Prophecies of the Future

Frequently with in the context of Future Studies, the concept that “the future is now” pops up both in theory and dissection of various issues. This paradigm is useful for close inspection of events and issues that go on indefinitely in the foreseeable future. Applying a variety of concepts frequently used in the field of Future Studies to the global HIV/AIDS pandemic can provide insight and creative ideas to combat the ongoing (and at the moment, unending) epidemic.

Human Immunodeficiency Virus is an incredibly costly global pandemic; its cost comes in both human life and billions of dollars. Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is the cause of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) a debilitating condition that progresses to death through the acquisition of various opportunistic infections including Karposi’s sarcoma and various Lymphomas. Contrary to popular belief the HIV/AIDS pandemic is still a critical issue in matters of both economic and health issues.

To be frank, the future of the HIV pandemic/world AIDS crisis looks bleak. We face several major cultural challenges with regards to the containment and treatment of the disease. Almost all hope for the development of a vaccine has been ruled out (and with the recent resistance to vaccination campaigns, that method of prevention may already be off the table). The future HIV/AIDS pandemic faces three challenges that are not mutually exclusive. The challenges that face the field of global health are misinformation about HIV transmission, stigma associated with HIV/AIDS and a distinct lack of funding for antiviral research and HIV treatment (especially in the United States).  These three major issues have confounded public health officials for over two decades, and an anthropological paradigm with in the context of future studies would be a huge aid in understanding what exactly is happening in the public eye.

            Misinformation is a giant problem in the age of the Internet. Not just in regards to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, but to society in general. As discussed in Trauma Time; a Still Life the United States has begun to live life in a state of suspended disbelief. We are subjected to harsh images and terrible news on a regular basis. The Internet exacerbates this effect, causing imagery and misinformation to only be a click away.  With five minutes on Firefox and a few words typed into Google, everyone becomes an expert, and everyone has seen the reality of Trauma Time.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in our youth population. Even with all of the educational resources provided by private groups (safe-sex is still a touchy subject in schools) various misinformation issues persist such as a belief that only homosexual men get AIDS, or that they don’t need to worry about HIV because they don’t use drugs or sleep with gay men.

This is an especially dangerous misinformed viewpoint, one that blurs between Stigma and Misinformation. Many heterosexual men and women do not know their status. This represents a huge problem for the future management of HIV. If people continue to behave promiscuity without practicing safe sex, and not getting themselves tested we have no way of tracking or containing the disease. Yet people continue to ignore the warnings and the devastation that surrounds them. Surely everyone knows at least one person who is HIV positive, maybe more. How can they remain so ignorant of its effects and the eventual death it causes? Simple, Trauma Time. Ignoring a problem that doesn’t affect you directly.  It is especially concerning that this viewpoint is prevalent among high school and college students who fit in the 18-25 year old demographic that account for over fifty percent of new HIV infections.               

            Due to our hetero-normative social structure, and a tendency to ignore drug addicts and people of low social strata, we as humans beings don’t like to talk about AIDS. It’s scary, it came out of nowhere, and we would like to forget it. Since the hardest hit areas are among the most marginalized groups in our society, it’s easy for us to sweep the whole pandemic under the rug [Tapia-Aguirra et al. 2003]. This phenomenon (and the misinformation that comes along with it) is due to a severe stigma that is still present in the United States (and across the globe). There are several major consequences of social stigma with regards to HIV. The main issue being that the stigma/fear of stigma prevents many people from seeking out a testing facility and finding out their status [Brown et al 2003]. As previously mentioned, having a population that is frequently screened for HIV is the only way to control and track the pandemic.

            Whether or not we as a society mean to or not, we have created an Imaginative Horizon with regards to the HIV epidemic. An Imaginative Horizon is a future in which we construct, wittingly or unwittingly horizons that determine what we experience and how we interpret what we experience [Crapanzano 2003]. As it stands right now, laissez faire attitudes towards HIV are creating and cementing a future where we will never control the pandemic. Indeed echoes of this sentiment are rampant through out this very essay.  People’s attitudes have moved away from trying to prevent the disease to treating the currently infected. This is not an acceptable attitude to take. HIV inevitably leads to AIDS, which will kill you. This sentiment that HIV is no longer a death sentence is a false statement, and the Imaginative Horizon we have created for HIV/AIDS will cost many lives, and for the sake of the future health of generations, we need to change it.

