The Walking Dead 19

It is small wonder that we are the Walking Dead. Being awake and fully alive is really too frightening. It is costly. We prefer comfort, safety, even if it is but an illusion of safety, a sense of certainty, simple answers, explanations and solutions. We don't want to have to think too much. But if we are going to surmount, or even begin to meet, the challenges that are currently facing us, then we are going to have to get ready for this discomfort. Otherwise, we will simply slip over the falls and plunge into the abyss and it'll be lights out before anyone can even wave bye-bye. We are probably in for one of the bumpiest rides in our human history since the last ice age. Global warming is presenting us with unimaginable challenges. It also means that nations with deeply conflicting political and social ideologies are going to have to cooperate and work together for the good of the planet, and this does not seem to be happening. It was naively believed by political and corporate elites blinded by greed that free and open markets would be the solution to our many global divisions and problems, so everything was deregulated and privatized and now, unless you are one of the privileged members of the One Percent, you are not exactly singing Kumbaya. Democracy has not spread like a massive global comfort blanket over the struggling and developing nations of the world. Indeed, we see now the troubling rise of demagogues and dictators, and this is happening even in the US, and we have to thank the many checks and balances in the US political system that the Dump festering in the West Wing has not succeeded in jack booting his hubris all over the Americas. Given that we have less than twelve years to get it right and prevent global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees, and that even here in progressive dear little Canada our Prime Minister Junior is still scandalously asleep at the wheel, that he is determined to get that pipeline built that he just paid for with almost five billion dollars of our money, and just to placate the conservative swing voters in this country for the next election, I think it is only natural that we're just going to want to go back to sleep, stay asleep and maybe wake up when it's all over. Except, for one little caveat: it ain't gonna be over, or at least not until it is really over. But we still have to get on with our important sleepy little lives. Christmas is creeping up upon us like a thief in the night, and those of us with intact families (not anywhere near as many of us as the news, advertising and other propaganda media would have us believe), are still scrambling to find that right present for auntie or mother-in-law, to bake that perfect shortbread or fruitcake that no one is going to want to eat, to get their remortgaged houses and artificial trees decorated just so, and to be sure that everyone is taken care of for this oh more perfect than ever Christmas that is just spiraling everyone into anxious neurosis, then following the holiday blitz and the New Years hangover we will be agonizing over the bills and the debts we have wracked up or fussing about the five extra pounds we piled on and getting back to the gym where we will keep going for the next three weeks, then give it all up and sink like a leaking dory into those troubled waters of our dissatisfaction as depressed and frustrated we continue at thankless day jobs while angsting about how we simply are not ready for beach and swimsuit season that will show us up for the lazy, self-indulgent gluttons and slobs that only one massive global kick in the ass is going to cure us of, if it doesn't kill us first. And of course everyone is still going to be driving their global warming machines, also known as cars, to get to where they need to as they continue to remain asleep and comatose. The sacrifices that we can still make, not just for reducing the likelihood of climate Armageddon, but for making our lives simpler, saner and healthier, are still relatively small, and even rather painless. But it requires such a massive waking and such an unpleasant reckoning with ourselves that I really wonder if it would be a greater mercy for most of us to simply learn the hard way from our mistakes, even if it's too late, even if massive species extinction is not reversed or slowed, even if horrible demagogues are still going to contaminate and infest the United Nations, and even if the real victims of our selfish negligence are going to be the most vulnerable among us. I still hope, I still want to hope, but, we have to start kicking our ass before it gets kicked for us, and if it gets kicked for us, then we just might never be able to get up again.