Modern Man, 2020 What we did at the end of the World - An Introduction

The year started as the movie ended “12 Monkeys”, 2020 the first season of a long winded spin off series, a science fiction box set told on a global scale, not a story inspired by pop culture, of zombies or alien invasion, yet the core theme the same, a slow burning apocalyptic melodrama which emphasizes societies unwillingness to adapt to its environment, to reality, to the New World scenario sprung upon it.

The movie ended perhaps in the summer of 2019, somewhere in an airport, America, China, Europe the end scene played out in full technicolour reality, as scientists from a dystopian future desperately try to solve the puzzle of the Virus origin, it wasn’t anything to do with the 12 Monkeys after all we would discover, instead predictably some lunatic with access & the means along with a disregard for human life, a willing participant, a virus, a passport and a plane ticket all it took to bring the world to its knees. As I recall it the final scene acted out with two Bruce Willis’s at an airport. One with the Hawaiian shirt and the gun, his girl with the big shades in hand both pursuing the cause of the futures demise, the other, a child version of himself with his parents waiting to board the flight, a witness to his own destiny as the man with friendly face, long hair & the briefcase passes airport security, future Bruce gunned down by unwitting law enforcement as he tries valiantly to save humanities world, failing in stopping the act, yet fulfilling his mission revealing the truth & identifying the Virus origin, a truth so important the futures survival depends on it.

After the round world trip, the airport lounges, the check-in desks, the baggage handlers, the countless flights, the holidays, the business trips, the overseas students migration, the Virus undetectable in its infancy begins to circulate, the symptoms so varied and mild at first exposure, the perfect killer, the virus incubates and mutates with each round of circulation until when its everywhere and uncontainable it reveals its self, sporadic outbreaks of mystery conditions deaths in hotel rooms of the otherwise healthy, blood clots and aneurisms, fatigue, headaches, infection, immunodeficiency, cancer, until later deadly untreatable Pneumonia and a rapid increase of immediate life threatening illness and A&E hospital admissions which befall Britain and the wider world, the Virus if left to circulate unabated, the worse still to come.

But this is not fiction, at least not entirely, this is 2020, this is the future….

Closer to home & in undocumented fact as a soldiers diary from the frontline it differs from the official media narrative, by Winter 2019 something is noticeably wrong, at work the sickness spreads, a seasonal flu? More and more people take time off for their own sickness and later bereavement leave to attend funerals of their elderly relatives; a feeling of change is in the air, as the season of death befalls us. Some notice the change, many don’t, instead putting it down to a bad year, a bad flu season but something most definitely has changed, life as we know it under strain.

Globally, perhaps, an international stalemate grows as each nation’s security forces try to work out what the fuck has happened, what has slipped through the net this time, as the intelligence agencies focused on individual citizens being the biggest threat to society, under the falsehood that conflict between nation states is over, a silent and deadly attack of global proportions but who the hell did it?

The first question! Was it us they ask themselves as they check their own super labs, an inadvertent release of a new virus whilst attempting to cure another, it wouldn’t be the first time, not another case of friendly fire? Better hold silent and watch this unfold, best not be the first nation to acknowledge the virus or be reported as the origin, then be burdened with the aftermath, the culpability, a veil of silence falls across the globe.

Who will crack first, which country cares for its citizens more than its international reputation; cares more for life than finance, the truth told not a failing, but absolute duty.

Yet in 2020, we can’t think that, we can’t speak that, Free speech gone, Critical thought gone, mainstream media interests owned & narrated by the same few controlling minds, their narrative & interests become the truth of the day, the common narrative of these biased minds only perceive the outbreak as an untimely inconvenience to their financial interests. Any questioning of the media or official narrative is labeled as crackpot conspiracy. The SARS pandemic in one form or another, a possibility, likelihood for nearly 20 years since the first outbreak in the early 21st Century, followed by the second outbreak an accidental lab release. A third outbreak, a global pandemic, should have been predicted, concluded as an inevitability and in response to the obvious each nation an emergency action plan in place to nullify the threat. The response plan 18 years in the making, at the frontline a fully funded and functional NHS, Mass stock piles of PPE, ventilators, hospitals built for the purpose of pandemic, trained and practiced auxiliary critical care staff, airport screening, isolation and quarantine procedure, a tried & tested fully functional test track and trace system first practiced to mitigate Influenza, an informed nation aware, an informed world aware, trained and mentally prepared, nearly 20 years to prepare, that’s how long we had, we should have been ready!

