- Bed time and I'm thinking of not bothering to wake up tomorrow morning.... Archived Message
Posted by John Monro
on October 1, 2019, 10:46 am
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.... it's 10.40 pm in New Zealand, clocks now advanced to summertime. Spring has arrived, though today from the weather you wouldn't know it, miserable, cold, sheets of rain this morning. But the buds on the trees are opening, my Awanui flowing cherry is painting the garden with a cloud of pink, the roses are waking from their dormancy, the daffodils have already bloomed, the days are rapidly lengthening and the grass is needing cutting twice a week, and I know I'm getting older as it didn't seem much more than a few weeks ago that my previous spring was arriving. But whilst being confined indoors by the inclement weather I've been doing some searching the web and answering some questions on Quora about global warming. But in answering those questions I've read so many others' replies - mostly denialisms, full of logical fallacies, factually wrong, scientifically illiterate and just plain stupid to the point of folly. Whilst reading these infantile adult opinions, I've been listening to Bach's Golberg Variations, and was suddenly struck by the contrast - that true genius and human achievement is actually a rare phenomenon, that it shines only as an occasional diamond in the thoughtless mess that most of humanity exists in. I've gradually, but ever more firmly, come to realise the 7 billion humans now existing on this planet are not going to deal with global warming, pollution, ocean depletion and overpopulation - we're just too feffing stupid and greedy- a million Greta Thunbergs could not counter this. So I'm going to bed now, in a despairing mood. I will sleep, I suppose, and perhaps I'll wake a bit refreshed but you know, the colour of my existence in the last few years has darkened so much. It's a combination of nearly forty years living under this toxic neoliberal economic and political system, which is now, predictably, falling apart at the seams, taking much of the planet with it, with the concurrent existential crises of global warming and planetary mayhem. . But instead of trying to remove the cancer and stitch our society together, hard but essential medicine, as a good surgeon might perform, we think our security is to believe lying quacks who never admit fault, always blame others, and promise our salvation in ever more vigorous application of the toxic treatments our societies have had inflicted on them during all this time and who, in selling their nostrums, sugar coat them with unrealisable promises that we guiltily swallow, as anything's better than dealing with reality. There is no answer to this folly. I'm coming up to 73 and if I popped my clogs tomorrow, then I've managed pretty well, but for my daughters and all our Gretas? What is their future? Am I just a bit depressed, a bewildered old man, or am I using my accumulated knowledge and wisdom to accurately plot an unavoidable trajectory? |