I love “Jurassic Park,” both the book and the movie. It has so many little pieces of wisdom that it is truly an amazing story. The most perceptive of all the characters has to be Dr. Ian Malcolm. I believe that in creating this character Michael Crichton has actually discovered the problem with our nation today. To quote the specific text, “If I may… Um, I’ll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you’re using here, it didn’t require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now…”
School shootings, insane acts of violence, the desensitization of our children to the pain of others, school bullying taken to the most extreme levels…all of this and more I believe can be explained by the above quote. Instead of scientific power, insert the words social norms and it will all make perfect sense.
Societal norms and values are historically slow to change. Except, that is, for revolutionary change brought about by war or other major turmoil. In the past, much of this had to do with the slow flow of information. A great example of this would be at the end of the American Civil War. A Union war ship, the CSS Shenandoah, continued to hunt down Confederate vessels for six months after General Lee surrendered. While there were rumors of the cessation of hostilities, the captain could not be certain as no official word had reached the ship.
Languages, too, can see the same slow change. A perfect example of this can be seen in the play “Measure for Measure.”
Of government the properties to unfold,
Would seem in me to affect speech and discourse;
Since I am put to know that your own science
Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice
My strength can give you: then no more remains,
But that to your sufficiency as your Worth is able,
And let them work
Holy confusing word-play, Batman! Of course, it would be confusing as this was written by Sir William Shakespeare. It is also a great example to show the incredible changes that happen over time within what would otherwise appear to be a fairly static language.
However, with the advent of the internet and then the subsequent addition of cellular wireless data networks, the change has been incredibly fast. The problem of this technology was that it opened up new avenues of communication that had never even been imagined before. As an example, look at the change in language from the advent of texting. We have created an entire new written form of the English language. Here is an example I took from Quora, “OK IDK FWIW IMHO RTFM ROTFLMAO JK ILY TTFN,” in response to the question, “How do I turn on my headlights?” The translation is, “Okay, I don’t know, for what it’s worth, in my humble opinion, read the manual! Rolling on the floor laughing. Just kidding. I love you. Ta ta for now.”
So, how is this an actual problem? Life is in a constant state of change with ebbs and flows. Anyone who tries to state that there is anything static on our planet is simply trying to sell you a political belief. In fact, Michael Crichton addressed this as well when he stated, “Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There’s been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multi-cellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away—all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval.”
He goes on, but his point is well made. The one constant in the observable universe is that everything is always in a constant state of flux. However, when it comes to our species interacting with one another, there have always been certain rules. These values were traditionally passed down to us via our parents, neighborhoods, and schools. However, when the internet was thrust onto the scene, most parents were unaware of the opportunity that it offered our youth to explore ideas and views well outside of values their families espoused.
These youths took the internet and created their own world. In fact, I believe that there is a 100 percent correlation between this and the book “Lord of the Flies.” In that book, children were stranded on a deserted island without adult supervision and created their own society. Unfortunately, without the stability and experience of adults, they regressed to live by a violent and emotionally driven mindset. The only difference here is that the island is the digital world. The adults/parents had no idea of what their children were being exposed to and this led to a situation where the inmates (children) were allowed to run the prisons (establish their own set of rules outside of parental control). They created a universe where they could live out hedonistic fantasies without any real consequence for their actions. If they did not like something, they simply recreated the structure of their reality.
This is the world that was created by the Millennials, now between the ages of twenty-four and thirty-eight. Yet it was the net savvy youth from Generation Z (from six to twenty-three) who have truly taken on the horrific nature of a society without parental involvement. The Millennials, and even the previous generation to a degree, should have known the dangers of allowing children unfettered access to a digital world. After all, they helped shape such a world. Yet this never happened.
This is where we tie back into the original quote in “Jurassic Park.” As a species we have evolved to the point where our technological advances have outpaced our abilities to create cultural norms to protect ourselves from their influences. I must believe that this is the nexus of the violence we are experiencing within our country’s border. Simply look at the material on YouTube if you need validation of my summation. What are kids willing to do in order to become famous on the internet? My favorite example must be the Tide pod challenge. I understand that kids have always done stupid things. Jumping off buildings or trees, and creating jumps for bikes into a rocky creek are all examples of risk-taking behavior that many people from my generation and others have engaged in.
Youth have always been recognized for lacking the ability to see their own mortality. Yet I do not recall other generations where kids were intentionally eating poison. In fact, the only good example I can give for this is the Jonestown massacre from 1978. In that case, Jim Jones was a charismatic cult leader who forced/convinced over 900 followers to drink poisoned Kool-Aid. At least in that case we had a human villain that we could pin this horrific waste of life on. In our modern world we have a cult that is being led not by an individual, but by a collective of immature children without any adult supervision who have been raised in an environment where they have been free from natural consequences for their actions. What could possibly go wrong?
I would like to answer that question with a final quote from Crichton. “If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again…the earth would survive our folly, only we would not.” So, take heart, even if we continue to do nothing, maybe the next sentient species that takes our place will learn from our lessons of inaction.
