Yay, yay, yay: a rational response to the problems concerned with the groaning spirit of a human and a not-so-human nature would certainly have to entail a large scale reduction of consumption (the logical side effects of which would have to be a decrease in both factory production and transport of goods, spare parts, and other material and natural resources, and that would come as good news to the planetary natural systems which are, as of today, pressured to the limits of what it can possibly take, and it is all due to human overgrowth activities), the introduction of education programs aimed at reaching a general understanding of the population connection (ie. the population explosion), the saving and protection of forests (especially the remaining rainforests of Africa, South America, and South-East Asia), the clean-up of extremely polluted city harbours, bays and fjords, cleaning up rivers that have gone green, purple and gray with toxic waste, implementing new international laws to stop overfishing, banning shark fisheries (simply for moral reasons: why on Earth are these shark fishermen only after the fins, cutting them off inside the boat and dumping the rest of these oceans’ beasts’ bodies straight back into the sea?! don’t they have any ethical qualms about that?! well, shame on them, and it had better be my lawyer’s personal opinion as well, as if it isn’t I will break his nose, just like that), moving away from industrial agriculture and towards ecologically sound methods of food production, and issuing all human beings with a light blue UN passport and grant us all complete and uninfringed freedom of movement, if not exclusively for that reason (we’re all human beings, first and foremost, and these days, with internet communication being the order of the day, it should be absolutely possible for anyone from anywhere to take on a global or planetary sense of identity, and especially so now that the whole wide world is reeling with the common-to-all problems of global warming and climate change), but also in preparation for an expected tsunami of climate refugees on rather a short notice, first of all from Africa, and later again from Asian countries like Sri lanka, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, The Philippines, and what have you? The island states of the Pacific Ocean? As a matter of fact, I would not be seen crying over the demise of the nation state system, and the fall of all national borders! And how about issuing each and everyone of us with a personal climate certificate which could, in the next phase, turn into a brand new monetary system which would, in effect, make way for a wholesale reduction of all forms of inequality measures? And so on and so forth. There are so many things that could be done, which would make life easier in these otherwise troubled climate times; if only we achieved the political will to do it. So much more than recycling, reusing, reducing, and changing lightbulbs, I mean. Oh dear: there seems to be such a lot of possible (yet still, because of the powers that be, impossible) rational responses here, available to us. Goal oriented responses that would be perfectly rational, reasonable, and – from a strictly humanistic viewpoint — very sound indeed. So why?! C’mon! Tell me why??!
City life, of course. I mean: just to mention one case in point. ‘Cause here we are, more than 50 percent of the world’s population will soon be living in towns, cities and metropolises, all thoroughly detatched from Mother Nature (I like this kind of spiritual notion of a Mother, which is the Earth, and a Man on the Moon, which must be Buzz Aldrin, whose steps were not the short ones of a simple man but the silly jumping about the place, right in front of Neil Armstrong’s camera lens), many of whom are fantasizing freely of a future of eternal youth, to be bought in the health clinic and worked out in the gym, as they are very interested in green issues like organic foodstuffs and perfectly fair trade 500 gram bags of coffee. Ordinary people like you and me, seriously troubled by the urban smog but still hating smokers like they were all spawns of the devil, and all of them being careful not to look the people they meet in their faces, because that might be dangerous: the perfect stranger could easily be a thug in disguise or a pickpocket, even a murderer or a rapist; you can never be too careful. Some people are terribly mean, like real beasts, but you won’t know that until all of a sudden you do, and that would be the point at which you have turned into a victim. Which would also be a moment too late.
It’s a jungle out there.
