Chapter one
Before I begin have a gander at these
two variations of post apocalyptic research
It’s said parasitic sociopaths can’t
be reasoned with. I beg to differ.
Lets say I’m some neo-liberal
billionaire who has more liquidity than any group of people can spend
in several lifetimes and I want for nothing and am surrounded by
highly intelligent fawning lickspittles and my life’s just peachy
and surreal. I’m part of a select digital aristocracy or perhaps
I’ve inherited a flatulent amount of wealth and sometimes I just
have to pinch myself.
My only problem is that I have it on
good authority, the best minds money can buy have told me that
there’s a probability approaching certainty that the entire system
that’s gained me my wealth and additionally every social system at
present intralinked to the present financial global status quo is
destined via basic formal logic…to collapse catastrophically
sometime within 3 to 15 years.
A great deal has been made about
prefabricated boltholes in NZ and other places. Private jets and
small select cabals and rushing off and locking the door behind them
for a bit. You can almost picture the cocaine rimmed nostrils and the
euphoria of a 5 star doomer fantasy realised with a flurry of
purchases and agreements and the secured knowledge that were some
short lived new plague to break out given a certain amount of
absolutely flawless timing and a perfectly executed logistical plan
you and some of your equally well heeled friends could live in a
swanky hole in the ground for quite some time.
All this can be manifest by simply
spending money and luckily as a billionaire you have that on hand. In
fact it could be said that spending money is the second best thing
you excel at. The first of course being acquiring it in the first
place.
I find it stupendously naive on a
multitude of levels. Firstly the trigger impulse that initiates the
bunker burrowing. Secondly the requirement of flawless logistics to
initiate it and thirdly and most importantly given after exhaustive
drills and rehearsals and false alarms and dry runs the plan is
initiated and a group of people whose major lifeskills revolve around
exploiting a system that has failed to the degree that jumping into a
hole in the ground is their best considered option and with the door
closed behind them and all further agency forsaken. [Surely someones
mentioned that if you communicate with the outside world you are
broadcasting your position to anyone with the right handheld device]
But what happens next? Is the ultimate
plan to recolonize NZ with everyone else dead or the guns you keep in
a room? Do you have any idea how idiotic and shallowly self revealing
your post apocalyptic wet dream is? Obviously not.
I suspect these articles are simply
penned by bad novelists desperate to drive viewers to their blogs and
have little to do with reality and more to do with their withered
imaginations.
I cannot digest that some of the most
wealthy are this sub-intelligent.
That said it got me to thinking. If I
were some financial titan and wished to ensure myself against some
financial and ecological and social collapse how would I go about
instigating protection for myself?
Well New Zealand is an ideal platform
to base the experiment. It has under 5 million population, it's
comfortably isolated, it has mountain ranges set so that whatever the
prevailing winds they are water making machines.It has hydro and
geothermal power sources and is aiming for 90% renewables by 2025. It
has potential socially to be galvanised towards the changes required
for the undoubtedly massive challenges ahead.
It also has the highest youth suicide
rates in the world. A bi-product perhaps of a relatively well
educated and critically thinking youth recognising that self
actualization within a forlorn socio-economic vehicle heading towards
a seemingly predestined cliff makes life less than rosy and optimism
a tad redundant.
Also and I just mention this in passing
because it amuses me. New Zealanders have evolved a relationship with
violence, the kind of tribal violence that usually eventually
destroys cultures and civilisations we've turned into a
celebration of all we hold sacred and it's our national sport and we
hold what appears to be an unassailable position of the worlds
champion having won over 3/4s of games played internationally since
1903. We have a well deserved reputation as cheerful kind folk but
don't go thinking we're easily usurped via flattery or trinkets. If
rugby were international politics we would be the worlds superpower
and given various factors this is in fact a potential possibility.
Now I'm worth a couple of billion and
on paper can probably double that if I short the industries I know
will crash first or any other of a number of silly maneuvers but my
prime objective, other than spending millions on a plan to hide in a
hole in the ground would be to gather a sociologist or two and a
handful of creative thinkers along with some govt connections and
some logistical gurus for the management side of things and put it to
them. How can I use my wealth to preserve and enhance as much of the
existing NZ culture so that I can live safely and fruitfully within
it?
The sociologists will flatter you with
your perception of the age old importance of the dunbar number and
the acceptance of the futility of manifest destiny as applied to
individuals such as yourself. They would fluff you like you had a day
long porn shoot ahead of you. But they would also say some wise
things that educated you into your potential place in a new situation
you would be instrumental in helping create. [and you'd still be
rich, richer than most, the most important thing ultimately being
most people wouldn't hate you and want you dead and you wouldn't have
to live in a hole in the ground, a victim of your own reptilian
impulses]
The creative thinkers, [and I'll switch
and be one of them now] would suggest four main projects, each aimed
at a differing but integrated part of any culture/society.
The investment in low cost, high energy
efficient housing.
The investment in solar [or other
renewable] powered intensive indoor agriculture
The investment in a network of
'makerspaces' of differing sizes throughout the country.
The investment into a festival that
celebrates 'Quirk' which is an intrinsic part of NZ's cultural
character.
Now I'll switch back to my solitary
billionaire guise and admit I'm a little overwhelmed by the cost of
all this and my neoliberal cortex is perhaps inflamed at the
injustice of it all.
“Well we all have problems mate.
We're just trying to solve our own and yours to the best of our
ability.”
On a macro-level NZ could leverage it's
obvious assets both natural and as a relatively small and potentially
nimble country to put things in place now that grew an
infrastructural independence and proactively positive example to
others. The cost being met in part using that leverage to offer
otherwise doomed billionares and multimillionares a seat at our
table.
I’ve
researched housing and intensive indoor farming and maker-spaces and
my own ‘quirk’ project and will elaborate at length on each of
them but I’m just looking for a bite sized introduction to begin
with so have left that elaboration out to include in in the next
installment.
If
you find this thought experiment interesting then please by all means
share it round and if not then perhaps recommend a wellington based
mental health expert.
part two...
https://winsomesrevenge.blogspot.com/2019/12/death-with-dignity-nzs-plan-to-party.html
part two...
https://winsomesrevenge.blogspot.com/2019/12/death-with-dignity-nzs-plan-to-party.html
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