Weekend Literary Supplement: The Climate Trials, Part Twenty Nine

All good things come to an end, and this is the final instalment of The Climate Trials.

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Conclusion to The Climate Trials: the Civil Society and the Great Turning

: by Prof. Greta Hultman, University of Uppsala

The world is now a very different place than it was when the Mikhail Bookchin organized the Climate Trials. It isn’t a Utopia---not by any stretch of the imagination. But if you had been able to show it to the people who lived back then some might have been excused for believing that it is. The world changes from generation to generation, sometimes in one way, sometimes in another. The rate of change sometimes slows down to an almost imperceptible crawl, sometimes it gallops like a runaway horse. Sometimes things seem to be getting better, sometimes worse.

It’s important to remember that “better” and “worse” are human categories that we impose upon the world around us. The world doesn’t care---it just “is”. Moreover, it’s important to remember that even though we talk about the “human race” or “the world” like it is one thing it really isn’t. What is seen as a catastrophe for one person or group, can be be a long-hoped-for change for the better by others.

The fossil fuel industry is a thing of the past. We travel on electric trains, buses, cars, bicycles, and, by foot. We don’t fly all over the planet anymore, simply because we haven’t yet learned how to do that without wasting huge amounts of energy in one form or another. This has been found to be no great loss anyway---tourism jobs were poorly paid, made housing way too expensive for the locals, and, tended to reduce local cultures to a sort of fake “Disneyfied” simulation of the real thing.

In exchange, people have learned to broaden their horizons through the growth of the World Wide Web, which has finally lived up to it’s potential as a means of spreading knowledge and bringing the world together. Once we broke up the tech monopolies and brought in regulations that destroyed it as a propaganda source what got left was on the whole much better.

Populist and Capitalist propaganda had convinced voters to support parties that fought tooth and nail against using the benefits of modern technology to benefit the masses instead of the elite. In addition to voter suppression, propaganda, “wasted” votes, and other “fiddles” that were inherent in traditional democratic societies, it was simply amazing how often people voted against their own best interests. Once people learned to vote more rationally, we got guaranteed annual income programs, the rich were taxed, housing declined in cost, and, the work week shrank. People realized that costly gee gaws were just shiny distractions that kept people from finding what they really needed---which was the freedom to find out just who they are and what they can accomplish if given half a chance.

And at the same time more and more parts of the economy transitioned away from artificially enforced scarcity to genuine abundance. The Open Source business model now generates half of the world’s GDP. And “General Purpose” Factories---based on 3-D printing technology---have sprung up everywhere. The need for huge amounts of capital to build commercial enterprises is drying up, and with it the need for wealthy capitalists. Computer technology linked up with the Web has finally given the edge to co-ops over corporations, art over marketing, craftsmanship over mass production, taste over price, and, wisdom over ideology.

This isn’t an end to problems---just the end to the old ones. New ones will arise after the first glow of “the Great Turning” is over. Dealing with them will be the task of future generations.

For now, academics have the task of recording and cataloguing the players who were there when the new world was born. Mikhail Bookchin and the Climate Trials were a visible player. He may or may not have been essential to what happened, but he was certainly a sign of what was going on. I am only glad that he---and what he represented---was there when we all needed him the most.

 

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Well, that's it for The Climate Trials. Next week I'll try to come up with something else for the literary supplement---simply because it seems to me that there were a lot of people who like it. If you like reading this blog, and you can afford it, why not subscribe? You can pay what you like (a dollar a month is fine), and Pay Pal and Patreon make it easy to do.

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with.

Weekend Literary Supplement: The Climate Trials, Part Twenty Eight

In this instalment Mikhail gets a surprise invitation.

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At that point Mikhi was asked to attend a small meeting at the Holy House.

There was no service or training session upstairs, so the usual crowd from the basement were set up on the main floor. Only a few others were there with Mikhi. Most were strangers, although he recognized Isabeau and Ian. The seating was a little more formal than he was used to---the group from the basement were sitting on chairs facing everyone else who were sitting audience style.

The tall Asian man with the tired eyes started to speak. “The Old Ones have asked you to come here because we think that it’s time we moved you on to another project. You’ve done good work and we want to know if you are willing to help build and preserve the institution so it will survive and continue to do good work into the future.”

“What we want you to do is undertake a trip in time. We want you to go back to the very founding of the organization called ‘the Old Ones’”. Of course, this brought out a startled response from the people in the audience.

“Of course, I’m not literally meaning that we want you to go back in time. What we mean instead is that we want you to immerse yourself in what we believe was the core cultural experience of being a member of the original Old Ones. We want you to live the life that inspired people to devote the rest of their lives to the multi-generational project that has built the organization. To be blunt, we want to learn if you are ready to join the leadership.” Oddly enough, this brought out if anything a slightly greater startle response than the idea that people were being asked to actually go back in time.

“What we are talking about is an intensive lived experience that captures the essence of what the original Old Ones developed in their communities back in ancient China. To do that, we will be asking you to pack a few things (we’ll give you an itemized list) and come back here on a specific set day. From there, you’ll be driven to a hidden location in the countryside. We’ve specifically chosen you because we know that you don’t have any on-going personal commitments right now, but if you have some needs that should be met (practical stuff---bills that need paying, plants watered, cats taken care of, etc) please write them out, email them to your contacts, and, we will have people who can ‘house sit’ for you. This isn’t going to be a long time commitment, just three weeks. So if you have to tell anyone, say a friend won a vacation trip and can’t take advantage of it because of their work commitments---so they decided to give it to you. We’ll give you some fake brochures that you can show people if anyone thinks that this sounds odd.”

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At that point, he sat down and the very white old woman with thick, black hair done up in two very thick braids rose to address the group. “That’s just the incidental, practical stuff. What we want you to attend is a monastic setting that will allow you to live in an approximation of an ancient, Elder community. We want you to see what the world would look like if all the annoying, stupid intrusions of superstition, capitalism, sexism, racism, etc, have been purged from society. Also, we want you to have a first-hand experience of what it would feel like to really live in harmony with nature on a day-to-day level. Finally, we want to help you to incorporate a useful mental discipline into your day-to-day life.”

The tall, thin black man with the short white hair finished up. “The value of this program is that it gives your life a ‘reset’ and will allow you start on the ‘first rung’ of the Old One ladder. To use a crude military metaphor, we’re offering you a position as a non-commissioned officer in the organization. When you come back from our ‘basic training’ you’ll be assigned to someone who can act as your mentor and who will work with you as you undertake your first assignment. As your abilities manifest themselves, and opportunities arise, you may end up being asked to do more and more important jobs. And there may be further educational opportunities. But ultimately, we hope that you won’t have any more ambitions than to just become a better human being and to make the world a better place. The Old Ones really don’t like personal ambition and we try to select against it.” He started to sit down, then hesitated and got back up again.

