I was watching football the other day when it occurred to me that we are in an age of spectacle. We are at that point in an empire before it slips into decadence and falls apart.
And how did we get here? I've been looking around and I think empires like the United States aren't brought down by avarice, greed, or malice - rather by an oddly aggressive complacency.
We want things to remain just as they are.
This is odd on 2 counts.
The first being that I've always assumed the U.S. as a place of re-invention, constantly churning out the new.
Now as I take a look at our current state and compare it to the 20th Century there does seem to be a sense that we have run out of answers and frontiers. Everything is a remake now-a-days. And not just at the movies.
The other is that this spectacle isn't Orwellian. It does not feel like Brazil; we are not losing our humanity among the ducts. It feels more like a huge boring party were no one wants to admit it's boring because of all the time and effort put into making it happen.
