I started writing a short story that began like this:
“2020 had been a memorable year, celebrated all over the world for its awfulness and dismal succession of disasters. Some nations fared somewhat better than others, but no-one was prepared for what happened on new year's day of 2021...”
The story was about an alien invasion. Countless, fabulously grotesque visitors from a distant part of the universe came falling to Earth through holes which had suddenly appeared all over the sky. Without a word of greeting or warning, or 'take me to your leader', they proceeded to steal all of planet Earth's air, water, soil and trees by vacuuming them up through the same sky-holes through which they had unexpectedly arrived. It was going to be a kind of moralistic satire on the evils of consumerism. I didn't get very far with it. Real life is weird and unpredictable enough as it is these days and there are enough scare stories going round to keep anyone awake at night.
Wednesday December 2nd
Woke up with the 60's soul classic 'At the dark end of the street' running through my head.. found it on Youtube, put up the volume and blasted out a final farewell to the internet for the next month. Shut it down.. dragged Youtube, Google and Facebook off my home-screen into a virtual dustbin in the corner – with a certain malicious satisfaction – 'Ha! That's where you belong!'.. bravely fighting back the fear and dread that accompanies cutting myself off from the Worldwide Web, although this year I'm looking forward to it and feel I need this retreat more than ever.
Facebook has got completely out of hand this year, especially over the last few months. Everywhere I look, people are fighting.. about the same old themes, as always, but increasingly on the new, hot topic of facemasks, lockdowns and general applied epidemio-immuno-virology, in which there are suddenly many new experts on the scene.
2020 has seen the world take a turn towards some dystopian, sci-fi, horror B-movie.. although, things have been heading that way for a while, so it's not really such a surprise that we've arrived at where we are today. Everyone has their own ideas about what's really going on, or else no idea at all. I'm mainly in the 'no idea at all' camp, but even when I feel I do have an idea, I can never really be sure if it really is my own, or just what someone else wants me to believe.
Thursday December 3rd
I didn't completely delete Facebook from my phone. It's still there on one of the app screens. I found myself tapping it instinctively, thoughtlessly, on some reflex, before catching myself in the act. All I saw was 'Gideon, here is your memory from six years ago'. I didn't look to see what it was, just shut the page down straight away. Let me have my own thoughts and my own memories for a while, Facebook. I want to see that I still remember how.
Wednesday 9th December
Sitting in Park Hazikaron – Memorial/Memory Park in the middle of Haifa.
Actually Haifa doesn't have a middle, it just sprawls from the bay up into the Carmel hills and out into the valley across the vast industrial complex and sprawling suburbs stretching out towards Nazareth. It's easy to get lost here and hard to find your way out.
I don't come to the big city very often. Only if I have to. Today I had to bring my oldest son to present himself to the army as he's about to reach the age of conscription. It's not really a choice. Of course, everything we do is a choice, but if he doesn't show up himself, they'll come and bring him here by force. He could always go into hiding and live like a fugitive, but that's not so easy in this day and age, especially in such a small country as Israel, hemmed in on every side by impenetrable borders and by the sea.
I'm looking out at the sea now from this little oasis of grass and trees, which is surrounded by roaring traffic and dirty streets. Half of the shops closed down since the pandemic. Beggars, junkies and staggering, forgotten people, old and young, physically, mentally or emotionally afflicted, seem to be numerous in this part of town. Also in this park.
I lay down on the grass and try to imagine I'm back in time.. about a hundred years, maybe..
The bay would have been about the same, but it wouldn't have been a modern, industrial port with huge cranes and giant cargo ships unloading containers from China. My view wouldn't have been interrupted by a tall, sharp building made from metal and glass. The hills beyond would have been much the same, but the grey-white spread of the concrete jungle wouldn't have covered the green valleys and hillsides as it does now. Where I'm sitting would have probably been a field on a hill. Or maybe not. Maybe something else was here. No sign of it now if there was.