“We can tend to be a little dour in our presentations, so it’s important to understand that we aren’t talking about a life that is just work and no fun. Indeed, we think that---I think I can speak for everyone on this.” (There was a quick nodding of heads around him.) “We agree with the motto of Socrates that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’. What we are offering is possibly the best life one can live. Life for a purpose worth supporting. Life involved with other people who have the wisdom and understanding to understand your own values and respect them. This is a community where you won’t have to spend most of your life biting your tongue or trying desperately to get people to do something that is very much in their own best interest. You won’t have constantly calculate how much of ‘the Truth’ this person is able to hear before their mind ‘clamps down’ and stops hearing what you have to say.”

“We know who you are. You’ve all spent your life tilting at windmills trying desperately to help the world become a better place. Well, we all started out where you did, and were once sitting in the same chairs that you are now, and, now we want to invite you to join with us in a chain of people that reaches back thousands of years to a group of individuals in a bronze-age culture, who sought to change a profoundly sexist, superstitious, violent, culture into something much better---both for themselves and for future generations.”

He clasped both of his hands into a fist. “WELCOME TO THE OLD ONES” He bowed deeply from the waist, smiled, and, sat down.

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

 

Weekend Literary Supplement: The Climate Trials, Part Twenty Seven

In this instalment Mikhi finally meets Tylon Talon. 

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Mikhi’s guest spot on the Tylon Talon show had been “hyped up” by the Raposa News, which meant that close to 100% of it’s regular viewers tuned into the Web news channel. The producers of the show were confident that they could keep control of the content and “build the brand” by “destroying” Mikhi. What they didn’t know was that the Old Ones had installed a shunt into their main video feed cable that sent their raw footage (ie: without the five second delay editing) to be recorded for their use. (It really doesn’t pay to treat your cleaning staff like crap---they have pass keys and are around when no one is looking.)

This meant that when Talon played his dirty debating tricks on Mikhi and he responded the way Wayne had coached him, the resulting “fireworks” might not have been on the original show footage---but it was on the stuff that the Elders put up on the Web. Moreover, because of their “white hat” hackers, they were able to create a very close copy of the original Raposa News feed that had the real footage, not the altered stuff. And they used their AI bots to push this footage to the point where the overwhelming majority of people who followed Raposa News on social media saw the Elder’s version instead of the real thing.

This created a “fire storm” among viewers because of the extreme cognitive dissonance. On one hand, they had been “programmed” to believe everything that they saw on the Raposa News, but on the other hand, this was about making Tylon Talon look foolish. This opened up a vulnerability in the minds of many of these fans, which the Old One’s psychologists took advantage of in one of those “cheap” projects that had been referred to at the Holy House. Some “crazy uncle Liberty” types actually lost their slave-like devotion to their goofy news sources. Some advertisers quit supporting the Raposa News channel. And more information was gained for future Old Ones projects. All around, a good time was had by all.

Except, of course, Tylon Talon. He heard through the “grape vine” that several wealthy “think tanks” that had been considering lucrative contracts for him now considered him too much of a liability for consideration. And the Raposa News owners decided to avoid renewing his contract. Instead, they told him that they’d keep him on a week-by-week basis and see how he did over the long haul.

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Eventually Wayne decided that the media circuit was at the point of diminishing returns. The invites to talk show were drying up and attention had moved away from the “Climate Trials” to the next “cause célèbre”. This just meant that interest went “underground” however. Now it was time to talk to academics and activists.

“These people are different and require a much different way of dealing with them.” Wayne had his Frye boots up on the table that served as his desk. (Mikhi was surprised that you could still buy them---he hadn’t seen a pair since the 1970s.) He had a bong in his hand and was even more casual than usual.

“Activists don’t generally set out to torpedo you, but you have to handle them very carefully. Some of them are very intense and tend to focus on minutia to the point of self-destruction. You can say the wrong word and they will instantly bracket you as ‘the enemy’ and then devote their considerable energy into tearing you down. That’s why people sometimes say that they form ‘circular firing squads’.”

“What we’ll do is create a program that will work you through some of the most common pitfalls. Things like learning the ritual that involves acknowledging the First Nations that lived on the land where the meeting is being held, dealing with people who have idiosyncratic gender identifiers---that sort of thing. These aren’t that important in the grand scheme of things and are usually based on real issues, but as a boomer you may find them strange and hard to remember. If you can avoid making a faux pas, you should be able to get along fine with these people.”

“Also, you are going to be interviewed by academics. As a general rule they can be trusted to not have any ulterior motives or extreme ideas about ‘political correctness’---but they can be very eccentric and obtuse. You have to be patient with them and accept that they know everything and their individual project is more important than whether or not the sun rises tomorrow. Once you get over that, you will do fine.”

This phase of the work went pretty much as predicted for the next two years. After that, the next fad came along and Mikhail found himself less and less in demand. Eventually the day came when Wayne announced that the project was finished.

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Our dear and glorious leader seems to have finally bowed to his science advisors---late is at least a little better than never---and put the province back into a lock-down. This sucks a little for everyone, but it and the disease sucks a lot more for a few---so remember to be both nice and responsible to people in different situations than yours. Try to keep a stiff upper lip, remind yourself that all pandemics eventually end, and, when the time comes roll up your sleeve and get vaccinated.

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Weekend Literary Supplement: The Climate Trials, Part Twenty Six

In this instalment we learn a bit more about the right-wing media and the Elders.

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Wayne was just as sanguine this time around. “We were specifically escalating in this dry run---but not unrealistically so. Tylon Talon really is an aggressive, obnoxious, fool, and the actor was doing a very good approximation of his methods. I liked the way you jabbed back instantly over the religious attack. I’m not sure that Talon would have hesitated like that actor, though. He’s really intelligent and has thousands of hours of tearing progressive voices to pieces.”

“Having said that, you do have the benefit of being someone who knows your subject like the back of your hand. Moreover, you don’t come from a position of privilege, so you know how to fight back instead of just crumpling or exploding when faced with someone playing dirty. I do think that your understanding of theology really is a nice card to keep in your deck. Generally, people on the left know nothing at all about religion. Even more useful is the fact that the vast majority of conservative Christians---and the people who ally with them---also know almost nothing about it. If you can sound like you know a lot and have some sympathies for church-goers, you can peel away a significant part of their rhetorical arsenal.”

“I do have a suggestion though---if you can remember it in the heat of the conversation. When someone like Talon throws a lot of fast-talking ‘what abouts’ at you, it’s often effective to turn his aggression against him. Don’t try to talk as fast as him, just deflect the question---preferably with a joke at his expense. You had the start of something like this when you said that there were a lot of questions. But you can’t telegraph this jab. You need to toss it off very economically and ambiguously so the producer monitoring the five second delay won’t weed it out. I’m not expecting you to come up with something on the fly. We’ll work some more with the actor so you can come up with a few snappy answers in this particular situation. I’d like to not have to do it, but this really is a tried and true way that the wingnuts take advantage of liberals and I think we should at least try to counter punch against it.”

