Slowing down on fossil-fuels consumption should come as the first and the best solution to global warming

APRIL 3, 2008: “Angry African” is stating the bleeding obvious, and quite eloquently so, saying: Global warming is just not cool. If you’re out there and wondering what is going on down here, you should read this post. It ends like this: “But those kids of mine. I sometimes wonder. Just wonder how cool it will be when they grow up. Will it be too warm when they are my age? Might be a bit too warm for them. A little bit too warm to live? And that is so way not cool…”

Has he got a point?

“Sure thing! He’s got a point alright. The strange weather reports from around the world are just starting to make themselves heard. There will be much more of the same on a later stage. Early warning signs include heat waves and periods of unusually warm weather, ocean warming, sea-level rise and coastal flooding, glaciers melting, spreading disease, earlier spring arrival, plant and animal range shifts and population changes, coral reef bleaching, downpours, heavy snowfalls, and flooding, droughts and fires. It’s definitely not cool. And casting a blind eye at these most worrisome signs do not make them go away either.”

So what are we supposed to do?

“Not much! And that is the thing: it is not primarily a question of what you choose to do. It’s more a question of what you choose to stop doing. You could start by putting an end to your excess fossil-fuels use. It’s not so difficult, really. And it would be a very wise response to the information that the coal, the gas, and the oil are the substances that are in fact warming this planet and thus making climate systems go weird. Slowing down on fossil-fuels consumption should come as the first and the best solution to global warming. But here we are, looking at a species of fossil-fuel addicts. And we can safely say it proves difficult for whole societies of people to kick the habit.”

As noted previously, almost a thousand new coal-fired power plants are being built around the world. In the light of manmade climate change, it is not the best of ideas, but okay: this is what the policy makers of this world is choosing to do, so.

“So?”

We got to accept it!

“You do?”

Unfortunately, yes! I mean, think about it: hundreds of new coal-fired power plants are being built all over the world. It’s not a good idea, but it’s what’s happening. The only thing we, as ordinary human beings, can do, is tell the policy makers that the development is going in the wrong direction. After which we can only hope that they care to listen. At the same time, we’re up against millions of not-so-informed ordinary citizens who crave for more energy to consume. We can tell them that it is not good for the environment, and then sit back and accept that we’re losing out here. Ignorance reigns supreme, you see. It’s strength.

“But all humans ought to realise.”

What?

“That they can’t just continue doing what amounts to plain stupid behaviour. Just continue doing what ought not to be done, and continue doing so until people start dying from climate change. In big numbers.”

You see: this is what we do not like to think about. The worst case scenarios. We don’t want to hear of them no more. We just want to be ignorant and forget about all the signs. Allow Mother Nature to do what She is doing, unabated. While we continue partying like it’s 1999. Because that is much more convenient than starting to make rash and active climate change decisions that have anything at all to do with the consumption of fossil-fuels. The vast majority of us don’t want to hear of it. — And that’s final. — Because we’re not quite ready for lifestyle changes. Not now. And probably not ever! We depend on fossil-fuels and are going to make use of them indefinitely. Unless, of course, a fucking miracle were to happen. And I don’t think that’s a thing to count on.

“It may seem as if a growing number of people are ready to accept the facts of global warming and world-wide climate change. So things are indeed happening.”

Yes. But these are individual people. I guess they’re just starting to cope with facts that they are going to keep on coping with until tomorrow comes. — Because on a societal level, I’m telling you: we’ve got so many problems, we’d much rather wish to pretend it’s just not happening. —

Freedom is slavery

“On the sixth day of Hate Week, after the processions, the speeches, the shouting, the singing, the banners, the posters, the films, the waxworks, the rolling of drums and squealing of trumpets, the tramp of marching feet, the grinding of the caterpillars of tanks, the roar of massed planes, the booming of guns — after six days of this, when the great orgasm was quivering to its climax and the general hatred of Eurasia had boiled up into such delirium that if the crowd could have got their hands on the 2,000 Eurasian war-criminals who were to be publicly hanged on the last day of the proceedings, they would unquestionably have torn them to pieces — at just this moment it had been announced that Oceania was not after all at war with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Eurasia was an ally.” — George Orwell: “1984″

- –

The Norwegian Minister of Defence, Anne-Grete Strøm-Erichsen, just recently made the statement that Norwegian soldiers can’t be withdrawn from Afghanistan for at least seven years. All Norwegian political parties are in agreement: the Norwegian Afghanistan policy is not a subject for discussion. — All is said and done, really. I think it should be a subject for discussion. I could think that until my face turned blue. All the political parties with representatives in the parliament agrees: this is a non-issue. The message made to the thousands of Norwegians who do not quite agree with the Government, but feel that the Norwegian soldiers should be withdrawn from Afghanistan, is, essentially, this: “You people don’t know what you’re talking about, so please shut up and listen!! What we have here is a National political consensus, and nothing you can do or say will stop us from keeping our soldiers standing on foreign territory throughout the seven years to come.”

There have been polls stating that as many as 40% of Norwegians do not want Norwegian soldiers to take part in the war in Afghanistan. Now, that is a large minority. I believe a small majority of Norwegians are against the war in the Middle East, but it doesn’t make any difference. The war in Afghanistan is a NATO decision that all Norwegian political parties (except some fringe parties without members in the parliament) support. And that’s all there is to it.

