Humpjones

The Sky is Still Falling After All These Years

Posted Aug 05, 2007 7 comments

Last night I was reading an article about how the US stock market is about to take a huge dive and crash next week. It was a technically well-written article.  Everything was spelled right, grammar was mostly flawless.  The author painted a vivid picture of the current economic situation to prove their point.  Still, I couldn’t help but think to myself: “Jesus God Almighty, I have been reading this exact same article every 2 weeks for 5 years now and IT STILL HASN’T HAPPENED.”

Midair Living

So what does this have to do with sex?  I’ll get to that, but first let’s take a look at the single greatest metaphor in the history of Chicken Little Fearmongering: “We are hurtling towards the edge of a cliff.” I might be alone in this, but “we” is a word that sets me on edge, unless it’s being spoken by someone I love.  When people in suits start talking about “we,” my flat policy is to leave the room.  “We” is even more absurd in an economic or geo-strategic context, because really, now, humans, who the fuck is “we”?

Were you consulted the last time the Federal Reserve made a decision?  Did you vote on wether or not to push the government of the United States nearly $900 billion dollars into debt?  Did you tell the Pentagon to raise spending above “Cold War” levels after the “Cold War” ended?  Fuck no, we’re just regular folks. Personally, I am not in the habit of buying slave trash from China, slave beer from Budweiser, or buying lunch at a gas station convenience store (although I am happy to steal Slush Puppies), and I haven’t paid any taxes in seven years. 

So there is no “we” hurtling towards the edge of any cliff, but that’s actually not the biggest flaw in this allegedly common-sense metaphor.  Nay, the biggest flaw is this: we careened over the edge of the cliff decades ago, before most of the people reading this today were even born.

Because, like I said, these “IMMINENT DOOM” articles are technically correct. All of the reasons they enumerate for the impending financial collapse of the USA are factually true—and they’ve been factually true for a long, long time.  The United States has been sailing in midair for so long it now feels normal and most people have no idea what I’m even talking about right now. 

THE WORST/FUNNIEST PART

Here’s the real kicker: nobody has any idea when we’re going to hit the ground beneath that cliff. In all likelihood, given the extreme conditions, given how long we’ve delayed the inevitable, and given the speed of a globally connected financial market running 24 hours per day via computer—when that impact finally comes, the United States will be demolished in 48 hours. 

Here’s the funniest part: every single dipshit pundit who has written a Chicken Little article since 1989 will be saying “I told you so.” That’s probably close to 10,000 people, if you really want to dig into Lexis-Nexis and start building up an exhaustive Bibliography of Doom.  Futhermore, whoever publishes their “THE END IS NIGH” essay within a week or two of the actual event will become an instant celebrity prophet.  That’s sort a mixed bag, though, because by then, nobody will have enough money to buy their books.  That’s what’s called a “pyrrhic victory”—you win, but you’re still a loser.

Here’s the worst part: every single dipshit pundit who has written a Chicken Little article since 1989 has not been enough to wake people up. And that’s the biggest danger of these articles—they numb us. If the stock market doesn’t crash next week, you’ll be a lot less likely to believe the next essay on the same subject.  Because so many Armageddons have come and gone, because the status quo has maintained itself for so long, people just block out the looming disaster.  Which is unfortunate, because like I keep saying, all of the facts that these Chicken Little articles are based on are totally true, very real dangers, and they will not go away if you stop believing in them.

That’s how Philip K. Dick defined reality, by the way.  I still say that’s the best working definition we have in the english language: “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, does not go away.” In other words, $900 billion in debt is more real than Jesus Christ—which is hilarious, because money itself is a total lie, fiction, charade, and joke—and “debt” is just numbers on computers.

(As a side note, consider that if you actually did the Jesus Experiment, he would not “go away” when you stopped believing in him, because millions and millions of other people do still believe in him.  They keep going to Church, they keep picketing abortion clinics, they keep passing out pamphlets, and they just keep on talking about him.  It is precisely this phenomenon that interested Dick so much—the possibility that humans can make things real that simply aren’t, and the ability of irrational beliefs to become operational realities.  Or something.)

Filed in: Zeitgeist

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