War and Censorship -- Difficult Times in Italy

A post by Miguel Martinez, originally published in Italian on his blog on 23/11/2020. Italy was the first European country to be struck by the COVID-19 pandemic and the first to implement a national lockdown. At that time, Italians would display the flag on their balconies and sing aloud in a show of national unity. That time is past and gone. 

 

The media gives the alarm: news of danger and a call to arms, together. When the message is inseparable from mobilization, it becomes propaganda. Since "propaganda" today has a bad name, let us immediately specify: propaganda can say absolutely true things and defend right causes, but it remains always propaganda.

The state of mobilization puts an end to disputes: in war, everyone must be in solidarity around a human figure, the leader, able to embody all passions.

Young people run to enlist volunteers. Fear, excitement, optimism. It's Gonna Be Okay!

We grit our teeth, citizens cleanse themselves gel and unmask the traitors, actually mask them – but we will win soon!

People who, until the night before were ready to file a complaint because they were not served the cocktail they had requested, or because the plane left five minutes late, meekly lock themselves in their homes, place the tricolor flag out of the window, and prepares to see the enemy fall to the ground.

 

Above: "I stay home -- checkmate to the coronavirus"

 

The first deaths are celebrated: both as innocent victims of the wickedness of the enemy, and as brave fighters.

 

"A nurse dies of coronavirus refuses to see her husband for the last time and saves his life"

But there are also the first victories, a united people, let's open the windows, it's spring!

Our leader is leading us to triumph and we will dance in Sardinia all summer!

 

The image shows Giuseppe Conte, prime minister of Italy. The text says, "Let's stay away from each other today to embrace each other tomorrow. Let's stop today to run faster tomorrow."

Phase Two.

Autumn and darkness arrive, and it turns out that we didn't win the war at all and that, after a few months, living in air raid shelters loses its charm.

 

Image: Air raid shelters in Italy during WWII.

 

Suddenly we understand the real cost of war. It is not so much the casualties, but the destruction of an entire social class – the majority discovers the uncomfortable truth, that is, they are not essential.

Suddenly, the society that seemed so united begins to split according to new lines, not those of the previous political play.

The euphoria is over for everyone, but the majority still trust the leader.

Many even begin to doubt the cause. The ubiquitous propaganda begins to sound strangely empty, almost ridiculous.

Doubt arises in a thousand different ways, but above all because everything in which people had invested their lives seems lost forever.

Then all it takes is a true or an alleged abuse, a leaflet, a well-made reasoning, the suspicion- -- God forbid! – that someone is cheating. The secret of every war are the arms dealers, and when the arms merchants are also the owners of the communications system (not just of the media, of the system), they are also those who decide what you must see as the truth, then suspects are unleashed.

It is a moment of visions: everyone knows Our Lady of Fatima who complained about the Portuguese volunteers who went to war during WW1, but the historian Cesare Bermani discovered a proliferation of pacifist Madonnas also in Italy, guarded by the military police and kept secret.

Trade collapses, businesses close, the Great Leader begins to print money and throw it at the crowd, which at first applauds, grateful.

 

Phase Three

Society splits, largely according to the perspective that everyone has for their own future. Those who feel guaranteed generally stay with the Great Leader.

More and more people are beginning to rebel because they have nothing to lose, but they have to invent an explanation for the world of why they rebel. The Great Leader has a monopoly on academics and those who do not align themselves take great risks.

People not accustomed to indulging in the luxury of theoretical thought are called upon to provide a reason themselves.

And people without political precedent take up arms, in the ways our generation can.

"everything will be well"

Those who have remained faithful react with anger: the rebels, they say, are opening the door to the Enemy, who will massacre us all.

At first, the Traitors are only mocked, or accused of belonging to some evil sect: the Journal of American Medical Association seriously explains that those who do not align themselves are probably suffering from front-temporal dementia.

And at first, the conformists may even be somewhat right. We are beings selected for social conformism; and the first ones to break ranks may well be a little crazy. 

Then, when it turns out that they are many, we try to divide them: the good ones are only victims of the Manipulators. They are simpletons, who are convinced by the first thing they hear.

It's a bit strange that they don't let themselves be convinced by television, school, notices posted on the street, and doctors. In reality, the rebels are shocked by statements (no matter whether they are factually true or false) that respond to something they already feel inside: that is, that those in power do not count the numbers right, and that behind a war that demands enormous sacrifices, there may be even more enormous interests.

Or that governments that introduce emergency laws are not necessarily just well-intentioned.

This is the beginning of the internal war against the Traitors: they must be censored, beaten, and the chronicles are searched to find in the words of the rebels their most absurd and confused phrases, which obviously are not lacking.

Debate in Berlin

But the Traitors are potentially a whole society in disintegration.

The Great Leader doubles the money thrown from the windows of his palace and announces that the Wunderwaffe is almost ready.

The Great Leader is still followed by the majority, but he knows that even those who incite him today to hang the traitors from the light poles, may tomorrow ask for his head.