What is more — and what has been the case ever since September 11, 2001 made Osama Bin Laden become an international celebrity — there is no saying what the war in Afghanistan is really all about. Afghanistan is the second most important front in the war against terror, but it is also a very important strategic part of the world map. I remember, back in 2002 and 2003, there was a lot of talk about all those oil pipes across the border, for example. But okay: I’m not supposed to think about what this war is all about. I figure you’ll be stupid to think about these things. The fact is: whatever is going to happen in Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, and the West Bank are things that are all going to happen anyway. Freedom is slavery, so grab a beer, mate, and take it easy.

All the political party leaders of this country is in favour of going to war in Farawayistan: you’d better shut up about whatever you might think about that, as you’re putting yourself in danger of being stifflippedly judged to be an enemy of the state; and you don’t want that. Your phone will be tapped, and your computer will be fixed up with electronic surveillance devices, and if you are particularly unlucky, they will have microscopic microphones and video cameras put in place inside your house. — They’re well equipped, you see. And they’ll only be doing their professional duty.

Now, the question is: who are they doing this for? Which is the social strata of the population that benefit from the information provided by secret services? Now, I’m not supposed to think about that, either, but quite simply accept that this is the way it is. Goliath watches over David, that’s all. He is big as a planet and strong as a sun, and poor David has lost his catapult and doesn’t stand a chance no more. It’s such a pity, of course (don’t we all love the underdog?!), but no one can do anything about that.

At the end of the day, the right follows the might. And there is nothing free and the helpless can do about it.

- —

Which kind of question is this..?

“How are we going to save the world, so long as our overlords insist on creating conflicts amongst ourselves, waging war, and investing in space?”

This is a question which has been bothering me ever since I wrote it down in a note book back in the summer of 2004, and actually managed to pose it to Madeleine Albright, as she visited Oslo in order to advertise her biography. She didn’t respond to my question, though. And the security guards protecting the woman on the podium had me thrown out of the bookstore in quite a forceful manner. All I did was ask a difficult question, and then hand an envelope to the woman on the podium, but okay: this was back in 2004, and the terrorist scare was all around, so. –

Nevermind.

There’s really nothin’ else to say I, I can’t explain it

“There’s no mountain I can’t climb, there’s no tower too high, no plane that I can’t learn how to fly. What do I gotta do to get through to you, to show you there ain’t nothing I can’t take this chainsaw to.” — Eminem –

Uh.

I think I shall have to learn how to be more ignorant of all the ill-smelling things I’ve seen on the other side of that proverbial mountain, from on top of which I could see our entire future heating up and turning into eternal fire. The development needs to be stopped. We can’t allow ourselves to turn the whole world into a giant gas chamber, can we?! — Uh. Sure we can.

Now, I don’t know what I got to do to get through to you, good people. Although I think, sometimes, that in my own special way this is exactly what I’ve managed to do. It’s only that in order to speak or write about the unspeakable, you need to be a dumb ass like me: one who is quite ready to climb every mountain in order to warn people of the troubles that lie upfront here, in terms of future times. Not like tomorrow. But ten, twenty, forty, eighty, one-hundred-and-sixty years from now. But starting today. As we all know the climate systems of this planet has seriously started to go crazy. This is just the beginning, I’m afraid. And that is why I’m dead to the world, I suppose. Oh yes: I think this must be the reason why the flame in me simply had to be extinguished by the health and social services authorities of this hateful state. Love is what I can’t have. I can have all the hate in this world, it comes free on delivery, but the idea of a loving relationship is truly dead to me. I can’t be anything less than true to myself. That’s the terms of the curse that once was cast upon me, I guess, while I’m feeling left with no other option than arriving at the conclusion that the devil won. – As always, I might add?

It’s the price I have to pay for being so good as telling a version of the truth that could be emulated by Al Gore. It’s only that I’m a nobody with no job and no position in society. And when I provide the stupid answers to the question of what to do about the crisis, my answers turn out to be insensitive to the requirements of the business world, and naïve in every way. I say we need a wholesale reduction of consumption, and that we also need to do everything in our powers to protect the rainforests. This is just too little too late, I suppose, and now that everything seems to be going down the drains anyway, I guess I have become a person whose only position in the society of humans is, quite naturally, that of an outcast.

Now, while the rest of the human species seems to be lost in traffic, me, I’m lost in time. — I remember, all too well, back in 2004 and 2005 I used to believe that big changes were afoot, and that we’d all at some point be obsessed with rewriting history to make it suited for a low carbon future in which the needs of the planet’s biosphere would be in the limelight, and that everything would start to change. I thought the human species was bound to move away from the basics of the present civilization: endless growth and fossil-fuels addiction. Now, to the contrary, it seems to me like the proponents of business-as-usual and status quo have actually got it their way. It’s a very small percentage of the world population controlling every mass media outlet of this world, every financial, industrial and military institution of the world. The flow of information belongs to the rich and the powerful. Those people (or that strata of the population) who have taken it upon themselves to be the controllers of the weapons of mass destruction belonging to the nation states: an enormous lot of nuclear and conventional warheads, and an equally enormous lot of battleships, tanks, bombers, jets, and computerized rocket launchers. Hell, these people, who control an enormous lot of surveillance equipment as well, are openly planning to build a satelite controlled rocket shield in Eastern Europe. There is no end to all the metallic, military logic of the happy few. And while the planet is about to crumble under the strains involved in offering some kind of living space for billions of travellers and joy riders, the interest of every goddamn nation state of this planet takes preference before any other interest; barred, possibly, from the mighty interest of all these multinational corporations whose powers are completely out of bounds.

