Apocalyptic or just Apoplectic?
My last post was somewhat apocalyptic.
But that is the mood of the times—everywhere expressed these days—not so much directly – but indirectly.
You see it most obviously in environmentalism, which unfortunately usually has too narrow a focus and tends to ignore root causes.
Separating your plastics from burnables makes you feel like you are doing something—but the main issues persist—and they are systemic – economically, politically socially, intellectually. It is hotter every year. Cancer rates are up. New diseases. Populations decline.
Environmental activists are vocal in their demands but, as I say, usually ignore the real issues.
Greta Thunberg says a lot of the right things about the environment-- but she still met with Zelensky who is in the pockets of ecocidal corporations. Greta is maybe "on the spectrum" – just not on my part of the spectrum! And I don’t have $18 million.
American wars in Ukraine and the Middle East do huge amounts of environmental damage—as do their sanctions. Ironically, European efforts to implement “green” technology required Russian LNG, at least for transition, and long-term maybe the Russian small reactor technologies, as well as Chinese SFR reactors —which are far removed from the antiquated American nuclear technologies used up until now here in Japan.
In the Middle East, Israeli bombing of Gaza is not only genocide but ecocidal.
But even these things pale in comparison to the damage done by the American military worldwide.
The US military is vast in scale, with a carbon footprint larger than any other institution on earth. But when it comes to disclosure of its emissions of greenhouse gases, it’s been kept off the books .
The irony is that Greta is promoted and supported by the same people who are destroying the earth—and supporting genocide.
The apocalypse is coming because it is good business—for the moment, that is. Those who run our world see the future in quarterly reports.
Fallout
Fallout is invisible but produces change at the genetic level.
Public anxiety about the world going boom is expressed indirectly in videogames and TV series – The Walking Dead and The Last of Us, for example.
Series with post-apocalyptic visions like these vary-- but they all see life as we know it ending horribly, with only a few survivors, saved somehow by values—resilience, the capacity to love and I guess their agents.
Did I mention there is no pizza in when civilization collapses!
Every season brings new shows. But things are changing subtly.
Most recently, for example, the videogame Fallout was made into a TV series.
Like all such things, it has its flaws-- but it is unusual in identifying the causes of its apocalypse as Corporatocracy.
It is alternative history—but closer to the underlying reality of what is happening than what we see in the media.
In the story, the major corporations of the US cooperate to set up a system of underground self-sustaining vaults to house their executives and key employees and technologists which will allow them to survive while they bomb North America into radioactive oblivion and everybody else dies.
This, they say, is “just business”— capitalism— controlling the market. After a couple of centuries, corporate executives, preserved by cryo-technologies, will awake and orchestrate redevelopment of the surface.
Underground, the vaults are home to people who live in artificial social environments educated to believe they are living and protecting the American dream-- the ultimate middle-class life—insulated from reality—gee, just like today!
Fiction speaks to reality
The greatest example of speculative fiction is George Orwell's 1984—which drew on Orwell's understanding of the social trends of the times.
We know what is happening. We just do not want to admit it. We leave that to writers and artists who allow us to experience apocalyptic events without us suffering the consequences in real life. Maybe that is why writers commit suicide so often.
But “normal” people can watch Fallout and eat pizza at the same time!
As I said, the Fallout series has its flaws.
For example, it assumes systemic, orchestrated coordination and collaboration between companies that does not exist in reality – which is not to say that we do not get collaboration and coordination of a kind—but asystemic and haphazard.
That is why both the Chinese and the Russians "manage" corporate activities to make sure they operate for the public good. They understand that corporations individually have their own isolated psychopathic logics.
They cannot be allowed to control society. Rather they must be controlled.
In the US, corporatism is already destroying American society. There is no public "good". Only greed.
Most post-apocalyptic scenarios envision viruses, alien invasion, or nuclear warfare— that kind of thing. Fallout falls into the general category of nuclear apocalypse stuff – but with the difference— the “enemy” is ultimately us. We know what is going on but we want to have our pizza and eat it too.
Nor is the Bomb the ultimate weapon.
As one of the designers of the apocalypse, an executive of the corporation Vault Tech, says, however, the ultimate weapon is simply Time.
The Russians the Chinese and the Iranians have figured that one out.
Which is why they are taking their time. More correctly, they are letting time take its course – rather than trying to control or change events.
The series followed correctly identifies the mistake in Vault Tech’s thinking— which is of course the primary mistake the US State, “deep” or shallow, makes— that it can control… well… everything— one way or another.
Hubris.
All lives matter
It is not just human life that matters.
Some people buy purebred dogs expecting that "breeding" will yield a certain kind of personality responding to stereotypes. Group think.
These people do not really care about the dog's personality as much as what the dog's “type” suggests about their “identity”. But dogs are individual just like people. They are not accessories. And genetics are always complicated.
If dogs are man's best friend—well—shelter dogs are friends in need-- and, by extension, friends indeed.
If you liked today’s article or just want to show support and get the next Special Article for Coffee Buyers which discusses coming American collapse you can click here to buy me a coffee! (Yes, that article IS on its way!) Or click on the photo above of my kind of friends.
Apocalypse is a feeling, usually experienced by good hearted, gentle people when they realize the truth, on how the world really works.
Greed seems to have has won, we say, and really want to say, it may seem like greed has won, but this time honest and truthful people will defeat greed and create a better world.
No, it is not what is happening,
please understand greed has been winning from the very beginning of the civilized world
genocide is real, leaders lead their nations into genocide because they can, and because it ultimately pays off
defeating Germany in Second World war was about who was going to rule the world, not about genocide.
An area of freedom exists, but is significantly smaller than gentle good hearted people expect
Thanks...I hope to live the future underground with our mole masters and eat frozen pizza. Yum. Eating pizza with the Bush and Clinton spawn. I can dream can't I?