During the 1948 War of Independence (if you're Israeli) or the Nakba (if you're Palestinian), most of the Arab residents of these Haifa neighbourhoods became refugees. You can still see the old hand-cut stone houses, with their magnificent arches and high, vaulted ceilings. Many such mansions, which may have taken generations to build, have fallen into dereliction, but have lately started to be gentrified – turned into hip restaurants and studio apartments for yuppies..
Are yuppies even a thing any more?
I don't see many young people with money to burn these days. Maybe a few lucky stars of YouTube or Tic-Toc. Not an easy time to be a young person, even with all the wonders of technology. Prospects are slim, the future is uncertain. Property prices are impossible, either to rent or to buy. I can see why some people join the army, just to get a place to stay, three square meals.. maybe learn a trade or qualify for higher education with less debt.. It's a cut-throat world out there, after all..
But I can't forget the pictures I've seen from 1948. Thousands of residents of Haifa, old people, women, children and babies, frightened and confused, crowding onto boats in the port, empty handed, or with the few possessions they could carry. Who were they running away from? Who stood in their way when they tried to return? Who gave the orders and who followed those orders? Who put those boys and girls in green soldier uniforms? Who put the guns in their hands? What flag is worth killing for, dying for, or driving someone out of their home? Is this just the way it's always been and has to be forever and ever and ever..?
I'm hoping they'll declare my son mentally unfit to be a soldier. It's the classic catch 22. Only someone insane would take part in an insane system. A sane person would take no part in such madness, but you can only get out of it by being diagnosed as insane. It's enough to drive anyone round the bend.
Walking round the city feels like walking around in a big, open asylum. I'm always a bit shell-shocked when I come to the city. It's not just the dirt and the noise, or the fact that everyone is wearing medical masks now (though that is quite nightmarish for me, as I'm a rather phobic of hospitals and medical equipment).. It's just the nature of the reality of modern life and the sight of people trying to stay human in it.
4 hours later...
Still waiting in the park and now it's dark. All the lights of the city are on and the noise of machines hasn't stopped for a second.
I was thinking of opening a guitar-making workshop in the city. There are loads of empty shops now, probably going cheap. It's a dream of mine to have a window onto a busy street, where I can look out at people passing by and they can look in.. but I don't think I could live in a place like this. Maybe if I'd been here a hundred years ago.
The battery on my phone has died. No communication with my son who's been inside that grey building since the morning. I'm sitting outside the entrance, waiting for him to come out. I'm watching the teenagers file out in ones and twos, having being processed. Slightly older teenagers in green uniforms also come and go, some looking like they're having quite a good time doing their national service. It's just like a youth movement, but with weaponry. A small girl in an oversized, ill-fitting uniform shuffles out at the end of a long shift, through the heavy, metal door, looking completely lost and shattered and utterly bewildered. My heart goes out to her. I'd have been just the same if I was in her position at that age.
A whole group of about 30 seventeen year olds in jeans and hoodies come out through the metal door, along with their teacher. They must have come all together as a group from school. In this country, high-school feeds straight into the army. It's the way it's always been. It was that way for their parents and for their grandparents. Some of the kids wander off to catch buses home, some of them sit around on the steps, chatting or looking at their phones, like teenagers the world over.
Despite my opposition to militarism and besides the tragedy of a country that has been perpetually at war for 72 years, I can't help but feel some hope when I look at these young people, born of the 21st century.
The world is what it is. For them, this is how it's always been. For them, there was no time before smartphones, the internet, artificial intelligence, social media. They've grown up with it. It's the air they breath. My oldest son is the smartest person I know. Him and his generation – they'll know what to do. The technology they have at their fingertips is unbelievable, incredible, astounding, mind-blowing. The sort of thing I could only ever have dreamed of as a kid. They'll take us to the next level, you'll see.
Thursday 10th December
There is a computer game you can get which is called 'Universe Sandbox'. It's not really a game so much as a super-advanced 3D modeling software which allows you to explore the known universe, as well as create your own cosmological events. You can zoom in and out, from a tiny piece of space rock, all the way out to stars, galaxies, super-clusters and so on. You can move around in space at beyond the speed of light, speed up or slow down time as much as you wish. You can place astral objects such as planets, moons, stars and black holes in space and watch what they do.
