The Age of Last Chances
(Why) 2019's Lesson is We Have Just a Decade or Two Left to Stop Our Worlds From Ending. Yes, Really.
When I reflect on the last year, there's a certain difficult truth about this age that strikes me. We live in the age of last chances. What do I mean?
We have about a decade, maybe two, left. To stop the intertwined threats of ecological, economic, and political collapse. From beginning to end the world as we know it. Yes, really.
Not, perhaps, in the way of a Hollywood thriller — the mountains slide into the sea. Just in the way of modern American collapse. Life becomes a slow, long disaster, from which there seems no escape, which only ever gets worse. Or maybe in the way of Australia, burning. Or maybe in the way of a million people in camps in China. Or maybe in the way of India, banning a religion from citizenship. Or maybe in the way of the soil turning to dust, the animals dying off, the trees withering, the oceans boiling away.
The end of the world, it turns out, comes on a strange, surreal scale — anywhere from a sudden catastrophe, to a long, slow apocalypse. That is why this age is so hard to process. History isn't just at one turning point — it's at a collection of them, each different, yet each the same, too. Either we turn back — or we continue marching towards ecological, economic, political, social disaster. If this age feels so strange, dislocating, alienating, troubled, perhaps that's why: when else has so much been decided in so short a time, in so many different ways?
But don't take my word for it. The UN (among others) has sounded the alarm on climate catastrophe. Any decent economist will tell you that poverty breeds political destabilization, which can destroy societies for generations. Any decent political scientist will tell you, yes, this really is fascism. Any decent ecologist will tell you that mass extinction is reaching levels that should alarm and horrify us. And so on. Nobody who is remotely thoughtful about their field these days will fail to tell you that we are in an age of last chances. What's strange is that they'd all probably agree. (Of course, "good", in my terms means people who have actually gotten the future right — which excludes most American pundits, the Pinkers and Ezra Kleins and so on.)
Last chances, though, are elusive things. They can be taken, not taken, barely taken, half taken — or worse, thwarted and destroyed, or worse still, thrown away, with an idiots' grin. Let me give you a few examples.
There's Australia burning. The fires are encroaching upon the cities. It's reaching temperatures of close to 50 degrees Celsius. Heat so intense that long-term human habitation itself becomes questionable. And yet there's Australia's Prime Minister…on vacation, fishing happily while his country burns. There's Australia's polity, which decided…not to take climate change seriously. There's a society that's known that a great burning is coming…and yet hasn't prepared for it much, if it at all, trapped in defensive delusions, perhaps, of grandeur. That's a last chance — not taken.
There's America, impeaching a lunatic President. But not for his highest crimes — concentration camps, Gestapos, cages, kids, crimes against humanity. Just for the lowest ones — minor-league corruption. Result? The world yawned. More people (literally) cared about JK Rowling's opinions on gender. The President himself laughed it off. Impeachment was a feeble shadow of what it could and should have been, for maximum power to have been exerted, for true accountability to have been delivered. What will the President do now — now that he knows Congress is toothless? Much worse, probably. That's a last chance — half taken.
There's Britain. Trapped in decades of self-inflicted decline, thanks to merciless austerity, as a result of a botched bank bailout. And instead of solving that problem, by investing massively in hospitals, schools, universities, media, transport, creating new jobs, industries, breathing life into struggling cities, households, families, with injections of much needed cash, energy, resources…it blamed it all on…Europeans. Wait, what? What does Europe have to do with British austerity, British underinvestment, British decline? Nothing — less than nothing. Europe invests in Britain in net terms. Europe is a friend. Never mind — the Brits, growing poor, were seduced into hating Europeans, as the cause of their decline…and voted in a government that's going to make the problem of austerity much, much worse. That's a last chance — thwarted and destroyed.
There's India. It's going to face tremendous challenges over the coming decades. Where will a billion people find fresh water to drink, as the skies boil away? What will a billion people grow, as the topsoil turns to dust? What will a billion people do, as all those glamorous new middle-class jobs selling things to rich Americans vanish, now that America's not rich anymore? Instead of solving any of those problems, India reacted against them, violently. It elected a hyper nationalist. It's now passed a law banning an entire religion from citizenship. Wait, what? Banning…an entire religion…from becoming citizens? Isn't that fascism? Sure it is.
