When the subter travler was merely a fellow voyager, many years ago, the believe that this world and our lives one day would come to an end by means of a new clear war was widespread among his age group. The year 2,000 was conceived as an invisible milestone in a hazy and uncertain future which most likely would never come into being. Things worked out slightly differently and ten years beyond the original expiration date mankind still struggles along, the travler having seen his life take many unexpected turns, lastly leading him from good old Amsterdam to the industrious town of Barcelona. The idea of a new clear ending has evaporated from collective consciousness, and with that the concept of living under constant danger of sudden death. The threat of depleted resources and environmental destruction, however real and present, does not quite as effectively sow fear and disillusion in our hearts. When it happens it will at least happen slowly, the general feeling is. As long as science hasn’t officially given up on mother Earth, we might as well pretend modern life will last our lifetimes. Recent developments however have created room for new attitudes towards imminent conclusion. The credit crisis and more specifically the sudden drain of wealth from the middle classes to the top - in the United States alone every member of the population has paid some 80.000 dollars to prevent the too big ones from failing, that is a good three tonnes per average family - has instilled fears there is a silent war going on, a war waged by the haves and directed at the fast growing numbers of have-nots in the western world.
Being this month the last of the decade and a reflection due, the subter travler chose to embark on a trip through the internet to find out what fearless people think of our chances for survival. He came upon paths that led him to deeply hidden websites with sensibly worked-out plans for the definite retreat of the super rich (the haves) into carefully sheltered and new clear protected gardens while waiting for the slow but inevitable demise of the human type. They are the elites, the old families that have reigned their countries for centuries and the captains of industry that rob us blind with their neatly orchestrated bailouts, and they are the lucky ones who manage to gather a fortune in their own lifetime through special talents in the entertainment industry, the ones we know and admire. How much would a garden in one of those hidden recluses cost? Ten million, fifty million? Enough to keep numbers low, because survival must be the exclusive fate of very few. They speculate on long periods of anarchy in a dying world and so they must be safe for perhaps a whole century or two, after which they can reconquer the barren lands they originated from. And if things won’t work out smoothly by themselves they of course have the means to encourage developments at will. They have the power to do so, of course they do. They all operate worldwide, the mega corporations, these enormous money controlled systems that have an ever tightening grip on our lives, our energy, our food, our fun and our naked existence. The quick and purely speculative rise in oil prices of two years ago that ignited the financial crisis was a foreboding of how things might work out. This time it was meant to shift the last resources out of the middle classes, the next time it will be to wave us goodbye. So long suckers, have fun killing each others off while we sit in our sun filled gardens, drinking your wine.
It’s a solid plan but there are important insufficiencies. While they can keep away from most environmental horrors, or so the reckon is, new clear explosions would inevitably hit them and in a world gone blind any unknown freak might want to go out big style. This is why the elites after the demise of the soviet union desperately started tracing new clear arms while denying unwanted regimes access to new clear knowledge, because leaving knowledge in the hands of the otherwise opined would put their whole project in danger. As long as every idiot can poison a whole country, where would anybody hide? They’ve got to get the nuke thing right before they leave us to ourselves and that’s a good thing as long as the fight is on, because it saves us from the end. The greatest danger we face is that the elites of the old nuclear powers start working together, because they will quickly identify their own working classes as their true enemy. But once they win that battle all they will be waiting for is a major disaster to get them going, be it natural or man-made.
So, how will it end, then? After connecting the best written pieces, the subter travler came to the following scenario: imagine a power cut that won’t be restored because the energy firms that feed us our indispensable electricity decide to call it a day. They will have need for us no longer, they have already stolen everything there is to steal from us and now they are retreating into the future which will be their future alone. Gone will be our heating and our light and gone will be the internet, our last recourse to intelligent discussion. We will be left to ourselves in our megacities without the means to keep them functioning. We will eat what we have and then we will steal from our neighbours and then the first will start murdering, if not for food then for false ideas of security. A dead neighbour is so much less dangerous than a hungry one, aren’t they? This is the new dark future careful writers envisage.
It would be comfortable to think the elites don’t believe in such speculation, as they daily let us know through their media, but it is hard to believe the big money makers and the deciders of this world really live in denial of what we are heading for. They know perfectly well our way of life is not sustainable much longer and they probably know better than most of us when chaos and destruction are due. For people who with a snap of their fingers have access to all types of information it is simply inconceivable not to be aware we are spilling what little we have left and that we are filling the earth with toxics at dangerous levels, that we are plagued by harvest destroying storms and draughts at increasing rate, that our deserts are growing and that sea levels soon will start to rise and that the future of life as we know it, that is with us around to talk about it, is very bleak indeed.
The plain truth therefore must be that our self-proclaimed leaders have given up on the idea of doing something about it and probably so a very long time ago. The Club of Rome report, now almost forty years old, must have acknowledged what they already suspected and they must have decided then it would be impossible to turn the tide, because denying the masses what they had got used to or were aspiring for would cause levels of unrest which might endanger their own precious existence. So they agreed to keep silent on their knowledge and deny it when asked and continue sending messages of hope and expectance, while in the meantime quietly preparing their retreat into safe havens where the impoverished millions couldn’t touch them. This is why they are making these unreal amounts of money, because allowing only the screaming rich in supplies the perfect selection method.
The subter travler must admit he is quite taken by some of these theories and if it really were true, he had better prepare himself for very different times, times that call for a dignified stance if he weren’t to waste his spirit on the wrong behaviour. But he is a human being, the travler, it is very hard for him not to believe in survival. There should be a lot of fighting and unbearable suffering going on, but there must be cities as well that find their own means and start anew, shouldn’t there? The subter travler must leave the reader alone with the question. He will discuss life after the gold rush later, somewhere in the future which inevitably is coming, because one thing there will never be lack of on this planet is time, with or without us to notice it.
