It's the end of the world as we know it

I saw this Australian movie from the late 70s sometime in the early 80s. It was on one of those weekend late-night TV shows that specialized in playing odd movies from around the world. I happened to come across it at the beginning.

It was called The Last Wave, starred Richard Chamberlain, was directed by Peter Weir, and it was very, very strange. Chamberlain is a lawyer defending aborigines from a murder charge who discovers what is really going on involves the end of the world. Or more specifically, the end of this contemporary world and the beginning of the next. As a result, at the end of the film, you feel positive, even good, about the end of the world. You know this has happened countless times before and will happen countless times again.

This has become my view of what is an almost certain end to contemporary civilization. I'm not a believer that the planet itself will somehow be destroyed. Pretty unlikely. I think what's likelier is how humans live and even their ability to live will end.

I'm all right with that.

The direction climate change is going will destroy much of the Third World in the near future, and while most Americans, if they think about it at all, and most of us don't, think it will have minimal effect on them, it's not a question of if it will but when it will. It may take some time, maybe years, a few decades, but it will have tremendous effects on us. At first it will be economic, but it will encroach on our lives more. It will be burdensome and painful, and we'll be uncomfortable and some of us will determine "It's them or us," and that might work for a while. Eventually, either because we develop a greater moral sense or we simply run out of people to exploit, Americans and other elites whose lives depend on other people doing most of the work for them, will be forced to do things we don't understand or haven't taken the time to adapt, and we will peter out as a species.

Today is The Day of Remembrance, a day one acknowledges death, including the death of the fantasy one can continue pretending not to know about what is being done in one's name or at one's side. We should acknowledge that we've reached beyond the point of holding off whatever form our species' death is coming in for more than a handful of years, and most of us don't care.

I do care. I feel fine.