Instead look at what happened, what we did, let history judge what we did, that’s if there is a future to follow.

Some countries clearly were prepared, the ones who closed borders and relied on a robust test track and tracing system, reflected in their low death tolls, reflected in the minimal impact to society, back on their feet and although restricted internationally behind their own borders some nations are thriving, but not our nation, not the flag ship nations of the West, we have failed miserably to protect our citizens, Britain by January 2021 seeing a stomach wrenching 12,000 people per week dying of this Virus, still this is only the tip of the iceberg as hundreds of thousands more remain in recovery, life changing injuries and future health problems the aftermath of viral impact, the full effects still unknown. Instead to protect our economy billions scrimped to reduce national debt in the decade of austerity precursor to virus, precursor to Brexit, pails to insignificance against the cost of Virus to the unprepared nation, no clear plan, of the cuff responses, hard decisions avoided until at tipping point, always too late, we act in half measures, reactive not responsive and 12 months in we haven’t improved our situation, help out to eat out, hasty easing of lockdowns only lining up the deaths and suffering that followed and is to follow.

With our lack of investment and preparation, our lack of clear defined policy, when the inevitable virus comes, SARS-cov2, hits it hits hard, instead of resolve we focus on spin, we apply new speak, the official and media narrative “Coronavirus” and “Covid 19” as the virus is rebranded & dressed as a new concern, one that we all need informing about but couldn’t have possibly been ready for, instead of calling it what is it SARS-cov-2. Our solution, inaction, herd immunity, vaccine, for the same virus that for almost 2 decade’s, science has been unable to find a cure.

So instead of truth and critical thought so essential in times of crisis we all buy in to the narrative of new speak and restrained thought, still we think what we dare not, no cannot speak. In the back of our minds we all FEAR is this it, is this end of days, Apocalypse now!

Away from the mainstream narrative, away from Sars cov 2 of bats and wet markets, this thing could have been caused by any number of all too real & likely scenarios, 21st Century life not the idyllic future humanity had hoped for, Bowies prophetic “Life on Mars” still as poignant now as it was 50 years ago.

The scenarios, the alternative contenders for the cause, as a game of chess the moves planned long before pieces are placed, 2020 the crescendo of 20 years of political madness, Terrorism, Global Instability, Resource Wars, Financial Collapse, obsessions of economic growth, over production, Extreme global leaders, Brexit the hammer blow to the great European project, climate change acceleration and now Virus, Coincidence? Simple cause and effect or we dread, something much worse? Only the future will know.

So we think & theorize could the narrative be something different, could this be WW3 a new epoch of warfare, a silent war unfolds in plain sight, suicide by internet our minds connected to unknown enemies, as the proxy war in Syria & numerous other nations spills into the sky above, as fighter jets rip through the air at supersonic speed shattering windows of the houses below, burning through the skies to intercept rival nations Bombers as they probe air space & borders. Tensions between the Superpowers at an all-time high perhaps due to leaked documents of national security from the actions of the irresponsible, night after night the mainstream news tells of stories of secret service cloak and dagger murders, the in your face Salisbury Murders to the less obvious indicators. The war for gas and oil, financial wars for the spoils of natural resources and the wealth & control they generate, could this virus be an outcome of the tensions. President Orange determined to make his mark on history 4 years & any number of dangerous policies under his reign, his clear disregard for others, for life, disregard of law & order, disregard of individual freedoms, disregard for his fellow Americans, his overzealous approach towards anyone whom apposes him, toward anyone whom disagrees with him, including we would witness his own national institutions, democracy itself too small for his ego this tyrant in bloom. It is an all too real and scary thought to consider in his approach to public affairs what could have been enacted in his name covertly, could this virus be the legacy of his presidency? Then there’s the white hot smoking gun, the most likely alternative theory, the murderous religious extremists, hatred of western life and its people, 911 shows the despicable lengths they will go to have no end, targeting institutions and individuals, beheading our loved honored & respected soldiers in cowardly attacks, followed in Britain at perhaps the lowest ebb of humanity the murder of school girls at a music concert, it’s right to reason a terror attack with a WMD would be next on the agenda, could this be the one that slipped the net, the last hurrah. These horrifying narratives & consequences of the societies of Modern Man by no means limited & alone to these potentials, the list of culprits & possibilities far exceed the obvious.

