Well Done! You Tolerated This (Final Post)

Where did it all start?

Debt crisis, recession, the onward and upward march of neo-liberalism, talk of sado-monetarism, student protests, police charges, melting ice caps, talk of shale gas fracking, a sea of plastic, the spectre of peak oil, high unemployment, celebrity worship, wars in the Middle East, tabloid skulduggery, poorly written articles, lots of football in-jokes, a healthy dose of comic cynicism, no readers, and delusions of grandeur.

So, where does it end?

Debt catastrophe, depression, the death of democracy in its cradle, sado-monetarism, people occupying everything, police pepper spraying or lacerating the kidneys of anyone who does, “frack baby frack!”, a new ocean of plastic, peak oil, higher unemployment (jobs! remember those?), I’m a human being get me out of here, “That News of the World Stuff is terrible”, rising sales for The Sun, more wars in the Middle East, poorly written, but less frequent, articles, too many football in-jokes, an unhelpful measure of cynicism, no readers, and delusions of grandeur.

What about the future?

I used to be optimistic about the capacity of ordinary people to effect meaningful change. That is no longer the case. A congruence of geological (the rapid exhaustion of fossil fuels, water tables, and other resources vital to the stability of modern industrial society), ecological (anthropogenic climate change, oceanic acidification, eco-system destruction, extreme weather patterns, declining agricultural returns, deforestation on an unprecedented scale etc), economic (the continued adherence to compound mathematics as the central organising principle of human society, the pursuit of the unsustainable notion of exponential economic growth, the crippling impact of corporate governance of human affairs), and political (the inability of politicians and citizens alike to a) recognise the monumental challenges posed by the previous three factors, or b) do anything about them) dynamics threaten to cut the Homosapien experiment dead in its tracks very soon. Writing in 2003, Martin Rees, the former President of the Royal Society, gave human civilisation a 50/50 chance of making it out of this century. My opinion counts for very little but I think he is being overly-rosy in his estimation.

A few months ago my cousin had a child. She’s called Casey and she’s pretty damned fantastic. But from the moment we were first acquainted with each other a growing cloud of unease descended over me. I don’t think the odds are in favour of Casey having a particularly good quality of life. The same goes for your siblings, your children, your friends, yourself, and the rest of the 99 per cent (to adopt a moniker used by the occupy movement). I can honestly say that if the opportunity arose, I would not even consider having kids. It would be cruel to bring them into a world which would be so exhausted that it couldn’t even offer them the basic necessities of life. That is a stomach-clenching thing to say. In fact, it’s a fucking repulsive thing to say. But I fear that the accuracy of the proposition I have raised is only matched by the sickening logic of the suggested prescription.

I would usually end an article like this with a positive flourish.  As it stands, there are no more happy endings left.

J Chisem

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