I signed up again….. I cancelled my subscription a while ago - I’d watched everything I wanted to which was mainly documentaries on food and the series Black Mirror....
I was chatting to a client who said there was a new season of it, what else could I do I LOVED the series. With a different email address I got a free subscription (sneaky yeah, who else?? come on.......) and have spent the weekend drawing with Black Mirror on in the background….
Why do I like it… It’s a hideous look at what the future could become, well hideous in my mind. Someone out there gets the ideas for the series from somewhere - things that are possibly developed or being developed already but not in use yet. Or are they?
It doesn’t freak me out, rather I find it fascinating - a deep look into the darker side of human beings and human nature. There is much that makes us human, that makes us different from other mammals.
I found this article which is pretty good at looking at the similarities and differences:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150706-the-small-list-of-things-that-make-humans-unique
Quote:
“ Ever since we learned to write, we have documented how special we are. The philosopher Aristotle marked out our differences over 2,000 years ago. We are "rational animals" pursuing knowledge for its own sake. We live by art and reasoning, he wrote. Much of what he said stills stands. Yes, we see the roots of many behaviours once considered uniquely human in our closest relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos. But we are the only ones who peer into their world and write books about it.
We see the roots of many behaviours once considered uniquely human in our closest relatives.
Obviously we have similarities. We have similarities with everything else in nature; it would be astonishing if we didn't. But we've got to look at the differences," says Ian Tattersall, a paleoanthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, US.
That our rapidly expanding technology has allowed us all to become instant publishers means we can share such information at the touch of a button. And this transmission of ideas and technology helps us in our quest to uncover even more about ourselves. That is, we use language to continue ideas that others put forward.
Of course, we pass on the good and the bad. The technology that defines us can also destroy worlds.
Still, as far as we know, we are the only creatures trying to understand where we came from. We also peer further back in time, and further into the future, than any other animal. What other species would think to ponder the age of the universe, or how it will end?"
We have an immense capacity for good. At the same time we risk driving our closest relatives to extinction and destroying the only planet we have ever called home.”
So back to Black Mirror, the technology that can destroy us and our 'steal' consciousness.
It makes me think of a few episodes, likes that we collect on a daily basis from every interaction we do - the more we score the better apartment for example we can buy. A new Tinder - now the app will tell you how long you get with the person IT has matched you with - until it says you have found the perfect person. Transferring consciousness of dead people into our own minds (or into a toy) - that person always with us. Contacts/eye transplants that mean we can rewind life and see what happened - block someone in our lives so they can no longer see us…
Is this really where we are going??
Take Facebook already, how often we only post good things, happy holidays, when someone rants (which is rare) it is often not well received - are we really approaching a world where we have to be happy all the time and can not show other emotions?
Personally I really hope not, I love having emotions - well now I’ve figured them out more and accepted them, both the good and the bad. But what is a good emotion and what is bad? We view the bad ones as sadness, anger, frustration etc but these all serve a purpose - without them we don’t know happiness, joy and peace.
It is the light of day, if it didn’t exist how would you know what night was?
If you didn’t know black, you couldn’t define white….
If you don’t know sadness you won’t know happiness…
I wonder if we are entering a world where we can’t express ourselves fully and freely, be grumpy some days, feel the need to be quiet, occasionally say the wrong thing because of the mood we are in, and then on the flip - express total full out wooohoooooo joy and excitement and show how happy we are and be accepted whichever it is we are feeling...
If we dull sadness, we dull happiness….
Black Mirror is it a premonition based series or a warning that this might happen if we don’t change….
We live on the most beautiful planet, with amazing creatures and nature around us, air that allows us to breathe deeply and as a species we can do so much good for each other and for the Earth and all that is living on it.
I wonder if there’ll be a White Mirror ? How the world will be if we come together in all our goodness and work as one, instead of fighting each other….?
I hope that is our reality...
Thank you