I grew up around horses, so to me they’re friendly creatures who’ll happily exchange slobber for apples. That familiarity—horses as pets—blunted the meaning behind the four horsemen of the apocalypse for me.
Historically, a horse and its rider were a terrifying war machine. Think of medieval knights or Mongol archers or the impact of mounted Spaniards invading South America.
To translate that terror into modern terms, substitute drones.
Pestilence.
Famine.
War.
Death.
All carried by drone.
But because they’re carried by drones, and our era is what it is (namely, connected via the internet) let’s add a fifth drone. Silence.
Silence is broken connection; a failure to communicate, a loss of trust, and the loss of bonds of community.
We have to keep talking and listening, creating and appreciating creativity, or we lose a fundamental aspect of human existence.
In 1962 Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring. She was warning of the loss of life, the silencing, resulting from the use of dangerous chemicals. Silent was a powerful word then; a word that warned of loss; of ending. Today it is just as powerful.
The fifth drone of the apocalypse is Silence.
Comments
4 responses to “The Five Drones of the Apocalypse”
In the USA our current government is trying to silence all voices that disagree or provide data that isn’t fitting their narrative. They are killing science in all its forms because it offers facts instead of just opinion which is how they drive their story .
This year has been a horror show for science. It’s beyond anything I imagined. And the implications are tragic.
As Paul Neuman said in Cool Hand Luke … What we have here is a failure to communicate.
You can’t beat the classics!