How can a world that is so addicted, so distracted, so stung by the past and occupied by the novelties of the present, have any idea of what's coming?

The answer is, we don't have any idea. Almost every person is addicted to either coffee, or cigarettes, or drugs (medicinal or recreational) or to computer games, or porn, or soap operas, or shopping, or some other person, or to alcohol, or fast food. None of these things are good for us. How can fat people go beyond being depressed and feeling sorry for themselves, and coming up with the discipline firstly to get themselves into shape, and then, by implication, to look beyond themselves, at the world, a world that is unravelling. The odds of fat people being able to lift themselves towards turning our troubles around are very very slim. The short answer is that we can't, that we won't. That failure, systemic collapse (total collapse) is a certainty.

Our economics was always based on a schism between the haves and the have nots, and the have nots always outnumbered the haves, and now we are all about to become have nots. Economics based on infinite growth is based on the Now, and has absolutely no notions of the future. Even the simple habit of drinking coffee borrows energy from the future. So does driving a car, and eating fast food. Smoking merely accelerates everything. Including death. And now, the future is upon us, and the now is going up in cigarette smoke and burning car tyres. The idea of order is becoming pure fantasy as systems disintegrate. It is already well underway.

What can we do? is there any solution? As Nate Hagens said, an ancient antelope with oversized antlers went extinct recently. We have the ability to trim our own antlers. To, with the help of media and advertisers, make a cultural shift in terms of what we consider 'normal' behaviour. Normal consumption. Thrift is about to be thrust upon us, thrift is the new shift, thrift is the new vogue. Or death, starvation, die off and disease. It's your choice, and mine, together, even if we don't choose.

Doomsday Smileys [COLUMN]

Today I went to draw money at an ATM in a small shop. It's one of those crappy ATM's that bleep once the card has been read and if you remove your card too soon you have to do it again. I drew R1000, grabbed the cash, and then walked out. The cashier referred me back to the ATM, saying there was a note I'd missed.
I plucked it out of the plastic tray, feeling a bit silly, thanked her and was about to scoot when she pointed me back again. Another R100 note.

It is great to see this level of honesty. It was my first or second time ever in that shop, and I doubt whether the lady had seen me before.

I also had an experience some time ago where I left my cellphone in the bank. I didn't know it at the time...but the next day I went to the bank to make sure. They went into a separate room and brought it out. Anyone could have pocketed it. Again, quite refreshing to see this sort of thing.

Facebook can also, at times, come into its own. Through Facebook, for example, I've reunited with a girl in Ireland whom I knew as penpal and then lost touch with. Although I went to Ireland in the late 90's I never knew how to find her, and we're now in fairly regular contact.
Someone I did meet, and photographed, I've managed to feel that we've stayed in touch despite the fact that she has gone to study in Miami. I've also had various school friends (and some I'd rather have forgotten) contacting me and finding me on Facebook. It's not all good. When I was going through a particularly rough period (including time in jail and difficulties where I was staying) some colleagues who are 'friends' on Facebook knew exactly what I was going through but preferred to rather gossip about it amongst themselves. Even though I was literally walking past them each day, even having lunch with some of them, they preferred to be voyeurs and gossips to having any interest or care about what I was going through.

That said, some people were really supportive. One person on Facebook that I have met and another guy that I haven't.
I believe there are some people - not many, but a few - like that lady in the shop. They know that one good turn deserves another, and that you don't need a reason or a reward to do the right thing. It just feels good, feels right to be a decent human being, and that is reward itself.

Doomsday Smileys [COLUMN]

Hilary Joffe's Business Day article sets the tone for the economic mood of South Africa right now.
She writes:

...the new administration should not underestimate the time and effort of merging and splitting and creating departments: the danger it has to try to avoid is that it might spend more time restructuring than actually doing anything. There’s no question that would be bad. For business and for everyone else.

We don't know how much influence Trevor Manuel will have in the new administration. What we do know is Manuel's role, after over a decade of successfully managing the country's finance, is being shifted. Zuma has made it clear that Trevor Manuel will not be responsible for formulating economic policy. In a confusing contradiction it turns out that Manuel has an even grander role, which is:

...to develop the government’s “entire national plan”. Manuel’s job [is] an “important one”, and would relate to the government’s “entire programme of action” including the economy.

There are, of course, a couple of ways to read this double speak. Firstly, if it ain't broke, why fix it? Manuel's done a successful job, so why fiddle with his portfolio? On the other hand, it's possible, though I admit not terribly likely, that Manuel himself asked to be shifted slightly out the door. Why? Because Manuel has already expressed the feeling that he can't serve forever. And while we may sing Manuel's praises till the cows come home, it is also true that probably, under pretty much any finance minister, South Africa probably would have grown economically anyway given the macro-economic [that is global] fundamentals in play. Because, of course, over the last decade or so almost every country in the world has grown a lot wealthier.

Of course economic prosperity is now past its zenith, and Manuel probably knows this. It is always good to retire on the money, a winner, and it is not difficult to read the signs. Recession is manifesting in the world's biggest economy in a big way. House prices are crashing 17% year on year, and 1 in 5 Americans are likely to lose their homes. That's a lot. That's bad. And there's a lot more bad weather in store. Swine flu may actually worsen an already fragile scenario, but let's keep things simple (and safe) for the time being.