Because just as people erroneously attribute victories to an individual, they are ready to attribute defeats to him.

The leader governs by decree, he can impose things that were thought impossible, but - like the Dictator in Ancient Rome - then he still has to justify himself to an entire political system, and he knows that one day he may be dismissed.

Phase Four

Does the Wunderwaffe really exist? And if so, will it bring Victory?

 

Will the uprising be crushed by fines, mockery, media coverage, censorship, or will it spread everywhere before the Victory?

The majority of the people usually stay at their windows until almost the last moment, supporting in words the strongest, but with their antennas ready to perceive any weakness in the Great Leader's position. Things can change in an instant.

Let's give it a date, in spring, to see how it is going. Let's say around April 25 would you be okay with that? (*)

Note:

Obviously here we are talking about what happens inside a closed system. The Italy of today is part of a global system, from which it cannot prescind. But also the global system is involved in this war, and probably these reasonings are valid also for several other countries.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

(*) In Italy, April 25 is the anniversary of Italy's Liberation, also called the anniversary of the Resistance

Time for a new Witch Hunt? The pandemic could change more things than you would have expected.

 

A detail of Benvenuto Cellini's "Perseus and Medusa," a statuary group created in 1554 and presently in Florence, Italy. It is considered a work of art, but it is also the depiction of an extremely violent act: the beheading of Medusa, shown as a young woman in the group. It is rarely noted that this piece was created in the midst of the rise of a wave of violence against women in Europe, exterminated as witches. Clearly, Cellini's scene is influenced by this trend, even though witches were normally burned at the stake rather than beheaded. (but that had a tradition, too!)

 

 

Which historical period saw the largest number of witch hunts? If you answered "the Middle Ages," you were wrong. Surprised? Don't we all know that the Middle Ages, were the "Dark Ages," a time of barbarism and superstition, surely it was at that time that witches were hunted and burned. Who didn't see the "Burn the Witch" clip by the Monthy Python? It takes place in a typical medievalish setting.  

But, no. Burning witches was NOT a medieval thing. Look at the data. Trials and executions for witchcraft picked up well after that the Middle Ages were officially over, at some moment around the end of the 15th century. 

 
At the highest moment of this homicidal frenzy, about 2500 people per year, mostly women, were burned in Europe for a total estimated as about 50,000-100,000. Not a very large number in comparison to the population of the time, but a significant number, nevertheless.

Why did that happen? Why were Europeans obsessed with killing people, mostly poor women, who were doing little or no harm to anyone? And who were these witches, anyhow? There is a long story to tell here, so let's try to condense the main points of it.

The idea of evil women using poisons and magical spells to kill people is very ancient and it appears in many human cultures. The first report on this subject that has numbers in it comes from the Roman historian Titus Livius (59 BC - 17 AD) who tells us about two episodes of witch-hunting that took place in 331 BC and 180 BC. In both cases, a spate of executions (perhaps a few thousand) occurred after that a mysterious and deadly sickness had swept the land. According to Livius, Most of the executed people were women, accused of having poisoned the population.

Apart from Livius' report, witches (sometimes termed striga‎e in Latin) exist in the literature of Roman times mainly as fictional creatures. But we do read of evil women poisoning people in the real world. One such case is that of Munatia Plancina, a noblewoman accused of having poisoned Germanicus, a popular general, at the time of Emperor Tiberius. Plancina could have been sentenced to death for veneficium, but she committed suicide before her trial. 

So, it seems that in Roman times, women were not normally the target of mass extermination, but they could be punished as evil murderers. And, indeed, there is no lack of vilification against women in the Roman literature. Just as an example, Seneca (sometimes said to be a wise man) is reported to have written that "When a woman thinks alone, she thinks evil." 

Maybe it was not Seneca's fault if he lived perhaps in the most male-oriented society in history. But I think the Romans had noted something well known to us: that the number of children a woman has is inversely proportional to her degree of instruction. There follows that, in order to have their legions, the Romans had to do all the things that today we associate with a "natalist" policy: keeping women at home in a subordinate position. As long as they kept at their role, they were left more or less in peace. Otherwise, they could be harshly punished.

Things changed when the Roman Empire collapsed (and, incidentally, the last Roman emperor who truly ruled the Western Empire was a woman, Galla Placidia -- it would have been unthinkable in earlier times). It was the turbulent time that led to Christianity to take over -- a religion that claimed that all men and women were equally sons and daughters of God. Of course, the practical application of Christianity was often far away from the ideals it claimed to uphold, but it was a change that was necessary at the time. And it was clear to the early Christians that there didn't exist such a thing as "witchcraft." Not that some ignorant women couldn't be deluded about being able to make a pact with the devil, but they were to be educated, not punished.

