Just stuck (in 1st gear)

You have to say it with a Southern drawl….” Just stuccccck”.

Can’t go far without destroying the transmission. Kevin Kelly said “technology wants to be free”…flow and fluidity.

Yet both people and technology often times are just stuck. No flow, no fluidity. In Beijing, where millions of cars clogged up the highways, one can call a bike (two service men) to come and help unstuck you (one would take your place, while the other gives you a scooter ride home for supper).

We’re boxed in: incubators at birth (in Gaza City, it’s a dilemma whether electricity should be cut off to deny the enemy the “flow and fluidity” of technology), then ventilators in death.

While we are all out for childhood vaccination, we then vote for weapons to kill “the others” in mass extinction might it be called World War numero Uno, Dos, etc… Einstein once said WWIV would be carried out by sticks and stone. In other words, WWIII is the end of everything. The Great Reset. Starting over. Unstuck.

I hold in my hand, with solemn reverence, Poetry of the First World War. Ernst Junger’s Storm of Steel triggered my curiosity, with bodies blown up, trenches unearthed and holidays recalled until the soldiers were maimed. There were no “Joyeux Noel” as romantically depicted in the movies of that title. Perhaps once, along the trenches, two sides decided on an impromptu cease-fire.

Humanity. Dignity. All that it’s entailed: the feeding frenzy, the putting out fire with fire, education and re-education (concentration camps, forced labor and outright prisons of war).

How many Jungers and poets have we wasted in the battle fields? Or we only know there was a Junger because of war and destruction. It’s a privilege, to stay alive to retell the horror tales.

To get unstuck during PTSD. Dreaming once again of Hamas tunnel, Cu Chi tunnel and what not.

I saw a PBS clip about a “tunnel rat” during Vietnam. Only the upper body can be stuck inside the tiny tunnel. Rest of the GI’s body remained outside. Often their heads got shot up. Stuck.

Back home in a box. Southern drawl or Northern Virginia (Arlington cemetery). Then names on the Wall. The reflecting pool. The inscription “All men were created equal…”. May God still oversee His creation, in it, us included. A little lower than angels, and a little “higher” than animals. A mix of saints and sinners, killers and healers. We injure others and ourselves get injured. PTSD and resolve (never again). Then we forget. Stuck again. In 1st or 2nd gear. World War II…and then what?

Technology wants to be free. So do we, human. Artificial intelligence, machine learning. We too want the flow and fluidity now afford to technology. It seems to me, technology progress has outpaced human one. Just look at the refugees fleeing war zones, seeking safety and signals (for her I phone). Once, they cut off all connections, before turning it on again. On that day, in Gaza, both technology and people were stuck. Just stucccck. Like we in our daily drudgery and struggle to survive.