“Livin’ in the back of my mind, there’s a wild idea. I just took a look around at all the shit in here. My mind is clutted like someone’s attic. Before I burn this house down, I better fix it up quick. I think I need a brain wash. It needs a clean. My mind must be filthy after what it has seen. I need to throw my thoughts out. Out into the rain. I need to purify my wooden legged brain. I need a wash. I need to clean my mind. Sometimes I get lost in here and I don’t like what I find. I think I need a brain wash. I need a brain wash. Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain.” — The Cruel Sea: “Brain Wash”
– – — – — -
Now, travelling to the countryside, what are people doing there? They are all cars, tractors and all sorts of agricultural machineries, I know that much. They are a 100 percent in need of a car, because there is seldom any such thing as a functional public transport system around out there, in the wilderness. And they are equally electricity crazy as the people who live in big cities. As a matter of fact some sociology report I heard about established as a simple fact that the homes of people in the countryside consume much more electricity than homes in towns and cities do. And another thing: how many relatively small communities do you have any knowledge of, that are almost totally dependent on the local garbage factory, in terms of jobs to the menfolk? Quite a few, I can imagine. Not only because it is imaginable but because it very often is the case. Oh dear. Am I in need of a lawyer now? As I am just about ready to take millions of jobs away from people who need these jobs, simply in order to put food on the table, and on the floor as well: animal feed for the dogs, the cats, the hamsters, the rats they are keeping because of the father’s hobbies of hunt’n, shootin’ and fishin’, and of course, also, for the amusement of three pretty children. While the mother’s main interest is going to the local mall shopping. Oh yes. To the local mall. Because with the building and construction boom in place all over the disaster area, even little villages get to have big shopping malls stashed away down there, up front or somewhere in the background. Consumers, you see: that’s what we are. And if we want to travel to some other place on on vacation sometimes, we no longer feel that the neighbouring country is anywhere near far enough away. Nope! We buy cheap air flights to the Maldives, the Bahamas, Thailand, or Brazil, places like that. Yes. That’s what we do, and we do so because we are modern and fairly well kept in terms of salaries and pension funds, not to worry. The economy is booming and you’ve got to celebrate the good times when they are here, because none of us can know what the future might bring. Well, anyway: not for certain. But hey. Let’s not think about the future. All of a sudden, you see, a range of rather depressing thoughts spring to mind, and you don’t want that. –
Oh dear! Am I in need of a lawyer?! — 
“I wasn’t doing nothin’ — anyway, just what is it that I’m supposed to have done?
With blood shot eyes and bleedin’ hands, I put my new suit in the cleaners again. Took the first buss, I didn’t look back. Lungs long blowin’ like a smoke stack. Hair fallin’ out as the wind blows through it, my horse ran second just like I knew it would. Overflowin’ ashtray. Yay.
And the Officer said: Better get a lawyer, son. Better get a real good one. Get yourself a suit and tie. Get your hair cut way up high. Get yourself a lawyer, son. Better get a real good one.
I got legs I can walk. All the way down the dirt track. I fell down. I got up. I turned around then I walked back. I walked to the sea. I stood there, looked for a sign. It took time. But it came. I added up and took what was mine.
Better get a lawyer. Better get a real good one. Don’t drop the soap. Don’t smoke no dope. Get yourself a lawyer, son. Your gonna need a good one to getcha outa this one.”
– – — – — -
Okay, so I’ve got my lawyer here. His name is Darras, and he sits in the left half of my brain, which is the head centre of creativity. This is the extraterrestrial being which entered my mind and spiritual systems some time during the year 2004, at about the same time as I was extremely busy writing big chunks of prose which no publishing house would be associated with, and then another chunk of philosophical and political essays which none of the existing political elites found particularly attractive, — to my own astonishment I found myself pondering the idea of making myself known to The Club of Rome as the God of Prose. But I didn’t do that. I didn’t. Darras was extremely disappointed with me about that, but I was thinking to myself: “for goodness sake! this would surely be a bit too poetic, now wouldn’t it? people like Mikhail Gorbachew, Prince El Hassan Bin Talal, Richard von Weizsäcker, Emeka Anyaoku, and Ruud Lubbers are members of that Club, so I’d better be good and introduce myself as an ordinary human being, although I ain’t, but then: who’s more worried about that? me or them?” (as you can see, I was mad as a vroon at the time, but I was actually thinking straight enough, I believe, when I thought that Insane Insight might be the solution to all our problems?) — So I introduced myself as an unemployed social anthropologist and a seriously irritated author of novels and plays, that’s what I did. But I think I can still stand by most of the things I said in that wretchered essay which was written in response to that ugly question! — Up to and including my idea of a global vacation on the part of mankind, simply as a major security measure, as humanity would take a time-out, dance just a little but remain sober enough to come up with a rational and reasonable decision as to what we are going to do to this planet, if anything in particular? It sure seems to me — and my good friend and bad lawyer Darras agrees, wholeheartedly — that humanity as a whole has already reached the conclusion that the time finally has come to party like there’s no tomorrow; starting yesterday.