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Mikhi went to the Holy House the following week and asked the conclave in the basement about how the Elders were able to find and fund such an enormous number of experts in such a wide variety of fields.

The tall, thin, elderly black man was the first to respond. “First off, most of our people have businesses and personnel that they put at our disposal when we need them. So whatever infrastructure you see is generally just being “re-purposed” from something much more mundane.”

The very white, elderly woman with very thick, frizzy hair in braids then spoke “More importantly, we have made it our job to carefully search out the ‘lost talent’ that our culture routinely squanders. The thing to understand is that only a tiny percentage of people who have incredible abilities ever get a chance to use them for the good of society. Everyone’s heard of Phds driving cabs and MDs mopping floors. But those are only the tip of the iceberg that is especially visible because these folks have diplomas that they can point towards.”

“For every one of these people there are thousands with equal expertise and creativity who lack some irrelevant other quality that means that they never get the chance to share their special talents with the world around them. Think about all the great works of literature that are languishing in the hard drives of shy authors who don’t have the connections to tell them how to market their work. Or brilliant students who can’t afford college, or get stuck with a crappy primary education, or have parents who are so dysfunctional that all of their energy goes into survival instead of learning. There are enormous numbers of brilliant, creative people who spend their whole lives grinding away at jobs they loathe because society just stupidly threw away their potential.”

The middle-aged Asian woman who managed the Holy House stepped in. “It isn’t hard to find these people if you try. And the Elders have the resources to help specific individuals take advantage of their potential. Would it be any wonder that most of them are willing to ‘step up to the plate’ and help out when they can?”

Mikhi stepped in at this point. “That raises another point. Where is all the money coming from for your infrastructure? Even this house had to be paid for, and this isn’t a cheap neighbourhood.”

The older Asian man with tired-looking eyes answered. “We aren’t adverse to using theft of funds as a way of dealing with problem individuals or organizations. For example, when that unfortunate individual tried to to kidnap you, we dealt with him by stealing a huge amount of his money, and, then made it look like the contractors he’d hired took it. The resulting war led to his quick demise and the end of the contract against you. What money we need comes our way through such situations.”

“Besides, most of the people working for us are unpaid other than whatever help we might have given them in getting on their feet in a world that treated them like crap. They are grateful and more-than-willing to help. Moreover, one of our three key values is frugality. We are careful with our money and have amassed a significant contingency fund that we can use when necessary. The Climate Trials is only one of many current projects---but it is one of only a few truly expensive ones. The rest are really quite cheap.” He smiled---and may have even winked---at Mikhi.

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Weekend Literary Supplement: The Climate Trials, Part Twenty Five

In this instalment, Bookchin's training with Wayne gets more "down and dirty".

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Wayne had his feet upon the table and was looking at a monitor mounted to the wall on a flexible arm. He’d obviously been watching the interview.

“You did remarkably well. You didn’t lose your temper and you had a short, snappy answer to every loaded question. Not bad at all.”

“This wasn’t my first rodeo and Mir has been helping me with general content. He’s great at telling me what does and doesn’t work. What do you think I could have done better?”

Wayne looked thoughtful for a while before he answered. “There are a lot of things you could have done worse. But better? I don’t think that is a question you should be asking.”

“It is true people can do things wrong when they get interviewed. But one of the things that is very commonly done wrong is to think that there is a solution to every problem. In fact, I like to get people to think about the difference between a problem and a dilemma. As I use those two words, a problem is something that you can fix if you just find the right response. In contrast, a dilemma has no solution at all. You can’t fix a dilemma---all you can do is see it as a test of character.”

“A lot of people get bad advice saying they must avoid making a mistake. The problem is they try so hard they end up just repeating talking points, which makes them sound like robots. At best, they look like they are incapable of thinking for themselves. At worst, they look like they have something to hide. If you do this while on the set of people trying to destroy you, they will eat you alive.”

“So no. I don’t think you could have done better. Moreover, I would advise you to not try to do better. Just be yourself. Have confidence in the fact that the Old Ones chose you for a reason---you are the best person for the job you are in.”

“But having said all of that, I do want to do a little coaching. You adapted well to the generic cable news event in our simulation. Tomorrow I want to run you through a specific combative interview with an actor who is primed to act like Tylon Talon.”

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Overnight Mikhi searched for You Tube clips of Talon. He didn’t like what he saw. Talon didn’t seem to be very thoughtful or open to new ideas. In fact, it didn’t seem that he was terribly interested in the truth of anything he was talking about. Mainly, it seemed that all he was about was winning.

He was a thin, very intense-looking young man with short hair. He spoke in a “burst transmission” way---short, very fast sentences interspaced with short moments of silence. Mikhi thought that this was part of his debating style. He tried to race past points that people might take issue with if he gave them more time to think. He also liked to use “loaded language”. He never allowed someone to make a broad statement about something he disagreed with and instead instantly went after them to talk about specifics. In general, he always talked so fast that the other person was always trying to play verbal “catch up” after the fact. If someone resolutely refused to play his game, he would quickly figure out some excuse to shut the situation down. If he was being interviewed on another person’s show, he sometimes even took off his mike and left the stage in a huff. If he was doing the interviewing, he got his producers to cut the mike and moved to a commercial after which a clip of something else would be cued up and ready to go---with no mention of the previous guest.

Tylon didn’t converse with people---he fought them to the death. And if it looked like someone else might get the upper hand, he instantly shut the fight down.

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The next day when Mikhi showed up at Wayne’s studio he was put through the same routine as before. But this time when he was led into the studio he sat across from an actor who was dressed like Tylon Talon and was doing his best to mimic his mannerisms. Bookchin had to admit, he was doing a pretty good job.

This actor introduced Mikhi and then went directly to a short clip of the Climate Trials where Wilson Gillespie was talking about the way the oil industry had campaigned to get evangelical Christians to see environmentalism as anti-religious. The clip was edited to ensure the audience didn’t hear any of the evidence. That made it look like Gillespie was just making an accusation without any accompanying evidence. When the clip abruptly stopped, the actor playing Talon immediately threw a statement/question at Bookchin like a machine gun spewing bullets.

“What does the environment movement seek to gain from attacking Christianity?”

“Don’t confuse a small number of evangelical church leaders who chose to get in bed with big oil with the entirety of Christianity. I’m not a Christian myself, but I’ve spent a lot of time studying the Bible and reading theology. I don’t particularly agree with all of Christ’s teachings---but I will admit that if most people decided to actually follow them, the world would be a better place. The problem is a great many of the church leaders that Gillespie is talking about don’t seem to do this.”