Personally, my concern is Zuma's attempt to centralise economic planning. The excuse is that it was in disarray, but to bring economic power under a command/control administration offers the ANC a railway line into the treasury. If conditions sour in South Africa, and they almost certainly will as global economics deteriorate, it will be as easy as pie for the 'right' hands to pilfer public coffers. That is, more than is already the case. No one has done this better than Robert Mugabe, and there must have been some surreptitious note-taking on political self-enrichment here, on home soil.

Meanwhile, Helen Zille, leader of the opposition DA has echoed some of these sentiments, saying:
"With few exceptions, President Jacob Zuma's new Cabinet is bad news for South Africa."

Zille rightly points out that the size of government has swollen. There now 34 ministries. And she cites the changes to the economic ministries as crucial. Of course they are.

Of particular importance was the creation of a National Planning Commission based in the Presidency, Zille said."While the DA welcomes the appointment of Trevor Manuel as the head of the commission, we will fiercely resist any attempts by this Ministry or the newly created Co-operative Governance Ministry to undermine the constitutionally entrenched autonomy of the three spheres of government."

"We will also watch two critical new appointments very closely, namely that of Ebrahim Patel as the head of the newly created Ministry of Economic Development and that of Pravin Gordhan as the new Minister of Finance.

Zille went on to criticise the changing of portfolios for Barbara Hogan - from health to public enterprises. This is a tough one to call. It is difficult to say which is more crucial to a nation's well being, the ability to render essential services (electricity and energy) or that the nation be able to maintain a minimum level of health services. It seems to me that public enterprises is the more crucial of the two, however I have no idea how informed Hogan is on energy matters. This is a more subtle and more difficult area than most people are aware.

"Blade Nzimande, as the Minister of Higher Education, is a Marxist ideologue, whose appointment raises concerns about the future of higher education in a global knowledge economy."

Zille said the DA was relieved that there was no place in the Zuma Cabinet for a number of ministers from the previous administration, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, Ngconde Balfour, Mandisi Mpahlwa and Charles Nqakula, whose tenures were "nothing short of disastrous".

"It is however, lamentable that Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula has been shifted to the critical portfolio of Correctional Services when her time as Minister of Home Affairs saw her lurch lethargically from one crisis to another."

One of these was the appointment of Susan Shabangu as Minister of Mining. Mining was a critical industry for South Africa's long-term economic growth.

While there seems to be some accountability going on (Manto Tshabalala-Msimang thrown out, for instance), what we're seeing is far from a sane, strategic deployment of talented people. Hogan's role change alone shows a worrying degree of petty politicking. I believe this cabinet will be villified very quickly by an increasingly belligerant public. I believe Zille's voice of reason will fall increasingly on receptive ears. But it remains to be seen whether there is a functional democracy in this country after all. Yes we went to the polls. Yes it was peaceful. But all that was preceded by constitutional ploys and dishonesty, and it is hard to imagine that Zuma will own up to any mistakes in future. Probably, he will form an inner circle of trusted lieutenants, and as conditions outside of that circle worsen - as they certainly will - that inner circle will be made more and more secure, and immune to the vaunted cries, appeals, to the baying public.

I hope I'm wrong.

On the bright side though, South Africa does need to turn a microscope onto the poor communities. They need serious attention. Zuma may do better in this area than anyone.

On this point, I hope he does, because in doing this he may well redeem himself.

Doomsday Smileys [COLUMN]

Losing Faith

I'm an agnostic, which is a step closer to full blown religious fundamentalism than is atheism. So I view it with interest when I see people becoming disenchanted with God. Someone recently complained to me that God had turned his back on her and her family, and that she no longer wanted to go to church as a result. How could God, after being so dedicated and having invested themselves for so long, how could he - well - drop them. Ditch them. Squirt lemon juice in their eyes.

I say I find it interesting because this disenchantment is really one of a bunch of responses we make to discovering reality. Religion can be a nice duvet cover over the cold, hard truth. And the longer you have been divorced from reality, or avoided it, or run away from it, the more uncompromising reality can seem to be. Truth can seem paralysing. But sooner or later most people find themselves in the headlights of reality and are dumbstruck by the sheer, freight train power of it.

Since I try to make it my business to stare into the unpleasant beam of it (and sometimes it is not so much unpleasant as simply, unbearably bright) one thing I do rely on, and trust, is the irrevocable nature of it. For example, once one accepts the truth about Peak Oil, that resources are finite, one doesn't have to get caught up in the conventional delusions of excess, and something for nothing, and false hopes that certain patterns may peter out if we wait long enough. Truth does provide some fundamental certainties (which is why there are fundamentalists lurking in the best of us).

The economic malaise we find ourselves in is going to take us down a road through permanent decline. Not nice I know. But in that contraction, people will become communities again, things will be made that have a use (beyond making money). Discipline will be re-introduced into the system, and while nature abhors a vacuum, many will initially abhor the introduction of discipline. Discipline may take the form of a rationing system, or shortages or both.

Losing faith in our delusions is a good thing. It may feel painful at first, as painful as when we realised our true love was cheating on us for the first time. But in the long run, the sooner we look full and hard into the Truth, the sooner we get ourselves on track. Some will fail in this simple task, making choices such as to take their own lives, or turning to alcohol or recreational drugs. Religion has a place - as a builder of communities. As a bringer of altruism. Religion on its own may not address objective truths such as climate change and other realities. Religion is based on the hope that salvation exists in another life. An after-life.
There is just this one life, and if we continue to put off our responsibilities to sort out the present, the present will sort us out. The Truth always does.