END OF CIVILIZATION

An essay by Terrance Lindall provided to SURREALISM NOW! Black & White Photomontages by Keith Wigdor/2001

Terrance Lindall was kind enough to share this essay with SURREALISM NOW! for all of you to read! I highly recommend that you read it!!! Remember that we all live in the Wonderful World of Corporate Martial Law and Technochivalry, so do something to change this miserable state of affairs and Transform Life and LIVE!!!

A MASS HALLUCINATION DURING THE 1980 CARTER-REAGAN DEBATE by Keith Wigdor 2001

Williamsburg Art in context with the Coming End of Civilization

By Terrance Lindall

I just had a discussion with James Seehaffer, the Massurrealist. We talked about the big immanent die-off of humanity and not because of the Avian Flu. James called the coming die-off "the BIG REBOOT." Of course! He is a digital artist. The good part of it is, about 200 years after it happens there will be a very small human population and no wars. Where the level of our science will stand is a question after the masses loot, burn and kill while dieing of starvation. These are the statistics. Half the world — nearly three billion people — live on less than two dollars a day. The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the poorest 48 nations (i.e. a quarter of the world’s countries) is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest people combined. Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names. Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn't happen. 51 percent of the world’s 100 hundred wealthiest bodies are corporations.

Sliding Towards a Post-Industrial Stone Age

Richard C. Duncan, Ph.D., of the Institute on Energy and Man, presented his conclusions about the big die-off of civilization in 1996. He said, “Industrial Civilization can be described by a single pulse waveform of duration X, as measured by average energy-use per person per year. The life-expectancy of Industrial Civilization thus measured is less than one-hundred (100) years: i.e., X < 100 years.” His proof was very credible and today many economists, scientists and energy experts confirm what he said. The only question is how fast it will happen. By his charts, the spiral downward begins this year in 2005, starts off slowly and rapidly picks up speed. So we end up on the rocks in just a few decades. The climb toward our prosperity throughout the 100 years of the Industrial Revolution had its ups and downs, but mostly was an advance in our standard of living and overall contentment in the West. But the downslide will be very painful indeed concluding with a mass extinction of civilization as we know it today.

Do you imagine that wealthy Americans will survive? Look at the riots in France, see what is coming. That is a small problem compared to what will happen when the starving come to get something to eat for themselves and their families…as you would do for your own family, they will fight to take from you what you have. The world now has 6.4 billion people. No matter how liberal you are, you will not be able to help the poor or yourselves. Ask yourselves what can be done. Too late! Nothing can be done now. No action will suffice, such as the recent Global Health Summit attending by movie stars and celebrities where enough money was probably spent to feed Somolia for a week, but all for glamour and publicity!

Former Florida Energy Czar Jim Minters says: "But we are unreformable, and it seems certain that any such modest reforms as humanity would swallow will only delay the inevitable by a few years. And so, as I understand it, a global economic crunch of epic proportions, one that stands to debase much of our current wealth and render much of our current infrastructure valueless, lies just over the horizon sometime in this century. Once again humanity is going to demonstrate Voltaire's little maxim: ‘History teaches us that history teaches us nothing.’"

The good news about doomsday! First of all, we in America will probably be the last to suffer (but we will eventually suffer). We are the world's biggest and baddest empire. We can take what we want. We do have the world's largest coal deposits. We can build nuclear power plants.

So, while Europe, the Middle East, South America and Asia starve, riot and burn, we can watch it on CNN while we sit on our lard and eat our McDonald value meal for $1, which probably cost $10 in oil to produce, and is in fact causing the rampant destruction you will see on TV in the rest of the world.

All of this while an overheated art market soaks up the excess money of wealthy people while billions starve. Imagine, a few hundred millionaires now own as much wealth as the world’s poorest 2.5 billion people according to “State of the World ,” Issue 287 - Feb 1997, New Internationalist.

So Williamsburg artists & galleriests, keep producing and marketing that contemporary art! Soak up some of those millions that could have educated and fed starving people, or have been used for research to solve our preeminent crisis. Let the art market sizzle, and fiddle while Rome, and soon America, burns beneath your feet!!