My oldest son got a hacked version, I don't know how. My 8 year old took the controls and within a few clicks he was zooming around the solar system in every direction. I don't know how he does that either, move around with ease in 3D virtual space, manipulating virtual objects. Something he learned from minecraft.
I watched, spellbound as he experimented with the various ways it's possible to destroy planet Earth. First by putting the moon too close. Then by firing asteroids at it until the surface was a fiery inferno and the oceans had evaporated. Then by creating a duplicate Earth and putting it next to the original. The force of gravity is quite amazing and powerfully destructive. Putting a black hole near the sun and watching our life-giving star spiral into the dark abyss. Putting black holes everywhere..
That's the kind of game I would have dreamed of as a kid. Maybe in some distant future, when there would be watches with video screens and self-driving cars that talk..
..and now that distant future has arrived!
Friday 11th December
So I heard that the vaccine is ready and we can all breath a sigh of relief that the pandemic will soon be over and we can all go back to life as normal, just like it was this time last year...
'Not so fast!' cries my inner voice of doom. 'You just watch. This is where the trouble really begins..'
What will happen to those who refuse to take the vaccine? Will they be allowed to travel on public transport – trains, buses and planes – or will only passengers who can provide positive proof of negative infection be allowed to move freely and mingle? Will they be allowed to cross international borders? Or even go from town to town? Or even leave their house? Will unvaccinated people be allowed in schools, university, the workplace, shops, bars, restaurants, concerts.. any public places or gatherings at all?
Personally, if it comes to that, I'd get the vaccine. Compared to other things I've put into my body over the years (see my No Internet Month Diary from 2017, for example) I don't think it would do me much harm and may even help to eradicate a dangerous disease.
I'm not 'anti-vax', but I would agree that much human sickness and disease could be prevented if people were able to live more stress-free lives in a more clean, harmonious environment, closer to nature and with better diet. But that's not to say that people who get ill only have themselves to blame. I'm not saying that at all, nor would I. It's also not to say that modern medicine isn't wondrous and astounding. It allows us to live in ways that would have been impossible even a generation ago.
One friend has a 5 year old nephew who was born deaf but can now hear, thanks to an implant in his head. Other friends have given birth to a babies which were fertilised in a laboratory. I most probably would be dead by now if not for penicillin, when I had a bad case of pneumonia a few years back. I would have lived my life not being able to see beyond arm's length, if not for the glasses I've worn since I was little. These are indeed the days of miracles and wonder.
It's also not to say that CEO's in charge of multi-billion dollar drug companies wouldn't tell dangerous lies or hide inconvenient truths in order to maintain their company's competitive edge and maximise profits for shareholders, or that politics has played no part in the world's pandemic response. It's not black and white. Nothing ever is really.
A lot of my anti-vax, 'plandemic conspiracy' friends talk a lot about freedom. If freedom means being stuck on a hill and unable to leave this tiny, mad country, then I'd probably go for the alternative.
Things get a bit more complicated when it comes to my children. Galit, their mum, is very much anti-vax, anti modern medicine and even anti-science. She will not under any circumstances consent for her children to be injected with DNA altering material, micro-chips or any of the rest of it. This is where the trouble begins...
Sunday 13th December
It's so quiet here. Maybe the quietest place I've ever lived. When it's windy, like it is now, the only sound is the wind in the trees. When it's still, you can hear the sound of silence itself.
I'm lucky to find myself in a place like this. These days, so many places are so noisy with the constant sound of machines and engines, that you can hardly hear yourself think. It can get that way with information too. Sometimes it's just too much noise.
I've been getting into reading a book. I haven't read a book in ages, since I started reading Face-book on a daily basis. There's just something so compelling about the interactivity of Facebook. The comments section always draws me in. At first, since it's been so long since I read an actual book-book, I felt like commenting on some paragraph or 'liking' a particularly good sentence.. until I realised that even if that was possible, it would be completely unnecessary and pointless. A book is a wonderful thing in itself. It can tell a story that can completely absorb you and transport you to other places and times. You can encounter people you never would have met, go to places you never would have been, be in situations you never would have been in.