            The final issue at the heart of the HIV/AIDS pandemic lies within the health care system itself, that is pharmaceuticals and paying for them. In order to contain the epidemic, in addition to the need for increased education and safe sex practices, we need to make access to antiviral treatment cheap and easy. Regular use of anti-viral medication reduces viral loads and decreases mutation rates with in the virus [Stover et al. 2011]. However the pharmaceutical have patens, and under the guise of protecting their investment, refuse to make drugs at lower cost or allow others to produce them at a more reasonable price [Holmes et al. 2012]. Government intervention/subsidies is looked down upon in the United States, especially in regards to HIV/AIDS medication, due to the stigma and misconceptions placed on those stricken with the disease. Under the guidance of corporate America’s capitalism, the pharmaceutical companies have directed the future of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in less than positive ways.

   1.            Adefuye, Adedeji, Titilayo Abiona, Joseph Balogun, and Mainza Lukobo-Durrell

2009

HIV Sexual Risk Behaviors and Perception of Risk Among College Students: Implications for Planning Interventions. BMC Public Health 9(1): 281.

  2.            Crapanzano, Vincent.

2003

Imaginative Horizons. "Imaginative Horizons."

  3.            Holmes, Charles B., John M. Blandford, Nalinee Sangrujee, et al.

2012

PEPFAR’S Past And Future Efforts To Cut Costs, Improve Efficiency, And Increase The Impact Of Global HIV Programs. Health Affairs 31(7): 1553–1560.

  4.            Kallings, L. O.

2008

The First Postmodern Pandemic: 25 Years of HIV/ AIDS. Journal of Internal Medicine 263(3): 218–243.

  5.            Rosenberg and Hardin

2005

Histories of the Future

  6.            Stover, John, Eline L. Korenromp, Matthew Blakley, et al.

2011

As I stated in class, and on the message board, Ubik completely freaked me out. Especially Half-life. Half-life is scary. I don't like it. The idea of being dead but not gone is just wrong, and frightening (to me). After digesting the book for about a week, I decided I still just really don't like the idea of Half-life. I cannot come up with a rational reason for being so freaked out by it, but all I know is that I wouldn't want someone to put me in it.

After completing the novel and drawing my own allegories towards the Gospel of St. John and the Son, I grew increasingly uncomfortable with novel. Then reading the analyzation of Ubik and PKD's life made me confront some very real issues I was having with the novel. I didn't like the idea of Half-Life, not only because it weirded me out, but also because it reminded me of the gnostic view of salvation. The idea being that you create a relationship with God in your own mind, and that everything on this plane is non-essential, and then through the grace of god, your conscience fades to nothing. At least, this always how I interpreted gnostic salvation. It walks a fine line between what I consider heretical christianity, and my own beliefs in the teachings of Buddha and achieving Nirvana. Perhaps being a mishmash of world religions is not as easy as I have been making it out to be.

Regardless, I think I now understand why the novel Ubik and the idea of half-life made me uncomfortable, it played on my faith. My faith is very important to me, and when someone uses it to make me uncomfortable, I get squeamish (and very uncomfortable). Ubik did just that, and it succeeded in making me think about death/salvation/Logos in ways that I had not before.

The Black Eyed Peas have been around for a long time. They have had countless hits on the charts, dating all the way back to 2002-03. They never had a massive album success, that is until the spring of 2009.

The Peas (and Lady Gaga, but that is neither here nor there) did what artists had been tenative to do before the gigantic success of this act. They skipped over the transition from physical music sales to digital music sales, and launched a music industry revolution.  The Peas 2009 album The E.N.D. (The Energy Never Dies) was launched with a giant single that the Peas never thought would reach mainstream radio. The song Boom Boom Pow was supposed to be for underground, futuristic, european synth bars. Even the lyrics talk about being far a head of the competition (I'm so 3008, you so two thousand late). The Music Video adds the the futuristic quality of the song and established the band as a music act of the future.

The video is laden with future imagery  from the outfit's the band is wearing, to the hybridized face that makes appearances throughout the video. Various "futuristic" effects are used through out the video, including lasers, a slender-man, and digital editing, and choppy, almost zombie-like dance movements.

Name: Ellyn Calvert

Relationship: Roommate

Age: Nineteen years ten months old

Informed consent for publication: approved

What does the future mean to you? Ellyn Calvert is a nineteen-year-old aspiring actress attending Kansas State University studying in the Theatre department. Ellyn’s view of the future, like most students, is optimistic with a undertone of worry. Indeed our discussion of the future began with asking for a simple definition of what exactly the future meant to her. Ellyn’s definition of the future “Is something you dream about, and you think about it a lot.  You have to do a lot of hard work now for later [in life].” Ellyn furthered explained that her hope for the future above all else is to leave “impact on people or shape and form them”. Continuing on in the discussion about what about the future was so frustrating, Ellyn pinpointed that waiting for it was what was really the hard part of the future. She said, “[It would be] Nice if it was now poof here.” Ellyn’s description of waiting for the future sharply contrasts with the philosophy of future studies that relies on the adage “the future is now”. When for her opinion on the idea, she replied simply “How can the future be now? The future will be what we create now.”

