With your Help we can restructure the economies of all nations of Our beautiful Planet towards producing billions of bullets with which to shoot the ocean. It is large and growing but we are smart and many and with enough guns i believe we can kill it

(The Bug Vs Earth - 'Snakes Vs Rats')

The piece below was written whilst listening to Concrete Desert, the album the above track is from; the album inspired the piece. In many ways the music is the sonic equivalent of the sentiments expressed in the piece.

Hope is moving like a wave*

At a conference to share out new territory, early on in the proceedings, the gods of death came to the realisation that they needed to prepare for planet-wide destruction, a glorious bloody banquet of decay that could last for decades amidst much turmoil. For in the recent century with war, famine and disease no longer operating on as grand a scale as before, these ancient gods had been starved of sacrifices. Revelling in the knowledge of the return of a devastation that would bring them intimately once more into the affairs of humankind, they cheered and raised their drone-like tones in song; the demise of the ancient gods of death would be averted.

What humankind was undertaking was a slow slaughter, and the gods had none of the blindness of human beings to be oblivious to the predicament crouching at the doorstep. The gods didn’t even have to do any scheming; humankind was voluntarily bringing the old ones out to feast. Once more war, famine and disease would roam freely striking at will and the gods of death would be waiting patiently on the side to begin their feasting.

There was one fear though that could ruin everything. After discussing it at some length, they reassured themselves of the low likelihood of its manifestation. Much of humankind’s past behaviour suggested things would be too far gone by the time people got their act together to unite for change. Once the situation on the planet hit a certain point, the triggered chain creation would create a feedback loop that would accelerate the process, setting off one devastating catastrophe after another. Rising temperatures would be enough as would the disappearance of key strategic players in the planetary ecosystem, like for example bees. Ethernal sleep was coming to billions, and the gods of death chortled at the changes to the state of affairs, ecstatic at what lay ahead.

Having gathered in a session to explore how to ensure their continued survival, they had rather become aware of how promising the future looked for them. They would grow heavy on the nourishment of souls they would collect, their faces contorting into the twisted expressions that passed for smiles amongst them. So yes, even though the possibility existed that human beings could reorganise themselves and change their relationship to managing the Earth’s resources, the greed, selfishness, and narrow-mindedness sustained by neoliberal capitalism did not appear to be giving way anytime soon to a more compassionate approach. This was definitely cause for celebrations, for in humankind’s inability to genuinely share fairly in a sustainable manner lay the seeds of their demise.

An almighty calmness came upon the gods of death as they collectively dreamed in the darkness, of the times to come when their kingdom would flourish as it had done in the days of old. One after another, as the gods of death bid their farewells, they slunk away back into the shadows to lay in wait for the inevitable deaths that would follow the pains and sufferings as life struggled to sustain itself on an Earth reduced to inhospitable conditions of extreme temperatures, rising sea levels, polluted atmospheres, and complex organisms becoming extinct. Human beings just had to carry on being the self-interested idiots they had shown themselves capable of being. The reign of the gods of death was in its ascendency, and this would be the case in the domains of all the different gods who watched every aspect of existence for all living creatures; a climate and ecological apocalypse was a great source of comfort in their respective isolations.

As an unnatural silence began to permeate the various planes of existence, levers controlled by unseen forces shifted into new positions, triggering minute changes in the balance of systems that usually worked together to sustain conditions suitable for life. The universe began to organize itself for another change, never passing judgement, simply responding to actions undertaken by sentient creatures in possession of freewill, who no doubt had the capacity to be so much more than what they were being. As it was there were rules, and order dictated by automatic reactions to behaviour the planet Earth was being subjected to, was being implemented; actions had reactions. This was the way of reality, nothing can last forever and eventually all living things must succumb to a transformation in status from one they were familiar with to one administered by the gods of death, those celebrants of eternal loss.

Somewhere contracts were being examined, little applied directives double-checked and procedures rehearsed in rarely glimpsed spaces where they resided. Whilst this was occurring, the great arbiter who oversees the flow of time prepared for the ceremony of ending exactly as had been done for planets in every other solar system, displaying no emotion of any sort. This phase of the Earth’s story would be stored in the archives alongside other planetary tales, marking the end of an era of life dominated by human beings, unless...

 If the world becomes desolate and barren because we couldn’t get our act together to live more considerately, when the green of vegetation no longer abundantly covers the surface of the planet, the sea as we know it is too toxic to sustain healthy life, and the weather is so unstable we can no longer depend on seasons with temperatures turning mostly unbearable, if that time should come to be, let us remember this period when some spoke of making different decisions with higher chances of success for life.

The album Concrete Desert - https://thebugmusic.bandcamp.com/album/concrete-desert

[*The title comes from lyrics from the track The Wave by Wildbirds & Peacedrums]