If humanity was supposed to start taking care of this planet, much rather than destroying it any further, it is my strong belief that human beings be allowed to claim planetary identity. As the internet revolution is gaining speed, it is should become easier and easier to making way for such an arrangement. I’m sorry to say this, and it makes me an enemy of the state, but all the nation states of this planet should start by getting in line under a planetary council which worked to facilitating for ecosystems preservation. And then, in the next phase, they should all just crumble and die. — I mean: take a look at any political map of this planet, and understand that I just can’t stand any of them. The nation state stands for me as the main distraction available to us, as at least some of us are trying to make sense of what might be the ideal reaction on the part of the human species, as the fact that the climate systems are going amok is becoming clearer and clearer. The nation states are stood right between nature itself and all possible groups of humans and it’s such a fucking pity it makes me want to puke. People should be allowed to think globally and act locally, but as a matter of fact what’s happening is the opposite. All these multinational corporations with head offices in the City of London and New York City, Berlin, Oslo, Zürich, Paris, Athens, and Abu Dhabi, Shanghai, and Tokyo think locally (controlling the policy making of nation states) and act globally. It is true. We are talking about globalization here, and all corporations are geared at always being fit for financial fights, market battles and economic warfare on a global scale, while on a local level, but never too far away from the satelite phone, the chief executives, lawyers, bargainists, orators, and important guests enjoy their cocktail parties in the modelled gardens or luxury yachts of theirs.

As I said: the human species should be allowed to develop planetary identities. I think this would be the most important feature necessary in order to start to deal with problems that by definition take place on a global scale. It is easy to think that human beings should reconnect with Mother Nature, but it is as good as impossible so long as nation states and financial and industrial corporations are allowed to call all the shots. And I have absolutely no reason to believe that a development away from the corporate and national rule is going to start taking place anytime soon.

Meanwhile — and probably for eternity — I’ll be stuck inside a black hole here, like a limbo, lost in time. Fearing for the future while loathing the past. I think this is going to become a feeling that is much more “normal” as the years go by and nothing much is happening in terms of climate change action and other forms of environmental restructuring. A creepy feeling.

No escape from the mass mind rape

… play it again, Jack, and then rewind the tape, and then play it again and again and again, until ya mind is locked in; believin’ all the lies that they’re tellin’ ya, buyin’ all the products that they’re sellin’ ya, they say jump and ya say how high, ya brain-dead, ya gotta fuckin’ bullet in ya head … check-a, check-a, check it out …

They’ve decided not to talk about the environment. It’s too frightening. It’s too bad for the economy. It’s too bad for the powers that be. So they’ve decided to talk more about health care. New drugs. New medicines. All the foodstuff that’s good for the heart, the stomach, the intestines, and even for the brain. They’ve decided to talk more about smoking. It’s bad for the health. They’ve also decided to talk more about cholesterol, which is bad for the heart, the body and possibly also the brain, so we should quit taking sugar. And quit smoking. Yes, definitely quit smoking. As cigarettes and sugar make you die more quickly than you would if you didn’t smoke and didn’t take sugar. The idea that the natural environments are crumbing under the feet of this ever-growing species of fossil-fuels addicts, is simply too much. So the owners and controllers of all the media outlets of this world keep preaching the same old health messages. While the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, and Gaza are frequently mentioned in the news. It is business as usual, and only God knows what’s going to happen if or when Iran gets their own nuclear warheads? Be afraid. Be very afraid. And trust us: the government will do everything necessary to protect you while you keep your body clean and your health just fine, not thinking too much about the emissions, the dust, and the exhaust fumes that are everywhere around you: those are simple by-products of the western lifestyle, which, in order to preserve and proliferate, our soldiers put their lives at risk, every day, because it’s necessary. — But don’t worry. We’re keeping a check on these terrorists, these islamo-fascists, these animals; of course we are. Just go to the store and buy some new health products, will you? It’ll sure make you feel just fine. Be a good consumer, please. It’s important. Call it a duty to our troops, if you will, although we’ve stopped being too loud about this aspect of the war economy.

I’m afraid we’re about to get ourselves landed in the scariest of all realms: that we are now making way for the development of a nihilist carpe diem culture, in which the past is a fucking disgrace and the future might even be a bigger disgrace, so you’d better not think too much about either the future or the past. And as concerns the present, well, there’s not much anyone can do about anything, really. So don’t think. Just do what you’re told, and don’t ask questions. It’s not worth it. Give up. Give in. Take it easy. And be good. Please.

Cold and steady in mood: slow to act or change

And the world is genuinely ruled by aged men who are safely seated upon big business office chairs, leading their entire lives protected by similar people who are seated in similar office chairs placed inside a disorienting range of national and transnational administrative and beaurocratic office buildings.

And the physical world is in shambles. Parts of the world is like a slaughterhouse and all of the world is in a scientifically proven state of great distruction. The world’s social systems are all in a state of great confusion, disorientation, morose and resentful silence and repression. Something is terribly wrong around here, but the so-called “family of humanity” (an extremely distorted, disintegrated and disunited species of gamblers and brutes) just don’t know what to do about it. All so very distracted.

And the world is populated by people who ever more frequently are asking themselves what they’re at all doing here? As if the human species really should have moved into the extinction phase by now. And that not a single human being should have been around no more. They all appear either to be desperate or sad, I mean. But who am I to say that? It sure feels to me as if I don’t know anything at all for certain.