“So, you think you know more about the world than the Son of God? Isn’t that something of an arrogant statement?”

“I don’t remember any place in the Gospels where Jesus specifically talks about climate change or the importance of the oil industry to the American economy---so I tend to see this as a ‘render onto Caesar, Caesar’s due’ sort of thing. Frankly, I don’t think that I’m the arrogant one in this particular instance. I won’t go so far as to compare these particular church leaders to shepherds that turn out to be ‘ravening wolves’, but I do think that a case could be made---.”

The actor drew a blank stare, then quickly went back on the offensive. This time he raced through a shopping list of quick questions---leaving Mikhi no time to answer. “What about the scientists who said that we were entering an ice age?”, “What about the fact that transitioning off of fossil fuels will destroy the economy?”, “What about the fact that the vast majority of CO2 comes from China and India?”, “What about the fact that many leading scientists say that climate change comes from sun spots instead of anything people do?”, “What about the fact that it requires more fossil fuels to make solar panels and wind turbines than they save during their short lifespans?”, “What about the fact that outside of a small number of elite people, no one can afford to buy an electric car?”

It was Mikhi’s term to draw a blank stare. “That’s an impressive list of half truths and out-and-out falsehoods. Let me guess, the show’s almost over and I now have no time to answer any of these---right?”

Actually, his response only got to “That’s an impressive list---” before his mike was cut. The producers were working with a five second delay on the broadcast, which meant that they had time to edit out embarrassing responses and shut down the camera in time for the actor to then launch into a monologue where he said “Well, there you have it. Our religious freedoms and economic prosperity are being held hostage by a radical environmentalist who doesn’t really care about how many people get put out of work.”

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Weekend Literary Supplement: The Climate Trials, Part Twenty Three

In this instalment Wayne helps Mikhi learn a little more about the Web, Social Media, and, how it fits into modern religious trends---.

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Wayne sent Mikhi a list of You Tube links with the strong recommendation he force himself to watch at least some of them. Mikhi started with one from a fellow in Missouri that he choose because it was only only 45 minutes long. Most went on for around an hour and a half---but a few were even longer.

The first image was a middle-aged man who was wearing a t-shirt and a ball cap put on backwards. He had a water bottle with some coloured fluid in it that he repeatedly sipped during the entire video. The first 4 minutes consisted of him repeatedly announcing that he had a “great show tonight” while a country and Western song blasted over his voice. Eventually the music ended. Then the narrator went on and on for another five minutes about how he is just an “ordinary guy” who wants the same as “everyone else”---mainly a job that would last long enough to pay off the mortgage on his house. He also announced that he cared just as deeply about nature as anyone, but he’d seen a video of a professor who argued that there was no such thing as climate change. He just wanted to make sure all points of view had been considered before the government did anything that would threaten the “rural way of life”. Then for the next ten minutes he complained about how “one-sided” and “slick” the Climate Trials had been, and why there hadn’t been any “ordinary folks” involved with them, “just so-called intellectuals who’d obviously never worked at tough, physical job in their entire life”. (Mikhi thought to himself “If only. Then maybe my joints wouldn’t hurt so much when I get up in the morning”.) Then the blabfest went on another particularly tedious 20 minutes where he read out loud a letter his local representative in Congress had sent him in response to a question he’d had about the latest carbon tax proposal. This ended with at least 5 minutes of uninterrupted blather that actually said nothing at all, but was peppered with phrases like “when the shit hits the fan” people will finally “find out where the truth really lies”.

At the end of this Mikhi was so bored he thought he would prefer to pound nails into his skull over watching another one of these tedious rants. Then his analytic mind kicked in. He was surprised to realize that he couldn’t really find anything that even remotely looked like an argument in the video. Instead, a bunch of random assertions were jumbled together with a lot of emotional statements about how “ordinary people” were upset with what the “elites” were doing to them. Bookchin looked at the number of views on the channel. Astonishingly, it had already received 10,000 views since it was posted last Thursday.

He contrasted that with his news blog that he’d toiled at for over five years. He’d been happy to get 1500 views a month. It dealt with hard news of local interest, though. That meant that he’d had to spend hours almost every day researching, doing interviews, attending events, taking pictures, etc. Of course the Climate Trials had had billions of hits already---but it had the support of the Elders, and they had tremendous resources to bring to bear. This guy had obviously just pulled this video out of his ass, and yet he had wildly out-performed Bookchin’s labour of love. And from the long list of video links that Wayne sent him, it appeared that there were hundreds---if not thousands---of channels just like the one he’d just forced himself to watch.

Just what the Hell is happening on line?

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The next video Mikhi watched was about creatures called “reptoids” from the star system Alpha Draconis who have infiltrated the earth using their advanced technology to impersonate human beings. This particular example purported to be of a “Draconian” who was in the security detail at a speech given by President Obama in Israel. The man in question was especially thin and seemed to have some illness that had effectively rendered him hairless. These features plus the poor quality of the extremely magnified screen capture and a trick of the shadows created a strange image that an active imagination could interpret as showing “reptilian” features.

An extremely emotionless and flat (Mikhi was half-wondering if the narration was machine-generated) voice-over suggested that this person was a Lizard man who was having problems with his high-tech camouflage.

Mikhail had a hard time understanding this and the other videos he’d seen, so he emailed Wayne and asked him what he thought was going on.

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I was listening to a post on Canadaland today where a story about Ryerson University's journalism program came up. Jesse Brown suggested that the future of the trade isn't going to be working for a large corporation like Torstar but rather little "mom and pop" news outlets---like Convenience stores. Well, this is Bill's "Kwiky Mart" of news. Help yourself, but if you can please subscribe so we can afford to get the roof fixed and the windows washed. It's easy to do through Pay Pal and Patreon.  

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He got one of those explanatory essays that the Elders sometimes sent him to explain complex subjects.

In order to understand the explosion of conspiracy theories people need to acquaint themselves with several key concepts and how they are interacting in the current world. The first one is religious faith and it’s decline and replacement by epistemological nihilism.

The Abrahamic religions---Judaism, Christianity, and, Islam---are somewhat unique in human civilization. That’s because they are spiritual systems based upon a historical revelation instead of on-going personal inspiration (such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Shamanism, Stoicism, science, etc.) This means that belief in an actual historical event, such as the revelation of Allah to Mohamed, is absolutely core to the entire religious system. But that requires individuals to believe, as an actual historical fact, the angel Gabriel met an individual named Mohamed and revealed the divine truth to him which he wrote down in the Koran. This is different from other worldviews, which suggest that there are universal human experiences that every human being can experience if they followed certain mental practices and which provide important insights into how best to live. Because individual members of the Abrahamic religions have no personal access to base their belief upon, they must take the word of historical figures on faith instead. Most other paths, in contrast, suggest that someone needs to find the truth for themselves. This makes the “leap of faith” a peculiarly Western religious concept.

