Perhaps it is because I have been picking up the news again, but then again, what prompted me to do that, yet it seems that we appear to be in the free fall that folks have been barking on about now for the past few decades. Things are getting really ugly in all manner of areas. A bit like watching a tower of little piggies or monkeys collapse in Angry Birds, when you know you scored a direct hit and the whole fucking lot comes down.
Briefly, let's look at it.
Economics is buggered. The lies and endless "everything's fine" has just melted away. People are actually physically hungry and fighting back against the controlling authorities. Jobs are vanishing, homes are overcrowded and further education is now only reachable by the wealthy. The resentment is spreading like a cancer around the world as hopes and dreams fizzle away in a puff of green smoke. Food costs are soaring. Now you pay more and you get less. I noticed a lot less folks in the supermarket last week, shelves stacked full of expensive, imported items. Even the street food is hard to afford at the end of the month. This war is on the streets, and all that cash spent on guns was really for the uprising of its own people.
Environment. Best not go there. In a place like Thailand, whole chunks of mountains lie exposed and machines digging up earth for ever more crummy flats built by fat cunts for poor folks to carry out domestic abuse in tiny rabbit hutches. The late rush for resources means the gloves are really off and the big, bun fight has begun. Disputed territories are soft targets for tension. Those superpowers need their boilers stoked. Weather, constant floods on my side of the world, no trees? Who gives a fuck? As long as we can build more....blah, blah, blah
Health. Another young dad died at the school last week. This one was 36. Poor little kid in class was hardly aware that anything was wrong. Cancer and diseases stemming from dirty air and cramped, stressful lives sends people to an early grave.
Tech. This ideology that tech is the answer and will save us is a bit limp wristed, isn't it? It hasn't saved us yet. Smart phones and Ipads have some work to do. They are just the tools pushing us ever faster over the edge.
Sometimes when I am riding about the town, I say to myself, "Is this a cool place"? Or is it actually a dirty, smelly shitheap?" And most of the populated world looks like this.
Is it gonna be any better next year? Or in 5 years? Or in 10 years? I don't honestly see how.
1 comment:
I like this blog entry, it says it how you see it. I agree with 99% of it but the 1 thing I'm missing is how is this really any different to how the human race has treated each other and the planet over the past several hundred years - if not longer? And yet we're still here and life expectancy in developed countries is continuing to rise. Not so currently in 3rd world countries but this should hardly come as a shock and as they continue to develop things will invariably improve.
I can't really see much changing radically long-term (and then any change will be so incremental it will only ever be looking back on history that will make it 'appear' radical) to be honest with you, except perhaps with the intelligent application of technology. Yes gizmos add to consumer spending and fuel capitalism, no doubt their manufacture increases pollution. However, without technology we wouldn't be looking at electric or hydrogen powered cars as real alternatives once the oil runs out (and nobody really knows when that will be, educated guesses at best but guesses nonetheless). Alternatives that don't pollute. We also wouldn't be looking at wind or wave power (still relatively in its infancy and a long way to go yet) to light or heat our homes. We also wouldn't have seen the uprisings and revolutions in Egypt and the Arab world generally, uprisings that were largely facilitated by technology as more and more people look around at the rest of the world seeing what others have and what they have not.
What I'm trying to say is that although the future does have it's grim aspects and it'll be entirely down to us to fuck this up or make changes it's not all doom and gloom. There is light. But only if you choose to see it.
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