The book I'm reading is called 'No Direction Home – The Life and Music of Bob Dylan' by Robert Shelton. Here's a taste:
'Mr Tambourine Man' is bold in definition, yet resonates with ambiguity. Dylan asks what experience, path, new door can bring us to happiness and fulfillment. The most widely accepted decodification is that Dylan was talking about drugs. The drug metaphor is easy to build: Transcendence, freedom, escape and direct references, in verse two, to a trip and stripped senses, and in verse four, to “the smoke rings of my mind”.
The song reaches toward a more universal experience than drugs. Knowing gospel music, Dylan could certainly identify the Tambourine Man as a bearer of religious salvation, bringing a “joyful noise” into the church. The Tambourine Man could easily be some embodiment of the muses of music and poetry, or a sandman for adults, a spirit who draws us out of our daily parade to escape “Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow...” with the hope that we can “forget about today until tomorrow.”
Dylan has cited Fellini's film La Strada and musician Bruce Longhorne at a session with a giant tambourine as direct inspiration for the song. “Drugs never played a part in that song.”
Reading that, reminded me of the Tambourine Man I once saw while riding a train in Sri Lanka. He was about my age – I was in my mid-twenties at the time – and like many people I saw there, especially among beggars, he appeared to be a survivor of polio. His legs were twisted into an impossible knot and so he propelled himself along on a wooden board on wheels using his hands. He positioned himself in the middle of the carriage and began to play his tambourine and sing.
I've never heard anyone play a tambourine like that before or since, or any instrument, for that matter.. with such virtuosity, imagination, emotion, skill, flow.. impossible for me to describe. The only other musician I've ever heard come close was a homeless street performer who played a magic silver flute on a dark corner of an empty street in France. When the tambourine man finished the song, he collected money in his tambourine and then rolled on down the train for his next performance.
.....
When it comes to vaccinations, Karly is at the very opposite end of the spectrum to Galit. Vaccines work. Full stop. End of story. The science is very clear and unambiguous. It's thanks to vaccines that we have almost completely eradicated polio from the face of the earth. It's also no thanks to people who refuse to get vaccinated or to vaccinate their children, that Polio is making a resurgence in recent years.
I'm not going to go into any detail about the great pro-anti Vax debate. You can find it all there on the internet and make up your own mind, which you probably have done already anyway.
Karly doesn't believe anyone should be forced to get vaccinated, but she does believe that some restrictions to keep non-vaccinated people out of public places may be necessary and justified. I can't say how much I agree with her on that, but it seems to me that's the way things are going, whether we like it or not.
Wednesday 16th December
There's a storm passing over. Rain, thunder and lightning for the last three days. Last night I witnessed the most intense lightning storm I've ever seen in my life. Massive bolts of lightning all around, very close, every 4 or 5 seconds. It went on like that for about an hour. I sat by my window awestruck, grateful for the shelter. I filmed a bit on my phone, wishing I could share this incredible meteorological even on Facebook, even though my phone's camera and microphone couldn't capture anything close to the reality of it. There's just that nagging 21st century feeling of 'pictures or it never happened.'
I couldn't help but wonder if it had anything to do with climate change. Even nature doesn't seem so natural any more. I read that human created materials – mainly plastic and concrete, now outweigh all of Earth's bio-mass – all of the plants and trees. That seems like a significant and worrying threshold to have crossed.
Galit thinks that all efforts to stop the Coronavirus are nothing but a futile and arrogant human folly. Who do we think we are to try and control the forces of nature? Either we live in harmony with the world around us, or Nature, God, The Great Spirit, call her what you will, will put us in our place as easily as swatting a fly. She says she's ready to drop out of society, the Matrix, Babylon, call it what you will, rather than consent to participate in 'the new normal'. She's not the only one.
I think that we all participate in our own way, whatever we do, whatever we believe. Somehow it's all natural, in the scheme of things.
Saturday 19th December
Almost three weeks into this No Internet Month.. seriously considering not going back to Facebook at all.. like I say every year at this time and always end up going back on it.
