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The light at the end of the world

Posted by Matt, 14 July 2010 · 55 views

As a teen I wasn’t above the odd bout of existential angst. I often wondered what my purpose was as an individual and what our purpose was as a race. Why did we exist? Are we destined for some greater good or are we just organic matter that figured out that the stabby end of a stick would allow us to climb the food chain?

I concluded that we have been given the gift of sentience yet we squander it on daytime TV, mundane “what’s for dinner” choices that wouldn’t bat a butterfly’s wing and working most of our waking days to covet material possessions that we eventually discard with flippant disregard for the process that we used to attain them.

It was all a bit depressing really when you thought about it. Eventually, though, the need for gainful employment gave me less time to think and replaced those thoughts with more pressing issues like paying bills, meeting deadlines and saving up for a shiny iMac.

Becoming a dad a few years ago has begun to reawaken those thoughts. Although my thoughts are more tuned into the future and what it holds. Not mine, of course, but Luke’s future and the general state of the planet and how life will be for him and his children. I find myself momentarily immobilised with the moribund horrors of melting ice-caps, unplugged oil spills, global warming, rising sea levels, droughts, food shortages and an exploding population. Surely these things won’t affect me in my own lifetime but what of our children?

I certainly don’t envy the next generation. They’re already beaten into a guilty pulp over recycling plastic bottles and eating their greens via the media, their schools and well-meaning relatives. You can’t throw a tin-can into a recycling bin without hitting a dozen kids TV shows that preach about the merits of ‘being green”. When I was a kid, the only thing that was green on TV wore ripped purple shorts and went on a bashing spree every Saturday night. Our kids will grow up in a world where the media paints a dark picture for their future and that genuinely worries me.

Even now, movies are pre-occupied with our own fate. You can browse through the many different ways the human race will be wiped out in your local Blockbuster.

“How would you like your end of the world, sir? Aliens? No? How about a natural disaster? Perpetual winter? Ok. How about dying sun? Or would you prefer the ‘population outgrew the planet and set off in a space ship to find a new planet to screw up’ scenario? Oh, I have just the thing for you. How about a dad and his son shuffling through a post-apocalyptic landscape desperately clinging onto the last shred of humanity while baby eating cannibals hunt them?”. Even Pixar couldn’t resist a stab with WALL-E; depicting a future where the human race evolves into soulless blobs while robots unsuccessfully clean up our mess.

Now that’s truly depressing. Happily, the man that found a “cure” for smallpox reckons we’ve got about a hundred years left before we’re all extinct.

Or maybe Gene Roddenberry will be right. We’ll sort out our mess over a nice pint of Romulan ale and a packet of custard creams.

I have been often accused of thinking too much. Which is like saying an ocean is too wet or sand is too sandy. We’re sentient creatures. We’re supposed to think about things. The alternative is to switch off and happily ignore the world around us. Regardless, these fleeting moments of mordant panic pass and I reassure myself that the media is always bleak. Even lovely hot sunny days become stories about how the heat is killing off old people and drying up our rivers and lakes. The media exists to tell a story and they season it with a pinch of salt.

So what of our future? For me, I hope it includes happiness, children, grandchildren and accepting that while we can’t change the world, we can change our outlook. The best you can do is to look after your own family and to try and steer you children in the right direction.

Source

Alex
Jul 14 2010 10:17 AM

Nice blog post Matt

Macuarium
Jul 15 2010 03:34 AM

I can't help being optimistic. It's not as if they risked a Black Plague (cue laughs for the last "pandemic") or a Macedonian or Roman invasion. The next town down the road does not war on them for sacrificial victims. Mass ethnic pogroms are rare, not just another way to cancel debts. They're not indentured serfs, nor mashed proletarians. Totalitarian regimes today have a scarcity value.

Yes, chaos is not that far away (in some places it's very present), but they have a very good chance. IMHO, better than we had: twenty years ago ("Kruschev says I will bury you", anyone?) nuclear war was a realistic perspective and there were serious armies squaring off in the middle of Europe. Not to mention the first half of that century in almost any part of the world. So they (and us) need to change perspectives on sustainability? That's not that hard

.

Western kids may have it best, yes, and a lot of Africa is hair-raising, but look at the last ten years in Brazil... and hope.

Now, about the existential question... that's another beer.

Best regards,

Miguel