Action must be taken. Thoughtfulness is not required. We have contemplated and it's over. My first principle has always been, first, do no harm. That is advice to make yourself insignificant. I have been contemptuous of thoughtless actors but the world as it is, exists because of them.
I feel the world staggering into an unknown place: a bar hopper past last call sliding into the street. What now? He has no direction home--whirl is king.
The planet abides, resplendent but wounded. The caretakers have forgotten who they work for. Everything is permitted. We are hurtling to some future we decided on long ago. If we have a goal, we cannot get it in focus. The weary wish for rest. A sip of water on the battlefield of life, a last cigarette. We have seen the movie but we will not be reliving it. Time goes on its way and the mistakes we made have made us people we don't recognize.
We can't fix anything. Carbon dioxide. Dying insects. Poverty. We listen to make believe plans from foolish leaders. 105 aging US nuclear plants accumulating 175,000 tons of radioactive waste. Do we need more of them to keep the lights on? Will we bury it all and walk away? It's all seeping into our future like a malignant sludge. Can we quit the fossil fuels? An "electric nation"! We are not serious people because we do not wish to live vulnerable lives. Any solution will require less energy intensive lives. Austerity means less. Someone wants you to make the sacrifice. THEY will wait and see. I think we need to pay the cost now so our progeny will not have to.
We are having a rumble: in one corner a sneaky little virus and in the other.......civilization. The COVID story is a strange one. In 2012 people explore bat caves
looking for fertilizer but instead find a congenial virus that makes several of
them sick. A few of them die. It is a new twist on a common disease--and the virologists set
out to study it thoroughly. They save it in a vial and bring it to a lab
and apply research dollars to understand how the virus
works. What hubris funds gain of function(GOF) research? Scientists want to know all the details to "save humanity" at the not inconsequential risk of destroying it. A Manhattan project for microbes. Then "it "
clawed its way out of a glass vial and found its true home and we are
learning to live with it. No one likes disease, let's organize the whole world against it. Could that be done? Will we all spend all our lives and time fearing Death?
There's a blessing here but no one feels that grateful. Did someone say humility? All of our energy slaves are running away. The new abolitionists, climate warriors, want to see how much austerity can be imposed on anyone but themselves. Are we trying to create a new civil war, testing whether this nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure? We are not yet met on that battlefield but some like to fight and the game of "lets you and him fight" is an enthralling prospect, giving us something to do besides reading and getting angry.
Accidentalists: The inattentive thought that what they couldn't see wouldn't hurt them. Hubris bred nemesis and here we are. Biowarriors: We designed a special bug to make someone else's life miserable. Then we sicced it on them or they on us. Who could the biowarriors be? Not the Paraguayans --maybe the Skripals dropped it when they whiffed the Novichuck. Plandemicamicians. We are thoughtful people and have several goals: vaccines for everyone for as many conditions as possible. Perhaps a business model. Perhaps better living through chemistry--a mission, a destiny to be proud of. But if we planned it to make ourselves better able to cope and we fail at that--we would have to call it faulty thinking. But we could go further and ask if we needed some throttle for the engorging expanding international economy and especially something to throttle the growth genie out making whoopie in everyone's expectations. We needed a break, I mean a brake on this growth mantra and so we are trying our new climate change sales pitch. It might be more acceptable as a requirement than a choice. We kept asking people to choose austerity and everyone said, you first, so we went for Plan B.
You might as well take the vaccine. Put a knife in your belt, if they chortle gleefully when you are poked, you know what to do. Be like William Tell, keep a second arrow for the oppressor. Papers please. You will need permission for everything. You can always drop out, it has always been an option, but you will be very poor. Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. There is no direction home. We spent our inheritance yesterday and there is no hamburger next Tuesday.
Earlier in the year I said the future was murder, quoting Leonard Cohen. And 400,000 since then have died. The government does not want to kill you but it doesn't care whether you live or not. What is important is that the Plan stays on track, whatever it is. The PLAN is simple, the rich (1%) run things to their satisfaction and those who want to help get an allowance.
The WHO says the virus sprang out of nature and did not come from a lab. The reason is that the labs don't have the virus in their catalogue of possessions. Since they don't have a record of it, it wasn't there. You will excuse me if I stay skeptical a little longer. Are all of the knowledgeable virologists tainted or dependent on government funding? Who really wants to know what's going on? The people that need to know, already know.
I respect the virus but I fear what we have become.
