When I look at the above photo of the Large Hadron Collider I think, “Tech Porn…” a bunch of scientists oohing, ahhing and salivating over the world’s largest particle accelerator, currently revving up in Switzerland. “Oh, it’s soooo BIG!”

The truth though is that one man’s pornography is another’s ‘decline of Western civilization.’ This mega-machine intends to go where no man has gone before, simulating in essence The Big Bang in order to quantify the so-called God Particle (the Higgs Boson) and thus figure out what it all means, I suppose. The risk according to some (which means there is indeed some risk) is that it will form tiny black holes and strangelets. A bunch of scientists laugh off such laymen’s fears–like Marie Antoinette giggling at the peasants who know not courtly love–. “End of the world, pishah, you Plebian idiots know nothing about science.” I find this totally insulting. Who wouldn’t. It’s not THEIR world to destroy or put at risk of destruction, even in the name of solving the greatest enigma mankind has ever known.

My question is: why are we taking the chance on the snafus (end of life as we know it) that this machine could exact, even if it’s an infinitessimally small chance? In the name of what? Getting answers to why we’re here, what preceded the Bang, etc.? I’d rather go to the country, look up at the stars, marvel, wonder and feel small, or take shrooms and trick myself into thinking I have the answer to it all. That’s at least a tad less reckless.

Beyond the fogged-up lenses of excited eggheads’ spactacles, there’s a whole world of people that are none too jazzed about this LHC. Personally I love science fiction and devour books on high tech evolution but this is the REAL DEAL–it’s not a Will Smith movie where the goofy funny guy cracks a couple of jokes about the end of the world and then saves it.

Ever since news of the LHC has leaked into the mainstream press (believe it or not it was tucked away in the back pages of most U.S. newspapers until recently) I’ve witnessed a burgeoning albeit relevant phenomena: LHC Fever. The symptoms include insomnia induced by thoughts of being sucked up by a Black Hole (”October Surprise”?), a sense of restlessness to start life before it ends and a general feeling of carpe diem brought on by thoughts of the world disappearing before our eyes (or maybe it’s not even an instant disappearance but a slowly consuming whirlwind that crescendos in 2012). But I digress and get carried away with post modern paranoia.

The bottom line is, LHC awareness is causing some to wonder why we’re always sitting back in front of computers on Facebook throwing sheep at each other when we could be meeting up in person and screwing like bunnies. Why do we watch TV shows about people that do extraordinary things and go to extraordinary places instead of, in the words of the great Nike of Niketown, Just Doing It!? A generation is sitting around getting atrophied and slit-eyed playing Rock Band instead of just going out there and forming a band. I’ve got news for the scientists searching for their Holy Grail of physics: if the God Particle could talk it would probably say, “Get out of your lab, get some fresh air, make love not war, smell the roses and suck the marrow out of life before it sucks the marrow out of you.”

Posted by Shana Ting Lipton