So!

Upon first reading I was not shocked. Moreover, some parts of the ‘life’ bring with them a certain indication of security. I know that sounds safe and boring but we all need that. She has a roof over her head, she can eat, she can meet up with friends, etc it sounds idyllic.

So why did it feel so damn lonely, isolated, contained? I’ve read this essay countless times now and I still cannot shake off that overwhelming feel of contact loneliness? Maybe it’s because she rarely refers to “us” or “we” until later on when she is talking more societally, but it sounds like she has no partner. Has coupling, in all meanings of the word, been outlawed? Is one no longer allowed a spouse / sexual partner – and / or the ability to procreate?

In my bulleted list I’ve referred to her living arrangements as madness, nobody would put up with such planning and micro-organising as to be 100% sure of getting up and going to bed at the same time so as to be away from her living room which is being used as a meeting room. It’s efficient and impractical, will the meeting be on pause until the over sleeper arises? No! Stop it, this is crazy, fantasy, childlike!

She refers to cooking for herself almost like it’s a wacky, zany, fun-exertion! But – because she ‘own’s nothing’ she would have to order every ingredient and utensil and appliance – I’m being literal here, she said she owned nothing so the cooker has to be classed as a service – which gets delivered! So impractical. Then, when she’s made her meal, the cooker and all other ingredients would have to be retrieved, and whilst this happens her food is going cold, then order a table at which to eat her meal. It’s crazy! I know people will counter with “ah but maybe she has a longer term rental service agreement for fixtures and fittings such as the cooker and table”. Maybe, that’s where the narration drops in quality, it doesn’t tell me enough.

For leisure she gets to ride her bike – which she doesn’t own, or go for a walk, or the exciting gardening. Plants start off as seeds (we’re ignoring vegetative propagation here)  – they do not germinate and grow to maturity in one swoop, it takes a little longer than that. So in essence the plant would be retained and become her property. Unless she grows it outside I suppose, which is kind of a given for plants, I don’t know why I focussed on this, but I’m down that rabbit hole now! I’m wondering what subjects she chooses to draw bearing in mind she “owns nothing” so wouldn’t have a camera to take photos of what she’d seen on the outside, so would have to view things on her workstation which I’m assuming she rents as a service or gets to use from her employer (it’s not like work – liar!). Essentially I don’t know what she’s drawing as I’m guessing contact with “The Others” would be kind of forbidden – wouldn’t want you emulating all that wicked freedom now would we? I’ve drawn nothing, often, I’m bloody good at it, she’s not drawing anything unless it’s coming from her imagination. Does this sound like the kind of society which encourages imagination? At what cost? “Show us your drawings and we’ll decide if your life chip should be deactivated?” – remember she has no privacy.

With regards to the Environment, well as I said in the bullet list, not all climate issues are caused by man, if volcanoes in the future are all now extinct I can’t help wondering who the hell plugged up all the hotspots? We’ll assume volcanoes are still erupting then, we’ve just built nowhere near them. Mind you, I’m guessing that a lot of people may be happy with this situation: Tornado touches down, you get out / survive and the nice little service delivery agent rebuilds that house / dwelling place for you, perfect, well apart from you still have no possessions, freedom, privacy…We may be able to stop dirtying the environment, polluting the waterways and sending our emissions into the atmosphere and that objective is laudable – see? It’s not all bad.

Her narrative with regards to shopping just about describes every woman I’ve never met. They love it, no, they do. You replace shopping with an AI driven algorithm and you’ll have a self-destructing algorithm on your hands as it too gets frustrated with the “How does this look? Perfect, adorable. Oh I don’t like it anymore” scenario inflicted upon men for the last couple of hundred years! Sorry ladies, it’s just true. The algorithm will no more likely have your taste pinned down, than we do.

