Public discourse in the age of space colonisation
As he approached the last door, he could hear the cheers of the audience grow louder. “This is what Freddie M must have heard before walking onto the stage at Wembley”, he thought. But this crowd was a bit different.
You would be forgiven for believing that newly colonised planets are the most advanced societies to live in. After all, the technology needs to be cutting edge to get people to new worlds and keep them alive. And all those pioneers that embarked on one-way trips to explore galaxies must be open-minded and progressive, the cream of the intellectual crop. You would be right about technology, but not about the pioneers. Now that colonising space had become more common, people didn’t leave to discover new worlds but to leave their old one behind. And since the colonisation of Jolene 1 started from a series of super-progressive planets, think women getting paid the same as men and company sponsored orgies on casual Fridays, the social climate here was rather old-school.
Society on Jolene 1 had not become extremely conservative overnight. The harsh environment forced people to stay in their underground bases. The men, therefore, started to take part in household chores. Some particularly lazy men then began to reminisce about the “good old days”, where women did all the cleaning and cooking. It is interesting to note that the “good old days” usually were only good for a particular part of society. It is often the part of society that used to have an unfair advantage taken away from them, which of course makes the current days less good. As soon as women were confined to doing the chores things started going downhill; Left alone, those men started to build hierarchies where the loudest and most aggressive rose to the top. Coupled with a weird fascination for the Roman Empire (the one from Earth not Brutus 12), Jolene 1 had ended up with a political system that could best be described as the reincarnation of the “thumb-down” scene from Gladiator. And this is how he found himself moments away from being eaten by wild beasts in an arena for having committed lèse majesté.
The inexcusable offence had taken place in a press conference. The president had sidetracked a question and was talking about how, in the “old days, where food was allowed to be unhealthy and tasty”, he would go to Dick’s Burgers: “And my friends and I would always say, ‘Let’s get some Dick’s in our mouths’.” As the room chuckled appropriately our future convict raised his hand and asked: “Would you get some burgers afterwards?”
The door slowly slid up under the thunderous cheers of the audience, and he could see the talons of the beast through the growing sliver of light. It had been worth it.