It's got its good points, especially in these times when the New Normal requires increased social distancing, even complete isolation for many people, often for long periods of time. Thanks to the internet and apps like Facebook, it is now almost possible to live in complete physical isolation without completely losing your mind due to loneliness and lack of human contact.
You can still meet your old friends and make new friends. You can have interesting, topical conversations, share a joke, engage in all manner of debates on all sorts of subjects. You can laugh about it all, cry about it all, help each other through hard times, give encouragement to people struggling in life and people trying to do good in the world. You can explore untapped aspects of your identity and connect with like minded people who can relate.
There's this feeling you get when you look at Facebook.. a certain sensation, hard to describe.. when you tap on that blue 'F' and your page opens up.. a simultaneous connection and disconnection...
In a strange sort of way, what it feels like to me is alcohol.
Alcohol is great. Being slightly, or even very drunk is one of the best feelings in the world. But a hangover is one of the worst. For some people it's a fair trade off and their lives are enhanced by the regular consumption of alcohol. Some people drink in moderation and it's never a problem for them. Other people's lives are completely taken over by and sometimes ruined by it. Alcohol, that is.
Ephraim often compares Facebook to the neighbourhood bar, and he's basically right. Lately it seems that whichever room I go into, in this great, sprawling, public house, there are fights breaking out.. name calling, swearing, cursing, all manner of personal insults flying. I think to myself, it's a good thing all these people aren't in the same room in real life.
Some people go there just looking for a fight, or trying to start one. Some people just get drawn in. It can get pretty ugly.
It's hard not to get angry when faced with someone who is obviously and obnoxiously wrong. But who's to say that being angry is a bad thing anyway? Anger is an energy after all. Sometimes it's necessary to get things done. But hatred is corrosive. It can eat away at your very soul.
Galit stopped using the internet years ago. You can't reach her by email, you won't find her on Facebook. She's got an old transistor radio which somehow seems to always be playing Israeli folk songs from the 1950's and 60's.. songs full of hope, national pride and love of the land.. in between hourly news bulletins. When the news comes on, she laughs. She doesn't believe a word of it, like it's some kind of big practical joke. She wonders how people can be so gullible. Maybe it's a coping mechanism, or maybe she's right. After this year, I am completely unable, with any real certainty, to tell the difference between real news and fake news. Maybe I'm a casualty of cyber-warfare. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Monday 21st December
Winter Solstice. Today marks the beginning of the Age of Aquarius, apparently. I certainly hope so. It's been a long time coming.
I'm sitting in the garage, trying to get my old car through the yearly test. It's failed on emissions, like the Paris agreements.
On the television in the waiting room, Israeli soldiers looking tense, tanks and heavy weaponry on the move. I don't know what's the story, I missed the beginning. On to a report from London. Empty streets, cancelled Christmas, borders closed due to a new, more contagious strain of coronavirus. Trucks backed up for miles on dismal, grey motorways. Is this how the New Age dawns? Onto a report about the vaccine.. a smiling old man, someone famous, a national treasure, some kind of song and dance man, getting a shot in the arm. Salvation by syringe and hypodermic needle...
… and just like that, the whole population of the world became entirely dependent on a injection of some impossibly complex pharmaceutical drug in order to function normally again.
Of course it sounds bad if I put it like that, so let's say instead...
… and just like that, thanks to the tireless efforts of scientists.. thanks to unprecedented cooperation between nations, working together to create a vaccine in record time.. thanks to supreme efforts of many people, from the billionaire philanthropist to the humble-but-essential shopkeeper, school-teacher, bus driver and of course the heroic efforts and sacrifices of all the frontline healthcare workers and the tens of thousands of brave volunteers who agreed to participate in vaccine trials.. not to mention, against severely disruptive elements of society who are against any and all sensible public health measures...
The smiling old man getting his shot in the arm, getting his fix, getting the cure, represents the very best of humanity. This vaccine is one of the crowning achievements of human civilisation. He's got every reason to smile. So should we all.