With this change, the voice of women started being heard. And what a voice! Think of Perpetua of Carthage and her diary ("Passio"), written maybe during the early 3rd century. If you read it, be careful, because it is powerful stuff,  not for the faint-hearted. It took time, but as centuries went by, the voice of women was more and more heard: strong, clear, moving. Just think of figures such as Hildegard Von Bingen (1098 - 1179), intellectual and mystic at the same time, she would have been impossible even to imagine in Roman times. Or think of Heloise, (1100-1164) and of her passionate letters to her lover, Abelard. Or Marguerite Porete (1250/1260 – 1310), the Beguine mystic author of "The Mirror of Simple Souls." (try to read it, if you have time, it is fantastically outlandish, eerie, and moving). And many more. To say nothing of the diffusion of the literary genre about courtly love that idolized women. A story such as the one of Tristan and Iseult would have been completely incomprehensible in Roman times.

And then, something changed, again. With the end of the first millennium, Europe went through a crisis of overgrowth. With wars, there came famines, the first was in 1315. It preceded the Black Death that was to arrive in 1346 and that would continue for centuries in intermittent waves. It was a painful transformation that would turn Europe from a backward peninsula of Eurasia into a forge of empires.

Europe was not just fighting external wars, but also internal ones against perceived internal enemies. Here, we need to digress briefly to consider the relationship between heresy and witchcraft. The two are often seen as being almost the same, but it is not so. Both had elements of challenge against the mainstream religious views, but witches were mostly poor women trafficking with healing herbs. Heretics, instead, were often intellectuals of some repute. They were also connected to political movements that challenged the powers of their times -- it was a completely different story. 

During the early Middle Ages, matters of faith were supposed to be solved by discussions, that was the reason for the ecumenical councils of the Christian churches. It was only when the political situation in Europe deteriorated that the Inquisition of the Catholic Church was established in 1250. Despite the harshness of the judicial system that was starting to appear, heretics were normally given a chance to recant and abandon their "errors." In this way, they could avoid the harshest forms of punishment. Remarkably, many of them refused, including Marguerite Porete who was burned at the stake in 1310. Galileo Galilei was not so brave when he was tried for heresy in 1633. He saved himself by abandoning his "false belief" that the Earth was turning around the Sun.

With time, things got worse: the European states needed soldiers for their worldwide campaigns and women had to go back to become child-making machines. Heresy started to overlap with witchcraft as a crime. And note that witches couldn't just repudiate their false beliefs in order to escape the fire: they were supposed to had committed heinous crimes for which they had to be punished, even though they might have repented. Joan of Arc (1412–1431) was burned at the stake after having being accused of several crimes, including both heresy and witchcraft.  She was given no choice to survive: her destiny was sealed when she had decided to abandon her traditional role of submissive female. 

A strong push in the direction of punishing witches in the same way as heretics came with the publication in Germany of the book by Kramer and Spengler "Malleus Maleficarum" (The Hammer of Witches) (1486) A horrible libel that reproposed the misogynistic views of women that had been typical of ancient Rome, it was the crack that caused the dam to collapse. 

So, for at least a couple of centuries, women in Europe could be accused of witchcraft and burned. And many of them were. Of course, nobody wanted to exterminate women, they just killed a sufficient number of them to give the example to the others, so that they would stay in their place. It is difficult to assess how well that worked, but surely witch hunts were an important element of their times. That's clear by the large number of the pictures we have of people being burned at the stake, but also for the resilience of the concept. The term is still popular with us, nowadays, and we use it to describe the persecution of people for their belief on superstitious or ideological grounds. 

Witch burning in Germany in 1550 (image source). Note the gruesome details, the methods of execution and the setting was is all studied to impress, scare, and intimidate people. An early version of the "shock and awe" method, well known nowadays.

 It was only in later times that women started to regain a voice in the Western society. The industrial revolution made women useful as workers and that generated the need for a certain degree of instruction for them (it was also discovered that women made excellent snipers). It was a gradual process, and don't forget that it was only in 1920 that the right to vote was granted to women in the US. But, in time, we arrived at the current situation where "gender equality" has become the rule. 

But now? Don't forget how witch burning is often associated with plagues and stress for society. Of stress we have aplenty and, about plagues, we are experiencing one right now. So, could we see a new age of witch-hunting in the West? I mean not just in figurative terms, but with people -- especially women -- actually executed?

Of course, we tend to think that we are way too enlightened for burning witches, nowadays. But things change fast. The reaction to the current pandemics is taking various forms, one is the typical attitude toward natural disasters: looking for a scapegoat. In this case, the scapegoat is taking a form different from the typical scapegoats of earlier times. Whereas witches were supposed to have actively caused plagues, nowadays the anger is directed against the "Covid deniers," not just the people who deny the existence of the virus (they are rare, but they exist), but often toward those who simply doubt the mainstream view of the remedies for the pandemic, lockdowns and the like,

So far, "deniers" are considered more or less in the same way as heretics during the Middle Ages. They are supposed to be gently pushed to abandon their false opinions and, of course, they are prevented from diffusing them. In some cases, deniers are considered somewhat deranged or actually insane for their "false belief" -- a stance that reminds very much the trials for heresy of old times. (see, e.g. this article)

