Change the World Mentality in the Social Imagination...

 

“Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.”  ~ George Orwell

    This quote from Orwell really does seem to sum up how we feel about the generations before and after us. Though differences between generations may seem like caverns, they really are not. Sure, we think we see different ‘Generations’ but that's only from a marketing perspective... labels such as: Generation X: 1961–1981, Gen Y (Millenials): 1982–1995, Gen Z: 1996–2002 and the all-new Generation Alpha from 2003. [https://medium.com/bwp-group/every-generation-imagines-itself-to-be-more-intelligent-than-the-one-that-went-before-it-and-wiser-7861d584e518]. 

    So, what's really happening? Aren't we evolving? Aren't we moving forward in time and space? After all, look at technological developments.  Well, there really isn't anything new under the sun ~ Ecclesiastes.... including technology. Sure, it looks different, sounds different, and works different. But, the idea of a new thing is not really true and it it were somehow really true it would only be temporary in our social imagination until the next new thing comes along. But, again... it never really was new. 

    You see, the social imagination (every generation of it) likes to imagine something is new. But, it is just reconstructed to look, sound, taste and feel different or at least enough to make us think it is different or new. What about going to the moon you say, "no one ever did that before Gen. X". Well, there have always been 'new' horizons in man's social imagination... in fact. through all time, the moon was just one of them.  

    And, what about making more people healthier, happier, democratic...  aren't those things new and hasn't technology made those things more possible for more people everywhere? I suppose relatively it seems like it. But, from a bird's eye view, men have been healthy, happy and democratic in the long past. 

    Sure, maybe more people appear to have those things because there are more people in terms of population; but realistically, as ratios, in terms of having those things, it only appears that those things have increased... but have they? What has really changed?

    Whenever someone says they are going to change the world they only intend to change it from their point of view, not their neighbors.  All sorts of people throughout time have had experiences with those things just mentioned and technology of different kinds...given that one should expect that the world would be changed by now. But, its not; and, if it has been changed... how exactly? 

     There do seem to be a few threshold events that appear to have radically changed the world. I would suppose CV one niner will be remembered as one as well as all world wars and civil wars, stock market crashes, assassinations, invasions and not excluding natural disasters such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes etc. 

    The key is word here is 'appear'. Whether its perceived as radical or not. A lot of what happens to us is perception. To find out why, we will borrow from some Wikipedia writer... We can point to the special theory of relativity for instance to find out why. It is impossible to say in an absolute sense that two distinct events occur at the same time if those events are separated in space.

    For example, a car crash in London and another in New York appearing to happen at the same time to an observer on Earth, will appear to have occurred at slightly different times to an observer on an airplane flying between London and New York. 

    Furthermore, if the two events cannot be causally connected, depending on the state of motion, the crash in London may appear to occur first in a given frame, and the New York crash may appear to occur first in another. And, you see here... appear in an order of things. No one can say what happened or what changed first.

    Appearances are important and more important to the the social imagination because it is agreement reality. So, we do need things as events to 'appear' to us (be revealed or show up on the scene) and we need them to appear as different or new or even the same. 

    But, do we really need change? What we do need more than change is to agree as much we need to agree to disagree to make life appear real to us. With agreement and even with disagreement comes a residue of imagined changed. 

    Its not that anything really changed but we imagine it did because we either agreed on something or we disagreed. Every generation thinks that they are the first to breathe air, the first to talk, the first to think or imagine something. And every generation needs to agree on something and disagree.

    Just because we agree or agree to disagree doesn't make change or add new meaning and it certainly doesn't make a brand new world. Americans are probably the most guilty of this 'change the world' generational curse because they like to think and agree with each other and especially agree that they are a 'newly imagined' country with new ideas never before conceived or lived. 

    Most immigrants who come here think that too ... whether they come legally or not. As for being a new idea... well, I hate to tell you but the Greeks and Romans thought that too. 

    You can't change the world but you can change how you look at it and what you  agree/align with... but it still does create anything new nor even meaning nor does it create a brand new world and it never will... until the day of the Lord.

 

 

 

Building on Sinking Sand ... in the Social Imagination

    Silicon Valley is home to a plethora of wealthy tech companies, but the sinking land beneath risks leading to far worse floods in the years to come, researchers said Wednesday. 

    This sinking, or subsidence, coupled with sea level rise, doubles the territory in the area known as Silicon Valley at risk of flooding by 2100, said the report in the journal Science Advances. 

    Until now, official government flood maps and projections have been based solely on estimates of sea level rise. "The ground goes down, sea level comes up, and flood waters go much farther inland than either change would produce by itself," said lead author Manoochehr Shirzaei, assistant professor in Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration. 

    Most of the San Francisco Bay shoreline is sinking by less than two millimeters a year, but "in several areas we discovered subsidence rates of 10 millimeters (half an inch) a year and more," said the study.

*This short article above was published in thejakartapost.com with the title "Land beneath Silicon Valley is sinking fast: Study". ~ https://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2018/03/08/land-beneath-silicon-valley-is-sinking-fast-study.html.

 

Ok, we found out why Silicon Valley is sinking but why is Silicon Valley called 'Silicon Valley'? Its not because its sinking but maybe it is called that because it is sinking. Largely, its because of the industry that has built up there in the San Fransisco Bay area... technology using silica sand. Not only here in the US, but all over the world man is building his future on silica sand... Hence, Silicon Valley.

 Let's look at another article ~

     Silicon wafers are fundamental in manufacturing the electronic “chips” that pervade almost every aspect of our lives. New applications in IoT, wearable and mobile devices, self-driving cars, cloud computing, 5G communication networks, and more, practically guarantee that demand for wafers will continue to grow at an accelerating rate. 

    Our life is now built on the SEMI... the semiconductor equipment manufacturers’ industry association. Recently, that industry announced that 2018 shipments of silicon wafers had set a new record of more than 12 billion square inches, up 8% from the previous year. Revenues for the year totaled $11.38 billion, up 31% from the previous year and exceeding $10 billion for the first time ever. 

    But wafers are not the only place silicon is used and they are not even close to the largest consumer of silicon. Construction (sand and concrete) followed by steel and aluminum are by far the largest. There are smaller applications for silicon that are also critical, such as solar energy and specialty parts for semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

 

Sand to wafers…
    Fortunately, there is no shortage of raw material. Silicon is the second most common element in the earth’s crust, comprising about 26% and exceeded only by oxygen at 49%. But silicon does not occur naturally in the pure form needed for electronic applications, for which it must contain less than one in a billion non-silicon atoms. The starting material really is sand. Not just any sand, but silica sand, specially quarried for this purpose and having concentrations of quartz (silicon dioxide) as high as 95%.

Online Source * ~ https://semiengineering.com/from-sand-to-wafers/

 

Commentary: "The rain fell, the torrents raged, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because its foundation was on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, the torrents raged, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its collapse!”…~ Matthew 7:25-27. 

Folks, the Social Imagination will ultimately be controlled if not already by technology and such a house will collapse.