Future = present shock

Dan and I went to see a film last night at the cinema  - Looper, a sci-fi future dsytopia type of movie, which we usually, strangely, quite like. But this whole "entertainment" left me feeling a bit yucky, not only about the film but the human condition in general.

For one thing, the ads that came before the film felt to me as though they were advertising a life still surely years ahead of ours. Three of the ads were for computer games - all fast moving, fingers brushing screens, "How many people would YOU kill, to save one?", large-jawed men bearing giant guns. Horrible. Another was for a better-than-ever smart phone with a screen going right out to the edges. Two seemed to be telling complicated stories that left me baffled as to what was actually being advertised.

Then the film itself... it told the story of a young man living in 2044, - and life by then is like the world of Blade Runner, depressed, frightening, streets broken up with trash lying around everywhere, everyone on drugs... - and how gangs in the even further future have hijacked time-travel machines, are kidnapping their targets and sending them back in time to be shot dead by their hired assassins in that time - including the "hero" - whom we see shooting many of these hooded, tied-up victims as they appear from the future. One day, he finds that the victim who appears is his own future self, who manages to escape... sounds like a good story, and it is clever, but... Are we humans really set to descend into this kind of violent, hopeless, threatening future? And if not, why are so many films made with this kind of story-line? Are we that depressed about the human trajectory? Or is it only the movie-makers who are?

Many parts of our world are already like it to some extent, though, and many people do live in fear, and I am just thankful I live in a generally safe country, in a time of peace. (Another thing to thank God for!)

I came away feeling like I wanted to go off into a forest and kick through piles of leaves and breathe in good clean country air, watch birds, and feel the peace and wholesomeness of nature. Get away from everything man-made, which is apparently devolving into slim, shiny black and silver rectangles with curved corners and HD screens that suck us in via our finger tips, bigger cars, taller and sleeker buildings, cynicism and mutual distrust, and guns. I don't think I like the way the human race is going...
I sound so old, I know...!

My fantasy of the future is to live in a stone cottage on Dartmoor, by a stream, growing food and raising chickens, (with a Baker to kill and pluck them of course, and a Florence too!) - reading books by an open fire, - not on my own but with family, and friends close enough to see often, maybe a pony to ride, Frodo of course... sigh...

But maybe the future will be something in between. I wonder what God thinks of the way our race is going. I wonder at what point he will intervene. I hope heaven will be Dartmoor, not a shiny steely city...