But, in the future, could we see the same evolution that we saw with the end of the Middle Ages, that is a move toward actively punishing deniers? Could very well be. The last spate of witch-hunting, the one that took place in the 1950s in the US against supposed Communists, didn't have specific anti-feminism connotations. But things are changing and there are clear elements showing that the struggle between men and women is not over. Take a look at this piece of statuary by Luciano Garbati, recently installed in New York. It shows us a woman who just beheaded a man, it is, obviously, the symmetric and opposite version of Cellini's "Medusa". Apart from not even remotely matching the earlier piece in terms of artistic qualities, this image is worrisome. It shows that men and women of our age can't find a middle ground of mutual respect, but tend to fight for dominance. And, historically, we know that males tend to win this struggle. 

Garbati's piece, just as Cellini's one, is just a symptom of the ongoing struggle. If the battle escalates to even higher levels, as it seems to be happening, we might well see a strong backlash against women in the West. Could it be that women would be accused again of plotting dark and dire things against humankind? And maybe burned at the stake? I don't know, but some hints that I read on the Web are ominous. Take this comment to the Malleus Maleficarum that appeared on Google Search. Hopefully, it is supposed to be a joke.... perhaps. And it is not the only one of this kind that appears in the site.

 

As usual, the future is impossible to predict. But never forget that the future always takes you by surprise. Hard times may be coming, but one day men and women will learn how to live in harmony with each other. Even Benvenuto Cellini, after all, shows to us a lovely image of Medusa, not as a monster but as a woman. Maybe he, too, had understood that men and women are not enemies to each other.

And, as I was thinking of these matters, there came back to my mind the song by Leonard Cohen "Joan of Arc" -- beautiful, sweet, moving, and delicate. May these times never return -- or at least so we can hope.

 

 

 

 

The militarization of the Western Empire: How the COVID pandemic accelerated the process

 

Donald Trump may not have been not such a warlike emperor as previous Western Emperors have been (and probably will be). But, even assuming that Trump is trying to avoid wars, he cannot oppose the militarization trends of the Western economy that was boosted by the COVID-19 epidemics. 

 

History repeats itself - oh, yes! And sometimes it repeats itself so fast and so ruthlessly that it leaves you out of breath. Think of what's happening right now: the COVID; the lockdowns, the face masks, the limitations to movements: all that happened in a few months, and the world of last year looks so remote that it could be seen as part of the still ongoing Middle Ages. 

And, yet, there is some logic in what has happened. History may surprise you and it usually does (the only sure thing we learn from history is that people never learn from history). But whatever happens in history has a reason to happen. And what we are seeing is not unexpected. We have seen it already, stark clear and unavoidable: it is the militarization trend of a decaying society.

Let's go back to the Roman Empire, as always the paradigmatic story of a state that went through a full cycle of growth and collapse. The Roman world was not so technologically sophisticated as ours, but the basic needs of the citizens were the same and the Roman government provided many of them. You may have heard the expression "Panem et Circenses" (bread and circus games). That described two of the services that the Roman state ensured: the shipment of  wheat from Africa to the Roman cities and the various kind of games performed in the amphitheaters. 

But there was much more than that. The state built and maintained the roads that connected the different regions of the empire. It built and maintained the aqueducts that carried water to the cities. It took care of the coinage needed for the financial system that made commerce possible. Then, the main service was security: the government provided an internal justice system that guaranteed a certain degree of social security to the free citizens. The Romans also maintained an urban police (the vigiles) that served also as firefighters. And, as we all know, the legions were the backbone of the Roman society, in war and in peace. 

Of course, the Roman state had all the defects that states often have: it tended to harass, oppress, humiliate, rob, and overtax its citizens, But the Romans normally believed that a bad government was much better than no government, so they put up with a lot of stress as long as they could. Unfortunately for them, collapse was unavoidable. As the Empire's finances declined, the government became unable to pay for the services it had been providing.

The loss of government services in the Roman state was a complicated process that went on for centuries, sometimes gradually and sometimes in bumps. Coinage declined with the decline of the silver and gold mines and, by the 3rd century, commerce started declining, too. We have evidence that the Roman roads were already decayed so much that they were unusable by the early 5th century. Many aqueducts were in ruin by that time and that probably contributed to the depopulation of large cities: nobody can live in a city without working sewers. The last gladiatorial game in the Colosseum, in Rome, is recorded in 438 CE. Wheat was still shipped to Rome from Africa up to ca. 450 AD, but no later and, most likely, the other Roman cities in Europe had lost the supply of wheat from Africa much earlier. The loss of the supply of food was the last straw that sent the Empire to the dustbin of history a few decades later. 

