I may be wrong about this but it seems to me that, when I was younger, the world’s craziness was delivered in smaller doses. You had time to look at the crazy or appalling episodes that occurred in some kind of isolation, think about them and consider what they meant to you and your life.
If that was ever true then it isn’t anymore. These days the madness is flung in massive dollops, all mixed up into a brown goo of insanity with no separation between its unpalatable ingredients and no breaks between the furious flinging. The “system” that rules the world is clearly out of control, with lunatics fighting over the steering wheel. I’m not confident that anybody who is anywhere near the levers of power has any interest in making things better. Mostly they seem intently focused on making things worse.
“Polycrisis” is what some have called the times we live in now. It’s a good word. It’s like dozens of alarms are going off simultaneously and the only plan anybody has is to cut the wires or put mufflers over the clanging bells so we don’t have to listen to them any more. Meanwhile the conditions that set off the alarms are getting worse by the hour.
Politically, environmentally, economically, socially, spiritually: in every way you can think of, it seems, the great globe-spanning edifice built by humans is flying apart. I find this very hard to deal with – poor me! Any time I think of writing about some aspect of this monstrous disintegration my mind links that aspect to other interdependent components of the broad-scale mess and it all gets too complicated.
I was overseas when the couple of hundred thousand people packed Sydney Harbour Bridge to register their boiling disgust at Australia’s complicity in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. I’d have liked to have been there (I attended the Newcastle march a while later). It would have been exhilarating to feel that sense of common ground with so many others who clearly feel the hypocrisy of the situation sticking in their collective craw. Australia – so quick to join in the condemnation of seemingly similar atrocities in other parts of the world in years gone by – is barely able to squeak out a few words of mealy-mouthed disappointment while simultaneously shipping bomber parts to the aggressor.
But look how quickly this pointy end of today’s cluster of polycrises leads to the rest of the horror show. Australia is shackled and bound to the empire that makes the genocide happen. Both the United States and Israel are currently led by narcissistic, self-seeking psychopaths. You might argue that this is nothing new, but it’s clearly a matter of degree. Donald Trump is an extortionist, pure and simple, extracting payola from every source he can find, using every threat – legal or illegal – at his disposal. Benjamin Netanyahu will stop at nothing to erase the idea of Palestine and to garner political and material advantage for himself.
Meanwhile, having prodded Russia into attacking Ukraine, the US is forcing Europe to re-arm at the same time as the loss of cheap Russian energy is driving Europe’s de-industrialisation. Behind it all America proposes a war with China, a move that will surely put Australia on the sacrificial front-line – an eager pawn in the great game, already paying extortion fees of hundreds of millions of dollars dressed up as down-payments on a future US forward fleet of nuclear submarines, presumably with little kangaroos painted on the conning towers. The lunacy is breathtaking.
Politically the western world is in thrall to corporations. Corporations by definition seek only profit and answer to nobody other than shareholders. Our money is debased, our economies are hollow and drowning in unpayable debt and our politicians are mostly spineless hacks who auction policy to the highest bidder. Our media is primarily a chorus of corporate-owned songsters, singing from songbooks penned in remote boardrooms. We are so used to being lied to that we expect it. The idea of truth is a distant dream and most of us wouldn’t recognise it if it slapped us in the face.
Life is increasingly being constrained by corporate and government surveillance. Thought-crime – once a cynical idea in a grim sci fi novel – is with us in its infant form. Those with money and power want to make it illegal to speak out against a genocide, for God’s sake! You can get in big trouble at a US airport these days just by having material uncomplimentary to that drongo Trump on your laptop or phone. Herr Trumpenstein, the Mussolini imitator currently in the big chair in the USA, wants to punish any and all critics of his lunatic regime, so who knows where that leads. And it’s not just the pychos in the US and Israel. I read today that an Australian, living in Thailand, was arrested at the airport by Thai authorities acting on behalf of the Malaysian Government, which has objected to some things the man wrote on his personal blog about its activities. The UK Government is pushing a digital ID and you wouldn’t be mad to wonder if the Australian Government’s plan to “protect young people online” isn’t aimed at the same goal.
As for Trump, how did that wicked slug become US president anyway? I thought the nadir of stupid had been reached with Reagan but, as David Bowie presciently wrote in Life on Mars, “Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow”. And as Frank Zappa so acutely observed: “The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre.” He didn’t mention the militarised police who would be standing behind the curtain nor the “anti-terror” laws pinned up on the brick wall. But here they are . . .
The soup of madness is so thick the Devil could stand his fork upright in the stuff. Indeed, he probably does. CEOs of big data corporations have been sworn in as senior officers in the US military. The president of the United States is raking in a fortune from dodgy cryptocurrencies. The internet feeds users demented slop dreamed up by artificial intelligence agents trained on Murdoch propaganda and Reddit thought-bubbles. Prices of everything rise, driven by inflationary money-printing and naked greed. Wages fall and “jobs” are are as scarce as they are insecure. Houses cost a life’s earnings. Cars spy on drivers and dob them in to insurance companies. Everything is “smart”, so therefore stupid and dangerous. Things that work are replaced by things that don’t. Police tase old ladies on walking frames and beat up peaceful protesters. Missile factories are sprouting in neighbourhoods. Drones are the new face of war. Glaciers are melting. The weather has gone weird. Once in a century floods come every few years. Forest fires rage for months. Hurricanes and hailstorms are frequent visitors. New diseases are spreading. Ancient species are disappearing.
The fossil fuels that underpin the whole mad edifice are running out, slowly but surely, and they cannot be replaced. Coal and oil were a one-off high-energy hit that powered the stupendous overshoot of humanity that is the reason for this whole deranged polycrisis. This situation is not sustainable in any way. It must fall because it cannot continue.
This system we live in is like Wile E Coyote in the old cartoons. He’d chase the Road Runner over a cliff and for a while he’d be so intent on his pursuit that he didn’t notice he no longer had ground beneath his feet. That’s us right now. So what happens next? I don’t know. Maybe the ridiculous AI bubble will burst, incinerating hundreds of billions of dollars and revealing the recession that’s been hiding behind it. Maybe the Yanks will decide it’s time for the simmering multi-front global war of the past few years to move to the next level in the hope that a massive military conflict will Make America Great Again. Kind of like how World War 2 ended The Great Depression.
Only thing I can say for sure is that none of the people currently in charge in this mad system has any desire or incentive to start ratcheting back the polycrisis. Expect the craziness to keep expanding and accelerating in line with the established trend. Enjoy the show, if you can afford a comfortable seat. Otherwise hold on tight. This ride only gets bumpier.
HERE! HERE ! Greg.