all) of the resolution in both movies included the lights coming back on and everyone cheering and smiling.

let’s take a look back in time. when we thought there was a communist threat, they were the enemies in our movies. when we thought there was a nuclear threat, that was the danger in our movies. when we thought arabs were responsible for terrorist attacks, they were the bad guys in our movies.

but the two movies mentioned above are different. the bad guys are either from 1) outer space or 2) within our system (or a combination of both); and part (or all) of what they are trying to accomplish is to shut down our support systems. these “bad guys” represent the two-fold reality of the situation to come.

evil from outer space: there is a finite supply of fossil fuels, which was created millions of years ago. it may as well have been brought here by aliens. who knows exactly how much oil is left and who knows when we will truely start to feel the crunch. it’s completely out of our hands.
evil from inside our own system: we have become extremely addicted to a finite resource. if only we can just act responsibly and break that addiction, the casualties will be minimal. it is our own inability to change, despite the obvious need to, that will be our undoing. it’s compeletly in our hands.

and it’s these evil forces that do what we’ve collectively decided is the worst thing that can possibly happen: they shut down our system, they turn off our lights, they break our cellphones, and they “send us back to the stone ages.” AHHHH!!! NOT THE STONE AGES!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!