The main reason why I wanted to call myself the God of Prose, had to do with the sheer magnitude of the question posed by the Club of Rome: a question that I quickly decided to process and respond to, one way or another. And as I saw myself (and still see myself) as not only an unemployed social scientist and sustainability philosopher, but indeed also as an author of SAMTIDSLITTERATUR; ie. “literary fiction descriptive of our own times and days.” I mean: having given up on the idea of finding work as a social scientist, I had made the decision to invest a couple of years doing everything that was in my power to become an author of novels and plays. As I most of all was interested in the current times and also, of course, in the immediate future as seen from where we stand today — a future that sure is looking bleak (a topic which I had written a couple of angry political-philosophical essays on, and published on the Le Monde Diplomatique’s Norwegian website (they were quickly erased from the internet, however: illustrative of the gravity of the situation, I might even suggest — I found that the question posed by the Club of Rome had arrived like an answer to my literary plight. I mean: “Limits to Ignorance: The Challenge of Informed Humanity.” Which kind of a fucked-up situation is that?! No wonder I needed to think of myself as the God of Prose, as I started working on my long essay informed by this riddle: “The course of humanity has not changed, even though an increasing number of people have all the informational resources needed for responding to the situation. The crucial question for the future of humanity is whether we learn to understand the challenge of sustainable development implicit in this issue in time. What are the thingsis needed for changing ignorance and the lack of vision into global responsibility and awareness?” And also this other riddle: “The Club of Rome will focus on this the contradictory development: On the one hand we recognise an increasing flow of information that may potentially provide us with more knowledge about the world around us. On the other hand we also identify a growing information overload causing confusion and disorientation and an increasing tendency on misuse of information and information channels, obscuring the premises of the public and private decision-making and increasing to public ignorance.”
It’s like: “Tell me what the fuck is wrong with us?” And the answer would be: “Everything is. As a matter of fact, what we’re dealing with here is a whole species gone collectively insane. So call me what you will: call me the God of Prose if you wish to; I’ve got dirty feet, I don’t give a damn.” 
Darras tend to be very, very clear about his points of view, and as the most sensitive person around, he feels there is every reason for humanity to start recognizing the fact that the human race, as an undivided whole, could be a paracitic species of crazy, lunatic mammals which, from the top of the foodchain, is just about ready to embark on the saddest undertaking known to all experienced research loons of an extraterrestrial background: the destruction, demonization, and ultimate desolation phase. Time is of the essence here, time is relative, and in the mind of extraterrestrial research loons and human physicists there really is no saying whether a hundred years or even a thousand years is a long period of time or a short one. As I said: nothing at all is more relative than time. But okay: Darras, who sometimes protests that he is not my lawyer at all, but to the contrary, my prosecutor: the strange little man with gypsy eyes, who is constantly worked up about the possible swift and final demolishion of all of the life support systems of this planet: all at the hands of one species: a species that had better start relearning a thing or two or three about how creatures of nature ought to be treating the very nature they are positively depending on in order to sustain a life of normalcy. He keeps nagging me with this foreign theory that unless we started to listen more often to the ghosts of Sitting Bull, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Albert Einstein, among many others, who all seemed to believe that we shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive. Or like Dalai Lama — who, by the way, is not yet a ghost — is reported to have said: “I believe that to meet the challenges of our times, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. Each of us must learn to work not just for oneself, one’s own family or nation, but for the benefit of all humankind. Universal responsibility is the key to human survival. It is the best foundation for world peace.”
But how can we achieve World Peace? Can it only be achieved by the murderous political program of New World Order thinkers? Or would that most probably be a peace at gunpoint? And is that the best peace we can found? Darras seems to think that this is the case. I hate him for that, but see no good reason for firing the man. Not that he seems to be fireable. As a person of an extraterrestrial footing and a little voice in his own right, he just sits there, stuck inside of the left half of my brain, and calling great many of the shots here. I’m just this helpless man whose fingers are dancing the tango on top of the keyboard here. Raving mad, I might add. And a person who is all hopes but no energy to put into any attempt at making a goal oriented effort. And I am quite aware of the fact that my sorry excuse for a lawyer really isn’t good enough. He is all so Bob, Bob in a sense. I don’t think he cares too much about whatever would be best for me. I mean: to him, I am nothing more than one simple human being, just this tiny one in a congregation of more than six-and-a-half billion. And here I am, blowing all the fuses. Smart ass!
