What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire Page #12

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"somehow, everything's ok."

somehow? How do we get there? You know?

It's like - it doesn't do any good to fantasize if

there's no way to get from here to there.

Is there a way to get from here to there?

And where is there, exactly?

Where do go from here?

As world events break through our

walls of denial, voices of helplessness

and resignation fill the air.

Voice 1 :
If we knew some way to

get out of it we would. But we don't.

Voice 2:
Whatever's gonna

happen is gonna happen.

Voice 3:
There's gonna have to be

some sort of catastrophic event.

Voice 4:
A meltdown of all of these

systems that we've been depending on.

Voice 5:
We figure there's no way to stop the

train from heading off the end of the bridge, you

know. We're just gonna go down screaming.

Voice 6:
And finally you just say, "Aww f*** it.

this ls. . . you know. . . let's just f*** it.

Who cares?"

Voice 7:
You know, we might as well go out and

party and have a good time. Because

the world's not going anywhere good.

this system feels like a trap,

a madhouse, a prison.

With resignation this profound,

It seems as though there is little left to do

but to make the prison

as comfortable as is possible.

Narrator.:
Personalized. And with accessories

engineered to our personalized taste.

For convenience. For comfort.

For convenience and safety.

With protection from rain.

Blocking out the wintry gale

with comforting warmth.

To hold out the searing heat

with cooling comfort.

Capitalist culture is telling us to bue.

And we will feel better if we buy more...

. . .that we are incomplete and that we need to fill

this emptiness within us be consuming.

Consume, consume, consume.

We've looked now at the train

that is hurtling us to destruction,

at the tracks that constrain us,

at the locomotive power

that drives us to oblivion.

And we see more clearly now

exactly where we are headed.

It all adds up to this.:

this culture is not only killing the planet,

It is destroying us as human beings.

The train plunges forward at blinding speed.

"Charlie stole the handle. "

So who are we going to be?

First Psychologist.:

In the film I see a man standing on the ledge.

Do you think he really wants to live?

Second Psychologist.:

The answer, of course, is yes.

I don't think humans are going to

gy extinct. We can't kill ourselves off.

I just don't see any plausible

wae it could happen. . .

well. . . I guess. . . eeah. . .

What we could - what might happen is

the earth could get into a serious

runaway greenhouse effect

that could turn the whole

planet like the planet Venus.

Where it's like a thousand

degrees and full of methane.

A powerful creative tension arises when

we hold two things at the same time.:

a clear assessment of where we are,

and a clear vision of where we want to go.

I don't see that the culture of Empire has either.

Trapped in a fantasy of domination and

control, any clear assessment of the world

gets trampled underfoot in the mad

march toward the scam of progress.

Traumatized by disconnection and

abuse, the people of Empire now hold

visions that are unhinged and insane.

Born and raised in captivity, we're

now so institutionalized that few

of us can even see the prison bars.

But we all know our cell numbers.

Waking on the train, we find that

we don't know where we are.

And we don't know where we're going.

We hear the whistle blowing.

And we can see the world speeding by.

Some of us want to stop the train.

We want to get off before it

reaches the end of the line.

But we have no clear idea

how to get from here to there.

The secret plan is that we're going to go on this

wae, no matter what, for as long as we can.

I likened it to the secret plan in Nazi

Germany. It was an open secret.

Everyone knew that those Jews weren't going

off to resorts or to have picnics in the woods.

But no one talked about it.

And no one talks about this either.

This is scare! We're in a democracy!

We're in the biggest democracy on the

planet and we're not getting informed.

And we're not looking, either. We're not asking.

As civilization has provided more and more for

us, it's made us more and more infantile.

So that we are less and less able to

think for ourselves, less and less

able to provide for ourselves.

And this makes us more of a herd. . .

where you develop more of a herd mentality. . .

where we take our cues from the people

around us, from the authority figures around us.

The situation is desperate.

It's the World-Wlde Eco-Slam, where climate

Crash goes head-to-head with The Peak oil kid

and Overshoot tears into Mass Extinction.

It's the Smackdown at the End of the

Unlverse and tickets go on sale this Friday.

The American lifestyle is unsustainable.

That means that it can't be sustained.

It's coming to an end.

Remember how thirty years ago we looked to

the future and said "thirty years from now, if we

don't act, we're going to be in trouble"?

Well it's now and we are because we didn't.

The fundamental laws of life have been broken.

The consequences of that are now apparent.

Remember the Secret Plan.:

the dominant culture is not going to

stop until it destroys everything.

It can't.

It's built on a foundation of faulty assumptions.

I see no way that it can be reformed.

It can only be discarded, so that

something new can grow in its place.

We have to look at this.

We've got to understand that we

are part of a living community.

We're not the masters of the living community.

We're not the guardians of the living community.

We are just another species. And we

have the power to destroy that community.

And when we do that we destroy ourselves.

if we don't figure out what

our place in the universe is

we're not going to have a place in the universe.

I have read many books about the world

situation. And I have noticed a curious thing.:

the Happy Chapter".

After an entire book of dire prognostications and

appalling facts comes the chapter at the end

that says that if we only do this and

this and that we'll find the solution,

that while there is much to give us

concern, there is also much about

which we can be hopeful.

I don't like happy chapters.

They've lulled me back to sleep.

They suggest that somebody

somewhere somehow is handling it.

I can just go on with my life.

And hey, we've got thirty years

or so, right? That's lots of time.

I'm sorry, folks, but I think time's up.

I have no happy chapter to offer you.

No llst of quick and palnless fixes.

No plan that will keep the train

rolling forever on this track.

I see no way for that to happen.

If there is going to be a happy chapter,

we shall have to write it together,

with the rest of the community of life,

on the pages of the living world.

I sometimes have dreams about

my grandchildren coming also.

And these dreams sometimes turn unpleasant.

Because the grandchildren come and they come

from a North Carolina and from a California

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