Chapter 12 Response

While reading this article I had flashes of Al Gore standing behind a podium with a swirling mega-hurricane projected behind him. The inconvenient truth of global warming is once again brought out again but this time in a very interesting way by Mr. Darksyde. I thought it was very interesting how he backtracked to the history of gunpowder and managed to wind up with our battle against CFC’s today. It was a very well developed take on, not only our culture’s path from the days of sword and shield to the industrial revolution, but also our culture’s path from self-reliance to machine-reliant. Looking over the last half of the article where Mr. Darksyde once again goes on a drive-by conservative shooting spree (again, I agree with him but felt it was a bit of a tangent) and also the emphasis on global warming, this article paints a pretty amazing chronology of our descent into the world of technology. From the looks of things, we as humans have naturalized the natural. We have taken hold of the definitions of what is to be seen as natural and what is to be seen as naturalized. There is no more room for the use of the scientific method expressed in Mr. Darksyde’s first article “The Gift that Keeps on Giving.”

What we see in this article is exactly why one should not rely too much on one side over the other. As we have progressed as a nation driven by technology, it is scary when we see events such as the blackout in New York. People’s lives actually hang in the balance of large mainframes run by computers. In order to analyze this from a neutral position I feel that we as English majors have the upper-hand. This is precisely why it is important to establish an education filled with both aspects of science and literature. We are able to remove ourselves from the situation and approach it from a different angle instead of purely scientific. To go a bit further here, it is also interesting to take Mr. Darksyde’s journey through time and our progression toward a more technological society and associate that with the progressions that were being made in our own field (printing presses, type writers, word processors, etc.). It is slightly disturbing to see how we must adapt to times even as naturally destructive as this, but it is nice to see throughout the history of science and literature people trying to reinvent the natural state of things in a predominately naturalized culture.