Have a Nice Day!

Every generation is frightened that it will be the one to face down the coming Apocalypse/Armageddon/Whatever like a weak-hearted businessman on a strip-club floor. But, these 'end-of-the-world' scenarios have been faced before – so many civilisations have risen and fallen (and that is the end of their world, folks) – but more powerful technology has created a much smaller world: A single nuclear/atomic/whatever bomb will reverberate through history - be it environmental (Chernobyl) or cultural (Hiroshima) damage - whilst a bunch of bombs will destroy history.

No people… no records… no history… because history is only for humanity and books; both of which burn easily.

A world that has pharmaceutical companies making as many cures as viruses is a world bent on it’s own self-destruction.

But all this won’t come until we are choked by our own cultural effluence. The constant recycling of ideas which are presented as fresh to each successive generation and moulded from plastics that will never degrade has become a junkyard cage around us. Music (in the charts at least), art, literature etc is regurgitated with more and more frightening frequency.

We are choking on our own sense of irony.

This is not a conducive atmosphere for new ideas. It’s more like we live (both figuratively and literally) in a state of perpetual anaesthesia (the ‘fluffy’ future). To paraphrase Bill Hicks: Here are 52 channels of ‘American Gladiators’; go back to bed.

Elsewhere, our living in a continuous somatic-fug creates fallout that everyone else is paying for. The Capitalist wet-dream is an attractive proposition to anyone who lives outside of the haze. For example:

You’re young, bored and stupid: In comes a well-dressed man offering you security and the prospect of cash – you take it.

You’re young, bored and starving: In comes a dangerous man offering you a gun and the prospect of cash - you take it.

You’re young, bored and angry: In comes a dangerous man offering you a bomb and the prospect of heaven - you take it.

I can’t tell the difference anymore.