Coming Ready Or Not

No observer, however keen, could have guessed his thoughts; he had acquired sufficient knowledge of the art of life to hide his opinions even when he was alone; nay, more than that, he was afraid of coming to a clear understanding with himself.

August Strindberg - The Red Room (1879)


The underlying weirdness of COP26 and the whole climate game seems to be exactly as Strindberg described over 140 years ago - he was afraid of coming to a clear understanding with himself.

As if the whole aim of the climate narrative is not to bring about a desirable state of affairs at all, but to encourage voters to hide from an undesirable one where people are free to do things. To hide from a state of affairs where people are free to build futures where there is no paternal hand to keep everyone in line.

There is a powerful juvenile streak here, but many of those in the climate driving seat do not share it. The drivers drive and know where they personally are going. They go along with the rhetoric and the madness, they see how many middle class people are easily manipulated by juvenile fears so they take advantage of those fears. Malthusian fears, not new ones.

But this way lies madness. We cannot hide from what we have built here in the developed world, from our absolute need to understand where we are, how we arrived here. We cannot hide from a need to adapt, move on and be free to tackle whatever turns up.

We cannot push aside people with the ability to take us forward. There is no alternative direction other than serious decline. We cannot reject capable people, silence them and hope that totalitarian politics will somehow arrange our lives in our favour.

What’s this madness? Nothing but taking just one step further — the step that takes you into a country where every sound, every movement, every smell, every tiny action means only one thing. It’s the ordinary normal world suddenly turned completely to one purpose. Something or someone must be stopped, put out of the way, silenced. That done, all will be right again.

Hugh Walpole - The Sea Tower (1939)


That done, all will be right again. But of course it won’t. We see that already.