You may as well smile, as the chances are you'll need to keep up to date with the latest vaccine for the latest strain of this new mutation of an old virus.. if you want to take part in society as we know it. Otherwise, you may want to start building a different way of life...
Science doesn't care what you believe.
Do your own research.
Tuesday 22nd December
In the big hospital in Kfar Saba, near Tel-Aviv. Brought my son in for an MRI scan. He's hoping they can find the cause of his back and shoulder pain. I think it goes deeper than something purely physical, probably emotional. Growing up in a mad family takes its toll. Many hours spent at a computer at a time when he was growing fast and should have been out climbing trees probably has something to do with it too. Many young people these days are suffering all sorts of injuries resulting from inactivity, not to mention depression.
While we're waiting for his turn (it's taking a while because the hospital's computer system is down) a convict in an orange jump-suit is brought in to the waiting room, chained to his wheelchair by his wrist and ankle, accompanied by an armed guard. You see all sorts of people in a hospital, a real cross section of society. I notice that the prisoner is a Hebrew speaker while his guard is an Arabic speaker. Half of the doctors, nurses and hospital staff are Arabs too, as well as half the patients. Is this apartheid? As always, things are rarely black or white.
The technology in this place is incredible, astounding, mind-blowing.
An unconscious man, about my age, who's face is mostly covered by his breathing apparatus is wheeled through in a huge bed with lots of tubes, wires and computers attached to him. Doctors, nurses and family members, all in facemasks, fuss around him anxiously as they rush him through some high security doors into a room full of machines. An old man, maybe a hundred years old, is lying in another bed in the corridor, waiting his turn, looking at his phone.
How much effort and energy is spent on trying to keep people alive and well. Say what you will about modern medicine, a well run, well funded hospital offering comprehensive, free healthcare to one and all is perhaps the pinnacle of all human achievement. And I say that as someone who hates hospitals.
Thursday 24th December
Woke up depressed. You know when nothing is quite right. It's not just that my life is a mess and everything I try to do comes to nothing or that I can barely keep things together from one day to the next... well, maybe it is that. If it wasn't for my children depending on me, I'd probably just crawl into bed and stay there.
Every time I open my door, twelve hungry cats rush in, begging for food. It's getting out of control. I'm the captain of a sinking ship. The sole is falling off my shoe and it's letting in water. Maybe I can fix it with glue and it will hold out for another season.
Five years into my Investigations in Facebook Algorithms etc.. I had hoped that I'd have been able to reach some kind of conclusion by now, but it just goes on and on, just like the daily news. Either the same stories repeating ad infinitum but with the faces and names changed, or things are going from bad to worse. I've learned nothing and proved nothing. People can do what they like, if they're lucky. I'm not here to tell anyone what to do, or how to think, feel or act. That's what we've got Facebook for, after all, lol.
In the end, we are all alone, spinning in endless space, an insignificant blip in the infinite folds of time.
Saturday 26th December
Galit says I don't need to be so dramatic. I shouldn't get so affected by every bit of bad news or every little thing that happens. She says I just need to have faith. Maybe she's right.
Money worried. Can't see a way out or any way beyond never making enough. I told her I feel like a failure, that I'm just not meant for this world. Neither of us are, I said. She says that's not true. We are made for this world, but this world isn't made for people like us.
Monday 28th December
4.44am
I can't sleep. The wind hasn't stopped for three days. It's still dark out. All around, the sound of the wind roaring through the trees. Today marks the beginning of another nationwide lockdown, this time for a month.
The novelty of the New Normal is wearing thin after almost a year of emergency measures to flatten the curve of the pandemic. Dolphins have not returned. The world has not miraculously reverted to the harmonious, natural state we optimistically hoped it might do, at the start of all this. Emissions are still rising and time is running out, faster than ever.
Last night out on the road, police were manning every major junction, reminding us that 'If your journey isn't absolutely necessary, stay the fuck home', as has become the rallying call of 2020.. at least among those who believe. I picked up a hitch-hiker who spent the whole journey telling me how it's all a hoax. 'It's all political', she said with utmost certainty. 'Everyone dies in the end. That's just life.'
