The above image was made with stable diffusion from the prompt 'robed figures standing next to a portal into another world.' It illustrates my feelings on the current situation in the US. A cultural high priest of red and a cultural high priest of blue preside over a portal leading to the future they're working together to create. Since the present they've created is already a dystopia, this mysterious future might not be all that great.
Beyond the portal is genuinely unknown territory. We've been treating our ecological reality, which is to say our physical reality, like a giant biology experiment. Any aspect of this experiment could, on its own, completely transform society. Microplastics. Declining fertility. Mass consumption of drugs and endocrine disruptors. Air pollution. These things and more are the ground on which our future must now necessarily be built.
The social dimension of this future isn't more promising. Our politics and economics are nakedly corrupt and fundamentally unsustainable. The US has literally been in a constant state of emergency since 9/11. Covid culture, red and blue, has seized control of public discourse.
One way or another, we're going through the portal. Right now, the high priests of red and blue control the narrative about what's on the other side. But we're all capable of seeing the future more clearly than the regressive reds or bank-owned blues. At least, I hope we are.
There is something mystical about these robe figures. Something arcane and important. The vast machinery supporting them is hidden from view. Their hordes of militants are nowhere to be seen. We hear their pronouncements, mistaking them for power while true power is quietly exercised by other means.
The biggest mystery to me is why we ever elevated such figures to great status in the first place. In truth, I'm beginning to suspect that we didn't elevate these figures at all. Rather, I feel like they were foisted upon us by a media taking orders from the same corporate overlords that own our politicians.
The power of institutional religion has been waning for a long time. But people haven't become less religious. They've merely transferred their religious sentiments to those with perceived social power in the new cultural landscape. The high priests of red and blue. Celebrities. Important people like that.
I do like that the AI image looks like an old photograph. Like, maybe it's just a snapshot of one possible future, and other possibilities could be better. Any day now, people could break free from the trance of red and blue. Any day now.
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