When People Became Super People

This happened, and it was a big happening - but we have not taken it seriously enough. We are willing to acknowledge that we got better, a lot better - but not willing to see how horrible this development was, in human terms.

As super people, we were willing to commit horrible atrocities - against ordinary people. That was the whole point of being superior. 

This possibility has always been active in human nature, especially in times of war - that brought out the best and the worst in us, but mostly the worst.

The last big change that happened to us was the Industrial Revolution - that we have never come to grips with - because it changed us so much. So much so, we can no longer recognize ourselves. But exist as split personalities - what we were before the change, and what we were after it.

I can understand this most easily, by examining the technologies involved. And there were a lot of them - too many, in fact. One way of looking at this, would be to observe, that our machines took over - and made us like them. This made us more powerful (as a system of machines) - but less human.

Our most important inventions were Electricity and Photography, That when merged, became the Movies. This was the culminating Industry, that resulted from WWI, the Depression, and WWII. We had become what our wildest dreams could not imagine! As shown to us, on the Magic Screen.

But behind all of this, was the humble vacuum tube - that had been refined, perfected, and was mass-produced, in huge quantities. Behind all the flash and glitter, were vacuum tubes - quietly doing their work.

No one gave much thought to what they were doing - that only became clear much later, when the Computer appeared - they were processing Information! One of the fundamental constituents of Reality. They had made like the gods - if not God himself.

This quickly went to our heads. We had become everything, and nothing at the same time.