Modern history has been steadily “whittling away” at the “reasonableness” of this demand. Science has undermined the idea there is such a thing as a Supreme Being who directly intervenes in the life of the world. At the same time, human society has advanced beyond the point where it makes sense for people to submit to a higher authority instead of collectively deciding the best way to live. Saying “God did it”, and, “do it because God says so” is easier to accept if people know almost nothing about the world around them and everything else in your life is done “because the local aristocrat says so”.

Religion protects itself from the corrosive effects of scientific discovery and the expansion of human rights by creating a thought process that it calls faith. At its essence, this is a learned behaviour that involves using one’s willpower to short-circuit their ability to critically exam and discard fallacious reasoning. It’s important to realize that we aren’t just talking about things like virgin births, life after death, or, miracles. There are also the ideas that people shouldn’t vaccinate their children, should actively discriminate against women or gays, and, support specific political parties that treat immigrants and poor badly.

This whole worldview is only sustainable if individual parishioners are forbidden to use their own moral intuition. If they did, it might suggest that the behaviours promoted by their denomination are not congruent with the wishes of a just and/or loving deity. Religious faith isn’t just a particular idea that an individual holds onto, it is an on-going battle against a human being’s natural tendency to use reason, evidence, and, their own understanding of right and wrong to make sense of the world around him.

Unfortunately for the Abrahamic religions, religious faith (at least in the modern, industrially-developed parts of the world) is in decline. The fastest growing religious affiliation in the United States, Canada, Europe, and, most technologically-advanced parts of Asia is the “none” category. That is, no religious affiliation at all. And contrary to what you might have heard, the category of religious believers known as “conservative evangelicals” are in the steepest decline of all.

This last point is masked by the fact that when church bodies fill out census forms they only add new members of the congregation and never subtract ones who have left. Add this to the fact that evangelicals tend to have the highest numbers of “church shoppers” going from congregation to congregation, and you end up with the illusion of very large, fast growing denominations. The fact is the demographics skew heavily towards the elderly and many churches only keep themselves financially afloat because of legacies left by dying---and never to be replaced---parishioners.

Unfortunately, this religious faith is not being universally replaced by enlightened rationalism. Instead, in a small but still significant number of cases the void is filled by epistemological nihilism. That’s the idea that there really isn’t any such thing as truth at all, so there’s no sense even trying to think rationally about issues. Of course, almost no one will articulate this viewpoint in such stark terms. (Indeed, being able to do so would require a depth of insight that might render the individual incapable of actually being an epistemological nihilist.) Instead, they find themselves attracted to subcultures where no attempt is made to converse rationally. What they like about these subcultures is specifically the thing that most rational human beings would find most repellent: the fact that emotional statements (usually negative) get repeated over and over again without any attempt to justify them using real evidence or a rational argument.

It’s important to understand the relationship between communities of “faith” and epistemological nihilists. They don’t map onto each other exactly, but they have enough in common that historically the strong influence that the former exerted on society hid the existence of the latter. That is to say, conservative religious faith communities were attractive to epistemological nihilists because they often held the same point of view (anti-vaxer, racist, misogynistic, distrust of experts, etc) but held them under control within their geographic or ecclesiastic community. And religious communities are to a lesser extent epistemological nihilists themselves insofar as they discourage members from using rational or ethical analysis to scrutinize the articles of faith that the community is based upon.

It might be useful to compare religious ritual to something like Twitter in order to understand the above point. Religious congregations self-select, just like Twitter feeds. This ensures that people have diminished exposure to different points of view, which encourages “group think”. A congregation controls the structure of conversation in ways that limits opportunities to expand people’s personal insight. For example, when have you ever seen a priest or pastor ask the congregation if they have any questions after giving a sermon? Similarly, religious ritual is designed specifically to encourage the emotions while discouraging self-analysis. In the same vein, Twitter limits intelligent discussion through the extreme shortness of tweets. It also encourages appeals to emotions by allowing videos, graphic images, and, GIFs (which presumably would use more bandwidth than longer tweets). Just like in churches where “smells and bells” bypass the rational mind, during a pandemic a GIF of a medical mask on a woman morphing into a burka emotionally suggests that public health measures are part of conspiracy to impose Islam on the Western world without having to provide any evidence supporting such an outlandish claim.

It bears asking whether or not social media did any of this on purpose. I suspect not, but it should be remembered that social media’s goal has never been that of fostering genuine human connections. Instead, it has always been about raising money through the advertising industry. And advertising has never been about rational discourse. Instead, it uses emotional appeal. It’s important to understand this relationship if a casual observer wants to understand why it is social media is so opposed to any changes that would foster rational discourse instead of discouraging it.

This is where social media and the way the artificial intelligence programs filter people into “bubbles” of like-minded individuals comes into play. The folks I am talking about aren’t seeking rational arguments to tell them what they should believe. Instead, these individuals already know what they believe and don’t have any interest at all in having these beliefs challenged. They want to find other, like-minded individuals where they they can all bask in some semblance of agreement.

It’s important to understand the appeal. In every geographic community there exist a very small portion of the population who---for one reason or another---believe in very unpopular ideas. They can be out-and-out racists, homophobes, women haters, extreme libertarians, anti-vaxxers, etc. These are the people who used to put photocopied sheets of paper espousing racist slogans under the wiper blades of cars in parking lots and spray-painted swastikas on the walls of synagogues. Then they were annoying but generally harmless. But they have found each other on the Internet and created an artificial simulation of solidarity through social media. This is the first place they’ve been in most of their lives where they can be open and honest about what they think without having to “pipe down” because the majority of people think they are idiots.

It’s also important to understand the limitations of this community. These people actually don’t have that much in common. The people frothing at the mouth over chem trails don’t believe that the Rothschild’s planned the 9/11 attacks. And the ones who want to incite a race war have very little in common with the people who believe that vaccinations allow Bill Gates to plant tracking devices. This means that their “conversations” have to adhere to very strict, unspoken rules. If people were to stray from them, cognitive dissonance would build up and people would have to confront the fact that they have almost nothing in common. This would destroy the tentative “pseudo-community” that social media has created for them. And this would put them back into the sort of social isolation that they suffer in their geographic communities---which for most of them would be extremely frustrating.

This new community---and the unspoken rules that allow it to thrive---have caused them to develop their own idiosyncratic ways of structuring communications. For example, when someone who believes in climate change decides to buy an electric car or insulates their home in order to lower their personal carbon emissions, this isn’t “leading by example” but rather “virtue signalling”. When someone suggests that making racist or homophobic statements insults people of colour or gays, this isn’t being “polite to other people” but rather “attacking free speech”. And when poor or marginalized people get some assistance from the government, this isn’t “helping people who are disadvantaged”, it’s “jumping ahead in line”.

