Paradise Lost (& Never To Be Found Again)

Over the past week since being stricken with the pox and knocking me completely for six, among the fever dreams and feeling sorry for myself a few notions dawned on me.

I’ve blogged before about the fact that aspects of my childhood can never be enjoyed by my children as times have changed and technology has taken over and the fact this saddens me deeply. I started to watch Warm Bodies as well as read more of Rise of The Governor and the biggest thing to me out of these concepts, especially in Revolution, is that the current generation would never survive because everything they’ve come to know and take as the every day norm wouldn’t exist as it’s all based on technology.  Even I have become sheltered and lost a lot of ‘smarts’ I once owned as a boisterous adventurer.

In the event of zombies or a global power take-down, most of our memories would be gone.  Digital photographs stored on the inter-webs, memoires tippy-tappy-typed on blogs, videos of special occasions inaccessible as Youtube is no more.  It’s a horrifying concept and one that all of us in developed countries will be able to relate to even partially.  People like me think me can’t comprehend the absurdity of people who don’t own laptops, have wi-fi or own a mobile phone.  Perhaps they have it right.  Perhaps they have the correct set of priorities…

The trouble is, we are in a society where there is no going back – even if we lose technology due to no power sources being available, things would never regress back to simpler times.  We will still collect technology only, instead of working and saving or serving the time of a contract to reach your eagerly anticipated upgrade date, we will steal, we will kill, we will rape and pillage.  We will regress too far back to the point where our more primal instincts come out.

The Walking Dead hits the nail on the head as to how we would be.  Yes, there would be good among us, but due to the strife and adversity even then, our sense of good will be bent to encompass our new environs.  It’s not about zombies or nuclear holocausts, it doesn’t matter how society collapses – the results would be the same.

My children will never know the simple pleasures of climbing trees and building dens using corrugated iron sheets, discarded pallets and tarpaulins and foraging for other scraps to make it more ‘homely’.  They have The Sims for that.

They will never know what it’s like to pretend fight with toy guns or lumps of wood fashioned into weapon-like objects because they have movies, games or even the ability to join the army and do it for real.

Running round woods for hours playing ‘Predator’ is no longer in.  Mainly because there are actual predators in the woods these days.  Our kids don’t play dead after encountering these ones…they get dead for real.

There’s no thrill of setting your alarm during the summer holidays to catch awesome cartoons at 6am because you can Sky+ them or they probably already have them on iTunes, DVD, Blu-ray or whatever the next for of physical media is.

There’s no rummaging through the droppage of a chestnut tree to pick the best ‘conker’ to dominate your friends with in competitions because there’s probably a DS game to simulate the entire thing.

There’s no playing with toy cars in the soil creating your own roads and taking down some insects as you’re cruising.  Why?  When they can play GTA and run PEOPLE over?  It’s more fun, for crying out loud!

No building with actual LEGO blocks any more because you can design virtual cities and play – no mess so what’s NOT to love?

You’d think I’m anti-tech based on this – and hypocritical considering I’m blogging, but I love tech.  I love GTA and now I have a bit more energy the amount of time I have spent in Skyrim has been significant.  The difference is, I had a good wholesome childhood and gamed from a young age but still had time to enjoy real life adventures.  You can’t get scars from playing videogames unless you fall off your top bunk because you’re staying up crazy late.

It’s almost like our kids’ childhoods are being lived by surrogates.