What is really necessary?
Of course, money is necessary, at least until the fall of Capitalism, hopefully soon. People are getting squeezed. No help from the government. Shops are closing down everywhere. Small businesses are folding. Making guitars by hand was unrealistic before, now even more so. What musician has money to spend on a handmade guitar now that the music industry is dead? Who has money for that sort of thing these days? Jeff Bezos maybe. Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Elon Musk. But they're all busy saving the world, or lining their pockets with more money than any mortal human could possibly spend in a thousand lifetimes, or else planning their escape to Mars.
More important than money – human contact, family, connection, love.. romance..
Trying to get a date is hard enough at the best of times – especially when you're a middle-aged man, separated with three children, two houses, no income, chronic headaches exacerbated by stress and 15 cats, at least one of whom is pregnant. Especially when you face a 500 shekel fine for leaving the house without a good enough reason. And with all the bars, restaurants and beaches shut down, romantic prospects are limited.
One of the cats has shat on the carpet. I threw him out the window. I'll deal with the turd in the morning. I'm going back to bed.
INCONCLUSION
Remember at the start of my Investigations, I was telling you how it all started? It was about 1992, when I first saw the internet for the first time when I went to visit my friend Alex who was living in some soulless university campus somewhere out on the outer rim of West London, studying micro-biology.. How after seeing the internet for the first time, I was so impressed by what it portended (foreshadowed, forbode, foretold or heralded) that I renounced modern civilisation and went to live in a tree. I then began to try to piece together all the signs and implications of the rapid rise of technology that was about to change the world beyond recognition. Was it going to be a force for good? Would it change the world for the better, like they'd promised us on Tomorrow's World, or would it make slaves of us all like in Brave New World and 1984..?
At that time, in the years leading up to the turn of the millennium, it felt like the end of the world was just around the corner. Now I look back on those years as golden years. I wonder if we'll look back on the year 2020 with fond nostalgia too – as a time when we were still blissfully unaware of the disasters and horrors to come.
Most of the Jews in Israel are either survivors of or descendants of survivors of the Holocaust. Many, if not most of those who survived, managed to do so by getting out when they could, before the shit really hit the fan, so to speak. Galit's grandma came to Palestine in 1937, being a fiercely idealistic young Zionist and sensing that trouble was brewing in her native Poland. The rest of her family stayed behind and perished in the gas chambers. By the time they realised it was too late, it was already too late. A similar story with my Grandpa Joe, who eventually made it to England, but left all his family behind in Czechoslovakia, unable to save them from the Nazi death machine which spread across Europe like an unstoppable, evil, human-technological virus.
Did they have a sense of what was to come? Did they try to warn others? Did they try to persuade them to leave everything behind and save themselves? Could anyone have possibly imagined what was about to take place?
For some people, it's the Coronavirus which is the enemy that must be fought and stopped at any cost. For other people it's the lockdowns, the distancing, the masks, the tracking and monitoring which represents the greatest threat to humanity since the Nazis.
So, what of Alex, my longtime friend and pioneer of future realms..?
He spent some time doing research into why fish in the rivers of England were turning from male to female. Toxic waste from chemical and pharmaceutical factories, naturally. After that, he went to Holland, joining a team of researchers working on developing the perfect, engineered supermarket-ready raspberry, but before long, he discovered that scientific life in the corporation or institution wasn't for him. One way or another, he found his life's calling in building Earthships – self, sustaining, apocalypse-proof, eco-houses made from used car tyres. He built himself one on top of a mountain in India and lived there for many years, becoming a guru of Earthship biotechture and an off-grid missionary evangelist, spreading the word about zero-carbon living, long before the rest of the world caught onto the dangers posed by carbon emissions.
Now he's in Portugal, along with many other people who are gathering there because of low land prices and the relaxed planning laws which allow for living on the land. He's building an off-grid, Earthship community which even has it's own crypto-currency, safe from the clutches of centralised banks and government. He's a real Anarchist.. the good sort and he's urgently warning anyone that will listen, to get out of the cities, out of the system and to get off-grid and self-sufficient as soon as possible. It's a very good idea. He's urging us to join him, or better still, make our own self-sufficient communities wherever we can.. while there's still time to save ourselves.