“It’s a shame about the car,” this girl said. What she meant by that, I don’t know. On the one hand I am fully aware of the fact that about 30% of the total emissions comes as a result of motorised transport. On the other hand I’ve been told that there’s a taxi driver waiting for me. Ready to kill. Put my corpse in the boot and just dump it at a roadside somewhere. A hit and run accident. Perfect.

And the world remains in shambles. Thrash, litter, and garbage everywhere. Human corpses floating away in the harbours and canals of third world cities. And small stains of microscopic oil spills on every highway, every road, and every street of this world. There is one hell of a lot of tarred roads around here. Tarred roads and parking lots. About 40% of the world’s population is lost in the supermarket; the remaining 60% being poor people who are equally lost, only not in the supermarket. Who cares?

And the world is a penitential colony for more than 6 billion people, all looking to a future which appear dimmer and dimmer everytime they care to think about it. They don’t care to think too often about that. What will be will be, and carpe diem. Don’t worry about tomorrow, it will only make you feel bad. And you should not think too much about the past, either, as that will make you feel equally bad.

And the world is a self-oriented place. It is every person’s damn right to be self-obsessed. Not to worry about other people’s fate is a privilege belonging to each and every one of us: it’s a human right, that’s what it is! So never mind. No one can make the demand that anyone should start to care about their neighbours; never mind the fates of people leading the hopeless lives of refugees: a timeless life of eternal fatigue, under the canvasses of the crammed refugee camps in Pakistan, Thailand, Kenya, Kongo, and Sudan. Just don’t worry about that. It’s not your life, it’s theirs, and that’s perfecty alright with you, now isn’t it? And how about all those people leading a life of police harrassment and eternal squalor in the middle of the completely packed slums of all these multi-million-citizens big cities of the third world. And how about the poor people of the first world? Forget! Their poverty is their own doing! And this is the way things work.

Damn!! I’ve seen too much.

- –

On quite a different note, but still on the same topic of the general state of madness on the part of humanity in general: I’m thinking the mere existence of words spelt out loud by a couple of British scholars would certainly be enough to make any person feel a bit sullen.

“Professor Stephen Hawking, celebrated expert on the cosmological theories of gravity and black holes, believes that traveling into space is the only way humans will be able to survive in the long-term. He has said, “Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers … I think the human race has no future if it doesn’t go into space.” Another of his famous quotes reiterates his position that we need to get off the planet relatively soon. “I don’t think the human race will survive the next 1,000 years unless we spread into space.” — “Dr. Hawking says he wants to encourage public interest in spaceflight, which he believes is critical to the future of humanity.”

On the future of this planet, Dr. James Lovelock says: “Our planet has kept itself healthy and fit for life, just like an animal does, for most of the more than three billion years of its existence. It was ill luck that we started polluting at a time when the sun is too hot for comfort. We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma. She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years. We are responsible and will suffer the consequences: as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics. — Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 per cent of the Earth’s surface we have depleted to feed ourselves.”

Lovelock says: “We could grow enough to feed ourselves on the diet of the Second World War, but the notion that there is land to spare to grow biofuels, or be the site of wind farms, is ludicrous. We will do our best to survive, but sadly I cannot see the United States or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time, and they are the main source of emissions. The worst will happen and survivors will have to adapt to a hell of a climate.”

Now, the social outcomes which might follow from world-views like these could equally be a renewed resistance to change. I mean: when famous scholars like Hawking and Lovelock both say that humanity has nothing much left to hope for on this Earth of ours, the best thing to do could equally be to kill all proponents of change and do nothing of the crazy shit the environmentalists among us urge people to do, but just continue our way and just keep travelling along that primrose path of self destruction. As the end, according to Hawking and Lovelock, is (relatively) near anyway. That’s what they’re saying anyway. — So why bother?

- –

And it still is a shame about the car. In fact, it still is a shame about all of our climate gas emitting motoric and mechanical devises. It still is a shame about the greenhouse gas traps which are the millions of factories that so many people depend on in order to make the money that it takes to provide food, water, and shelter for themselves, their wives, their children, and also, perhaps, their old parents. It’s funny how people lead their lives around the world, no isn’t it? And it’s funny how people go happily to work at the garbage factories of theirs. It’s a real shame, isn’t it? Or is it? I mean: I’m feeling the vibrations between people here; and it sure seems to me like I live in a society which understands that changes are indeed needed, but also a society which simply can’t come to terms with the most realistic side-effects of a change to the better on the part of the environment. Goddamn! Life in the over-industrialized factory society of ours is like a riddle.

And all the while, the world is traditionally being ruled by the generation of old people who very often make the claim that they have seen and experienced so much it makes them smarter than young people. It’s a shame about the old people who quite naturally are park themselves up somewhere in between the spirit of change which is the prerogative of the younger generation and the actual change which would put them out of power. It’s a shame about the 50 – 80 year-old boardroom rulers of this world, who are camouflaging themselves as in favour of the kind of change that would not affect anyone who has the right to make the red phone call to the military leadership of the nation.

“Nuclear warheads, doh! What the fucking shit is this?! What’s up, man? Are these people out of their minds?”

They sure are. And they’re all surrounded by a wall of bricks, and existing in a dazzling sphere of cocktail parties and exclusive dinners, celebrating themselves and their sponsors. This is the ruling class of the world. These are the people all military-industrial complex protects and defends.