But note an important detail: During the declining phase, the Roman government always gave maximum priority to maintaining its military potential intact. The data show that  Roman troops kept increasing in numbers up to the end of the 3rd century. We lack data for the last phase of decadence of the Western Empire, but we know that the Romans still kept armies and were paying for the maintenance of the walls defending the empire up to the early 5th century. As decline continued, the Western Empire was reduced to a giant machine that collected taxes and produced legions. The result was that even a terribly weakened Empire could put up a decent fight up to nearly the last moment of its existence. Just think of how a ragtag Roman army still managed to defeat Attila's Huns at the battle of the Catalaunian Plains in 451 AD. It was at the same time the last battle and the last victory of the Empire.

Now, let's move forward of about 1,600 years and we are in our times. The modern Western Empire has many points in common with the old Roman Empire although, of course, the range of services the state provides nowadays is much larger. Just think that the Romans had nothing like our public education system, not our public healthcare service. But, like the Roman state, the modern Western states provide food, water, transportation infrastructures, security, and entertainment. And, of course, a heavy military apparatus supposed to defend citizens from external invasions. 

Today, the West is in a situation similar to that of the Roman Empire at the start of its declining phase. With the economy tethering on the edge because of the gradual depletion of natural resources, there are many things that the Western governments can't afford anymore. You don't have to think that the imperial elites are especially smart, but they understand perfectly well the situation: the Western Empire can survive only as long as it can have access to exploit the resources it needs. And most of these resources are located in faraway places that are hugely expensive to control. Crude oil in the Middle East is a good example. In the competition for the world's resources, the West faces a giant and growing power: the Eurasian block, much better placed in terms of still available resources within its local sphere of influence. 

Right now, the West is still in an aggressive posture in military terms, but the leaders may decide to settle into a defensive position and hold on as long as possible. In either case, the Empire needs enormous amounts of resources to keep alive its overblown and inefficient military system. Because of this, some Western leaders may well be reckless enough to try something desperate, such as attacking Russia (preferably in winter, as it has been fashionable in the past). More easily, these resources can be found by taking them from other sectors of the Western economy. If you like to see the empire as a beast of prey, it is starting to eat itself.

Curiously, it has been the coronavirus crisis that pushed the process to accelerate at an unexpected speed. In less than one year, we saw the collapse or the rapid decline of several infrastructures that we were taking for granted up to now. Note that I am not saying that the virus was engineered on purpose in some military lab -- that's extremely improbable, to say the least. I just mean that the elites of the Western world are an opportunistic predator: they jump on whatever opportunities they can find. And there is no doubt that they exploited the coronavirus crisis to their own maximum advantage.

The first and the most illustrious victim of the virus scare was international mass tourism. The collapse  will probably be irreversible: read any description of what is today to visit Disneyland while wearing masks and keeping distances and you'll understand why. Mass tourism was unsustainable anyway, but the speed of its fall has been amazing.

Also, the collapse of the civilian airlines is well advanced and of much of the industry that produces private cars. They were all very expensive infrastructures that consumed a lot of resources for little purpose. Their collapses are taking with them the fossil fuel industry, but that's not a problem for the military. The remaining production can now be re-directed to military uses. 

Then, we have the rapid decline of the public education system. It had been already declining for a long time, but the pandemic showed how fragile is a system that costs a lot of money to the state and produces little that's useful. Do we really need to teach ordinary people how to read and write? They don't need that to play on TikTok and most of them are too fat to be useful as soldiers. All that we need is highly specialized technologists able to design and build weapons and top-level managers to handle the levers of the government machine. And that's where the remaining resources will be concentrated. 

How about the healthcare system? That, too, was badly hit and turned out to be terribly ineffective in stemming the first wave of the pandemic. One possible reaction would have been to strengthen the system with a badly needed injection of capital and a re-organization for better efficiency. But it was not done. Here, propaganda played its usual role in convincing people that what's bad for them is good for them. Have you ever heard a slogan like "fewer tanks and more hospitals?" Can you imagine one of the presidential candidates stating something like that? Of course not. 

Propaganda has been able to convince people that, if the healthcare system was unable to manage a problem that never was really overwhelming, it was not because the system was badly mismanaged and turned into a profit-making operation for a few fat cats at the top. No, it was the fault of the people who didn't wear their face masks or didn't wear them right. The pen is mightier than the sword when it is used to write propaganda.

And there we are: suddenly we find ourselves rapidly moving along a road that we hadn't realized we had taken. The system is moving to a condition that will eventually turn it into a mirror of what once was the Roman empire: a giant machine that collects taxes and produces legions.

And then what? Of course, the Empire will crumble. All empires do. They bankrupt themselves with excessive military expenses, they are like the fat man of the restaurant scene of the Monty Python (if you haven't seen it, it is here). And in our case, things will go even faster than in the past because we face not only resource depletion but also the collapse of the ecosystem. 

But history goes in cycles: there is no collapse that's not followed by a rebound. We don't know exactly what the world after the crash will be like, but after the great binge of fossil fuels is over, and with it the toxic dreams of dominance, we might be able to build a gentler and better world. And may the Goddess help us in this difficult task.