            It would seem from this statement that Ellyn is a firm believer in shaping one’s own future, when this vein of thinking was continued upon she affirmed my suspicions by saying, “I believe in destiny to a point, but you can change your future.” The specifics of this paradigm remained vague, but Ellyn stayed rooted in her disbelief in destiny dictating your life. She remained firm in this by dismissing horoscopes (other then as entertainment) and laughing off a question about a Tarot reading done by yours truly. Ellyn does not know if precognition exists, but has not seen a “legitimate reading” happen.

            After wrapping up our discussion on destiny and fate, I continued the interview by asking about her views on the apocalypse. Ellyn is not a very big follower of Sci-fi (though she does enjoy it from time to time). However Ellyn’s irrational fear is a Zombie Apocalypse at the end of the world. She knows that this type of event would never happen, but it still scares her nonetheless. Indeed Ellyn admitted to being very freaked out by the Bath Salts issues that happened earlier in the year in Miami, FL. Ellyn’s fear of a Zombie apocalypse stems directly from a very realistic comic book that had a variety of zombies in a post-apocalyptic world. In particular a kind of berserker zombie that kills for fun and another that is a hunter. Ellyn has a deep-seated fear of being hunted, and not being able to do anything about it. She admits to being a “little claustrophobic, particularly when I have to crawl through things.” She chuckles and says that it’s probably involved in the fear of being hunted Zombie/Apocalypse.

            Ellyn’s view on the future is unique, just as everyone’s view on the future is unique. She offers a very critical viewpoint from a new generation of adults. Ellyn represents the half of the millennial generation that “Is not going to live the future that everyone else wants me to, and I want to do what I want,” as Ellyn herself put it.

The conflict in the middle east is indubitably the defining global political issue of the past thirty years. Cultural and religious tensions coupled with meddling from western powers has made the area a hot bed for radical islam and vehemence against all things western. At the center of the problem resides a multitude of issues. Arguably the most important of these is just plain old history. To populations entrenched on opposite sides of a multitude of issues. Most prominently  who gets claim of the Holy Land, Palestine (Muslims) or Israel (Jews). 

Tonight was a nerve wracking night, to say the least. The presidential election is always a a massive anxiety attack for the nation but for me, this year was personal.  My roommate and I are too poor to afford cable, so I went over to a friend's house to watch the election. They happen to be liberal leaning as well so we sat down and listened to Rachel Maddow tell us exactly what was happening in the nine ever so crucial battleground states.  I had come prepared for a night that could head in either direction.  I had starburst jelly beans, penut butter M & M's, Dr. Pepper (with the fat still in it) and giant bag of gummy bears.  I also managed to scrounge up a bottle of tequila incase things went south (that is to say, to the Right). 

Scream by Janet and Michael Jackson was released in 1995 and when the music video dropped, it created a media sensation. It was seen as a direct aggressive response to Michael’s alleged sexual abuse of children in the early nineties. At a cost of $7 million dollars it was and remains the most expensive music video of all time.

I didn't get into Medical School. Granted it was one program, at one school, in one year. But it was what my (academic) life was centered on for the last six years. It was my plan. I always have a plan. A plan for the future, a plan for a project. I always have a plan. The plan changes, but I always have control of the plan. I didn't have a change planned for the failure of the plan to go to Mount Sinai.  What do I do now? I will probably go to grad school and obtain a Master's degree before applying to Medical School.   I have a lot of options, but none of that matters. My future no longer has a focal point that I can put my energy towards, and that's terrifying (for me). I honestly don't know how to be ambivalent about my future after college. Since I was twelve, I've had a plan. Now the plan went belly up, and if "the future is now" I don't know what I'm doing with my future anymore. I do know one thing though.

Madonna is undoubtedly one of the biggest stars to ever walk the planet. By 1989 she had established her self at the forefront of the music industry, having amassed 7 number one singles and a total fourteen top five hits (a record at the time). Express Yourself  appears on the second track of the singer's fourth album Like a Prayer, and was undoubtedly over shadowed by the highly controversial and religiously charged lead single and its video. However the diva would not disappoint for the follow up to the lead single, this video.