“It’s a crazy world we sent you to report from. Hapless lunatics.”

You’re right. The whole thing here is absolute bedazzlement, uh. –

Only love and death

if man is 5, then the devil is 6, and if the devil is 6, then god is 7

- — – — – — -

And 8, my dear friend, is love and death. Only love and death. Only love and death. And if it’s only love and death, then I’ll be damned. Well, I’ll be damned. Yes, I’ll be damned. — In my dreams I see this tunnel. It starts with a bend and it ends with a bend, and between those two bends there is a small eternity of straight fast driving forward. A tunnel in which I can lie myself down and think of The Pixies. This monkey’s gone to heaven, I might think, while I’m contemplating this piece of biblical poetry: if man is five, then the devil is six, and god is seven. And know, fully well, that this is a fact of life, nothing but a fact of life, and only a fact of life (haha), and that I have been caught inside that trap which is all about realizing the spiritual facts of things in this age and time, when the ruling classes of our societies are getting themselves prepared for the kind of political game that is going to leave some 144.000 chosen people behind. — As the rest of the human race will die in the millions and billions, through wars, famines, floods, and other forms of environmental devastation. What we will have on our hands is the ins-and-outs of natural and artificial selection, that’s all. And that’ll be the brutal truth, they say. The brutal truth.

As I said: I see a tunnel. It is a tunnel of love and death, and I know that I can dream about love as much as I may please to do so. But I’ve stopped doing so. As a matter of fact, I’ve come to conclude that my 13-year-old daughter is the last person who is still with me, and that she is poised to leave me alone to my own fate. Just like the rest of my entire family has aready turned its backs on me, so will she. In 2007 my family has finally done what the rest of society did back in 2005. They were only a bit slow, that’s all. Now, in 2008, it seems to me like turning your back on me is only natural. My daughter will turn her back on me as soon as I am telling her that there is an official and an unofficial truth in circulation, as concerns my life and fate. My daughter is not going to believe a word of it, but conclude that I’m going to hell, and that “my dad’s gone crazy,” and goddamit, you little motherfucker: if you ain’t got nothin’ nice to say then don’t say nothin’ –

I have spent the last four years moving in and out of mental hospitals and losing touch with society more and more. Today I can only conclude that there is no way I will ever get well. Too much has happened to me along the way. Too many bad things. Only bad things. Evil things. Unbelievable things. Things that my daughter is never going to believe. — And there’s nothing I can do about that. Just accept it.

And I’m thinking about the condition I was in when, back in 2006, I was taken to the mental hospital by force only to receive the kind of treatment that might be due for an ill-behaved youngster to go through with. — I remember, before I was taken to the mental hospital I had spent as much as five full days awake without sleep. And before that last spell of sleep another three full days of no sleep. I was psychotic from lack of sleep, and equally psychotic from lack of belief in the future of mankind, thinking the best thing to do would be arranging for a collective suicide (quick! quick!) instead of getting our asses prepared for a slow ecocide. I was absolutely senseless with lack of sleep, and running around like a demon shouting in all directions a lot of hellish gibberish. No wonder I was brought to the mental hospital, I mean. But the treatment I received there was … pure evil …

Oh, I remember how Dr. Dickson found it extremely difficult to sign my journal. He simply had to tell me that the HIV diagnosis was good news in terms of the money I’d receive from my disability pension, and staring at me like some psycho from the movies as he said so. I was being ”killed.” No, not killed. “Killed,” I said. “Killed.”

And that’s not possible. — It happened, but that’s impossible, so now what?! 

Throughout the last half of 2007 it was communicated to me several times and in several ways: vocally and by use of non-vocal means of communication. All manners of communication, I say, except from that of putting it in writing. — Why? Because it can’t possibly be. Doctors working under the rule of the Norwegian state just do not “kill” people. They don’t! They just don’t! Okay?! So therefore: it just didn’t happen, now did it? Impossible! Of course it didn’t! I was “killed” but I wasn’t. ‘Cause it just can’t be. Not in a good country Norway, for God’s sake. I mean: Amnesty International can certainly guarantee it: things like these just do not happen in Norwegian institutions like Ullevaal University Hospital. It just can’t be.

What happened (really! it did!) may have had something to do with the spiritual side of being exposed to being with, and dealing with, a person who’d just come to conclude that all of mankind could equally just go and be quick about it, and have our politico-religious ruling class go ahead and organize the perfect mass suicide for us. I don’t know. But I know that a lot of spiritual shit is going on around me at all time. Now, I’m hospitalized again, and the workers here all tell me that they “don’t wish for you to experiencing bad things.” – While at the same time they’re all acting like the official truth about my bloody bodily condition, which is a lie, is the truth, and that the unofficial truth about my condition just doesn’t exist: it’s only about things that I got to hear last summer and automn, and not something that, in real life, has any bearing what-so-ever. How I am supposed to live with this is anybody’s guess. There’s no dignity in this, so I don’t think I’ll manage.

I can sense that I’m supposed to learn to live with the official truth, which is that I’m infected with HIV/AIDS, and that I’m just going to have to forget about the fact that a number of people — medical doctors and nurses — spent the last half of last year communicating to me the story of how I have been framed. My life is Madness then. And there is nothing I can do about that. The thing is: I’ve got a choice to make. A simple choice, that’s all.

