Gandalf: The fate of the world will now be decided.
Theoden: So it begins
What is the true state of affairs? Does anyone know?
Sam: [Both are overcome by exhaustion] Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It'll be spring soon. And the orchards will be in blossom. And the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And they'll be sowing the summer barley in the lower fields... and eating the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries?
Frodo: No, Sam. I can't recall the taste of food... nor the sound of water... nor the touch of grass. I'm... naked in the dark, with nothing, no veil... between me... and the wheel of fire! I can see him... with my waking eyes!
All you can know is the state of your own heart and mind, and also to do something with that. Move your body. Make of your mind - your thoughts and words - something good. Think thoughts that are not of the herd. Think about the practical matter of how to live in this world (whateve rit has become). Can you do that?
It is no exaggeration to say that tomorrow we may wake up and find the money we have in the bank is worthless. That currencies around the world - all based on 'promises to pay' that cannot be kept in reality - have lost their value. I discussed this with a friend of mine in banking. Instead of the usual positive spin and talking up the markets, he said, wistfully, "Well, then we'll all be on the same level." It was ironic coming from him since he is a lot better off financially than I am.
If money is about to become worthless, then I wouldn't mind making a quick trip to Australia just ahead of that happening. Always wanted to see it. What if, while there, the carpet gets pulled out of what remains of the world's engines? I'd be stranded...
Truth be told, when I lived in South Korea around 3 years ago, I believed where we are now was imminent - and 3 years went by. I believed then that a stock market crash and global recession was very near. I went through an entire year without a car - in this country. A difficult enterprise, but I feel fortunate to have 'practised' for the real thing. But 3 years went by, time when it was necessary to have a job, and buy groceries and live like everyone else. That said, there was also another choice. To work on a farm, to begin preparing for the life after this one. To start working on self-sufficiency. I could have done that.
If it does come to that, and I believe it will - money becoming worthless - what will happen? Commerce will come to a grinding halt. People won't work (for what?). There will be a basic level of bartering, but since the world has operated on a super-efficient scale as a cash-based market, the transition to something else will create almost instant chaos and anarchy as system upon system collapses. From there we will enter The Dark Night.
While I always imagined the end of the world as we knew it would begin with chronic fuel shortages, it is actually a lot easier and in fact worse than that. Yes, depleting oil has placed tremendous (and original) strain on the systems of living and banking and phantom finance, but how the whole shebang collapses is via the financial system buckling, then failing completely. That is an instantaneous wiping out of everyone's ability, everywhere, to function. Except none of us live on farms today, or near streams of fresh water and we need to get food from big storehouses called supermarkets located in our areas. How will that happen when commerce is no more. The answer is, it won't.
I've considered what the implications for this would be for me and I realise that electricity would be one of those things we can't expect to have in this long emergency (because how will we pay for it?) Which means this blog will no longer exist. Which means the investments I make into it now may be fruitless in the long run. I had hoped to change hearts and minds, but all I have managed was to make a few friends in the course of my travels and these people visit my blog and come here to find out more about things they also agree to. Worryingly, the perennial favorite post on this blog is for a sexual position. This is the world we live in. Never before or since have so many lived under such total delusion the way we have. It's good that this is ending, but it will be a rude awakening.
Take electricity. In the world post-stock market crash, even if electricity is somehow kept going through the exceptional altruism and voluntary niceness of the people tasked with these operations, the levels of disorder in a world where no one is working (and have too much free time on their hands to brood, blame and break) will lead to the sort of destructive activity that renders ordinary municipal service (such as water sanitation, garbage collection, roadworks etc) unworkable. In South Africa already vast amounts of copper wire are chopped up by the poor and sold off. Cash machines are bombed. It's not hard to imagine these sort of activities beginning to take place by vigilantes, resistance groups etc. against other rival groups.
For all the politically correct talk about race and tolerance, in the world to come, groups will divide very clearly along racial lines, and to some extent on common beliefs. It will be a world of instant scarcity and chronic competition for survival in the city. Us vs Them. We will form groups and kill each other for food.
Never in the history of the world have we had so much. If you are reading this, then this applies specifically to you. Never again will people have so much stuff at their disposal ever again. That's a big come down, a big adjustment. Think about it. Think about how much music you listen to in a single day - on the radio, from your collections. If you're like me and you have an iPod you can soundtrack your day to one new song after another. And that's just music. What about movies? What about cars, and food and overseas trips. The variety we get to choose from is a smorgasbord of excess. It is only because everyone around us (mere suburbanites) share in this excess that we think of it as normal. It isn't normal. Like globalisation (the fantasy that the world could function peacefully as a large common market), and suburbia (the fantasy of a country life in the city), the consumer era (the fantasy that infinite growth was possible in a finite world with finite resources) is nothing more than an aberration.
We've had a good run. Some of it has been a grand old time hasn't it. Some of us will live to tell our grandchildren stories that will go like this: "My child, I have seen things, been to places in this world that you wouldn't believe. Okay, those places no longer exist, but trust me when I say that once upon this world, there was..."
A little over 100 years, and period that neatly coincides with the industrial use of oil (starting in 1901).
We can enjoy it it still, for a while, and say good bye. There may be time to begin to prepare for an alternative lifestyle. It was good, some of it, but not good enough to last. Yes, good - some of it. Hopefully, the good will live on. And while all of this happens, all we can do is find the good in ourselves, the presence in the steps we take, in the exercises we do. We have our bodies and our minds, and the choice is ours to use these in powerful and constructive ways. The herd may not do that, but always, the choice is there for each of us, to do the right thing. The right thing is the best thing for you and any other other person or creature. We are going to a place like Middle earth, and no one knows who is the Lord of the Ring.
Frodo: I can't do this, Sam.
Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for.
No comments:
Post a Comment