It Can't Last

It can’t last.  The truly aware know it, and even the vaguely aware sense it at some level.    But they don’t know how to get from here to a better world.  They’re afraid of the pain.  Too late for that, Americanos.  You f’d the relatively “painless” escape valve up a long time ago.

We are in Doom Drift on a near-endlessly wide river.  If we drift all the way to the Fall(s), we go over the edge—Civilization Doom.  A strong, wrenching, all-out exertion by us can avert that, but we have to jettison a lot to have a chance at success—and to our detriment we continue to let the selfish, shortsighted, and criminally foolish be in control, as they have been for decades.

The other likely possibility is that a violent storm blows us way off course, and we smash into uncharted territory.  Many of us may perish in that, and many more as we struggle to survive in a harsh new reality.

I think this is a reason that books like World War Z (and obsession with “zombie apocalypses” in general) are so popular.  Like the sleepwalking populations of past political-economic entities such as the Roman, Ottoman, and Austrian-Hungarian empires, we recognize the signs of decay and the lack of any real measures by “the elites” to stop it.  In fact, we recognize that those elites are prime center of the decay.  Whether war, revolution, plague, famine, or disaster of some kind, wrenching change becomes acceptable to the populace at some level, even if not desired.

[By the way, World War Z is, in addition to widely informed—and worldly in the truest sense—insightful social commentary, it offers glimpses of possibility for a better future out of catastrophe, even while it condemns our present sloth and illusion embracing.  Maybe it is a best seller for more than just zombies. :)]

If drought continues, if climate change and its resultant destruction really does proceed past the tipping point (as many in the scientific community fear), if national economic and fiscal criminality proceed, if resource consumption accelerates while environmental destruction and pollution continue, if we at the same time remain married to finite fossil fuels and the ills that flow in every direction from them, then the cascade will have begun. 

We are doing next to nothing to recognize these interlocking threats (of which I have mentioned but a few!) and change course.  Will history—and our descendants—curse us?