The fantastic 1981 song "Under Pressure" by Queen (and Bowie) is about living in a world where random, daily, and pointless cruelty -- people on streets, ie, just the life of the dregs -- is simply how it is. So many screaming, let me out!
The song reflects on the fact we seem to be stuck, trapped, inside this apathy toward cruelty, even as it becomes more and more pervasive. The modern opiate epidemic would get a chuckle or two from Freddie on that point. Capital idea! Just turn every hill and valley into a 2-out-of-3 will try by age 15 demo! Etc. People on streets. And out in the sticks. Be do do. Dregs for harvest. Do de do do dum.
As trapped, we are akin to the Starship Enterprise in the S3;Ep09 "The Tholian Web." Journeying into a region controlled by a strange, crystalline-like people, the Tholians, the Enterprise is ordered to leave before the web is total, or stay trapped forever!
Are we not trapped? Under pressure as we grow cold to the ever present cruelty we let pass among us? We cannot continue this path. We cannot turn away. We cannot sit on a fence. For this is ourselves.
Under (Tholian) Pressure.
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go go go
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