On Disappointment
LEFT TURN CLIVE
Disappointment is something all presently coexisting generations will likely experience. Disappointment for those of us growing up, those of us in middle age too. It’s a disappointment at not being able to get what the elderly have - namely money and assets. The young have it even worse, as their prospects at being able to own a home or achieve a comparative level of comfort and wealth is even less likely. There will be exceptions of course but the trend will be one of diminishing returns. There is a jealousy here, an unfairness because the opportunities afforded to the boomer generation just don’t exist anymore. There are multiple reasons for this and those reasons are most reasonable: late capitalism has exploited the furtherest reaches of this planet. The Western global hegemony is running out of third world to fuck over, that is to say that it is still doing that but the cost of resource extraction is going up. There is climate change and eco-devastation too. Crops are harder to grow in some places and the chaos of shifting weather patterns is making the act of farming more costly. There is also that rather large problem of people. There’s just so many of them now, all competing and stinking up the place with their cars, plastics, mobile phones, wifi and cancers. So many of the older generation are just fucked. They add nothing and simply exist to consume. I tell ya business is booming round where I live when it comes to the sale of mobility scooters. I kid you not, on one of the main roads into town, right next to a car sales showroom is an equally large mobility scooter showroom.
It’s like we all just hang on way too long now. Decrepit old bodies riddled with all manner of ailments, living by the skin of our pensions, propped up by a cocktail of pharmaceuticals and medical procedures. It begs the question - why? Is this living? These resource sinks are better off not being around anymore. It would go some way to alleviating the problem.
This disappointment however is a minor symptom of the much larger problem. Globocap is entering its latter stages now. Decline and collapse are coming for the decadent Western civilisations. Never again will we see an average of wealth across the populace rival that of the baby boomers and that’s a good thing. It’s a good thing because a correction is coming. Disappointment won’t be the only experience in the days ahead but this is how it begins.
RIGHT TURN CLIVE
The disappointment cuts both ways though. Ironically and rather unfairly it is the boomer generation that sees the young as being failures. They chastise the young as being unmotivated and distracted. But how is one to respond when the system you have been thrust into, a system controlled by old white men in suits, delivers so little and is clearly on a one way forced march off a cliff?
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
To reject the world and it’s prized values is a difficult thing to do. It is more than just an act of rebellion now. When I was growing up the world was explained to me the way it was to us all - you get an education, you get a job, you buy a house, you start a family. You have two or three cars/kids, you go on a yearly vacation, you eat three meals a day consisting of meat and vegetables. You do all this, living pleasantly next door to John and Rachel and their two kids who are doing exactly what you are doing. You get a dog or two. You are happy. Eventually you retire with enough assets to live out your days in modest luxury. Then you die - hopefully of heart failure but probably of cancer. However, as it turns out, this whole ideal is predicated on the exploitation of the third world and the natural environment, that none of this is remotely sustainable! To live this way is deeply damaging to the long term success of the species and the economy that you are dutifully contributing to, is in fact pumping the world full of toxins and fuelling international wars. It’s decimating our nonhuman brothers and sisters and their habitats. It’s also making us miserable, something that seems utterly clandestine if you can stomach a peek at the TV.
So let’s start living in a way that wants no part of this exploitative and cruel world. How you do that is up to you. Rejecting the current globocap orthodoxy is the bravest and most noble thing you can do. It’s also hard as hell and a huge challenge which makes it all the more interesting. Live in a way that suggests a better tomorrow despite their scorn and condemnation, for the new world is across the divide of collapse and we are still building the bridge. Start the project, build the bridge.
Be a disappointment.