Eloi

In a search for some sort of defining culture around Riverside, Tiffany and I hit up the museum a few weeks ago. They were spotlighting a photographic exhibit titled "Eloi: Searching for Paradise". Eloi is the name H.G. Wells gave to the human descendants populating the Earth 800 millenia from now in his short story "The Time Machine". The Eloi live in a seeming Eden, where food grows plentiful without the attentions of the population, disease is defeated, and all the other shortcomings those of us in the 2nd millenia must face. Of course this paradise is flawed, as the narrator find outs. The Eloi have become cattle for a second branch of human evolution, the subterranean-dwelling Morlocks. The background here is relevant to both an understanding of the exhibit and a commentary on the current progress of humanity.

The exhibit is unfortunately very brief, consisting of maybe 20 pictures. But the message (with the added weight of H.G. Wells) is clear enough: every day we hear that the world is getting better, that we're closer to solving many of our problems, that everything you see around you is working towards achieving paradise. The exhibit brings into focus what that paradise is turning out to be. Pictures of blasted empty lots, carefully constructed sand castles, and nude men and women revealing their individual scars and age lines. We are in danger of believing the "hype", that the rampant homogenization of America is the paradise we all want. Every day another giant Wal-Mart of Target shopping center is built, paving acres of land and clear-cutting through neighborhoods. Every day we see forgotten skeletons of buildings, rotting in place just blocks away from a new ten-story, state of the art office building, never remembering that thirty years ago that broken building held the same passing awe of the people. MTV, magazines, popular culture all throw images of the ideal human, effortlessly beautiful and competent, while no one you know looks like them and everyone has their own personal stripe that doesn't make them "beautiful".

People constantly reach for this perceived paradise, following fashions with a zeal better reserved for something meaningful. Medicine is working towards the general health of the population, if you can afford it. But luckily a good portion of the medical eye is turned towards defiling our bodies and our habits, helping us reach that unattainable goal of manufactured beauty. Liposuction, plastic surgery, implants - you name it, and we can force your body into your preferred mold.

More than a century ago H.G. Wells saw a future where people failed to evolve. The Eloi and the Morlocks both devolved into sub-human mockeries of modern people, one so helpless that they no longer spoke a language, the other into an underground creature working endlessly forever, for no reason. The question is, are we heading towards the paradise we want? If you look around you and think about your surroundings, are things progressing towards a future you want to be a part of?