[leicester, recuperating]
So this is the opening programme for a new support group myself and some colleagues in Edinburgh and Copenhagen are going to be setting up.
The support group is for the endlessly cheerful and incorrigibly happy amongst you and is called
...
OPTIMISTS ANONYMOUS
[and in Canada i would say... i do think we're going to find a fertile market in Canadia ... cos lets face it when it comes to positivity you Canadians can certainly teach us Europeans a thing or two... and in fact, if any of you are considering a big change in your life, you could consider moving to England and starting a new career teaching Positivity As A Foreign Language... but don't try it in Scotland... they will kill you
its a bit unfair on the Scots that bit... cos after a while in Scotland you realise they are, in general, more positive than the English, particularly Londoners... they just don't look it from the expressions on their faces... ]
...
So...
Born with a smile on your face
Adept at seeing the bright side
Feeling happy, full of beans and generally jam-packed with new and better reasons for liking yourself?
You must be ready for…
More than a bit grim…
In fact annihilatingly awful
All other pessimisms are outed as rosy tinted la-las
Because this is
[There are now more people living in poverty than ever before]
THE TWELVE STEP ROAD TO
TRUE PESSIMISM
One
Ten thousand years of culture so we can wander braindead round the mall
Is this what all the long hard struggles for thought and freedom were for?
Just think of all the titanic efforts of mind and body that have created everything we have
And just look what we’re doing with it?
...
[OK, that wasn’t so bad was it?
However, that was Depression Lite
or perhaps Shite Lite
and it is going to get worse]
...
Two
All centuries are born old.
And the Twenty First century was born older than most.
The Twentieth, whose product we are, was the human race’s worst century ever.
Only the Fourteenth comes close
The Twenty-First, can’t be much worse
but we can all die
which is much worse
though ultimately
peaceful
Three
The crux of the twentieth century was that power realised the revolution was not going to happen,
the forces of change could and would be contained,
and it was going to be business as usual from here on.
Four
Our current wealth in the developed world derives from the massive suffering of our crushed forebears who were dispossessed during industrial revolution and slavery, and worked to an early grave
It is their utter immiseration which has legged us up to all we have, and our every luxury and plenty has their blood and suffering shot through it
Of course, one might currently ask, how much current benefit, we are currently deriving, from the current, immiserated labour of hundreds of current, millions
Five
The western world has always progressed gun first
Almost all scientific and technological developments have been generated by the constant drive for new and better weapons
Six
Except perhaps, for gunpowder.
For the Eleventh Century Chinese monks who invented gunpowder were in fact Taoist alchemists, who were trying to discover the secret of eternal life
So there they were, mixing powders, like no-one had ever mixed powders before, trying to concoct an elixir of eternal life
Bit of sulphur...
Bit of charcoal...
Bit of saltpetre...
Lot of saltpetre...
When, whoops, they accidentally invent gunpowder
And whoops, there goes the next twelve hundred years
And whoops, there goes hundreds of millions of lives
...
Could this be described as the greatest failure of all time?
Well... we’re not going to live for ever... but we can blow a lot of people up.
Seven
Robot aircraft... already massacring unarmed civilians
And... coming soon... Robot soldiers!
On sale, around the earth.
Just like the movies, but with added torture facility as an optional extra
Will the hackers of tomorrow be imprisoned in Guantanamao Bays for treasonably hacking morality viruses into military hardware?
Eight
The Missile Defence Shield.
This is that arer thing, a wholly new phenomenon in human history.
Yet its very name is a deception.
For the essential thing is to have the Missile Defence Shield
a-a-and
Intercontinental Ballistic Weapons.
This is the wonderful double-whammy of Total Defence and Total Aggression.
Meaning you can hit them, but they can’t hit you.
You can annihilate them, but they can’t annihilate you.
This is wholly new. Never before has one nation, except perhaps the Mongols, been able to destroy any other with such impunity.
The British could and did bomb your ports with impunity until you signed the trade deal, but that’s some way from total annihilation.
Has all of human history been leading up this sudden cut-off point where suddenly one group of human beings can destroy all and any other without fear of coming to serious harm?
At this point we could wonder if God, yes God, is going to come down and save us
But lets face it…
He hasn’t done so so far
And you know what they say
You can’t teach an old god new tricks
Nine
Global warming.
Obviously, no-one can say how disastrous global warming might be.
Despite this there are, as we know, people on this earth dedicating their entire, well-paid, lives to maintaining current energy policies.
Is it not excruciatingly depressing, that so many of us find it so, excruciatingly depressing, that these people cannot say for certain they are not dedicating their entire, well-paid, lives to ensuring the death of literally billions.
Ten
The main coming alternative to Imperial US Power is Confucian Communist China.
Whose cynical brutality does not well compare with those of their rivals.
Of course there is Europe but, in the light of events, no-one is in a hurry to let Europe have another go at World Domination.
Eleven
Is truth dead?
Well perhaps nothing is BIG T TRUE, but some things are more true than others
And if truth is relative then it is, like democracy, buyable
...
So, is truth dead...?
Nooooh
Truth is alive and well and living in Washington...
Preparing for the move to Beijing
Twelve
Ask yourself.
There are people who deny that any or all of, Auschwitz, the Gulags, the Belgian Congo, the Rape of Nanking, or even Genghis Khan, actually happened.
Ask yourself: did they?
...
We might prefer to live in a world where they didn't
but only a very very few of us get the world we deserve
And one more, for bad luck
Thirteen
By the time the meek have inherited the earth
it will be a dry desert and resourceless husk
and the last of the rich and powerful will be leaving
on the last spaceship
CONGRATULATIONS
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