Within these groups there are smaller cliques who believe that there are advantages in “playing” the majority. White nationalists hang around groups that get together to make fun of “normies” and toss out vaguely racist lines once in a while. If they get called to task by the majority, they can just say that they were being “ironic” and suggest that people “can’t get a joke”. By doing so, they are trying to “normalize” racist statements and find the odd person that might be interested in more overt messages and can be channelled to their main messaging system. Lonely young men look at boards that are part of the “pick-up artist” community and the same process finds the most distressed and channels them towards “Incel” groups. “Skeptic” groups attract youth who feel that “politically correct” notions about Islamophobia and “white privilege” are putting them behind the eight-ball are a fertile ground to find the odd individual who is willing to take the next step towards conservative populism and white nationalism.

Add all these people together and all you have is a tiny fraction of the public, but unfortunately they are still capable of creating a great deal of havoc in society. That’s because the emerging global village is so huge that even a tiny fraction of the public is big enough to support a substantial financial and cultural infrastructure. Once you get on-line and within an extremist discussion forum, you are surrounded by many like-minded individuals. And these people have no qualms at all about “egging on” each other.

Moreover, each individual on social media is a total cipher. Outside of a geographic community where someone “carries their past history on their shoulder”, or even in a face-to-face meeting where you have the opportunity to check out someone’s non-verbal signals, communications that happen only through written media on places like Twitter, Face Book, or, Gab share only what the individual chooses. That’s how a twelve year old boy in Estonia managed to become the leader of one of the largest American on-line Neo-Nazi organizations three years ago. Before he was “outed” member of this group committed several murders and were the targets of a huge FBI manhunt, yet it was directed by a child living in another country!

Many people have dismissed most of this activity as harmless idiocy. But the fact of the matter is that there are consequences. A mass murderer in New Zealand who live-streamed his rampage is found to have been inspired by another killer in Quebec who posted a written manifesto. A young misogynist in California videotaped himself preparing to murder six young women and another in Toronto pays homage to him on 4Chan before he drove down a sidewalk and killed another 26 women. A Norwegian who spent a couple years avidly reading American white nationalist forums decided to bring bombs and weapons to a left-wing political party youth camp and murdered a whole generation of politically-active teens.

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Weekend Literary Supplement: The Climate Trials, Part Twenty One

In this excerpt, Mikhail sums up the case against the apologists for climate denialism---.

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Final Summations and Verdicts---The Climate Trials and the End of Fossil Fuels, by Dino Payhas, from The Academic Journal of Restoration Ecology, vol 23, # 7.

When the final summations were delivered in the Climate Trials, it’s viewership had ballooned to become the largest audience in human history. The site by that time had amassed 20 billion clicks and was obviously being followed by a huge fraction of the world population. Even if Mikhail Bookchin hadn’t been so eloquent and logical, his last words would still be important to follow. To paraphrase Churchill, this wasn’t the “end of the beginning”, but rather “the beginning of the end” for the fossil fuel civilization.

It was like the old “unresponsive bystander” experiments that psychologists did during the 1950s. They would hire actors to fake something like a heart attack on a busy urban street. Often people would just walk by---even though when interviewed after the fact they had mostly wanted to do something. The key point was leadership. If someone stepped up, decided that the actor was having a heart attack, and, started saying things like “are there any medical professionals here?”, “can someone call for an ambulance?”, etc, people routinely jumped into action. But there had to be that first step.

Most people wait for someone else to take initiative. That’s because people take their cues from each other---it’s that old “wisdom of crowds” thing. But if everyone looks at each other to take the first step, often no one does, and, nothing happens---even though everyone wants it. Well, in this case politicians kept waiting for someone else to do something---young people, NGOs, etc. But there was such a tremendous power imbalance between the state and the large corporations---and everyone else---that no matter how much the environmental movement fought to be taken seriously, inertia always seemed to win out.

The Climate Trials seemed to create the “critical mass” needed to finally convince the governing classes that people would follow if they would lead. Moreover, it scared the rational egomaniacs into realizing that even if they didn’t give a damn about future generations, they would lose power unless they did step up and “get with the program”. The irrational psychopaths who still refused to do what was necessary quickly found themselves being sidelined---and ceased to be important.

Problems are impossible to fix until they aren’t. That’s how societies change.

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Wilson Gillespie gave the summation for the defence. He didn’t try to justify the continued use of fossil fuels. Nor did he defend their use well past the point where they were causing huge, long-lasting damage to the global climate. Instead, he asked for mercy in the court of public opinion. He said that the people who defended the industry were afraid that many gains humanity had made over the past two hundred years would be lost if the carbon economy was eliminated.

“Traditional societies were based on controlling the allocation of intrinsically scare resources. People don’t understand the lived reality of our ancestors. People starved while aristocrats spent scarce resources on great works of art and fought wars. There was rarely much of any provision for the sick, the disabled, people without skills, etc. They simply fell by the wayside and disappeared from history.”

“It’s true that many ancient societies lived in harmony with nature. But it was a harsh, brutal harmony where populations routinely expanded beyond their carrying capacity and were beaten back down to size by famine, plague, or, war over things like arable land and access to water. Fossil fuels changed that. Mining coal allowed people to smelt metals without destroying all the forests to make charcoal, and eventually to replace all the wood that was used to build things like ships. First coal and then oil allowed steamships to circle the globe and saved sailors from routine death whenever unfavourable winds drove their sailing ships onto rocks.”

“I’d like to draw people’s attention to a couple observations Henry David Thoreau made in his writings. First, while on wilderness excursion he mentions that it didn’t matter how wild and remote a place seemed, all that remained of the giant, old-growth white pines were the stumps---and this was before the civil war! Second, while in Cape Cod he went out onto a beach after a storm and saw the locals with wagons collecting the bodies of drowned sailors and passengers. He states that this was such a routine occurrence the cost of paying people to bury the drowned was a serious drain on the local government. That was two of the prices paid for using wind-based transportation---a ‘sustainable method’---before fossil fuels replaced it.”

“The ‘dark Satanic mills’ that William Blake railed against were built on vicious colonialism and slavery---but they also extended democracy to the newly-emerging middle class. And eventually, they dramatically raised the standard of living and extended the franchise to British workers too.”

“It’s simply an undeniable fact that fossil fuels have raised the standard of living and helped grow an equitable society for billions of people. Is it any wonder people would be terrified of the prospect of weaning our economy off the fossil fuels? Where an ecologist sees climate change and disaster, the denier sees freedom and prosperity.”

****

Bookchin’s response was to ask people to not take Gillespie’s psycho-analysis too far.

