broken record

It is painfully obvious to me that I will be on this topic for a while. First because I realize that 16 years of SciFi channel has made me complacent, thinking that there will always be a SciFi channel. Second because the one reader I have may get really sick of the subject. And thirdly, it will be painfull because I will be reattaching a limb that has been dangling by a stringy tendon. Science fiction is the ultimate guidebook for understanding an Aquarius. It's major themes of hope, common good, responsibility and technicolor dreamscapes of the imagination are keys to the Aquarian archetype. Those themes apply equally across the board, government and governed. We are dreamers building realities where there was only empty space. And some people don't get it.
I've been surrounded by people who don't get it. People who think imagination is a collossal waste of time and energy, that art is for people who write grants, and store bought schlock is good enough for everybody keep telling me I have to buckle down, fly right, be logical and keep my feet on the ground [head out of the clouds]. And I have let them dictate how I interpret the view in my mirror. In an effort to not assault my brother and sister with ideas, novelty and invention, I have suppressed my outer SciFi geek. Well, based on what Michael Weiss said about his last art installment, its more like repressed the geek. All that time shut up in a dark closet waiting for an empty house so that she could sneak out and play has atrophed a goodly portion of who she was. And it shows.
I used to know who I was. More importantly, I used to know who my people were, where they were and why we were united. If you put this mini battle into a Mutant vs. Human context, I'm on Proffessor Xavier's side. But, I am hiding in the woodwork. That is to say, the me that found more than slick entertainment value in the SciFi genre.
There are ramifications that I had not fully considered until this de-geeking of SciFi started. Sidebar, de-geeking sounds very benign, like extricating your computer from a nasty worm or spider's malignant designs. But, since we are dealing with people, it really amounts to the kind of culling preceding a genocide of any magnitude. We were brought out into the light with the flashy programming and neato gizmos, thinking that someone finally got us. Oh they got us. In their sites. Just enough freedom and tolerance to allow the miscreants to reveal their true nature and you get Salem all over again... okay, I exaggerated. Still... it would make for a good plot in the vein of Perretti. Christians vs. Humanists. And that folks is the best idea I've had for a plotline in nearly a decade. Sadly it comes out of my paranoia. Anyone want to run with that go ahead. Back on point: one of those things that has atrophied is my vision.
I can't see things like I used to. Sure, I still have mad dot conecting skills. But it is superficial. I used to have these great OMG that is a GF Plot! or a GF Character moment that made my body feel like someone poured warm honey over my head. Good feeling until you realize that you have to clean up the mess... i.e. write the stupid story with proper punctuation, spelling, grammatical usages et all. Now when I am connecting dots I see dark things in corners that no one should be talking about for a while yet or I'm just laughing with the kind of banal glee a geek can get from absolutely nothing. I used to see plotlines and characters. I used to see heroes defy greed, violence and apathy. Now? Now I'm thinking a claymore, stick of C-4 or a zat is the only solution to every problem. I see corporate raiders taking over and there being nothing done to stop them. I used to see that I had power.
That is really the probem with Science fiction. The archetypes endure hardships that would break a "regular" human spirit. The characters have a consciousness that recognizes value in each individual because the individual makes the whole. Everyone has power to effect changes in their world, and science fiction, even with its capacity to shred your nerves with special effects and fantastic adventure at warp speed, puts the character in a place where he/she/it can develop personal power that does not contradict the establishment. At least that is the problem that I have with people who hate SciFi. They feel like in claiming personal power for yourself that there is an intrinsic reciprocity that denies them theirs. THAT is so far from true it would be laughable were it not for the fact that belief dictates reality. When two beliefs clash the one with the greater faith in their belief wins. I am handicapped by the very thing that gives me power. The whole of the genre's protagonists' core value sums as "First do no harm." As we put the rest of the world ahead of us for the greater good we assume that it means we have to bear the harm. Stupid, I know. But its not a perfect system. And in the end....
I have lost my train of thought because people are talking in the library like its a frakking coffee house!!!
In the end I put myself into a little box and allow myself to be set on a shelf in Fibber MacGee's closet til somebody decides I've sufficiently aged [read been forgotten long enough] for a yard sale. This disconnect from the world that first taught me a code of honor... What? No, I was lerning this long before I got to catholic school... what teamwork was about and that the individual cannot be sacrificed for the collective anymore than the collective can be decimated for the wants/needs of the individual. This is the world that taught me how to be greatly responsible with my great powers. This is the world that built me. I don't know what kind of Aquarius I would be without scifi. I don't know what kind of human I would be without it. I don't know that the circumstances of my home life wouldn't have devolved me into someone kin to the living dead. I don't know that I would be planet bound now. I only had limited contact with my grandparents during my formative years where I should have been learning about society and my role in it. As the oldest I had to help Dad with siblings and fend for myself outside of the demands of basic necessity. This is where my teachers came from; from Vulcan, Starfleet initially. Ray Bradbury showed me worlds I did not want to live in, how to avoid them [by embracing Roddenberry]. From books to movies, these were my friends and teachers, masters and guides... a life line.
How can you trash a whole classification of work that has the capacity to teach you that you are more than a tax id number? More than a voter? More than the list of acronyms at the end of your name? Mine is a biased view to be certain. But the thing is science fiction isn't the empty calorie choice that it is often labled. SciFi geeks aren't antisocial... we're just part of a different society; a society that exists next to this one. One on the verge of supplanting a weakened network with a stronger, more vibrant viable alternative where no one is a waste.
I still say Jesus was misquoted in the Beatitudes: the Geek shall inherit the Earth.
And maybe that is what the Ptb's are afraid of.