Saturday, January 05, 2008

epilogue

This is the last post in the current form, until Ichange my mind, not that I suspect the five or so of you that read this will notice. It’s run it’s course. I am not going to apologise for this, or for the long gaps and inconsistencies of floodculture. It isn’t for you and it never was. It’s just something I do when I get a thought or a rant, whatever, that fits it, because I enjoy it. And, frankly, much of the time I have something better to do anyway. I don’t care about it’s audience, or even if it has one. It’s not here to recruit, to build a movement, push a manifesto, change minds, change the world. We all do that every day, anyway.

Piece by piece, cliché by cliché, increment at a time, we all of us change the place around us with our actions. Sorry, but the future isn’t made by the great gestures and actions or great people, by Heroic Efforts at Moments of Destiny. It’s made by the squalid, thoughtless actions of fuck ups like you and me, actions taken in panic and blindness as we simply try to live our lives, to get by. Yesterday I switched to a (supposedly) renewable electricity provider. Yes, me, who’s rants about climate change have soiled these virtual pages, only just got round to it. Because that is how life is lived. Because it just wasn’t high enough up the list. Because, deep down, I just don’t believe there is actually any point anyway. Because, if I really meant it, I’d be switching to self generation, or quitting electricity all together. Instead, I got a fucking iPod for Christmas.

And, when those small things add up to larger, collective actions, we don’t make the right calls. They just don’t add up to what we need to do, more often the opposite. Like building a new coal fired power station at Kingsnorth. Like funding climate change denial from oil profits. Like not pushing for regime change to save people from tyranny when the country concerned…, but I’m turning into a bitter, cynical, whining liberal spitting self loathing platitudes from a comfortable chair in a comfortable house in a comfortable country.

Bottom line. When it comes down to it, I’m too comfortable. We all are - apologies to those on the end of the bell curve here, but the vast majority of us are, and by us I mean the people who are able or likely to read this. Whatever. Look, those of us who need to change won’t, because it will by uncomfortable, simple as. So, get back to work, put your noise cancelling earphones in and grin while you bear it. Just read the sports pages, don’t watch what passes for news. Keep it tuned to the music channel. And, for fucks sake, don’t look too hard out of the closed and locked window. There is a big world out there you and I made together.

Control. Alt. Delete.