“It’s certainly true that my colleague’s explanation of why people fought against doing something to prevent and then mitigate the Climate Emergency can be found in many apologist’s writings. But I would suggest that there are layers of moral culpability, and Mr. Gillespie’s analysis lacks any discussion of those. He spoke of climate deniers at their best---let me speak to what that really means.”

“Many years ago I had a conversation with an old man who’d been a railway worker in Switzerland during the Second World War. He said that as a young labourer he’d been working on the track next to a stopped train filled with sealed cars. He took a break and because the wind was making it hard to light his cigarette, he leaned against one of them to have a smoke. To his surprise, he heard voices inside speaking in Italian. He was afraid to tell anyone---because he’d been given strict orders to stay away from the trains. Later he found out that there were rumours that Switzerland allowed German trains to ship slave labourers and Jews out of Italy through the St. Gotthard Pass in Switzerland once the allies had bombed the Austrian Brenner pass in 1943 and put it out of action.”

“The reason I raise this is because that old man felt tremendous guilt because as a young man he’d been too afraid of losing his job and ‘making waves’ to look into what was going on or to even tell the shop steward of his union. Roman Catholic theologians would call this behaviour a sin of omission. Existential philosophers would call it bad faith. The former is when you sin by what you don’t do instead of what you do do. Letting a child fall into a well when you could have stopped it from happening is a sin---although you haven’t actively done anything. The latter is when someone refuses to look into something because they are afraid that doing so will reveal evidence undermining their assumptions. When the Pope refused to look through Galileo’s telescope he was exhibiting bad faith.”

“Most people labour with the delusion that they are ethical people if they just do what society tells them to do: they don’t steal, they follow the laws, they don’t act disrespectfully towards authority figures, are nice to their family, etc. But that isn’t being ethical or moral, that’s being conventional. Ethical people don’t just avoid doing things that everyone else says is wrong. They actively try to learn what it means to do the right thing, and do it no matter how unpopular it may make them with others. Being ethical require curiosity, courage, and, self-sacrifice.”

“I accuse the people who organized and paid for the fight against dealing with the Climate Emergency of being at best conventional. They had the benefits of an education, wealth, and, privilege. They were intelligent men and women. They could have been curious about whether or not climate change is a real thing---instead, they put their careers first. They could have taught themselves that what humanity was facing is an existential crisis, but instead they distracted themselves with learning the “finger exercises” of their profession and applying what they’d learned to create disinformation campaigns. Ethical people use the gifts the universe has bestowed them to become better people, leaders who make a better world for everyone. Conventional people squander these gifts to constrict themselves into beings who follow others in order to avoid conflict, become wealthy, and, raise their status among other conventional people.”

“Confucius understood conventionality thousands of years ago when he said that in a just society it is a shameful thing to be unsuccessful---but in an unjust one, one should be ashamed of his success.”

“It’s true that many people over the last several hundred years have advanced humankind by inventing things like the steam engine, plant breeding, the blast furnace, etc. But it does a profound disservice to them to suggest that the people who inherited their technologies and used them to make money at the expense of future generations are cut from the same cloth. People didn’t build steam engines by lacking curiosity or ignoring the implications of their inventions. They just didn’t know what would happen a hundred years or more after they had unleashed their inventions on the world.”

“The real innovators right now are the ecologists who discovered the processes that are damaging our ecosystem and the activists who are mobilizing the human race to prevent the problem from becoming a catastrophe. They are the people designing solar panels, wind turbines, more efficient and less destructive farming methods, etc. These people are the inheritors of the mantle created by the innovators of past age---not the conventionally-minded “enablers” who benefit from preventing society from dealing with a clear and present danger. That’s the people at their best.”

“Let’s not forget the folks who fight to preserve the fossil fuel economy because of the worst motivations. Studies by people like Hare and Altemeyer have shown that top corporations and conservative political parties have a disproportionate percentage of psychopaths in positions of authority. These people make up only 1% of the general population but as much as 15% of CEOs. That’s because psychopaths want power much more than ordinary people and they have no internal sense of right or wrong that would stop them from doing anything they believe is necessary to get it.”

“The defining element of psychopathy is the lack of a sense of right or wrong, or, obligation towards other people. This diminished sense of social responsibility means---almost by definition---that they will not feel any obligation towards the environment, the poor, or, future generations. All these people want and care about is their own wealth and power.”

“Unfortunately, another key aspect of psychopathic individuals is their ability to mimic normal human concern---when necessary. That means that they are very good at finding plausible excuses for their behaviour. (Indeed, they are such fast studies of the human condition that prison officials forbid their access to psychotherapy. Not only do they not benefit from the experience, but it helps them become more adept at manipulating other people.)”

“When you contemplate the people who fought so hard to prevent society from making the necessary changes to prevent or mitigate the Climate Emergency, ask yourself the following question. ‘Are they conventional people who avoided taking any personal responsibility to make the moral choice? Or, are they psychopaths who simply cannot understand why anyone would do something to help other people instead of amassing wealth or power?’”

“I’m not saying that either group of people are ‘evil’ or ‘bad’. I’m saying that they are dangerous. We don’t say that a tornado or a cougar are ‘evil’ or ‘bad’. But that doesn’t mean that we ignore them. We take measures to limit the damage that they can do to us. It’s the same thing with conventional and psychopathic individuals. We need to limit the damage that they can inflict on us, the environment, and, future generations. We don’t do that by getting angry. There’s no sense punishing either group---no matter what you do to these people, they won’t change. But what we can do is change the way our institutions, our businesses and political parties operate so a small group of these sorts of damaged people don’t get to amass so much power over everyone else. That’s what these trials are all about. They are a ‘wake up call’ for people to stop handing over power to others who don’t give a damn about who they hurt.”

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Weekend Literary Supplement: The Climate Trials, Part Twenty

In this week's instalment, Mikhail has serious questions about the Elders and he gets some serious answers back---.

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Mikhi had gotten used to attending events at the Holy House, but this time he had some serious questions to ask of the people in the basement.

“What the heck was that all about? I saw four people killed before my eyes! Am I still in trouble? And just who exactly are you guys that you can do that sort of shit?” Mikhi was almost hyper-ventilating. He had thought that he had dealt with his experiences, but he suddenly realized that he was in denial. He was really freaked out by the previous week’s experience.

The short, old woman with the super frizzy hair in long braids answered. “There are lots of different answers to your questions. Let me start with the one that you haven’t asked, but probably is the most important one for you.”

“When people go through a shocking experience they generally feel numb for several days afterwards. This makes perfect evolutionary sense because it dramatically lowers our chance of survival if we immediately dissolve into emotional goo whenever we witness extreme violence. We need to get away from or fight a danger, not freeze. You are experiencing the emotions that came from your experience now because you feel comfortable in our presence. Don’t be afraid of your emotions. They are natural. And the fact you are experiencing them now, in the basement of the Holy House, with us, means you feel part of the community of Elders---which is a compliment to us more than anything else.”

