END TIMES
I know! Every generation feels like they’re living through some form of end times, but now I think we actually are. I read something the other day that went something like; “the Romans didn’t know the empire was falling, they just noticed one day the roads weren’t getting fixed”. The fall was a slow burn, generations long, a process of incremental failings of leadership, greed and war-mongering from those at the top.. familiar… The fall of empires though has never really happened to a backdrop of the existential soul-fuck that is climate and ecological collapse, a terrifying out of control planet-wide eradication device that is hurtling towards all of us, FAST.
What makes our particular end-time so depressing is that we are almost entirely unable to do anything about it, unless ALL of the normal people can drop their differences see the bigger picture and literally drag fuckers out from the top and build a new system quickly. The usual way of human-driven change takes time.. generations.. millennia even and we haven’t even come close to starting to begin. We have to face it, we are climate changed and we are ecologically fucked. I’m not being nihilistic, I’m just a realist. There is no point lying to ourselves and the kids that things can be fixed simply by not using an airplane, planting some natives and becoming vegan. Nothing lasts forever. Not even dominant species.
That isn’t an excuse to not still try doing what we can, it doesn’t mean you can be wilfully ignorant and choose to fly fifteen long-haul flights a year because “the world’s fucked anyway”, it’s still vital to support nature in every way and try and educate those around us where possible; but I think we need to stop imagining it’s up to us and we can make a difference big enough to stop this or even mitigate the effects of global warming/pollution/toxic systems/etc. Knowing everything is fucked takes the pressure off, alleviates the mourning, parks the rage so that it doesn’t utterly destroy us, allows us to think and make a contingency plan and choose our fights, collect our energy, mobilise if we can.
WE haven’t fucked the world up by the way, THEY have fucked it up by managing to manipulate multiple generations into believing and buying into the bullshit and before we knew it we’re generationally spiritually, physically and emotionally exhausted and lost from being ensnared in a cycle of living that none of us really asked for but most of us were born into, successively. The incremental baseline shifting of what a human population will tolerate. I refuse to take any responsibility for this shit! I am not accountable.. and niether are you if you’re not a multi-millionare/billionaire, trust-fund raised cunt. We (99% of the population) are victims as much as the rest of the natural world.
Anyway, day-by-day I will appreciate the species, plants and planet around me, the little community I dwell on the edges of, notice the small rebellious acts happening around the world, continue to support underdogs in every way I can as a human on a spinning rock in space, live quietly and small-ly and be content in my mostly ten mile radius life. Shop locally, grow organically, give things away, not be driven by money, find my self-worth in physical labour and creating actual things from the actual earth… the only thing I need more of is dancing and music… humanity needs more dancing and music…
