REALITY EVENTUALLY TRUMPS DENIAL

The contagion of public relations through mass media has deepened with the power of internet outlets. Individuals are now living lives of PR manipulation and persuasion. Facebook works as a primer for many. Twitter is more advanced, since the possibility of getting in the middle of a partisan grudge match always lies in wait there. YouTube is a gift to the exhibitionist with photogenic features and an alluring voice. Audio-visual seduction brings in clicks and cash. And the cash is crucial in an increasingly materialistic and competitive world. 

This all is as it is. Materialism is inevitable when the materials of improved human existence begin to diminish relative to population. Living spaces shrink. Food becomes an adulterated facsimile. Travel becomes reduced to crammed jets and floating mega-hotels. Driving in urban areas is as much waiting as moving.

Human beings are in the midst of a massive environmental shift. It is greater than climate change. As with personal physical changes, these shifts tend to sneak up because living through them is so demanding of caution and attention in the present. This obscures the inevitability of future accounting. 

New conservative/intellectual preachers, such as Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro, rightly point to the general improvement in the human condition from a statistical perspective. They are satisfied to attribute this to capitalism and individualism. It is possibly a view from the ascent to the top of the roller-coaster. The great horizon opens. The breeze is bracing. The great height imbues a feeling of preternatural power. Then the apex is reached ... The screams explode as riders face gravity head-on at great velocity.

Too many people will possibly never get to ride that roller-coaster before the pressures of population and environment combine to severely stress the species. Am I being negative or glum? It doesn't seem so from where I am sitting. And I am sitting in a very comfortable corner of the world. I see mass complacency with the material status quo and hysteria about virtual communication about politics, sports or entertainment. 

My point here is a declaration that public relations, manipulation and seduction will be useless in a world with depleted resources and the widespread skills to utilize what resources remain. A catastrophic collapse of the global power grid would hurtle human civilization back to the Stone Age. An airborne viral epidemic which is highly contagious could spread globally if it originates in a populous country where mass air travel abroad is routine. This could overwhelm the global health infrastructure in a matter of weeks. 

Unbridled market capitalism is built on the fundamental myth that more is indisputably better. However, our planetary structure is fixed. Fixed atmosphere, fixed mineral resources, fixed arable land, fixed water resources. A vast amount of human effort in science and technology is devoted to the efficiencies of planetary exploitation. Retrofitting our lives to the choking pressures of our own overpopulation and endless pursuit of comfort. Our political leaders are doing the same. Globalists, claiming the halo of peacemakers and social justice advocates, are opening the gates of efficient countries with decreasing populations to overpopulating uneducated masses in the name of dubious economic and social theories. 

The majority of global politicians have surrendered to the inevitability of environmental disaster without being honest enough to declare this openly. The wispy thinkers in science and technology are looking out to Space as more and more of this planet is surrendered to desertification, deforestation and necessary factory farming. Fertilizers from urban waste processing have poisoned millions of acres of arable land in developed nations. China has decided to save its own environment by rejecting a vast amount of the world's recyclable materials. Sea level rise is flooding major coastal cities with frequent storm surges. Yet politicians advocate filling those cities with more and more people.

The development of a realistic view of one's own life comes with the harsh awareness of human limitations. The Gospel of Aspiration preached by conservatives has its merits, especially for the young. But it has been the traditional role of elders in society to preach sensibility to blind optimism. We have lost that elder culture in The West. Our celebrity elders, with few exceptions, aspire to youthful folly. They mutilate themselves to appear young and callow. Rather than bearing the creases of a life hard-earned, they attempt to portray a life of youthful enjoyment. 

Reality does change, for good and bad. Yet it always defeats fantasy and denial. Knowing what is happening to the planet which supports your feet will never be wasted knowledge for the intelligent. It is seldom a comfortable intelligence. It is seldom one of conformist acquiescence.