the fifth scenario

It's been pretty crazy so far in the twenty first century. Everyone needs hope for the future, and sometimes it is the darkest hour when you need it most. But there is no absolute hope. One's hope is another's despair. Nevertheless hope still stirs people to grasp for it. Since the world is less bewildering with a view of the path ahead, the Mid-Coast Sub-Church of Paranoia, paradoxically, is offering hopeful visions of future scenarios. However, a number of people have misunderstood (Thanks for writing folks!); apparently they think the hopeful scenarios are a menu of choices from which they may select. These aren't options people! Each scenario will unfold in the fullness of time. It's simply unclear how fast, where and in what proportions.

Hopeful Scenario 1: Status Quo. Maintaining the suburban lifestyle is at once the most hoped for and the most hopeless. Suburbanites are hopeful that tomorrow their cars, cel phones and credit cards will still work. That will require unfettered corporate access to resources, increasingly regressive taxation, further abridgement of civil liberties and ever harsher application of military force foreign, and domestic. Expanding economic activity and emerging technologies will provide solutions to problems before they become too acute to be managed, and progress will be driven by the fascination men find in their own works, as well as by their acquisitive nature. Still they realize subconsciously it is hopeless because the system is predicated on phalse profits. That gives rise to a countercurrent of hope the whole mess can be transcended inexpensively and painlessly, but that is hopeless too because it is so selfish. Dilemma leads to neurosis, neuroses lead to decadence, decay leads to decline. At least suburbia isn't endless. That's hopeful!

Hopeful Scenario 2: Earth Change. Not much can be done about it. Pressure of culture on biosphere, long term cyclical dynamics of climate change, tectonic action and cosmological events will combine to cause a radical reorganization of Earth's surface environment which destroys almost the totality of human culture. The planet could even become inhospitable to vertebrate evolution. People might go underground or something, but it is all a matter of degrees, centigrade. Hope is it will be a cleansing of Earth's surface and near Earth space as a substrate for evolution of more advanced life forms.

Hopeful Scenario 3: Global Revolution. The world's poor will not be denied. They too want comfortable lifestyle, freedom from fear and full enfranchisement as citizens, though it may surprize suburbanites to learn how many of them have no desire for petrochemical derivative consumer products or vulgar pop culture. An unstoppable flood of ragged, brown skinned individuals eager to Get Some! will flow into suburban neighborhoods in all "developed" countries and will effect a radical redistribution of the means and ends of exploitation of Earth's resources and access to technology. Ask yourself: if you could forestall revolutionary violence by giving up half your stuff would you forgo half your cars? Half your electrical power? Half your food? Half your clothing? Upon your answer depends how much violence the revolution will require. Of course, they'll want it all..

Hopeful Scenario 4: Ecotopia. The fortunate people of Earth will suddenly awaken, and voluntarily renounce suburban lifestyle and abolish the warfare state in favor of global equality and fair trade. Activists will finally end counterrevolutionary fratricide, and building a worldwide united front, will spark a revulsion of feeling across the globe against patrist corporate structuring. Rank and file everywhere will down tools, quit their jobs, stop buying stuff and start building sustainable communities with local character and global awareness. Communes, co-ops, land trusts, ecopeace villages, nature conservancies, credit unions, workers' collectives, student committees and peoples' academies will replace outmoded boards of directors, cabinets and military commands as the organizational structures of human culture. People's attention will be directed toward frank inquiry, conduits for sharing, advancement of social justice and protection of natural ecosystems. Profit, force and limited liability will be replaced with harmony, peace and love. Promotion of the arts, advancements in health and education, development of psi powers and membership in the off-world community are the dividends that will accrue to all people. Hope is that everyone will live happily ever after.

To respondents this is the best hopeful scenario. Oddly though they don't seem to have much hope we can get there from here. But wouldn't it be nice! Clean air, clean water, efficient public transportation, beautiful cities, beautiful countryside, plenty of wilderness, no poverty, no crime, no war. It's a conundrum! So many want to live this scenario, but they don't believe in it enough to make it happen! Hopeless!

So here's the alternate ultimate hopeful scenario as foreseen by Johnnypod:

Hopeful Scenario 5: The Rupture. Hilarious Econocataclysm. Determined grassroots efforts to float anarcho-syndicalism are swamped by the mindless nihilism of free market fundamentalist fascism as economy implodes and ecosphere collapses. The excrement really strikes the ventilator. It's way worst than anyone ever even imagined. Disruption, destruction, chaos - no more toilet paper! Luckily everyone is so cynical and inured to tragedy by media violence it's a riot! It's like this movie they saw on SCI FI TV once where the world ends but the guy gets to kiss the gal while mutant dinosaurs devour shoppers, and an armada of alien battle cruisers vacuum up the atmosphere just before the asteroid hits, and everyone dies laughing! Been there! Done that! Got the T-shirt! Meanwhile the SubGenius board the escape vessels in an orderly manner, with all the SLACK in the world, as billions of deserving sinners fry in hell on Earth. The hope for humans is that they get to go with a smile on their lips.

These scenarios will come to pass, just as a flower buds, then opens. For the present, status quo will be maintained, but cracks are forming - people are already falling through - and they won't be getting any smaller. Earth changes are around us always. An era of particularly clement weather has allowed patrist civilization to fester. How long will it be before the planet proves it is bigger than man? Earth changes will accompany and intensify the political changes involved in the other scenarios. As status quo disintegrates, popular revolution will fill any void. As soon as occupying troops are gone, all areas will revert to control by local populations driven by local needs. How voluntary or violent the change will be depends entirely upon political will. This factor is wholly elective and more than any other will affect the outcome of the scenario. Ecotopia is where all are headed. What is uncertain is how long it will take and which will arrive there. Human culture, if it is to be sustained, must become sustainable. If not, then the fifth scenario will become a certainty.

The changes are happening already. For the time being there are more malls than organic farms, it's still nice out and insurgents are being kept in check, just. Some areas are ahead of their time: Haiti had four hurricanes in a row and the South Asian basin had the largest tsunamis on record, Spain's fascist government was voted out after popular revulsion at official lies, and photovoltaics developed for the space program are making off grid electricity an affordable reality.

So have hope! Don't think there is nothing you can do. Everything you do has an impact on the world, on the future. Every action, every thought is a choice that determines what the next choice will be. These things will happen all right, but it is up to humans how it all happens.

Reverend Doktor C. Sarian

Mid-Coast Sub-Church of Paranoia

Church of the SubGenius

022113