They say “it’s from your own people you’re going to have it.” And my own people — the North Norwegian people — has nothing to offer, other than death. It’s just that they can’t kill me. I’ve got to do it myself, that’s all. It is what has been communicated to me again and again, by quite a few people. — So. I say: on with the extraterrestrial agents of mine! Let them come to me in my dreams! They’ll be keeping me alive for another while, I guess. While I continue to digest all the death that my people has in store for me. Now, that’s the spirit. –

- — – — – — -

If you want to know what it is like to be working under a system that has gone evil on the world, you should definitely read up on Steve Milgram’s psychological experiment. -

“There will be ‘good’ times right up to the precipice.”

“A soul in tension that’s learning to fly. Condition grounded but determined to try. Can’t keep my mind from the circling skies. Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit, I. Above the planet on a wing and a prayer, my grubby halo, a vapour trail in the empty air. Across the clouds I see my shadow fly, out of the corner of my watering eye. A soul in tension that’s learning to fly, a dream unthreatened by the morning light” — Pink Floyd

- —

It sure feels like I’ve said it all. I took me three days. All I had to do was putting two pieces of explosive prose and a distant lamentation into writing, and that was all it took for me to seal my fate. Well it sure feels like that. And although my fate is probably one of having to do without love in my life — what little remains of it (there is not a thing more relative than time) — there is also a sense of freedom in it: it’s like Kris Kristofferson famously said: “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose, and nothing ain’t worth nothing but its free.”

“Overcome by the sublime feeling that flying gave him, Icarus soared through the sky joyfully, but in the process he came too close to the sun, which melted his wings. Icarus kept flapping his wings but soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he was only flapping his bare arms. And so, Icarus fell into the sea in the area which bears his name, the Icarian Sea near Icaria, an island southwest of Samos.”

My fate is Greek. I realized that back in December 2003; it was only that I refused to accept it. Since May 2007, I’ve not only come to believe that my fate is Greek: I’ve come to terms with the fact, and understand that I’m a zombie, a ghost, or a spirit belonging to the Heavens. I have become a person who’s mission in life is one of warning other people — younger folks for the most part — against doing what I did, which was to go into a philosophical clinch with the powers that be, only to realize that the suckers have authority.

As I have come to understand that the family of humanity is not going to heed any climatic warnings, but simply continue to defend their mining jobs, factory jobs, transportation jobs, building and construction jobs, shopping center jobs, beaurocratic jobs, social systems and health related jobs, et cetera, and not giving a flying fuck about all the local pollution and global greenhouse gas emissions that all these consumerism culture protection and proliferation activities lead to. All I can do is try to come to terms with the most probable results of these things on a local, regional, and global level. On a general note it looks as if the family of humanity is ready to live with, and learn to appreciate, some devilish closing time philosophy: learning to live with the fact that the society of humans are moving into a period in which time is of the essence. A period that is going to last for a purely imaginary number of years but at some point certainly come to a halt. — That halt will be the death of the last human being of this planet, whenever and wherever that might happen.

Some people believe that the last living soul of this planet will do his living in the northernmost reaches of the world; the region which supposedly is going to be able to support life as we know it the longest. Notable for this philosophy is a rather funny creature named Danny Bloom, who’s operating with years 2121 and 3007 as focal points of imaginary time: points in time in which the conditions of human life will have become extremely hard; barely survivable. Bloom contemplates a future in which a relatively small number of people live in so-called “Polar Cities” built in Siberia, Alaska and Northern Canada, Greenland, Svalbard, and Novaja Zemlja. It would be the last era for humankind; “closing time” would be Bloom’s imaginary starting point. –

And yet no one is going to talk openly about the shared acknowledgement of biosphere destruction. It will probably be like George Mobus said in a comment on Trinifar: “Almost all of the models suggest that overshoot of population results in a crash. Hopes for a soft landing are further dashed by the advent of peak oil and the calamities made likely by climate change. All of these forces taken in roughly the same time frame portend doom for the majority of humanity. Perhaps, then, it is most humane to let people continue in their ignorance (self-imposed it would seem) right to the end. A crash implies that there will be ‘good’ times right up to the precipice. The end will be horrific, certainly, but if truly inevitable, why scare and threaten the general populace, or at least try to?”

It’s a good question; one for which I have no good answer, I guess. Simply because I can’t get my head around the idea that much rather than coming together in unity and co-operation in order to make way for a change of direction on the part of humanity’s irresponsible lack of philosophical connection with the life support systems of this planet, the combined human race seems to be quite ready to accept the idea that a collapse is coming and that we don’t know when exactly it is going to happen or where it is going to begin to happen first. I mean: I find it absolutely impossible to think like this, and that may also be among the reasons why I am, on a personal note, doomed to go rotten, and then — like everybody else, of course — getting old, perish and die in the end. — Which is to say that all the babies of this world that have yet to be born, will certainly be like stillborn: born into this closing time of which there is no way of saying how long it is going to last. As my personal version of imaginary closing time is not one in which the collapse of the population and the final destruction of the ecosystems is going to occur in my lifetime. I’m no more than 37 years old, and it is sure going to take more time than that, I suppose.

Not that I know that! Oh no. This is the nature of imaginary time: you just don’t know when it is going to happen; you only know that it is. And that is a fact which you are morally bound to not talking about. The social effect of such talk is a tearjerker, and nobody wants that. So go ahead and build your opera halls, new airports, big shopping malls and luxury hotels, I say. These are the pyramids and hanging gardens of our times, and they are being erected these days. It is happening all over the planet. All these new and futuristic gigantic complexes of modern architechture will be the physical remainders of the consumerist culture of our times: an age of glory which will never be allowed to draw to a close, but become a golden age that lasts “forever” — – an adverb that must certainly be about to become experimental.

