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.
