Downfall of Civilization

ROLLERBALL was a futuristic movie made in 1975 that had multiple layers of deep meaning far beyond the brutal sport it portrayed. It depicted a future, supposedly the year 2018 AD, in which global corporations rule the world.

Countries no longer exist and the sport of Rollerball was designed by the corporations to defeat individuality.

James Caan played the lead role as a Rollerball player who becomes the sport’s leading star. The corporate executives don’t like him because he is becoming bigger than the game itself, which was created to numb the masses into a corporate mindset of teamwork and cooperation.

To make matters worse, the Rollerball star begins to question his role in the grand scheme of life. He even visits a facility that houses the world computer system in an attempt to learn how the corporations had come to power.

According to the man in charge of the computer, they're having a problem with history because they can’t find the 13th century. He doesn’t seem too concerned though, as he claims the only important things about that century were Dante and a couple of corrupt Popes.

Unable to get any coherent answers from the computer, the Rollerball star wonders why so many people prefer creature comforts to freedom. Even though the corporations provide things everyone seems to need, very few people appear to be contented with their existence.

When the corporate executives attempt to get the Rollerball star to retire from the sport, he refuses. He realizes they have controlled his entire life and he isn’t about to give in to them.

He stands alone, an individual in a society of human robots, defying the very authority that helped make him rich and famous.

While the game of Rollerball had some exciting scenes of excessive sports mayhem, it only served as a metaphor for the larger issue of the human tragedy of choosing comfort and security over freedom and individuality.

We are engaged in a great internal struggle for freedom in America, as we continue on a slow descent into becoming a police state in the name of national security.

Those in power continue to consolidate more control by manipulating the masses into the false belief that additional government involvement and intervention is the solution rather than the problem.

One of the next steps will be National ID Cards. And when those in power discover that the ID cards don’t work well, we will all be required to have a “mark” placed in our right hand or forehead. And those who refuse the mark will be outcasts, unable to participate in society, with only their dignity intact.

Ironically, the Energy Corporation of Houston was the Rollerball team James Caan played for in the 1975 movie. That bit of movie magic has a familiar ring to it as Enron Corporation of Houston went through the largest corporate bankruptcy in history a couple of decades later.

By the way, another version of ROLLERBALL hit the movie screens in 2002. Larry Ferguson, one of the writers on the project, is an old friend of mine from my days in Los Angeles as a fellow struggling screenwriter, back in the early 80s.

Larry won a Golden Globe for the screenplay adaptation of THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. He is also the screenwriter of such movies as THE PRESIDIO, BEVERLY HILLS COP II, ALIEN III, HIGHLANDER, MASTER AND COMMANDER, and many others. Needless to say, he is no longer struggling.

Global corporations are not the problem. They exist merely to serve the appetite of the masses. If they have enslaved us, we have enslaved ourselves.

Human complacency in the face of declining individual liberty will be the downfall of civilization. Too many people prefer to be treated like farm animals, safely corralled, processed and well fed, than to be free.

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Quote for the Day – "Anyone who would give up some of their freedom in the name of security is entitled to neither." Benjamin Franklin

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NOTE: I wrote the above piece in 2008. Presently, a dozen years later, we are dealing with the Corona virus which is compelling governments to curtail freedoms in the pretence of the common good. I suspect many of the repressive governmental measures will remain in place in the future. Just as in the literary Orwellian world of 1984, the Rollerball movie was once again reminding (warning) us that freedom is precious and must be preserved for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

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Bret Burquest is the author of 12 books. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a few dogs and where freedom isn't for wimps.

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THE SUMMER OF 1947

The summer of 1947 was an amazingly eventful moment in human history, in more ways than one.

In June of 1947, a French scholar named Jean Doresse discovered the importance of 52 books, referred to as the Nag Hammadi Codices, found in December of 1945 in a cave in Upper Egypt. These books were allegedly hidden by early followers of Jesus Christ, called Gnostics, nearly 2,000 years ago. Gnostics (gnosis is a Greek word meaning inner knowledge or insight) were considered heretics and persecuted by orthodox Christians.

These books included: the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Apocryphon of John, and the Gospel of Truth. Also in this collection were writings attributed to early followers of Jesus Christ, such as the Secret Book of James, the Apocalypse of Paul, the Letter of Peter to Philip, and the Apocalypse of Peter.

Also in the summer of 1947, 15,000 fragments from 500 manuscripts were discovered in 11 caves on the shore of the Dead Sea, about 13 miles east of Jerusalem. These are known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Fragments of every book in the Old Testament (except the Book of Esther) were found. Prophecies by Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Daniel, plus psalms attributed to King David and Joshua, not found in the Bible are written in the scrolls.

