Ok. So, we met George Jetson, and he’s a heck of a guy. Great wife, perfect kids.

He has stressful, difficult work – he has to reach out and hit a button from time to time.

He lives in a soaring skyscraper, gets there with a flying car, and has a personal robot maid to keep the house clean.

Is this reality? Not really. In the end it’s like any other popular 60’s sitcom with popular 60’s stereotypes.

And honestly, I hope we never get completely to this point in life, where it’s all clean and perfect. Life has to be a little gritty, a little hard, a little – well, impossible.

Why should we reach for the stars when they’re already in our hands?

In the movie “The Fifth Element”, it seems far closer to what life might be like in the future. It’s actually a little grittier than I’d hope for, personally, but on the other hand it’s very realistic. The cars fly, but they’re still 10-20 year old rust buckets for the average person. There’s police, overpopulation, crime and so on.

So, which direction do we go from here? Because really, I think that’s the juncture we’re at. Are we going to strive for George Jetson’s future with clean, green, and stress free lives? Or are we going for poor Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis) who’s a cab driver with a nasty ex, a cab in hock and nearly trashed and the cops after him for … well, everything. Or anything.

So, how do we decide? How do we get to either of the futures?

As per usual, it’s up to us. And honestly, it will take a lot of work, and a lot of compromise to get near to George’s world. I’m not even sure it can be done, really. Because in the end, humans are a contentious lot. No one really wants to give up what they have, and I think it would take a lot of sacrifice for us to get to the point where we all live happily ever after.

Sadly, if we don’t make decisions, we’ll almost surely wind up in Korben’s world. And it’s the most realistic one. It’s the one where everyone continues to go on pretty much how they are now. Keep believing the leaders who seem to be in it for ‘the people’ but really are in it for themselves.

And you can tell this by how long after the election they make any effort at all to keep all those promises that blow in the wind so easily.

So, my suggestion? Start doing it yourself. Start putting in the time and effort to run for office. Start with little political offices in your town or county. Most of the time those positions run unopposed or with only a couple half-hearted opponents. Water Commission. Sewer Commission. Fire Commission.

Sadly, it takes time. It takes lots of time. And most of us don’t really have that much time. Although, I have to say that the time I waste scrolling through basically nonsense on Facebook could probably be put into a nice little campaign to win something like City Council.

And in the end, the people who have the real power are the ones who are closest to the people. Those are the ones that can make true change that gets echoed up the line.

With patience and time we can have something like George Jetson’s world. But scrolling page after page of Facebook probably puts us in “The Fifth Element”.

It’s still a flying car, after all. Even if it is a 20 year old bucket of rust flying car.