the last hurrah
After 4.5 fruitful hours around George and Oxford Streets --
picking Dae's Christmas present
(collector's edition DVD of Fellini's Casanova; you haven't got it already, have you Dae?)
three books for self
(Jon Courtenay Grimwood's Stamping Butterflies,
Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception, Raimond Gaita,
Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales)
Wim Wender's Land of Plenty DVD
Olga Berg tote in grey
(that I can carry in China, and not be afraid of getting dirty)
a pair of metallic green sandals from Nü
-- I should be in a good mood. And in a way I am, I'm calm and happy and content. But due to a meandering line of thought that started when I bought the Guardian Weekly (several days late), began reading the front page article on climate change and how the weight of international opinion has forced the White House to rethink, if not reverse, its dismissal of the Kyoto Protocol (no mention of Australia, although I'm sure we're been pig-headed as usual) -- I am also reminded not-so-ironically of a line from Terminator 3: "The life you know, all this stuff you take for granted; it's not going to last."
To the politicians and the economists who think that global warming is not a legitimate, urgent concern -- who argue still that the current changes in our climate have no significant connection to greenhouse emissions, that it was all going to happen anyway -- I want to say:
What does it matter what the cause of it is?
The Earth, the universe, has a pretty good record for ending life without the help of humans: everybody (well okay, everybody who doesn't believe the universe is 5000 years old) knows about the dinosaurs, right? You've seen (and then wished you hadn't) Armageddon, haven't you? Movie fantasies aside, that kind of cataclysmic impact does happen, will happen, has happened.
Things and events that occur "naturally" (that is, without human interference) does not equal "good for us". A lion in its "natural" state is dangerous to us. Ice ages come and they go, before we even existed as a species. Does that mean we ought to do nothing to protect ourselves from them? If the climate is changing, and it is, do we want to sit around as a species saying "It's not our fault, not our responsibility, so why should we have to take action?" -- as meanwhile our cities fall and everything we take for granted is slowly taken away? Or do we utilise that imagination and ingenuity that have got us to where we are and try to prevent it?
But can we prevent it? Can we find alternate fuels, cut back on the energy we use, change our economies and our lifestyles, rethink our relationship to the universe at large -- all before it's too late, and nature takes charge? Is science and willpower going to save us this time? Is all the "green-thinking" in the world going to be enough to stop this train from going off the edge of the ravine?
I ended my shopping trip, on the route home, by thinking with conviction:
No.
It was like the bottom dropped out of my world, and then the walls fell down as well.
I felt like that is the only possible end to the modern age, this spectacular collision with the inevitable -- a dark ages like there has never been before. We are all either on the hurtling unstoppable train that is the high end of 21st century capitalism. Or we are running beside the tracks, running and running, wanting to come onboard, to be where the party is; so even if everyone on the train jumped off, the momentum of all those bodies coming up the rear would still carry everybody over.
I am not brave enough to get off the train, leave all the things I value and love. I don't relish the thought of living without electricity and hot water. My body is used to enjoying more sugar and carbohydrates than it needs to sustain life. All of it has to come from somewhere, you know? Nothing comes from nothing. The Earth is not boundless like Hobbes believed, and even the Sun will die.
Mankind now is less Godfearing, not so ready to believe in such things as apocalypses. We hear bad news, but we don't really want to believe it, so we don't let ourselves believe it. And why shouldn't we want our species to endure?
The problem is that nothing lasts, all living things end, and it's incredibly hubristic to think that we as a species should be singled out: that we will always be able to cling to life. Like an old man, mankind knows itself a bit better now than it did in its youth -- but like an old man, it is so set in its ways that it is slow to change. Fallen, it may not get up again.
Let's enjoy the party while it lasts.
Ah, fill the Cup: -- what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath out Feet:
Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday
Why fret about them if To-day be sweet!
-- Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat XXXVII
ETA: I really need to get a job.
picking Dae's Christmas present
(collector's edition DVD of Fellini's Casanova; you haven't got it already, have you Dae?)
three books for self
(Jon Courtenay Grimwood's Stamping Butterflies,
Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception, Raimond Gaita,
Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales)
Wim Wender's Land of Plenty DVD
Olga Berg tote in grey
(that I can carry in China, and not be afraid of getting dirty)
a pair of metallic green sandals from Nü
-- I should be in a good mood. And in a way I am, I'm calm and happy and content. But due to a meandering line of thought that started when I bought the Guardian Weekly (several days late), began reading the front page article on climate change and how the weight of international opinion has forced the White House to rethink, if not reverse, its dismissal of the Kyoto Protocol (no mention of Australia, although I'm sure we're been pig-headed as usual) -- I am also reminded not-so-ironically of a line from Terminator 3: "The life you know, all this stuff you take for granted; it's not going to last."
To the politicians and the economists who think that global warming is not a legitimate, urgent concern -- who argue still that the current changes in our climate have no significant connection to greenhouse emissions, that it was all going to happen anyway -- I want to say:
What does it matter what the cause of it is?
The Earth, the universe, has a pretty good record for ending life without the help of humans: everybody (well okay, everybody who doesn't believe the universe is 5000 years old) knows about the dinosaurs, right? You've seen (and then wished you hadn't) Armageddon, haven't you? Movie fantasies aside, that kind of cataclysmic impact does happen, will happen, has happened.
Things and events that occur "naturally" (that is, without human interference) does not equal "good for us". A lion in its "natural" state is dangerous to us. Ice ages come and they go, before we even existed as a species. Does that mean we ought to do nothing to protect ourselves from them? If the climate is changing, and it is, do we want to sit around as a species saying "It's not our fault, not our responsibility, so why should we have to take action?" -- as meanwhile our cities fall and everything we take for granted is slowly taken away? Or do we utilise that imagination and ingenuity that have got us to where we are and try to prevent it?
But can we prevent it? Can we find alternate fuels, cut back on the energy we use, change our economies and our lifestyles, rethink our relationship to the universe at large -- all before it's too late, and nature takes charge? Is science and willpower going to save us this time? Is all the "green-thinking" in the world going to be enough to stop this train from going off the edge of the ravine?
I ended my shopping trip, on the route home, by thinking with conviction:
No.
It was like the bottom dropped out of my world, and then the walls fell down as well.
I felt like that is the only possible end to the modern age, this spectacular collision with the inevitable -- a dark ages like there has never been before. We are all either on the hurtling unstoppable train that is the high end of 21st century capitalism. Or we are running beside the tracks, running and running, wanting to come onboard, to be where the party is; so even if everyone on the train jumped off, the momentum of all those bodies coming up the rear would still carry everybody over.
I am not brave enough to get off the train, leave all the things I value and love. I don't relish the thought of living without electricity and hot water. My body is used to enjoying more sugar and carbohydrates than it needs to sustain life. All of it has to come from somewhere, you know? Nothing comes from nothing. The Earth is not boundless like Hobbes believed, and even the Sun will die.
Mankind now is less Godfearing, not so ready to believe in such things as apocalypses. We hear bad news, but we don't really want to believe it, so we don't let ourselves believe it. And why shouldn't we want our species to endure?
The problem is that nothing lasts, all living things end, and it's incredibly hubristic to think that we as a species should be singled out: that we will always be able to cling to life. Like an old man, mankind knows itself a bit better now than it did in its youth -- but like an old man, it is so set in its ways that it is slow to change. Fallen, it may not get up again.
Let's enjoy the party while it lasts.
Ah, fill the Cup: -- what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath out Feet:
Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday
Why fret about them if To-day be sweet!
-- Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat XXXVII
ETA: I really need to get a job.