Seer or Silly Sausage.

I had a nightmare of sorts last night. I was standing in the middle of an urban landscape, watching in horror as it was being devastated by raging fires as far as the eye could see in all directions. I looked up to see a turtle floating through the air. The underside of the creature was hollow with fire burning inside it, but its head and legs were still moving. Seeing a creature burning from the inside disturbed me so much that I woke up.

So what should I make of it? Was it simply a reaction to the turbulent state the world is currently in – increasing evidence of climate change; a leading economist forecasting that economic meltdown is just around the corner; increasing tension between East and West as evidenced by Putin’s war on Ukraine; capitalist economies seeing an ever-growing gap between rich and poor? And why was the turtle there?

The fact is that for some years now the conviction has been growing in me that the world is approaching a period of cataclysmic change, and that generations alive today will have to go through some uncomfortable times before everything settles down again and the world will be a different place. And I might mention that I began to think that global economic meltdown was inevitable even in my thirties.

So am I a seer or just being silly? Am I becoming one of those shabby men who used to stand in town centres wearing placards declaring that ‘The End of the World Is Nigh’? I don’t know. Do you?

What was interesting about the dream, though, was that I felt no sense of personal danger while the conflagration was raging. So if I am being a seer, maybe I can feel reassured that I’ll be dead before it really gets underway. That, at least, is comforting.