Can we Predict Collapses Before they Happen? What we Learned from the Pandemic

 

My 2019 book "Before the Collapse." In it, I examined several scenarios of the future of humankind. Was I able to predict the current pandemic? Of course not in the details, but I think that I did note an important facet of the story: epidemics are never very deadly when they come alone. They become true killers only when they are associated famines.  In the case of the current coronavirus pandemic, the human population is not so badly debilitated by famines that we should have expected disasters comparable to those caused by ancient epidemics. So, we could have been better prepared if we had paid more attention to history. But the main thing we learn from history is that people never learn from history. And so it goes. This post includes a review of the book written by Daniel Ruiz.

  

After nearly one year from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in China, we can say that, at the very least, we learned a lot from it. One lesson was that we should be much more careful about "model hubris", to think that because a model is complex and detailed, it can predict the future. This problem is well described in a recent paper by Saltelli et al. in a recent paper in "Nature." 

But perhaps the most important lesson we learned was how easy the future can surprise us and how our perception of it can be remote from reality. We tend to judge on the basis of our past experience, but our mental models are often poorly calibrated. When the COVID-19 started diffusing in the West, many people panicked, some seemed to think that it really was the end of the world. Maybe they had in mind as a model the great plague of the Middle Ages, an image that has been with us for centuries. 

As things stand, we can see that the coronavirus pandemic will be very far from being as deadly as ancient epidemics were. It is said that the "black plague" killed maybe 50% of the population of Europe during the 14th century, perhaps even more than that. For the current "plague" caused by the coronavirus, we may estimate that, if the current trends continue, the world may see perhaps 2 million deaths (we are now at about one million). For a world population of nearly 8 billion people, it is such a small number (about 0.025%) that it is even difficult to visualize it. Just to frame the number in context, consider that every year, there die in the world some 60 million people (and 140 million are born!). For a virus that has caused so much concern, it is surely an anticlimactic result.

But why such a big difference? Why the little SARS-COV 2 fared so poorly (from the viewpoint of the pathogen) in comparison with the Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes the bubonic plague during the Middle Ages? And why doesn't the deadly Yersinia return? It has not disappeared, it is reported to have caused more than 500 victims during the past few years. But it does not spread. 

It is said that it was Paul Samuelson who said "When events change, I change my models. What do you do?  (I changed one word). This is what we should do, too.

On this point, I can tell you that I examined the question of epidemics in my 2019 book "Before the Collapse" when I described how the world's population could be partly wiped out by various kinds of disasters. I correctly noted that epidemics are always associated with famines, typically following them. Disastrous pandemics never come alone.

Rethinking this matter more in-depth, it seems more and more clear to me that an epidemic can hardly affect populations of people who are well-nourished and in good physical conditions. That's especially after I started looking into the concept of "holobiont" and noting that we are true walking bags of bacteria and viruses, most of them harmless, many beneficial, but some potentially harmful -- even deadly -- but normally they remain dormant. 

But all that is needed to set these little critters in motion is that your body is weakened by something. A whole population can be debilitated by hunger and then it becomes an easy target for normally harmless creatures. That was the case of the Medieval plague that followed a period of extensive famines in Europe. Today, evidently, the 8 billion human beings living on this planet are still well-fed enough that they can fend off the attacks by most viruses and bacteria. For how long, it is all to be seen.

And here is a review by Daniel Ruiz of "Before the Collapse." It deals not just with famines and epidemics, but with a lot more things!

Book review: Before the Collapse. A Guide to the Other Side of Growth, Ugo Bardi (2019)[1]

by Daniel Ruiz [2]

http://magazine.cisp.unipi.it/

The overshoot of human activity is driving the planet from the stability of the Holocene to the instability of the Anthropocene. This includes physical changes like global warming, extinction of species, pollution, pandemics, rising oceans, wildfires, as well as other more directly human-driven catastrophes like the risk of nuclear war, mass migration, economic crises, resource depletion, or inequality. This perspective has encouraged the Academia to develop the new science of Collapsology, among whom Ugo Bardi is a pioneer.

Bardi presents Before the Collapse as a mainstream version of his previous book, The Seneca Effect (2017). He refers to the Roman Stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca, who first theorized on collapse as a natural phenomenon rather than supranatural. Bardi clarifies that this fast and unexpected degradation is a feature of any complex system: health, careers, marriages, enterprises, banks, armies, economies, civilizations, resources, ecosystems, solid objects, etc., and regrets that our culture has not yet developed a “science of collapse” due to our blind belief in infinite growth. The purpose of the book is to analyse the phenomenon of collapse as well as to prepare for the aftermath. He proposes a “Seneca Strategy” to confront collapse: Attention, Avoidance (be prepared), Mitigation, Exploitation (get rid of the obsolete structures).