With regards to The Others living outside of the city, we’re told they live “different kind of lives outside of the city” – what does that imply? Are they feral, or worse? You can’t read that line without inferring the author believes her life is better than ‘the others’. Is it? From what we’ve been told, she can’t have a single thought, conscious or otherwise, in her head which is not known (sorry about the extended double negative), by someone – presumably in authority. Do “the others” suffer the same plight? I think I’m with “The Others” to be honest, although they will be excluded from services and the way that humanity vilifies minorities, ostracised and held to ridicule – and probably blamed every time anything goes awry.

All in all (sorry, couldn’t resist) it doesn’t sound too brilliant a life. I imagine guarding one’s thoughts is akin to trying to hold back the tide with a colander – if you’ve thought about not revealing your thoughts then guess what? That’s a thought! It’s sort of impossible and I believe so is the life which is described.

It’s often said that “People are not stupid”. I’d like to modify that, having worked with people all my life and I’d like to think I’m in the club, “People are not always stupid!” I can further add to that an amendment to Jeff Goldblum’s words form Jurassic Park: “Chaos finds a way” – my meaning: no system is immune to the unanticipated, a circular reference in itself, as the unanticipated is unanticipated, shit happens!

Ida Auken is not evil.

If I’ve lead you to believe anything other than that then I’m sorry to you, and to her. She is ultimately the author of a work of fiction, much like Stephen King, Richard Adams and George Orwell and we don’t think they’re evil, do we?

This is where the internet is highlighted as a tool for making us look pretty damn stupid, literalistic and lacking in critical thinking.

What Ida did is to put out an idea for debate, essentially ‘is this a place to which we were heading?’ And a lot of us misinterpreted it!

I did!

What we can learn from this is that more often than not, a greater portion of the story (or facts) are required, without this, we have a tendency to fly off the handle and take a running jump at ill informed theories and conclusions!

This is where we are at today.

In a week when there have been truly devastating losses in my home town of Southport, some resultant activities influenced by misinformation from social media and irresponsible notorieties, caused a riot, damage to property, injured Policemen and further stress for the residents of my town and those whom had already suffered because of the initial event. Social and Mainstream Media have a duty to be more responsible. It’s all too easy to take fragments of a story, highlight them in a certain shade and let the fools rush in with the wrong conclusion. Don’t believe me? Have a read of this:

A man with an axe goes into the woods looking for children – that’s Little Red Riding Hood (Later variant)!  How sinister does the Woodsman sound out of context? That’s a method deployed all too frequently in Social Media – especially X (Twitter) and YouTube which sinks to new, disgusting depths of click bait!

WE LET THE BEAST IN

Look how the capitalisation, massive letters and emboldened text dragged your eyes to that h1 tag. This is what the newspapers have been doing to us for decades. It’s about as unsubtle as an elephant falling downstairs but, like that second cigarette, it’s addictive and irresistible and easy. We all love a mystery yet, to be truthful, our brains can be very lazy at times. What’s easy is what we take away. Back to my original post, Ida Auken’s work of fiction, because the first time we encounter this widely read article we see it as some kind of mission statement from the powers that be, and that influences our opinion ahead of us actually finishing reading the article. In a nutshell we’ve formed our conclusion whilst we’re still reading the thing. Perhaps our source was someone else who did the same, and on and on and on for nodes and nodes until we ultimately reach the dance (send reinforcements we are going to advance / send three and four-pence, we’re going to a dance!). We have to look and listen better. It’s so comedic that we now have all of this information at our fingers yet seem to take less of it in than before the internet enslaved us! Maybe we see too much! Maybe the process of filtering out the white noise of distraction is simply too long a process that we just reach for the low hanging fruit.  Perhaps there is no true middle ground, no absolute neutral and the illusion of being central is simply not attainable.

It’s got to be on us, if balance is to be sought, and it should. Not everyone has the time to scrawl through the internet desperately seeking the true truth. But those of us who have the time should also assume the responsibility of telling it correctly and not adding our bias. Can we do that? Most don’t,

For those of us who want to dream of a better future, check out this page: https://nexusnewsfeed.com/article/human-rights/welcome-to-2030/