According to scholars, the Dead Sea Scrolls were written by the Essenes (a strict apocalyptic Jewish sect that dwelled in the wilderness) between 200 B.C and 68 A.D. The Essenes were led by a priest known as the "Teacher of Righteousness" who was opposed (and possibly killed) by the established priesthood in Jerusalem.

On June 21, 1947, an airplane pilot named Kenneth Arnold spotted what he described as “flying saucers” over Mt. Rainier in Washington. The term “flying saucer” soon became part of the English language. Over the next few weeks, hundreds of reports of flying saucers appeared in newspapers across the USA.

On July 4, 1947, several witnesses, including an older couple sitting on their porch, an archeologist and his students on a field trip, and two nuns changing shifts at a local hospital witnessed an object late at night "come in out of the north-northwest sky at a very high rate of speed" near Roswell, New Mexico, and crash into the earth.

This unidentified object was spotted on Army Air Force radar and an armed unit was dispatched to the area.

Sometime thereafter, during the daylight, Mack Brazel discovered a large amount of unusual debris scattered over his ranch near Roswell. He informed the local sheriff who informed the Army Air Force Base in the area.

On July 8, 1947, Major Marcel, intelligence officer of the 509th Bomb Group at the Roswell Army Air Field, released a statement to the press that a flying disk had been recovered from a ranch in the Roswell vicinity. The recovered debris was flown to "higher headquarters" where it soon disappeared from the radar screen altogether.

The official explanation, by General Ramey of the Army Air Force, was a weather balloon. Apparently, an intelligence officer and numerous witnesses were unable to distinguish between a balloon and a metallic saucer.

No big deal -- now we can all sleep better at night knowing our government isn't keeping any secrets from us.

In the summer of 1947, Jews began returning to their ancestral homeland, from Europe and Russia, to form a new state named Israel (officially recognized in 1948). The United Nations set up partitions for Arabs and Jews.

Also in the summer of 1947, Jackie Robinson broke the racial color barrier in baseball, Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in jet aircraft flight, construction began on the United Nations (U.N.) building in New York City and the minimum wage became a dollar an hour. The ever-expanding federal government created the Atomic Energy Commission, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Council, the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

It was quite a remarkable coincidence that significant holy scriptures were discovered in the Middle East and UFO activity became intense during the same short span of time. Plus, it was quite a coincidence of the rapid buildup of military intelligence during a period of perceived UFO threat.

Or perhaps, it wasn't a coincidence at all.

On August 10, 1947, I blew out the three candles on my birthday cake. Then I went outside and played alone in my sandbox, contemplating my future as either the inventor of a space-time continuum modulator that would traverse parallel universes via vibration-frequency modality corresponding to the nine-dimensional vortex of superconsciousness within the quantum matrix of the id, or as a rodeo clown. At age three, I had trouble figuring out what to do with the rest of my life.

In the end, it turned out that a space-time continuum modulator was non-functional because the Galactic Federation didn’t think much of the human race thereby quarantining Planet Earth from contaminating the rest of the universe, and being a rodeo clown had too many potential mishaps such as being flung into the air by a large-dumb animal and landing in a fresh pile of large-dumb-animal dung, so I moved on to other pursuits.

Today isn’t much different than the summer of 1947. The human race is still populated by self-centered morons who lust for wealth and/or power, and/or demand conformity to their way of life. Materialism and mindless growth remain prime objectives, superseding stability and peace of mind. The greedy manipulate the wealth, the fearful initiate conflicts, the self-righteous demand conformity and the conformists fall in line. Humanity becomes a giant organism of power struggles, inevitably resulting in suffering and injustice.

On Planet Earth, greed is good, big is better and follow the leader over the cliff.

But at least we can now watch it all on TV.

In the meantime, those with enough common sense and fortitude to see beyond the programmed vision forced upon them by the Elites will live incorruptible lives of rebelliousness, patiently waiting for the glorious moment when the Bubble of Bling-Bling bursts.

The summer of 1947 was a monumental turning-point in human history.

Another monumental turning-point in human history beckons -- when human greed implodes upon itself and the Age of Enlightenment brings contentment to the Orb of Wounded Souls.

Bring it on.

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Quote for the Day -- “When you’re born, you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.” George Carlin

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Bret Burquest is the author of 12 books.  He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a dog named Donner and is still trying figure out what to do with the rest of his life.

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