Dignity, eh..?

Feels like I have said all that can be said. I am afraid I have managed to say some few things that I really ought not say, for the simple reason that it certainly makes me sound delusional. There are some few things that no sane person can ever believe a democratic country, with a health and social security system which is commonly believed to be functioning well, is capable of doing to a person. Western Europeans just do not expect that the social security system is at all able to go evil on a person; in the sense that going evil on someone actually equates to destroying that someone’s life, completely, utterly, and ruthlessly. I know this. I know this all too well. — And it sure does leave me with the creeps.

Now, I also realize that I have just done something that I did in quite a different way back in 2004. At that time I wrote a large chunk of quasi-biographical prose about my personal ordeal as a person who had just been found out about, and labelled as a sexual offender. Now, this is my destiny, I guess. I keep putting myself in awkward situations in relation to women. It’s just fantastic, really. Especially as I can say that — in the real sense — I am finding it difficult to understand what I in fact did wrong, although at exactly the same time I know that I did the worst thing any man can do to a woman. I mean: scaring the shit out of her, and making her go through with the HEAVY ANGST which is associated with taking and an HIV/AIDS test. Because my family was already informed about my diagnosis, and this woman came into my life like some unexpected Angel, all of a sudden, this was the only right thing for me to do. I simply had to tell her about my condition, as in strict accordance with the official truth of the matter. I didn’t have the nerves to tell her the unofficial truth, though. The truth that I have been framed by the Norwegian health care system. At that time — in June 2007 — it felt like a way too stupid thing to say. As I had yet to be informed, over and over again, about the real truth of the matter.

In 2004, I wrote a novel about what had occurred. This time around, as I have already given up on so many of my writing life dreams, I reached the decision to allow myself to explode on the Internet. It is over and done with. I needed to do it. It was all a matter of self therapy. I don’t care if the truth is too good to be true. I don’t care if the truth is too green to be told. So long as I know that the truth is out there, and as I know that I am being socially and systemically prosecuted because of this truth, I also know — to the very least — that now that I have laid my side of the story bare, I also know that I will be free to continue to look at myself in the mirror every morning. Now, the next thing I need will probably be a brain wash?

But there’s also a lot of medical doctors, psychiatrists, nurses, social workers, and beaurocrats who are in urgent need of a brain wash, I think. And based on the truth, as evaluated from my perspective, I believe I have every reason to think that my apparent destiny is not fair. And I am thinking especially of the thing that this Norwegian doctor at the Central Hospital in Haugesund said: “If you think that Swedish doctors are out to get you, you may be right about that.” — I mean: which kind of a thing is this? Honesty? It probably is. This doctor even told me that he had heard about the things that happened to me as I first met with Dr. Nielsson at the mental institution named Haugaland DPS: “I understand that things went very wrong over there last time,” he said. So please! No, sincerely! Please! – Would you be so good and teach me how to live?

Well, okay. I have lost my life to the truth. I have lost my family to the truth. I should have been in love with that woman in Haugesund: the Angel which came like a miracle, and left me because of the truth. The official truth, that is, and not the unofficial truth, which is completely unreal, nauseating, grotesque, macabre, and bizarre. — The truth which is driving me insane: a truth too cruel to be told.

- — – — – — – — – — – —

If you want to know what it is like to be working under a system that has gone evil on the world, you should definitely read up on Steve Milgram’s psychological experiment. –

Life as we know it: an American Lifestyle protection and proliferation campaign

Oh yeah! That’s exactly what’s up here, and happening everywhere. This spiritual and practical activity on the part of modern, westernized humanity has nothing what-so-ever to do with the said importance of natural environments protection. To the contrary, this activity — which, I repeat, has to do with a little more than just physical behaviour — works as the guarantee for faster and faster destruction of the life support systems of the planet. Some people may even think that’s good, as now that we are starting to despair here, and contemplating decades and centuries of climate change awareness, we would equally be better off should we all agree to hurry up and get this whole thing over and done with at a more precipitous speed: the general idea being that the human family has a choice here. Thinking ahead, we can either decide to protect the ecosystems of this planet, and end up having to endure several hundred years (a small eternity) of Weltschmerz due to the shared awareness of manmade climate change and other anthropogenically driven forms of biosphere destruction, or, on the other hand, we can choose to forget about it, and simply pursue the best life possible — which would be (as the majority of humans would have it) the American Way of Life, complete with two family cars, a swimming pool and darn costly hobby activities for the children. ‘Cause as it is: don’t we all essentially want what’s best for our children? –

Of course: no politician in his or her right mind would ever dare to make statements such as these, right out, in front of a TV camera and a long row of microphones. Every politician in his or her right mind will certainly be willing to do almost everything that is within his or her powers to address the situation of global warming and climate change. It’s only that the powers of politicians only reach so far, and it is also that these are not things that any sane person would consider doing all at once and not thinking through these things in advance, and that we are still waiting for a lot of future technologies to become available on the market, and, er … yes: the answer is: of course we will do all that we possibly can to reduce carbon dioxide emissions; just not right now. A substantial reduction of all climate gas emissions right now, like, almost overnight, right, would certainly be an overly enthusiastic and rash decision. You know. –