In the first Chapter Bardi insists on the necessity of models to help understand complex reality. These models should not be based on a heuristic/statistic method of projecting the past into the future, but on the scientific method which consists of splitting a system into subsystems, analyze them separately, and then build a model of how the whole system works. The climate change models, starting with the Limits to Growth (1972), is a good example of the success of this method. The statistical approach cannot predict tipping points or “black swans” like the economic crisis of 2008 or an eventual runaway greenhouse effect. The scientific approach is particularly important to study systems that cannot be reproduced in a laboratory, like climate. The models are then used to build future scenarios. Bardi points out that some politicians tend to ignore models for emotional reasons, or to hide their own mistakes, or because they are badly advised, or for “groupthink” or for “doom fatigue”.

Chapter 2 describes Sciences behind Complex Systems and Collapses. The science of complex systems only developed in the second half of the 20th century, as soon as adequate tools like computers were available. In the past, physical science could only describe systems with single equations. A system is considered complex if it contains energy and shows strong feedback effects, which can be enhancing or damping. Bardi defines the most important jargon of the complex systems field, like forcing, feedback, attractor, tipping point, carrying capacity, overshoot. Complex systems have the basic characteristics of living beings because they dissipate energy potentials through the trophic chain. EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested) gives a measure of the efficiency of the system. The MEP (Maximum Entropy Production) principle says that energy potentials dissipate fast. Only Networks can be complex systems. Bardi also explains some of the jargon of the network science like node, link, size, density, degree, clustering coefficient, topology, etc. Networks can have many arrangements, like: connected, lattice, random, fully-connected or cellular. Bardi introduces Amelia the Amoeba, which reproduces slowly in the Petri dish and then collapses of starvation and suffocation in its own excreta, as a metaphor for the way complex systems behave. Some of the possible growth modes of complex systems are: exponential, logistical, bell shaped or collapsing:

Chapter 3 is about the practice of collapse. It starts with the collapse of the Genoa cable-stayed Morandi bridge in 2018 as an example of the collapse of Engineered Structures. Bardi then describes how Financial Collapses happen: the very nature of money, through the stresses of the “market”, leads to debt and eventually to insolvency and bankruptcy. Bardi illustrates the process of Natural Disasters with the example of the Florence flood of 1966, and points out that large disasters are not frequent but cause massive damage. Regarding Mineral Collapses, Bardi elaborates on oil, which is scarce, has increasing extraction costs and is being outcompeted by renewable energies. Bardi also concludes, based on historical records, that Human Violence it is an inherent feature of the present human culture. Concerning Famines, Starvation and Depopulation, Bardi thinks that humans have been able to dramatically increase their population in recent centuries thanks to fossil fuels, but that this should change with the end of cheap energy and the depletion of fertile soil. Civilizations have arisen from the availability of abundant and cheap natural resources and they should collapse due to the “diminishing returns of complexity” and the rising costs of resources and pollution. According to Dmitri Orlov, the Soviet Union followed the pattern of financial, commercial, political, social and cultural collapses. However the ultimate collapse is that of the Ecosystem, with the best science available warning that we are on track for a temperature rise of 3-4ºC over the next decades, and that tipping points could push the planet into the condition of “hothouse earth”.

Chapter 4 deals with the Strategies for Managing the Collapse. Bardi starts by clarifying that production cannot be driven by technological progress only, but by the input of energy and resources. He advocates for fossil fuels to be used to develop renewable energies.

The Iago (from Shakespeare´s Othello) Strategy analyses how some evil individuals have imposed their interests to the rest of humanity through a mix of deception and force. Climate change denial by the elites is a good example of it. The present economic system, founded on greed, is also critiqued: it reduces the functioning of the world to the mechanics of the market, advocating for the overexploitation of finite resources while relying on hypothetical “backstop resources”, and endeavours to isolate the individuals in order to prevent collective action to protect the planet.

The next section deals with how to control the collapse of complex systems, and introduces the last Roman Empress Galla Placidia who, instead of trying to avoid the inevitable end of the Empire, helped to transition European society to the medieval system. The Edo period of Japan is another example of how a society can be prosperous without growth.

The last section develops the concept of the Seneca Rebound as the recovery after collapse. European society, after the four recorded historical collapses managed to rebound because the reduction of the population facilitated the restoration of energy sources in the shape of fertile soil and forests. Hopefully the next rebound, after the end of the fossil fuel era, will be energized by renewable sources.

Through a balanced mix of physical science and cultural references, Bardi announces in a clear and amenable manner the collapse that looms our civilization. With stoicism and ironic humour, he advises us not to resist the inevitable at all cost, but rather to get prepared for the next rebound. A second edition of this extremely interesting book, with additional editing and translation to other languages, would be highly welcome.



[1]Ugo Bardi is professor of physical chemistry at Florence University, focusing on natural resources and sustainable economy. He is a full member of the Club of Rome and has published extensively on resource depletion, including “The Limits to Growth Revisited”, “Extracted” and “The Seneca Effect”. He is a scientific advisor to several international and Italian institutions dealing with sustainable economy and contributes to scientific outreach through his blog “Cassandra’s Legacy” (www.cassandralegacy.blogspot.com).


