The frog in the slowly boiling pot: Symptoms and signs of our dying civilization.

‘Ahh’, think the green little critters, ‘so comfy now that the water is warming up. It was so cold a little while ago’. True; the waters of time has been cold since and after the world wars. But it has since then so nicely warmed up, that all the little froggies are now comfortably frolicking about in the still warming waters of time and space. Warmer and warmer it gets, the little frogs frolicking and prospering; their numbers growing and growing in the hot little pool, fogging up their cute little eyes. Then one day, some of the frogs on the sideline realise that the water is becoming a bit too hot for comfort, and start warning their friends, but alas, the rest go about their business (ridiculing their paranoid friends), enjoying their new found sauna – after all, isn’t sauna’s supposed to be healthy? Alienated, the paranoid ones climb out of the steaming pool, taking one last look at the now slowly bubbling waters. As they disappear over the hills; the smell of boiled frog flesh start drifting from the valley with the volcanic pool…

Like the little frogs, we frolic around in our hot little pool called civilization or culture if you will. We dress in the mornings, go to work with a hot steaming cup of Starbucks in hand (as it looks so cool in the movies), read a book on the metro (cause, that’s what smart and sophisticated people do on their way to work apart from shutting out all those possible maniacs surrounding you), go to a café or bar after work, get drunk, get laid, get bored with our own routine, become obsessed with other people’s lives splashed on glossy magazines…Everyday, we do the same old routine over and over again, buying more stuff we don’t need in order to muffle the voice in our heads that try and wake us up from our consumerist, modern civilization stupor. While all this is happening; our self obsessed fascination with our egos drowning the meek and the mild with pathological ambition and lust for power, our comfortable ‘pool’ is warming beyond the point of not only comfort, bur sustainability of life.

Stand back from it all – gain perspective, and you will notice that the rose colouring of the world is an illusion. It’s an illusion created to keep the whole cookie from crumbling, as it is a very brittle cookie at that. To put it as plain and simple as I can, I will use the words of one of my friends: ‘I may not know a lot about economics, but as I see it, if there are too many worms on a dwindling leaf, the game is over…’. If you take the time and study the statistics of what is really happening in the world in regards to how many children die of starvation each day, how little resources is left in the ocean and elsewhere on the earth, and the unhealthy demand supply equation of oil (not to mention the problem with Hubbert’s Peak Oil) on which our whole civilization is built, and you look at the human race’s population of 6.7 billion, growing exponentially, there is but one outcome – too many worms, and too little leaf; thus, game over.

No matter how positive you are or how much one tries to rationalise it; our days here are getting numbered, one by one. There is simply too many human mouths to feed (and greedy mouths at that, especially looking at the western cultures using more than 50% of the world’s resources), and too little goodies to put in those mouths. It is being artificially buffered by virtual money in the form of interest rate credit loans, escalating into the trillions of dollars each year. And who are then the ones falling for this trap? Why, you and me of course; Mr and Mrs Ordinary, programmed everyday by mass media to WANT - want new digital gadgetries, Scandinavian buffet sets, designer handbags, German super cars, plastic surgery for ‘that special look’…while the steam is rising from our ‘comfortable little pool’. One can set the boiling point of water at a higher level with cheap trickery, but in the end, if the heat rises, that water will boil – tricks or none. One only delays the inevitable; the coming economic meltdown, depression and a fading civilization, as history has taught us over and over again that economic depression and war goes hand in hand. But alas, the next world war (seeming to be around the corner if one looks at the new American Defence budget, super carriers closing in on Iran, and Israel asking permission to bomb the same country), will certainly be more devastating than WWII. I think it was Einstein who said: ‘I don’t know what they will use to fight WWIII, but they will certainly use sticks and stones for WWIV’.

This might sound like I’m a good old doomsday prophet: ‘goodness, he is such a negative guy’. ‘Mmm’, then how in the hell does one break it lightly to friends, high on dope in a burning house that their lives are at stake? You don’t if you want them to live, no matter how much of an idiot you might seem to them. You will scream and shout your head off in order to save them.

Now; civilizations have come and gone; Egypt, Greece, Rome, China…They ebbed and flowed like all things do in our limited universe. The one always makes room for the other. But what happens to a civilization not confined to a single space on earth? What replaces a civilization that is global and stupendously interconnected in politics and economy on a limited planet with less than half her resources left? Another civilization? Or a long cold spell of struggling human beings, reverted back to primitive primates as they fight for tomorrows morsel of food?

The only way we can stop this, is to firstly, wake up from our denialist stupor that blinds our perspective minds. We need to wake up NOW, and realise that the ‘warm’ pool is at boiling point, and that soon, we sill start smelling our own cooked selves before departing…

(alternatives to the abovementioned scenario follows soon)