As far as Alex and many others are concerned, the Covid-19 pandemic is a complete hoax, or at least a massively exaggerated threat. We are being lied to by the media, by our governments, by the experts, doctors, scientists, politicians and even by facebook. If you want to know what's really going on, the place to get true information is on the uncensored, decentralised parts of the internet. All the rest just serve to control, confuse and misinform us.
But why? Why would these people do this to us? Who are they anyway?
Techno-fascism. Or something along those lines. To gain complete control of humanity. Power. Money. Just like any villain in every James Bond movie. Just like the Nazis tried to do. World domination. Because they can. That's just what evil villains always do. The New World Order doesn't care about us.. soon we'll be replaced by robots.. that's the plan.. it's already happening.. just open your eyes and look around...
It doesn't really matter if you believe that or not, the outcome will be the same.
Ever since that time I first saw the internet, I've been haunted by visions of a future world completely divided between those who live within an all-seeing, all knowing, highly technological system and those who live completely outside of it. Now, everywhere I look, this premonition seems to be coming true.
In Israel, the new 'Green Passport' is about to be introduced any day. The scheme is likely to be used internationally. It will be an app on your phone which will identify you as a safe person to be admitted into public places, either because you have been vaccinated against the coronavirus, or have recently tested negative for it. You will be able to use your Green Passport to get into such places as shopping centers, theatres, restaurants, public transport, aeroplanes, 'safe cities' and 'safe resorts' such as Eilat and the Dead Sea holiday resorts.
How this situation is going to play out is anyone's guess, but it seems to me that the celebrated vaccine is not the end. Not even close. If anything, it's just the beginning.
Wednesday 30th December
I had a friend on facebook. Not a real friend. He didn't really know me, probably didn't like me or trust me. Maybe he thought I'm a Mossad secret agent, some kind of spy, because I live in Israel. Of course, there's nothing I could do to prove I'm not, as any attempt at denial would just confirm his suspicions.
He was always offended when people accused him of being a conspiracy theorist. 'It's not a conspiracy theory if it's true', he would argue, pointing to reams and reams of evidence of secret CIA mind control experiments, false flag attacks, faked evidence, corporate-media-government collusion in deception, the military-industrial-complex and illuminati-freemason-deep-state shenanigans.. all of which proved to be true. He had certainly done his own research.
I had to unfollow him after a while. It wasn't that he was necessarily wrong. He was probably right about some things and wrong about other things, like most people. It just wasn't healthy for me to be thinking about the kind of things he was thinking about so much. The comments section under his posts was too much altogether. Just so many opinions and second-hand third-hand information. So many people thinking they have the answer. Who really knows anything? I mean really knows? I don't.
Thursday 31st December
In the end of the apocalyptic story I started, it was the cats who saved the world. The alien invaders didn't care for humans at all, but some of them had a soft spot for cats. That was their downfall. I didn't get as far as writing the middle part, but you can probably fill in the gaps. It's standard science fiction stuff.
Friday 1st January 2021
A very spring-like day. The sun is out and the wind has settled down to a gentle, warm breeze. It's such a beautiful day, I won't spoil it by worrying that 20 degrees on the first of January has anything to do with global warming. It feels like the storm has passed, for now at least, and that maybe, somehow, things will work out.
Karly tells me that actually, thanks to the pandemic, CO2 emissions fell in 2020, for the first time since the second world war. Maybe the first time since the industrial revolution. There is a chance, if everyone pulls together, that we might just manage to avert the self-caused extinction we face.
There's a chance.. that with the right treatment and with the right practical, preventative measures.. with the right combination of science, technology, humanity, humility, determination.. with good governance and good sense.. and maybe with faith and with all of our help.. our beloved old planet Earth.. our mother and our grandmother.. sacred Gaia.. spinning endlessly through through the vast loneliness of deep space.. gasping for breath like a victim of Covid-19.. might.. just might pull through.