Answer: On the whole, it would be a good thing. Oh, the snails and the cockroaches would soldier on, and perhaps their distant descendants would build cathedrals and atom bombs as we have done, and end as we seem likely to end — either with a bang or a slow braising. Having done a lot of harm along the way; whenever we end, and however, it will have been justice delayed. Good riddance to us, and good riddance to those highly-developed hypothetical hexapodes or gastropodes sapientes, should they arise, and come to believe in progress.
How amiable the butcherbird and the tapeworm seem, compared to us.
Of course this is all over-dramatic, self-indulgent, etc. The nukes will probably not fly. We, you who read this, and I who write it, will probably die in our beds, with plenty of morphine in our veins. Other people will be incinerated, gassed, buried under fallen masonry, widowed, orphaned, maimed; and we will pay for it. Pay for it, that is, in the monetary sense, not the moral one.
But you and I will no doubt go our rounds tomorrow more or less as usual.
Tonight I find it very much in my heart to wish this weren’t so. I love my comforts, and I fear pain; but tonight I long for judgement. Somebody please put an end to this relentless, inexorable, monotonically-growing horror.
Well said.
This fine musing inspires me to see the humor, albeit momentarily, in this fearsome folly: “Pay for it.” So Jesus comes to judge the living and the dead. Says you gotta pay for the destruction yours wrought. The Chri$tian sighs his impatient reply that his taxes *had* paid for it, thank you very much. Now lemme at that wine!
‘Til my dying breath likely will I repeat, ad nauseum, ad nauseum, my most approaching proud, certainly self-pleased, self-penned aphorism that eschatological paranoia is fueled by the knowledge that others are right this very moment suffering a personal apocalypse, and that none familiar with the cause should be immune to its effects. The irony that this longing for justice includes one’s own demise is bonus humanity I can only reckon. Guilt is kindred as tributary of the proverbial river in Egypt, the alternative to flowing down which must mean suffering the tributary’s wrath of relative non-suffering. Oh, why must I be not just helpless witness to this suffering but also be made to contribute a tithe to the decimation!
In spite of all that, you’re a creative force for non-destruction, Fadda. I’m grateful for that much.
nice davidly.
it’s no secret the world is full of shit & misery. the only fair thing is sharing. we are at this point b/c of refusal to share (using “we” loosely). we’ll be forced to share. the sorry. and the pity. (golf clap.)
the system must deny the reality of its victims (the poor, refugees, the earth itself.; and so we get the ever-increasing criminalization of poverty itself.) but the repressed never goes away. it always tries to come back.
turn not your back on your own flesh, as god’s own KJV English says somewhere, Isaiah I think.
https://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2013/02/the-fire-next-time/
Here’s a shocker: the first and only people I noticed on social media defending United Airlines and the brutal treatment of the “overbooked” passenger were liberals. “Rules are rules you know…. I never would’ve behaved the way Dao did…. United has to maximize profit, and overbooking is part of that…. Did you read about Dao’s ‘troubled past’?….”
Refreshingly, most people reject this nonsense. And right-wingers I know referred to the cops as the Goon Squad.
See, space is curved, and traveling in opposite directions, left meets right. Think libertarian, or Anarchist Christian. If you like.