Doug's Darkworld

Why yes, it’s not been a good year. Dead friends, dying cats, involuntary unemployment, it’s been a  trifecta of  “this sucks” so far. On the plus side, I did get my first poison pen letter. If I’ve managed to piss off some complete stranger so much that they are sending me hate mail, I must be doing something right. So, I’ve decided to go with the flow. The appocalypse is upon us, in my posts from now till July, I’m going to pull out all the stops and let my dark side express itself. Casandra will have nothing on me.

For starters, I have concluded that technology is an evolutionary dead end. And this is more than just my disappointment regarding the lack of flying cars we were so confidently promised on the Jetsons of my youth. I will expand upon this in a future post, but basically I think that technology far more magnifies the power of evil than it magnifies the power of good. For example, my rantings used to be limited to anonymous flyers I stapled to telephone poles at night, now people the world over can be and are offended by my musings. I rest my case.

I am going to revisit corporate CEO psychopaths. I may have been premature by completely dismissing the topic as a few readers pointed out. It certainly is worth a more in-depth look. At the very least the whole idea of corporations and how they work in society is worth examining. A way for people to engage in commerce for the benefit of all, or a malignant fraternity of evil plotters infecting our civilization? Stay tuned.

There are some reasons to think that world war three might start this spring or summer, a post on that unpleasant possibility is on the way. Heck, the Russians are re-arming. Great, just what we need, more weapons. This was how Europe prevented world war one, everyone armed themselves to the teeth and planned for war. We all know how well that worked out. There are a number of hot spots where a major regional or world war could start. I’ve said since 2003 that the US invasion of Iraq was very analogous to the Japanese invasion of China in 1931, in that both were the first shots in a much wide war. I still hope this proves to be a false analogy, or even a silly one.

I’ll be revisiting the LHC, the giant atom smasher that is being built in Europe. I’ve discussed this before, and sadly was unable to clearly make my existential point that there might be some danger to Earth by turning on this machine. We were saved by the bell though, the LHC broke down as scientists fired it up last fall, and it won’t be repaired until September or so. I’m going to go out on a limb here, and predict that scientists will never be able to run the LHC up to full power. My theory: The universe is protecting itself somehow, and won’t allow the machine to be turned on. Feel free to berate me this fall if and when they get it up and running.

Assuming we make it to this fall. I think  a Malthusian event is underway, a sea change in human society and a transition into a new age in history. How bad this will get before we come out the other side, who the hell knows … but I’m going to have fun trying to imagine the possibilities.

“Everyone is loyal to the nightmare of their choice.”
— Josef Conrad (from Heart of Darkness.)

(The above painting was painted in a church in Munich around 1481. It was painted by Michael Pacher. I’m pretty sure the copyright has expired. Aside from the general weirdness of it, it is situated on  a panel so that it could only be seen when no services were being held in the church. It’s some saint confronting the devil. Europe was a pretty wild place in the 1470s, lots of wars were raging, though other long running wars had come to an end. Not a whole lot different than the world today.)