When I was little I had an ideal of how life would turn out; actually i had two ideas, both appealing, but mutually exclusive. The first was the cookie cutter stereotype enforced by a boyhood of being shown what a ‘real man’ was by the media, adults, and Hollywood. I would be the strong manly protector, loyal to wife and children, providing them with the necessities of life. I would get some land, grow food in the back yard, go to work to provide money, play with the kids and be a caring dad. The other was less ‘traditional’, it was to wander the world, without roots, and take life each day as it came.
Ever have one of those grey days, where it all seems so bleak that you want to cut off all ties to humanity and go live on a beach somewhere with only the seagulls for company? Of course that means severing all ties with the real world, all those human bonds that make it worthwhile staying off the beach in the first place. I once thought I did a pretty good job of that, cut away a huge chunk of friends, cauterised the stoner circle, and move back to a transient town. I was on the way to the beach and I’d cleared my inter-personal to-do list.
Naturally I then botched the plan by creating a few new bonds. Only a few as this was only going to be temporary while I readied myself for that last step to the beach, that and there was still residual guilt from cutting off the earlier ones. Its so much easier to remake yourself when your certain no one cares. Sadly deep down we’re all pack animals, and I never got back to that beach. As tempting as the idea to reinvent myself again is there is too much to stay for (as muddled and confusing as it is).
I grew up under the shadow of the H-bomb. A lot of us did, and those who were morbid serious enough to pay attention to such things developed a very bleak hear-and-now view on life. When you live every day with the threat of either the USA, or Russia, kicking off World War III over a slight to their egos misunderstanding, it tends to sour you on the whole ‘moral high ground’ stance. The only real difference I could see between the fanatics of the USA and the fanatics in Russia was that the communists mostly killed their own people, while the USA preferred to do its butchery of minorities in other countries. Either way the chances were that someone was going to make a mess and this thin veneer we call civilization was going to collapse in a screaming heap. Hence my second projected future, wandering in the wake of the global economy collapse. Some noteworthy once said something along the lines of us being three meals away from barbarism, and it isn’t hard to see.
Granted the bomb never fell, and nowadays America is busy creating enemies so it has a new threat, to justify its isolationist ideals, in the form of a poorly crafted Axis of Evil. Of course that doesn’t mean that civilization won’t suffocate under the weight of its own inequity and corruption and when it does all that money in the bank will evaporate like the electronic fiction that it is and the only thing of value will be land and the ability to hold it. To me that means that money in the bank lacks the security of property, but even property will have to be re-evaluated under a worst case scenario where the oil dries up effectively ending food distribution and intensive agricultural practices even as it eviscerates our communication industry. Lastly there is the joyous exodus of pissed of Asian nations should the seas rise as predicted, and all these displaced folk have to ‘claim’ new lands to live in. maybe I’m getting too old, but it all seems too hard and rather pointless.
Since the dawn of civilization [assuming we can call the Greek city states the dawn, and relegate Sumeria to a trial run] we’ve had thinkers decrying the stupidity of civilization and the need to throw of the self-imposed shackles of tradition and custom. Of course the Greeks also thought that a bit of buggery before marriage was a good idea and that the younger the boy the better. Can’t say I agree with that particular philosophy, but then just because they were Greek doesn’t mean they were right all the time (something the Romans never seemed to fully understand).
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