For quite a few years, I’ve been railing about the evils of “consumer plantation” society, how foolish and immoral it is, the waste and pollution, the idiocy, the march of corporate feudalism, and the terrible problems all of the above will present for individuals and for society as a whole, etc.
But nowadays I’m a lot more serene. First of all, many more people are losing their naivete, and finally waking up to what is going on. Secondly, there’s little need to rail against the system, because it’s coming down on its own. All I have to do, is sit here, and wait. Global corporate “free-market” capitalism is creaky, corrupt, disconnected from the people. It is broken, and it is about to go away. As best as I can reckon, the future is coming to me, and it will fit me and my anarchist-socialist-hippie-treehugger-D.I.Y. kind, like a glove.
It will be, as it’s been said, “human-scale”.
Americans will no longer be consuming cheap plastic shit like drunken sailors on leave, and throwing away perfectly good and usable things just because they’re not “upscale” enough. The global economy will not be a giant game of Lotto or a huge Vegas table, riggged by the casino. Corporations will not buy and sell Congressmen, Senators, and Presidents like so many baseball cards. People will live close to the land and to each other. We will produce more than we consume, and do both of those locally.
Actually, it’s been said better:
“In the world I see – you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center.
You’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life.
You’ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower.
And when you look down, you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn; laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.”
Actually, I’m not convinced that civilization will collapse as completely as Tyler Durden predicted. I don’t think that’d be either possible or beneficial. Momentum counts for a lot, as does human nature and human desires. We’ll always have technology, specialization, cities, and complex social structures. But all of the above will be smaller, more distributed, more “people-powered”… more “human-scale”. That’s a positive thing.
Civilization is in for a long-overdue (and probably very dramatic) “correction”. At the end of it, the world will be the kind of place in which I, personally, will feel much more comfortable.
While somewhat more serene, I’m not yet optimistic, because I’m not at all convinced that the transition will be peaceful. Things could get very ugly before they get any better. But, then again, maybe not. Either way, I think we’ll survive it
At least, I can hope so, and try to do my part, and that’s all.
