The northlondonhippy

Archive for February 17th, 2007

When I was a kid, sev­eral decades ago, expec­ta­tions of the end of the world were sim­ple and directly related to the nuclear arms build-up between Amer­ica and the Soviet Union. The planet was going to be incin­er­ated in an orgias­tic exchange of h-bombs. The con­cept was called mutu­ally assured destruc­tion or MAD as it was known at the time.

It still could hap­pen, but prob­a­bly sparked off by one of the later mem­bers of the nuclear club, or even more likely, if some crazy ter­ror­ist group gets their grubby lit­tle hands on one.

Hey ho!

But now, added to that list of cat­a­clysmic hor­ror is cli­mate change and that’s even scarier sim­ply because of its appar­ent inevitabil­ity. This is one run­way train that can’t be stopped!

At least we’ll all go with a deep, dark, trop­i­cal tan…even the polar bears! What fun!

One way or another, the end of the world will come, but my guess is it won’t hap­pen until our sun goes super­nova, in a bil­lion years or so. Until then, the planet will most likely still be here.

So what do we really mean by the “end of the world”? What we really mean is the end of us. We think we are the world, but we’re not, we’re just the peo­ple. Or so sang a bunch of pop­stars in the 80s!

The end of the human race is our big fear, yet we’re doing sweet fuck all to pre­vent it. I would argue that we couldn’t pre­vent it, that our own destruc­tion and dis­ap­pear­ance from the face of this planet is as inevitable as the sun going super­nova. We’re doomed.

That’s not a bad thing. It’s not a good thing either. It’s just the way things will be. Nobody said we’d last forever!

Why is it so hard to accept that noth­ing is per­ma­nent? I’m not per­ma­nent; I’m tem­po­rary and more so with each pass­ing day. I’m going to die, I just don’t know when, but I get closer to my last day, every day.

I don’t have a prob­lem accept­ing this fairly cer­tain truth. And there’s noth­ing I can do to change it, even if I wanted to, unless they invent some immor­tal­ity brain com­puter, but I couldn’t afford that anyway.

I’m not say­ing we shouldn’t try to pre­serve the human race, or per­pet­u­ate “our way of life” for as long as we can. What I’m say­ing is that doing so is an exer­cise in futility!

And what is our way of life, anyway?

Our way of life is to con­sume, any­thing and every­thing. Our way of life is devour our nat­ural resources in a very unsus­tain­able way. It’s just what we do and we’re damn good at it; so good in fact that we’ll never, ever stop.

All right, what per­sonal sac­ri­fices are you will­ing to make to save the planet? Will you give up your car; jet travel; your cen­tral heat­ing or air con­di­tion­ing? Will you stop watch­ing TV, going to the cin­ema? How about buy­ing your food in shops; are you ready to pro­duce your own grub, make your own cloth­ing? Are you ready to return to the 18th century?

Nei­ther am I!

I love liv­ing in the mod­ern world and all the con­ve­niences it affords me! I love pick­ing up my cord­less, recharge­able tele­phone, read­ing a menu under the glare of an elec­tric light and plac­ing an order from my favourite Malaysian take­away and then wait­ing for 30 min­utes, while they pre­pare my food, flip­ping through the chan­nels on my dig­i­tal satel­lite tv receiver, while watch­ing it on my big screen LCD TV. And much like Pavlov’s dogs, I sali­vate at the sound of the petrol-powered moped as it pulls up out­side my north Lon­don lair with my pip­ing hot dinner!

Stick that in your car­bon foot­print and smoke it!

I recharge my mobile phone and iPod with reck­less aban­don; I don’t think twice about sit­ting on my com­puter all day, while my stereo blasts out my favourite tunes. I drive to the shop to buy my gro­ceries, I drive to work every night. When I’m cold, I turn up my gas-central heat­ing and in the heat of the sum­mer; I do have an air con­di­tioner. I’m a bur­den on the resources of the planet and I’m doing next to noth­ing to redress the balance.

I say next to noth­ing, but I do make some empty ges­tures that are meant to make me feel bet­ter, rather than do any actual good. My car is fairly green, with a very small, fuel-efficient engine. I’ve changed all my light to energy sav­ing bulbs; when I order from Ocado, I always choose the green deliv­ery option. I recy­cle as much as my local coun­cil will allow, which at the moment is alu­minium, tin paper and glass; now if they would extend that to include card­board and plas­tic, my actual rub­bish would be next to nothing!

Does any of that make the slight­est bit of dif­fer­ence? I sin­cerely doubt it.

So what if we’re doomed. Only fools believe that the per­ceived supe­ri­or­ity of the human race jus­ti­fies our con­tin­ued exis­tence for­ever! Don’t be a fool!

How can any­one be sur­prised if our time is com­ing to a close? We’ve done more dam­age to the planet in a cou­ple of cen­turies, than every other liv­ing thing in the mil­lions of years before that! If any crea­ture has earned the right of extinc­tion, it’s us! I say, bring it on!

My nihilis­tic of view of things isn’t meant to bring you down. In fact, it’s intended to do just the oppo­site. Accept­ing our fate and know­ing what’s com­ing should empower us to all do the things that give us the most pleasure.

For me, that means lots of skunky bud, because if I actu­ally had any decent weed right now, I wouldn’t give a shit about the end of the world! And I wouldn’t be fright­en­ing all of you!

Send me some good weed! Please! I’ve had enough of the draught and the grit!