The Ballad of the Pink Coral Cell

[mallorys_camera]

Big day for the lad yesterday:



He did good!

Has to watch those sweeping right hand gestures and tone down the "You know"s a bit. But he knows his stuff & held his own with the greybeards. So, I think he has a good shot at that Common Council seat.

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Other than that, I am in a sour mood because I woke up in the middle of the night.

I did manage to fall back to sleep & Fitbit sez I even managed reasonable quality sleep, but when I wake up in the middle of the night, I think dark thoughts the following morning.

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I fully believe that climate change is transforming the planet in such profound ways that the immigrant onslaughts we are seeing now on industrial (mostly temperate zone) nations are just the tiniest manifestation of what will be happening in a mere 10 years.

Drought is ravaging. Drought leads to famine. When people are starving, they go elsewhere. The only way to stop them is to provide them with food and the wherewithall to have a more sustainable existence. (Don't give a man a fish. Give him a fishing rod.) But resource allocation is a complicated game under capitalism.

What we are seeing now is a kind of scuttling to maintain a status quo that cannot possibly be maintained.

The revolution that is coming will be an extinction event.

Won't come in my lifetime. Almost certainly will come in my children's lifetime.

Against such inexorable global certainties, I weigh my own exceptionalism. (Because it's always about me-ee-eee.) In the close-up shot, I'm the pink cell standing out from the rest of the coral reef but move that camera back 10 feet, and the reef is completely yellow. My existence does not matter. It does not have the slightest effect on what is or what will be.

Ah, the mysteries of consciousness! What is the evolutionary advantage of consciousness, anyway?

Where's John Locke when you really need him?

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Anyway, I must push all such gloomy thoughts aside. For it's time to write sprightly chick-lit dialogue!!

Comments

[smokingboot]

He's great!

I reckon the hand gestures would actually help if he was on a podium. It's only in cramped spaces like the above that it might be an issue. I barely noticed the 'you knows.' Perhaps slowing down a tiny bit, give people more chance to take in what he is saying. But even that, we're talking minor tweaks. He sounds assured, knowing his stuff, upbeat, clear. Go Robin!

Re the transformation of the planet, my mind is blank. I just can't 'see' it. I know that if mass extinction's on the way out, so am I. That's OK, I don't want to stay without elephants and tigers and trees. But it has occurred to me that current work for resources exchanges on may be obsolete if we don't need human time or expertise. And then what? Some sense in UBI ideas, but inflation could crush these pretty quickly. Are we just going to reach the point where we need to give out portions of food to most of the Earth's population? It's not the worst idea, but its flaws are obvious.

Anyway, by the time you read this, I hope you are bouncing and grinning with chick-lit vibes!

[mallorys_camera]

Yeah, I do think if the human race is gonna survive in places like sub-Saharan Africa or the drought-stricken Mesopotamian Valley, food will have to be brought in.

Of course, the places supplying that food would have to believe that human life in sub-Saharan Africa & the Mesopotamian Valley is worth being preserved.

And I'm not seeing a lot of conviction on that front.

[smokingboot]

Care is the first necessary point, most people care provided they aren’t scared or angry. Of course humanity has its creeps so issues like black marketeering and governments using scarcity to bring dissidents to heel would become pertinent. Still, my heart tells me there’s a solution to all this.