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Mikhi realized that the next person to speak, a heavyset, middle-aged fellow with short iron-grey hair, was one of the people with the two dogs that he’d met on the trail. “The Elders have had many centuries to hone their ability to protect themselves from violent people and institutions. We have special subgroups who have learned how to apply a subtle understanding of force in order to protect ourselves and others without drawing attention.”

“Generally we are able to operate with a minimum of violence. But sometimes we have to deal with opponents who are so crude that the only logical response is to respond in kind. Ong Kata and the Rukka are probably as crude and violent as any force we have ever encountered. We had been watching the people watching you very carefully, and, as you saw, we were able to protect you when push came to shove. But I will admit I personally consider the fact that four individuals died in a public park at our hands a colossal failure on our part. I would rather have resolved the issue, if not peacefully, at least with minimal direct involvement.”

“I can assure you this will not happen again. Our operatives have manipulated Mr. Kata’s extreme anger and arrogance to trap him into a suicidal war with the Rukka.”

At that point the tall, thin, elderly black man stepped into the conversation. “I think we need to get you into a program of therapy. You’ve been through a really traumatic experience and we need to help you deal with it. PTSD is a real thing, and your experience could cause a really good case of it if left untreated. We will hook you up with a good therapist this week.”

Mikhi wasn’t finished with his questions. “I think I need a better explanation about who exactly the Elders are, and, where I fit into the plan. I just had four people attack me and watched them get very efficiently killed. I think I’m owed a better explanation.”

The middle-aged Asian guy with the smooth face and tired-looking eyes spoke up. “Yes, you are. And I’ll try to give you a bit of one. But you must realize any real answers will have layers of meaning, and the person hearing the answer won’t understand all of it until they’ve assimilated a certain amount of information first.”

“We don’t know when people began to realize that---contrary to the democratic slogans---all men are not created equal. It’s a combination of genetics and childhood experience, but there is a small percentage of the population who have the potential to have a significantly greater level of self-awareness. Within that small set of individuals, there is a much smaller group that have had the opportunities in life to get the necessary education to live up to their full potential. No one can know how many brilliant people wasted their gifts in menial labour as slaves or died in silly wars, being not much more than cannon fodder, etc, over the centuries.”

“But eventually schools of wise folks grew up in various countries. For example, when Alexander the Great entered into India he found a group of wise men he called the ‘Gymnosophists’. There was another group the Greeks found in Egypt that they called the ‘Ethiopian Gymnosophists’. When the Romans invaded Britain they found a school for Druids on the island of Ynys Môn---which they destroyed in order to end resistance to their colonization effort. In China a group of individuals called “the Old Ones” wrote a book of theory titled The Book of the Way and Its Power which people still read and which has been translated almost as much as the Bible. You would know it by the title Tao Te Ching. Later on, under the Islamic civilization, orders of Taṣawwuf---what you might have heard of as the ‘Sufis’---were established. In addition, under the Turkish diaspora a secret society called “the White Beards” collected information and directed efforts aimed at saving their civilization from the ravages of the Mongols. At the same time, the Free Masons were established in Western Europe as a means of creating an intellectual ‘sub-current’ aimed at freeing the population from the tyranny of the Catholic Church.”

“There were successes and failures. Some organizations degenerated into being not much more than lodges aimed at self-help, charities, or, even superstitious cults. Individuals and groups suffered persecution. But there were always enough individuals who went undetected and who kept the light of reason burning so new progress could be made in learning what it means to be an awake, aware, concerned human being. Eventually human technology and social organization developed to the point where different groups could easily connect with each other and eventually co-ordinate their actions on a greater scale.”

“What really helped the Elders take off was the creation of the World Wide Web. It had been tremendously difficult to co-ordinate actions across international and cultural boundaries before. But the Web has created a real global civilization for the first time. This has allowed us to extend the reach of our activities in ways that simply wouldn’t have been possible before. Moreover, the way in which modern societies have become dependent on technology has meant that the specific strong suit of the Elders---knowledge, wisdom, and, self-awareness---are increasingly important assets for asserting influence over the greater society. In other words, it is getting harder and harder for brute force to trump brains---as Mr. Ong Kata recently learned.”

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Weekend Literary Supplement: The Climate Trials, Part Nineteen

In this instalment of The Climate Trials, the Elders get rid of a minor inconvenience.

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Albert Tuttle had worked for Klytemnestra Industries for 30 years and eventually rose to head of Financial Services. He was under no illusions about either the corporation or his boss, Ong Kata. They were both evil, violent, and, stupid. But they paid very well and he’d found it was best to just do what he was told and not bother to think about what he was doing. He had expensive, vicious, vices (involving young children) and the money he made doing what he was told to do allowed him to indulge them without having to worry much about being caught. People with a conscience get sifted out of organizations like his before they get to any position of responsibility. Moreover, his loyalty began and ended with doing what he was told. Kata was not a man to be second-guessed---and he had no qualms about killing any employee who inquired into what was going on or attempted to show the wrong sort of initiative.

This was why Albert simply took it as a matter of course when a man he’d never met before came in and told his receptionist that “J. J. Clarke” wanted to see Mr. Tuttle. He wasn’t the same “J. J. Clarke” that he’d dealt with in the past, but accepted his request with the instant compliance he’d been told was required. Tuttle didn’t even ask what the going rate was for the mineral before he told Klytemnestra to secure and transfer a ton of Rhodium to a warehouse in the harbour district ASAP. “J. J. Clarke” told him that if he had trouble securing the Rhodium quickly, Clarke’s associates would be happy to take a first shipment within a week and accept the balance when it was available. Having said that, he intimated that everyone---including Tuttle’s boss---would like to see as much of the shipment as possible delivered in the first consignment.

Tuttle knew what that meant. He’d gotten his current position after his previous supervisor had tried to “double check” a “sketchy looking” similar order by contacting Mr. Kata. In doing so, he’d broken down the “fire wall” between accounting and the head of the company. The rumour was that Ong had been furious, the supervisor had never been seen again, and, Tuttle was offered his position. He signed the requisite forms, and put his best people on procuring the precious metal. He was able to get the full ton together and delivered to the warehouse within five days.

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When Ong Kata found out that Albert Tuttle had given $111.144 million to a complete stranger, he was so angry that he literally saw stars. When he’d finished smashing most of the furniture in his office, he had one of his henchmen beat his head of financial services to death and then dispose of the body. And since he knew that only the Rukka had the password necessary to get paid this way, he immediately put a $10 million “hit” on the head of the organization through his contacts with the Russian Mob. This led to further complications under the surface of the criminal subculture, which in turn resulted in Ong Kata’s disappearance and Klytemnestra Industries going into receivership. Since no one wanted to buy a company with so many liabilities, it quickly went completely out of business.

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Furthermore I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!