The Beauty of a Heterogeneous World
I really ought to use the writings in my journals as the raw materials for prose / poetry / lyrics. That is a direct isomorphism from the way King Crimson is using its ProjeKcts to research possibilities for new static material.
I am beginning to have serious ethical problems with working for this giant omnivorous corporation: Microsoft. What a fucking ironic name! In my meeting this very morning, Scott laughingly placed “The Zone” in an extremist competative position with cyber-active feet poised to smash flat its peers who lurk incautiously underneath. Ostensibly, we have a competitor dubbed “Heat” (about which I know absolutely nothing other than the just stated) who has a great deal of “momentum” and a peak user base of 300+. Funny - The Zone has a peak of 4000+ users. It never, actually even drops below one thousand at any given time. Still, Scott chuckles (his potbelly wiggles grotesquely in tandem) and jokes of smashing Heat completely out of existence. Is this imagination-spawning competition or war Is the end a greater knowledge base with a diverse and colourful offering of choice or the annihilation of all but one - the winner? Metaphors drawn - parallels with mayhap Nazi Germany can easily be seen. Why must things be so extreme and potentially deadly? The very game in which I am now intensely interested has the ultimate goal of the obliteration or assimilation of all but one or into one, respectively. That is an interesting full circle! It is a case of the scaly snake swallowing its twitching tail, eh?
Assimilation might be the peaceful take over Microsoft performs to company after company, homoganizing - maybe creating an easy usability standard but at the same time washing out the colours with its harsh, bleaching, all consuming light, leaving a sad, palling grew. So, so - sad, eh? Yes.
Assimilation might also be the end of diversification by the countries of the EU merging and living in peace, eventually blurring the bounds of community and world culture. The internet is a good extensive metaphor of this. Let everyone touch and interfere with everyone else and the sharp corners of culture and communication are finally dulled so that confusion is cancelled. But the beauty of a heterogeneous world is also destroyed. It saddens me to think that the human race may reach this “goal”. Unity, peace and harmony recalls the equilibrium of a stagnant pond, or of a universe consisting of only uniform energy. I, for one, do not want to sing only Eb for the remainder of my lifetime, or for even 45 minutes (as Brynn claimed that Kenny G did - albiet on his saxophone).
At the other end of the spectrum, and oddly at the same position, is annihilation of all save one. This seems, with its surreptitious and even bullying tactics, the stand that this grand corporation for which I work seems to be taking. Wipe out Heat and let The Zone rule the gaming world, period. Microsoft does not want competition. It wants supremacy with all other decimated or in a state of servitude. Here am I, on the periphery, in the thick? Hell, homogenity will be the end if either path is trodden. There must be a way to perpetuate diversification, the beauty of pockets of isolated culture, untouched by the outside except for their brief blinks of dreaming cities of existential passion. The human race has created a spectrum of intense beauty, of colour - all who see this rainbow as a bland strip of white light is are missing … missing … a soul?