Paradise Lost

One point two trillion dollars. That’s how much money that the tourism sector is set to lose just because of a little flu bug. 1.2 trillion, that’s… wait a minute, twelve zeroes, so… 1’200’000’000’000.00 dollars US. That’s just about twice the annual US defence budget. That’s how much money that the tourism sector stands to have lost in just four months.

Now that’s just fucking sick. It’s the kind of money that becomes so stupidly astronomical that we can’t even grasp it. We could go to Mars with that kind of money. No, not just travel there, of course we could, and have. No, if we laid it all out in single dollar bills, we could actually build a fucking bridge to Mars. That’s how much money that is. A space-bridge to Mars kinda much. It’d be a flimsy bridge, and I guess you’d have to use some pretty strong wire to rig it all up, but… nevermind. That’s beside the point. That’s a lot of money to miss out on in a four month period. You could forget to turn your light bulb off for a 50 billion years long vacation for that kind of money. It’s fucking sick.

You know what’s also fucking sick? That we, consumers, spend that much on just flitting about the planet all willy-nilly-like. Some 8’000 hotels in the US alone seem to be shutting their doors. Airlines are shutting down, closing down routes, and stranding aircraft left and right. And the number of people left without a job, without an income, are beyond count (unlike the apparently very countable 1.2 trillion dollars).

And maybe that’s not such a bad thing…

I love travelling. I love just sitting at the airport, waiting, knowing that I’m on my way somewhere. I think travelling broadens a person’s horizons, and thus strengthens their immune system to The Dumb^[tm]. Travelling is good for the soul, if there’s such a thing.

That said, I think that the way we do it, and the reason why most people do it, isn’t very healthy… To some, travelling is about new experiences. Broadening horizons, expanding cognition, observing alternatives to our own little world. But many more, I believe, miss the point. They travel not to become better, but to seem better. They wallow in the extravagance of travelling, believing that seeming is being. They totter hither and tither with their selfie-sticks, more concerned about letting people back home witness their freedom, and wear their worn passports and novelty t-shirts like medals. To these, it seems, travelling is a luxury item to flaunt to the world to try and convince themselves and everyone around them that they’re special.

Another large group, those that may very well be the bread and butter of the travelling industry, travel just to escape. Escape the monotony of their lives. They partake of the blessing to, once a year, be able to go somewhere else, just to imagine themselves seem a little more alive. And usually, they go to the same old places. From Sweden, during the 80’s and 90’s, we travelled to Mallorca or Crete or some other mediterranean island. Since the 00’s, we travelled to Thailand. Every year, every summer, like clockwork.

Some ink-slinging blowhard once said that it is the journey that’s important; not the destination. And that’s been lost, especially with the availability of air travel. We conk down in an aluminum hell-tube for a few hours, and then step out into a new and exotic location. That’s not really journeying as much as it is really shitty teleportation.

But following this new world order for travelling, out of the wood work crawls pundits and classist academics, bemoaning the idea that flying and travelling may become so much more expensive in the near future. That such a development, with fewer destinations and higher prices, will cause a new class divide in society. A divide between the cans and cannots; those that make enough money to be able to flit about, and those that toil beneath the sun, bound to the earth, like serfs. Theses voices echo from the thin confines of a socialist dogma, fearing the return of some class society that never really disappeared to begin with. As if the equality of vacation options available to a population was the most important metric to retain following a collapse of the tourism industry.

And while the post-colonialists whine that their privileged middle class may lose some benefits, I’d like to point out to these spoilt voices that there are far worse effects from the lack of affordable tourism than some shattered veneer of equality. For example, the resurgence of poaching and illegal hunting now that local denizens no longer profit off of endangered spieces’ by letting white folks come take pictures or buy an easy trophy kill.

Still… I would argue that a swift economic kick in the nuts to the global tourism trade isn’t such a bad thing. Those that stand to really gain from their travelling experiences don’t really need an airplane ticket to do so. And it’s really not the responsibility of the tourism trade to stop poaching by outbidding outdated Asian mysticism; that’s a job for local governments and the sole responsibility of the heartless desires of eastern markets. Because the truth is that all that travelling, all those travel blogs and all those Facebook bragging rights, they come at a cost. A cost to the environment. A cost to public health. And sometimes also a very tangible cost to the locals that we deign to crash in on.

And truth be told, those concerns are much more important than your Instagram account, your escape from your sordid reality, or your precious class idenity. It’s all a matter of priorities. And I don’t think that anyone’s precious ego is more important than a chance to curb our addiction to unsustainability.

/Sebastian Lindberg 28/7-2020

The Great Toilet Paper Crisis

All I have is a single roll of toilet paper and civilization is about to crumble.

And all because of a cough. Fair enough, the Wuhan Virus (an apt name if only it weren’t for the fact that the squabbling tips of society have gone done goofed and politicised it) has been running rampant across the world. A fresh new influenza virus that by and large, aside from the elderly and infirm, seems not much worse than a seasonal cold. Certainly not as deadly as SARS was. And yet, the infection has our leaders (who coincidentally are, by and large, elderly and infirm), and by extension their more reactionary and pliable subjects, in a fearful frenzy. Leading to people hoarding food and utilities in expectation of something of apocalyptic proportions.

But no matter how fast the Wuhan Virus spreads, a new Black Plague or Spanish Flu it is not.

And yet, here I am, but with a single roll of toilet paper to my name. At this rate, I’m more likely to perish from malnourishment as I get stuck in embarrassment on the loo after finding my roll empty upon having taken a particularly nasty shit then I am from respiratory failure.

Though, aside from pointing out the hysteria of the public in its bunkering of supplies we’ve grown to take for granted, there’s another good point to be made here. How fragile, oh so fragile, the supply-lines of our massive world economy can be. The West is sorely unused to supply shortages. And even though there are the precious few that may remember the last days of rationing, my Generation X and the ones that spiralled downward after me, can barely even fathom a world were we can’t get a hold on a roll of toilet paper if so our lives depended on it.

So I guess it’s actually not very difficult to imagine that this coddled generation of people can envision the End of Time in the grime of an unwiped turd cutter.

Every single civilization that has come before us has fallen. Due to ecological disaster. Due to disease. Due to economic collapse. Sometimes because of all of the above. And every single time, once we get back on our feet, we keep building the same fragile societal structures that are proven time and time again to be about as sustainable as a house of cards. To call human development stupid seems insufficient in such a light. Yet, we keep at it. Sourcing our food from across the globe. Sourcing our electronic pacifiers from sweat-shops in the Third World. Sourcing our fuel and energy from anywhere but where we live.

It is a humbling thing, to look at how the world twists itself into a living Prisoner’s Dilemma. How no matter how educated or knowledgable our populations have become, we keep reverting to the same basic nature over and over and over again. We learned nothing from the Bronze Age Collapse. We learned nothing from Rome. Nothing from the Aztecs or the Mayans. We learned nothing from the near miss Y2K, and we have learned absolutely fuck all from the Great Recession.

Humanity, so hungry for knowledge, never ever learns.

But you know what? I don’t mind the hysteria, the pandemic pandemonium. It’s fine. It’s overdue. I’m a chronicler. A writer. I look forward to the Great Slip; when our downfall turns from a slow slide into a headlong rush. I want to see it. I want to document it. Even if it’s heralded by just a mediocre couch. I’d be damned if I’d have to slog through the inane bullshit and incessant corruption that we today call society, without being afforded the privilege of watching it all turn to dust.

I just wish I had a clean butthole while I was watching it…

/Sebastian Lindberg 16/3-2020