And there are all those problems — water, food, air, jobs, money, opportunities, lives. They go ignored. A process of what psychologist might call sublimation has taken place. A society too fearful to solve its real problems decides to blame everything on a hated minority, instead. But that doesn't make those real problems go away. What will a billion people do for food, water, air, money? Nobody knows. Nobody has an answer. Nobody much cares. There are dirty, filthy subhumans to hate. They are the real problem. Perhaps a final solution is needed. That's a last chance — thrown away, eagerly, foolishly, stupidly.
There's China. It's taken a hard look at America's collapse. All the miseries of capitalism — from inequality to greed to vanity to extremism. And it has decided that they must be pre-empted, at all costs. So it's put a million people in concentration camps. It's begun to install cameras on every street corner. It's created systems to rate people's morality. It's using technology as a force for absolute social control.
And that's quite alright with many Chinese. They don't want to end up like the West. Who'd want to? Take a hard look at America and Britain. Do they seem like countries worth aspiring to become? Shouldn't we value social harmony and our responsibilities to one another more than these foolish Westerners have done? But doing it in this way — with an iron fist — means Chinese democracy never develops. That China doesn't mature and grow as a society. Responsibility imposed with a fist, after all, isn't responsibility internalized. People don't grow self-directed and self-governed. China has forestalled the problems of capitalism — but only at the cost of democracy. That's a last chance — perhaps half taken.
There's Europe. It realized something like modern history's greatest economic miracle. In just one human lifetime, it rose from the ashes of war, to enjoy history's highest living standards, ever, period. Modern-day Europeans are the happiest, wealthiest, healthiest, longest-lived people…in all of human history. Think about for a second. All of that — in just seventy years. It's astonishing. The world has never seen anything like it.
What produced this miracle? Europe distributed its social surplus fairly — and that led to higher levels of investment than in America and Britain. Translation: middle classes were paid well, enjoyed stable jobs with protections and guarantees, and so they could reinvent their gains in expansive public goods (as opposed to in Americe, where billionaires took all the gains, and the middle imploded.) Europe therefore developed the world's best healthcare, childcare, elderly care, retirement, financial, media, education, transport systems…ever. One human lifetime of fairly distributed gains, reinvested back in society, sparked an improbable miracle.
And yet Europe's forgetting this miracle. Actively unlearning it. Instead of distributing fairly and investing…it's actively choosing not to do both. Why? It has a generation of leaders who seem not to understand its own history. Who grew enamored with America and Britain. Who've forgotten what made Europe special, unique, improbable. And as European life begins to lurch and stagger into American and British style collapse, so extremist movements begin to grow, just as they have in America and Britain. That's a last chance — arriving.
Shall I go on? Let me zoom out, and go to another level, for a moment.
There are the animals, dying. The insects are beginning to die off, en masse. Why? Nobody knows. Maybe it's light. Maybe it's carbon. Maybe it's electromagnetic emissions. Nobody knows because barely anyone's studying it. Barely anyone's studying it because…we live in a global economy where it's Facebooks and Tinders that receive billions in "investment." So there are the insects, just…dying off. But what happens when a critical threshold — we don't know where it is, because we don't study it enough — is reached? And there aren't enough insects, to feed the small animals, who feed the big ones? When there aren't enough left to pollinate the flowers and till the soil and spread the seeds? Bang! Our entire planetary ecosystem collapses — from the bottom up. Like someone turned the foundation of a skyscraper to dust, yanked it out, and the whole thing suddenly keeled over. What happens if the insects go on dying off? Everything else does, or most of everything else does, anyways, is what. And yet here we are, on our Facebooks and Tinders. That's a last chance — happily, stupidly, fatally ignored.
I could go on. On and on and on. But by now perhaps you're getting my drift.
These are our last chances. We have a decade — maybe two — to stop the intertwined threats of ecological, economic, political, and social collapse from laying waste to our worlds. Yes, really. Life becomes a slow, long apocalypse — like it has for Americans. Life becomes a surreal dystopia — like it has for Hong Kong. Life becomes a sudden fire, raging out of control — like it has for Australia. Life becomes a self-inflicted catastrophe — like it has for Britain and India.
Our worlds fall apart, in all these many ways. Quickly. Slowly. Suddenly. Lingeringly. One day at a time. Nightmare by nightmare. Catastrophe roars at us. Catastrophe caresses us. Dystopia grins at us. The apocalypse screams at us. The wind howls and gathers. The floodwaters lap. The sun shines, while the fascists march. A world can end in many different ways, my friends.
The thing about now is that we are choosing all of those ways. We are choosing different endings. But all endings are the same, too. They are just endings. So we had better begin choosing beginnings, too. This is the age of last chances.
Umair
December 2019
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