Nov 23

 Better days. Improved a bit. Rough around the edges. Uh huh.

After spending 24 hours thinking about the whole shares and mom thing, I settled down once more into a status quo. It is what it is.

Today, as it turns out, there's not actually that amount of money there. Decimal place in the wrong point. A lot smaller than the sum thought for. Which. Makes much more sense and is about what I thought should be floating around.

So. It wouldn't have made no never mind anyway. Well. Kinda. It would still have been more than the £5 in her purse that my mom thought she had. Oh well.

All in all, the money being a small sum after all is probably the better thing. Less wiggle room to be found in the past. Fewer what ifs.

But it still dug up the ugly facts. Mmm. Meh.

Time has been slipping away from me. Despite heading each of these posts with the date, I was surprised to find it was so late in November. Shit to do. Things to get sorted. Bureaucracy. Forms. Nonsense. The paperwork tax I need to do just to exist in the modern clown car. I hate the bureaucracy. Drives me crackers. The endless bits of paper stuffed through my door. Buy this. Have you seen that. Have a statement. Have a council letter. Heres a flyer. Honestly. The amount of shit that gets shoved through doors. And then they sit there and bemoan waste. Hilarious.

Talking of waste. I went past a crane yesterday on the way to visit a friend. A big advertising board hung from its arm, visible to half the city. It was a big ass video display screen. With changing text. Showboating the company.

It occurred to me that in todays world, some are trying very hard to clamp down on waste and pointless shit, and yet, others seemingly don't give a shit and are doing things like erecting giant LED billboards on cranes. Because they can. I shudder to think of the carbon cost involved in manufacturing that, getting it up there and powering a giant display 24 hours a day. For no reason whatsoever than a bit of vanity.

We're truly fucked as a species I think. Happily driving over the edge of the cliff of sustainability to produce just one more bit of tat. How did this happen, the unlucky survivors in the wreckage of society might ask. Same as ever. Just carried on being stupid, then lamented the consequences of actions after the event. So unfair. No. Just simply cause and effect.

Human. Innit.

And of humanity. I think I'm going through a bit of a lower mood at the moment. A bit of a understanding disappointed kinda mood. Where I see people stuck in their loops. You can offer help. Maybe advice. Listen. Try to change the loop. But. It seems. It's incredibly hard to change those loops. Shit will play out the way it is wont to do. In the face of banging away at issues and getting nowhere. You have to stop and ask yourself, holy crap, what's the point. Just sit. And observe instead. Tragedies will unfold. Mistakes are made. Damage slowly further erodes.

I think in the end I sometimes retreat from it all. Just. Let the world turn. And people do their thing. As preventable as shit is. People are gonna people. Tomorrow. Everyone could get up and decide to be kind. Putin could call off the war. Greedy fuckheads could be less of a dickhead. Not impossible. In fact. Extremely easy. Just. Get out of bed. Turn left, instead of right. Easy. But it doesn't happen. Not because it's impossible. But because that's people. We are stuck in the ways of what we do. Crazy. Disaster. Almost inevitable. The strength it takes any individual to break out of their loop, their rut, in such a world, should really not be underestimated or overlooked. It is a tremendous achievement when someone can change their path. As easy as it should be in theory. It turns out to be uncommonly rare.

I find that hard to not be disappointed with the whole thing.

As much as I am at zen with people being people, flawed, fucked up, imperfect. And accept people as they are. The old bit of me, the IT trained bit of me, that wants to find the problem, fix the problem move on finds it hard to entirely accept. Even when it has learned to sit on its hands and listen rather than speak.

Meh.

I flip flop over time between hope for humanity and disappointment, futility and inevitable disaster. Mathematically speaking, disaster is almost a certainty. It's not politics. Or opinion. It's just math. Math concerning tech. The greater your reach and power, the higher the consequence. At some point a tipping point gets reached where any error leads to oblivion. Russian roulette with a gun loaded with a world killing bullet. Give it a spin. Pull the trigger. Once every 3 months.

Math.

Eventually. Your luck runs out. That new virus kills all of you. That biological weapon gets out. That nuclear exchange occurs. The climate gets into a runaway effect. Pollution reaches a subtle tipping point and humanity withers. Society revolts. Crashes. Disasters. An extinction level asteroid hits the planet. An extinction level volcano blows its top. Hubris. Or just plain bad luck. Eventually. Your luck runs out. Unless you're very clever, and more importantly, very wise.

We're not wise. Everything else after that, turns into an inevitability.

Ozymandias ( 1818)

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare 

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley ( 1792 - 1822 )

 

I can think of no better epitaph for our species than that poem.