Away from policies of Modern Man but still linked to Human cause, the thought process & narrative that Humanity are the only power the Universe knows; As per Lovelocks Gaia hypothesis, Life itself could have acted, as the white blood cells within a body counteract a virus, beyond our current understanding, the theorized and alternative possibility of Earth Systems having a natural regulator, an enforcer for life, taking effect as the Earth breaks under the bow of 400 years of Modern Man’s environmental disregard, as our eco system catastrophically collapses due to our industry, life fights back in the form of Virus, to reduce our numbers, to reduce Modern Mans impact on life on earth before it’s too late and the atmosphere burns, runaway climate eliminating all life on earth an inevitability without this immediate intervention or more simply humanity changing its industrial way.

Still despite the alternative hypothesis, unfortunately, reasonably the most credible of all predictions remains, an accidental leak from a super lab, either a military grade weapon leak or the hazard & result of searching for a viral cure, entirely unintentional or entirely intentional the outcome the same, the scramble, the lockdowns, the isolation, the race for vaccine to nullify the effects, the resolve, the mission success limited by secrecy, limited by silence, the measures taken in 2020 & 2021 reveal the gravity of the situation humanity now faces. Given the potential, the necessity for violent response that such likelihoods would require, the terrible wheels that would be set in motion by open truth, the Fear and Panic that would ensue, the fragility of the World exposed by the Virus and beyond the virus, the virus deadly but only the shot that caused the avalanche in the hands of nuclear loaded humanity at war. So perhaps to that end, we don’t explore the thoughts any further, we know not too in these times of Modern Man. As a silent knowing fear tells us to keep quiet, as it winds its way into the psyche of humanity, similar maybe to the years building up to WW2, fascism and the atrocities to humanity that followed, 75 years on, the messages delivered in news and pop culture an indirect warning to us all that now is not the time to raise one’s head from the crowd, in this our time, a time when our human rights are failing as life & assassination is undertaken by nations and individuals unchallenged by law. When a citizen is murdered by the State openly in public and no one does anything, no one says anything, and a time of darkness has befallen us all.

The Truth should always lead us, but now in these times it seems the truth is too inconvenient to be told, to terrifying to be thought or discussed, instead as we are taught by the media first think of the economy, we think of stability, we think of Fear. The inconvenient truth that would detach us from our plans and habits, from social status, from the good times, so we carry on and accept the narrative, the doubt swept to the shadows of our minds. Yet the consequence of silence, our acceptance of the Lie, the darkness grows. It grows as it always has and always will, with every silent tongue it feeds, feeding & mutating in every day that passes, until when grown beyond control, when grown beyond the shadows, beyond the veil of our willing ignorance, our cowardly silence, the darkness reveals itself and forces us to act, but if we act too late, the darkness will consume all. Later when the dust settles, if ever the dust settles, people will ask why anyone didn’t do anything, why didn’t they say anything and we will answer, we didn’t know, but that won’t be entirely true.

So in a place and time not so far from here and now, yet in a place for away, somewhere between fantasy & fiction, the movie reel rolled, the long haired 12 Monkeys movie villain made his dream trip around the world, spreading the death seed, the generic disillusioned scientific genius, the lab tech with access and the means is to blame, we found out at the end of the film as the plot unfolded, by then too late as history cannot be rewritten & Pandora’s box cannot be closed.

So we all silence our minds and buy into the official narrative, the absolute truth! January 2020 somewhere in China a bat shits in a cup and someone takes a drink, the rest is History, now documented and recorded in reality “the butterfly effect” in action, or more aptly named, the bat effect.