Now, judging from what happened in Bali in December 2007, it is too easy for me to predict the way of thinking of the powers that be, when, in Helsinki, Finland, in April 2008, their diplomats and political cronies are going to restart the negotiations of a new and stricter climate regime, to be implemented after the Kyoto Protocol’s commitment period draws to a close in 2012. As a matter of standard capitalist world civilization philosophy, a simple, straightforward, and well-meaning term like overconsumption is certainly not going to be heard uttered; not in front of TV cameras and microphone rows, for sure. And the same goes for the meetings scheduled to take place in Copenhagen in 2009: none of those words and terms which are forbidden according to the structural laws of globalized capitalism, will be heard. Well, not so long as the growth cult can continue to call all of the shots here. I think that will last a while. As far as I’m concerned it can equally last forever. And I say that, knowing that there can hardly be no stopping the growth machine so long as it is protected by all the political institutions of this planet, all the armies of the planet, all the banks, ensurance companies, stock exchanges, and other financial institutions, all the loyal servants of the mass medias, and all the likewise loyal servants of the workers unions of this planet: all of whom are there to protect the status quo and actually make sure that nothing bad ever happens to any of the big industrial companies and corporations of this world, on which whole societies, whole countries, and whole populations of loyal and hard working individual human beings depend.

It’s all one helluva a Catch 22 situation, for short: “a situation in which multiple probabilistic events exist, and the desireable outcome is an AND join of these events, however there is zero probability of this occurrence.” I’m thinking this is also going to be the sad case of a Murphy’s Law situation. — “If there’s more than one possible outcome of a job or task, and one of those outcomes will result in disaster or an undesirable consequence, then somebody will do it that way.” The simple fact is: even if the politicians wants to do good for a change, there’s no way they can do that if the population in general doesn’t lift a finger to allow anything out of the ordinary to happen. So we allow ourselves to feign ignorance of problems with the atmosphere that we are all well aware of, and of problems concerned with chaotic weather patterns and climate systems that seem to be going crazy; a development that is already felt.

I hear that quite a few people take an interest in what might happen to life as we know it. But what is life as we know it? Isn’t it the everlasting pursuit of happiness, a husband or a wife, three children and a few good friends, plus a good and well paid job, a comfortable house with a garden, a good car in the garage, life, health and property ensurances in order, and the perfect pensions scheme awaiting for idle years to come. And a holiday in the tropics of course. Well, once in a while. If and when you can afford to go. It’s good to have something to dream of.

Does life as we know it have anything much to do with ecosystems protection? Not much. Some of us recycle bits and pieces of thrash, and that’s it really. If at all you own a car, you probably use it more often than you need to. And if, for some reason, you need to travel farther than 500 kilometers and don’t want to go by car, you’ll probably prefer an airline ticket rather than making the trip by train. When you get to your destination you will be going to sleep inside a house or a flat that is fixed up with a refrigerator, airconditioning systems, and burglary proof windows. And all this is if you are a middle class citizen of Dangeria. For the Dangerian working lower class the situation is a bit different, of course. But who’s telling whom to be worried about what, eh? Illiterate people only have themselves to blame, really. Isn’t it?

These days, every people and every nation state of the whole wide world wants to be a little bit more like the United States of America. And all the people of this world are quite ready for such a development, to say the least. Now, the ruling upper classes of all the kingdoms and republics of this world are promising their people to make good progress in the duration of the next few years in order to facilitate for gross Americanization of their societies. There is going to be food for all, of course, but also electricity for all, and also safe water supply, new sewers, new roads, and new airports, and international broadcasting systems available to the people in the countryside. New schools, for God’s sake! And new shopping malls which are going to take over for the outdoor market places. And, of course, new hospitals. New hospitals everywhere. – A guaranteed vote winner, for sure. — And if anybody’s worried about the who’s and how’s all developments payments, they should just shut their mouths up and mind their own business, as the entrepreneurs are indeed talking seriously big business here, alright?! So don’t ask questions. Enjoy.

And all the while the population keeps growing. More and more people are searching to buy scarcer and scarcer plots of land. The land price is sky-rocketing, and the scarcity of fresh water is not somewhere in the horizon. It’s simply to be discovered as you find that you need to buy water from a tank and store it in the backyard. And the city air is filled with smoke. With smog. With all sorts of particles, toxic or not, but smelling. And the open sewers systems crisscrossing all around the slums. Have you seen the canals and do you know the stench?! The kingsize rats and the mosquitos and the flies, big like fowls!! You’ll need to take a bath at least two times every day. And as the population keeps exploding, so does the pollution of the air and the rivers; not only in the towns and the cities, but in the countrysides as well. The “population” of cars and airline companies also grows. The need for modern highways appear where once (not a long time ago) a dirt track covered the distance the old road is now made to pass. A new road is urgently needed. Useless politicians has made that same promise for years already! And hospitals. New hospitals are needed. The children are suffering from malaria, typhoid fever, sleeping sickness, and what have you? New schools are certainly in demand. The old schools are now crammed with pupils! And in the villages, the erosion of the soil has for a very long time created havoc! There’s crisis all around. Nobody knows what to do about it. And the politicians are all cruel military people and corrupt bastards (just don’t talk all that loudly about it, remember the night has ears), so what on Earth do you expect? Progress? Well, yeah. But slow. Very slow. Too slow. It’s not fair. Just look at this country (hush! hush!): rich with oil and all sorts of minerals, but stinking poor no matter what. This country should have been like America, I’m telling you. — If only our politicians would hear!