Fake Answers for Real People

Things are becoming clear. Our numbers are being reduced through anxiety and starvation. As long as people have money, they can sit at home and consume, waiting for developments. Those who don’t will have to find a job in any online service still in demand during and after the implosion of Western civilization. Remember the twin towers? They turned into a giant dust cloud floating out over the ocean. People said it was from the airplanes crashing into them, but that was silly nonsense. What exactly happened, nobody knows. With covid it’s the same. There is a condition, quite obviously, but the official version of what it is and what it does is not very convincing. It’s scary, yes, but the best conspiracy theories are way more frightening.

So where do we take it from here? We know we are being lied to, but we don’t know the truth. This is all part of the anxiety agenda. Feed questions, give no answers. All media are involved, both fact-checked and inspired, if only because it is in their nature to be so. We will have to come up with our own answers. Meanwhile the economy is being consumed as if she were cancerous. Tuberculin, perhaps, as it seems more in the style of covid. Anyway, all we can do in the meantime (all we have been able to come up with so far) is wait until we get are freedom back from those who stole it from us in the first place. In my childhood this was never a winning option. Therefore, we’re heading for disaster. That it may not seem like that is because we used to be rich, meted out on a global scale. We’re still comfortable.

Starvation is already happening in the Southern hemisphere and it’s spreading upwards. How long is this going to last, you may wonder. Will my resources reach until the new normal sets in? Am I going to make it there? People who are not able to answer this question with a heartfelt yes - and outside Netherland they are a majority of the population - will start getting nervous. Government handouts are all very nice, but in many countries where this routine is now practiced state largesse has never been a safe income bet, making a return to a steady job the preferred and inevitably hoped for solution. A real pity that so many people find themselves in similar circumstances, we’ll soon be fighting over slave wage work.

This is our new reality: if you show weakness you risk being wiped out and if you have no money you risk being wiped out. It’s a game designed for the young, and many Xers are being forced to play this game at the moment, just trying to stay alive. Have I still got anything to offer or is it all about being young? I think it’s a natural, healthy reaction when you are young, to feel that anybody above forty should shut up and be glad they’re still alive. Pandemics usually strengthen such notions because the young will survive and they know it. They can feel it in their lust for life. Oldies, on the other hand, are all about damage control. We will have to accept this difference and its consequences. For one thing, the young are certainly not to blame. They’re just waiting to take advantage.

This is our situation. The economy shrinks and shrinks and every next round another batch of oldies will be forced out. Is there no solution to this? Of course, there is. But it requires a serious change of our societies. To begin with, we will need to change our attitude towards money. Once upon a time, money was invented to enhance bartering and in order to make it acceptable it was given real value, by using precious materials. Then one day the idea of buying shares was born and money became something invisible. You couldn’t really see it, as it wasn’t there, but it was supposed to be there. And suppositions were just as valuable as the real thing, as long as everybody were willing to play along. Those with serious money, that is; ordinary people were still using coins, though they had become cheaper than their printed value. Nowadays, nobody uses actual money anymore. We just sway our bankcard or telephone. Money is your right to participate in society.

I’m not saying this is wrong. I’m just noting that some people have had to get disturbingly rich before we reached this stage. If a mere two thousand of your local currency can keep you alive, somewhat, then what does two billion buy you? A million lives? If the enormous sums of money rich people have been allocating themselves over the last forty years would ever spill into the economic realm of ordinary consumers and their fifty quid for a night out, spiking inflation would blow up the system instantly. So, they keep both worlds well separated. It makes sense. Yet, I wonder what will happen with their money when we normal people (who want our freedom) will have run out of ours, which we inevitably will under present conditions. Will they start bidding for their best services, which of course is all they have, the best? After getting rid of the poor, and this time it seems to be meant quite literally, as in dead, pretty much as Alan Vega foresaw in 1983 when he sang of avenging angels defeating the poor in his aptly titled Wipeout Beat, one two blues, after us, the rich may turn on themselves. So used they are to hurting other people, that they can’t help their sadistic instincts. They must hurt. One feels tempted to say it’s in their genes. Now would you be able to laugh at them from an astral position?

If you don’t believe you can, you should perhaps contemplate revolution. I am quite sure you are not the only one who would like to see things go back to normal, the old normal, a very old normal in fact, when even in poor Spain income progress seemed to be the future. But then we would have to get rid of the few and powerful. What exactly does their power consist of? We like to say money and the doors it opens. We also know power is enforced by armed humans. Who are these fools? Does anyone know one? Don’t they understand there won’t be much policing left to do once there is no public anymore? Can’t they come over to their own family’s side? There’s a job to do here for families that raised soldiers and policemen. Criminals, too. Fuck all of them, they are wrong, period. You have always known this but you didn’t want to disturb anyone with your conservative views, as they were never very hip. Now they are. Now that we are losing everything, the only thing we have left is our conservatism, our willingness to survive in close and intelligent collaboration with our Mother who has been suffering so much from our behaviour. If you believe in the end this will be our only way out, that we should go the smart gardener road rather than embrace the decadence of the wipeout beat – too hollywood, don’t you think – then it’s high time you accepted the inevitable. The only way to get out of this mess is being wonderful. We really have to start accepting each other.

So much for sloppy feelings, time to get serious about the when and how. Changing society, or whatever you want to call it, is a long game. It’s a bit like playing poker. We shouldn’t pretend we can take over public life as it is. Or was. It’s too expensive still. We would have to let its value deteriorate and then strike at the right time. We will need to let society implode until sufficient has been destroyed to claim the leftovers ours. But once we do, we must be strong and believe we have something to offer to ourselves. That we can create a new society simply by being stronger than our adverse circumstances. Such a thing can almost never have been done alone (some have shown they could). So let’s reach out to our neighbours, for a starter.

More to follow.