Winter Solstice

[Photo: Herrmann Stamm]

The clock says 3:30 am. Is that early or late? Wrapped in a blanket I go into the living room. I open the door and step onto the patio. It’s too warm for December. An almost full moon blurs into the clouds. In the distance, the highway hums.

Somewhere, someone dies.

For everyone who dies, two people are born. 7.5 billion and counting.

We came to dominate planet Earth because, compared to other animals, we learned fast and collaborated well. We used resources efficiently. We developed tools to use more resources, and then employed those tools to use even more resources. But no longer. It’s 2018, and we are failing.

That’s what I think every day when I read the news. We are failing.

Throughout history, humans improved how to exchange and act on information held by only a few. Speech, writing, politics, economics, social and cultural norms, TV, telephones, the internet. These are all methods of communication. It’s what enabled us to collectively learn and make continuous progress. But now that we have networks connecting billions of people, we have reached our limits.

Fake news, Russian trolls, shame storms. Some dude’s dick in the wrong place. That’s what we talk about.

And buried below the viral videos and memes there’s the information that was not where it was supposed to be. Hurricane Katrina? The problem was known. The 2008 financial crisis? The problem was known. That Icelandic volcano whose ashes, in 2010, grounded flight traffic? Utterly unsurprising. Iceland has active volcanoes. Sometimes the wind blows South-East. Btw, it will happen again. And California is due for a tsunami. The problems are known.

But that’s not how it will end.

20 years ago I had a car accident. I was on a busy freeway. It was raining heavily and the driver in front of me suddenly braked. Only later did I learn someone had cut his way. I hit the brakes. And then I watched a pair of red lights coming closer.

They say time slows if you fear for your life. It does.

I came to a stop one inch before slamming into the other car. I breathed out. Then a heavy BMW slammed into my back.

Human civilization will go like that. If we don’t keep moving, problems now behind us will slam into our back. Climate change, environmental pollution, antibiotic resistance, the persistent risk of nuclear war, for just to mention a few – you know the list. We will have to deal with those sooner or later. Not now. Oh, no. Not us, not now, not here. But our children. Or their children. If we stop learning, if we stop improving our technologies, it’ll catch up with them, sooner or later.

Having to deal with long-postponed problems will eat up resources. Those resources, then, will not be available for further technological development, which will create further problems, which will eat up more resources. Modern technologies will become increasingly expensive until most people no longer can afford them. Infrastructures will crumble. Education will decay. It’s a downward spiral. A long, unpreventable and disease-ridden, regress.

Those artificial intelligences you were banking on? Not going to happen. All the money in the world will not lead to scientific breakthroughs if we don’t have sufficiently many people with the sufficient education.

Who is to blame? No one, really. We are just too stupid to organize our living together on a global scale. We will not make it to the next level of evolutionary development. We don’t have the mental faculties. We do not comprehend. We do not act because we cannot. We don’t know how. We will fail and, maybe, in a million years or so, another species will try again.

Climate negotiations stalled over the choice of a word. A single word.

The clouds have drifted and the bushes now throw faint shadows in the moonlight. A cat screeches, or maybe it’s two. Something topples over. An engine starts. Then, silence again.

In the silence, I can hear them scream. All the people who don’t get heard, who pray and hope and wait for someone to please do something. But there is no one to listen. Even the scientists, even people in my own community, do not see, do not want to see, are not willing to look at their failure to make informed decisions in large groups. The problems are known.

Back there on that freeway, the BMW totaled my little Ford. I carried away neck and teeth damage, though I wouldn’t realize this until months later. I got out of my car and stood in the rain, thinking I’d be late for class. Again. The passenger’s door of the BMW opened and out came – an umbrella. Then, a tall man in a dark suit. He looked at me and the miserable state of my car and handed me a business card. “Don’t worry,” he said, “My insurance will cover that.” It did.

Of course I’m as stupid as everyone else, screaming screams that no one hears and, despite all odds, still hoping that someone has an insurance, that someone knows what to do.

I go back into the house. It’s dark inside. I step onto a LEGO, one of the pink ones. They have fewer sharp edges; maybe, I think, that’s why parents keep buying them.

The kids are sleeping. It will be some hours until the husband announces his impending awakening with a morning fart. By standby lights I navigate to my desk.

We are failing. I am failing. But what else can I do than try.

I open my laptop.