Mother Nature is being even more precocious than usual this year. The snowdrops have been more numerous than ever, and now we’re seeing primroses, crocuses, hyacinths, daffodils, celandines, and even blossom on the blackthorn trees. And both the bluebells and wild garlic plants are more numerous and more advanced than is usual for February. Even the birds are behaving as though they think it’s April, and are starting to prepare for the production of this year’s next generation.
I was left feeling frustrated and annoyed last night when an arranged phone call from the pharmacist at the GP surgery failed to materialise. I called the surgery today expecting there to be some friction, but there wasn’t. The woman I spoke to was calm and apologetic, explaining that the problem had been due to a combination of sickness and the failure of modern technology to deal effectively with the requirements of modern times. This has become the way of things now, of course, and a new appointment was easily made. And all was well that ended well.
The Bad
I read this morning that Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, says his technology firm Block is laying off almost half its workforce because artificial intelligence (AI) "fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company." So is this stage 2 in a trend which began in the nineties when the banks were laying off up to 5,000 people a week as the internet removed the need for bank staff and even whole branches? Where is this going, I ask.
We in the west live in a world almost wholly dependant on consumption. Consumption is the bedrock of capitalism and the driver of economic growth, and economic growth is the tenuous means by which society as we know it hangs together. So I wonder what will happen when there is so much unemployment and concomitant poverty that the base of the capitalist system begins to diminish rather than grow.
Will the practice of wage slavery be replaced by a harsher and more transparent form of the same thing? Will there be riots on the streets and the imposition of marshal law? And is this the real reason behind (allegedly) the billionaires buying up properties and converting them into bunkers. Some assume it’s intended as protection from post nuclear excesses after WWIII, but maybe they’re intended as a shield to protect them from angry mobs who have finally woken up to the realisation of who has been causing the damage over the past century or two.
And how will that change the world order? Will the once-powerful USA be reduced to an archipelago of third world states? Will Russia and China become the new overlords, while Africa, South America, and probably Europe will be forced to bow the knee? Karl Marx was a highly intelligent man, however much Americans have been brainwashed into considering him no more than a ‘dirty commie.’ And Karl Marx did say that capitalism will one day destroy itself through its own greed. Can’t you see it beginning to happen?
The Disturbing
Earlier today I watched a collection of shuffle dance routines on YouTube (only because they were set to Lady Gaga’s Fine Romance, you understand. It’s one of my favourite pop songs.) I really shouldn’t, you know. I shouldn’t. While the spirit felt renewed, the flesh felt weaker than ever when faced with imagined prospects now become deader than a dodo’s granddad.
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