[2]Daniel Ruiz, PHD, is a researcher in Peace Studies at Scuola Sant’Anna di Pisa (DIRPOLIS), focusing on the nexus between political and environmental crises. He is a former Director at the United Nations, and deployed for more than 20 years in conflict and disaster situations.

The Corona Crisis: Fighting the Authoritarian Response

At least 20 thousand people (some say many more) marched in Berlin on August 1st 2020 to protest against the restrictions imposed by governments against the Covid-19 epidemic. Unanimously branded as "criminals," "neo-nazis," and "idiots" by the Western media, their presence is nevertheless an indication of a growing movement of resistance against the authoritarian crackdown in Europe.

As I am writing, the Covid epidemics has been over for at least two months in Europe. In the US, instead, the epidemic is over only in the large cities while it is still ongoing in the central states, only recently showing signs of abating. The result is a different perception of the situation. In the US, the progressive movement is still trying to use the epidemic as an anti-Trump weapon, accusing the president of not having been authoritarian enough and not having imposed even more draconian measures. In Europe, instead, the public is starting to perceive that nobody is dying of Covid-19 anymore and that their governments are terrorizing them about a threat that has ceased to exist. It is still an embryonic movement, routinely demonized and criminalized by the government propaganda machine, but it is clearly rising. The recent manifestation in Berlin of tens of thousands of people (perhaps many more) is a clear indication of this trend. Earlier on, we had seen something similar in Italy.

You will be probably baffled by this interpretation of the Berlin demonstration, especially if you live in the US, or if you routinely watch TV or read newspapers in a Western country. But there is a logic in everything that happens and the general perception of the coronavirus is rapidly changing. As an example of this growing interpretation of the situation, let me report, below, a few paragraphs from the book "The End of the Megamachine" by Fabian Scheidler, at present in press in the English version.

Scheidler is seeing well beyond the current epidemic crisis: he sees the disintegration of the whole system appearing, among other thing, as the loss of trust that derives from the routine habit of lying taken by the rulers of society. As I already noted, an empire of lies cannot stand, at least not for long. And the disintegration seems to be accelerating its pace: there are dark times ahead. I suggest that you carefully consider these thoughts by Scheidler. And if you can, do read his book: it is eye-opening.

The Structural Irrationality of the System

The corona crisis has revealed a structural schizophrenia of the system: While governments resorted to extreme means to contain Covid-l9 -—even a temporary shutdown of the economy -- virtually nothing has happened in relation to the climate crisis for four decades. There are no binding reduction targets that are even remotely compatible with the two~degree target, nor is there a serious plan for the rapid restructuring of infrastructure and the economy. This is despite the overwhelming  scientific consensus that accelerating climate chaos is many orders of magnitude more dangerous than the corona virus. Our political systems respond to short-term crises with panic and ad hoc measures, while long-term disruptions are de facto ignored -- apart from occasional soapbox speeches. The highly praised "knowledge society" proves in this situation to be a chimera: for it is precisely here, where prognostic knowledge is the most relevant for the survival of humankind, namely in the climate issue, that it remains politically inconsequential.

The end of truth and the Instability of Ideological Power

While it is evident that representative democracies in many parts of the world are becoming increasingly unstable, there is at the same time no reason to assume that the authoritarian structures that partly replace them would be any more stable in the long run. The constantly changing legitimization for the state of emergency also give them a certain volatility. Declaring war, sometimes against terror. sometimes against a virus, then again against migrants, wears off over time. Changing the enemy too frequently is irritating and exhausting -- especially since for most people, fighting all those enemies in no way brings about any improvement in their own living conditions. On the contrary, the social downward spiral continues on. Permanent political stability can hardly be achieved in this way.

Added to this is the growing fragility of ideological power. Many authoritarian governments that have come to power since 2010 have propped up their rule on the targeted dissemination of fake news, both through social media and through major television stations and newspapers that are in line with their political ideology. Now, lying is nothing unusual tor governments, even in relatively democratic countries. It is part of everyday political life, and it is always the task of a vigilant public and press to expose these lies. Dictatorships that violently suppress a critical public have always bolstered their power with propaganda. What is new about the current situation, however, is that the very concept of truth is being shaken. And this for several reasons. One is the established media's massive loss of credibility, and the other is the systematic attack on the sciences,

....

If it becomes apparent that this supposedly rational civilization is completely blind to the most important information essential for survival, then the governors of this system face a serious dilemma. either they have to attack the sciences head-on and deny their findings, thus exposing rationality, one of the foundations of this civilization as a myth, or they react appropriately to the research and immediately begin a deep socio-ecological restructuring of society. But since the second option seems too terrible, even unthinkable in the logic of the system, the only last result is to sacrifice the claim of rationality. And this is exactly what the political leaders of the new Right, such as Jair Bolsonaro or Donald Trump, instinctively do. The success of their attack on scientific authorities is fed by the widespread feeling that the majority of people have long been systematically lied to by the “establishment." This impression cannot be dismissed: didn't Neo-liberal economists spread false prognoses and promises with their pseudo-science for decades, thus exposing society to downright plunder? Have not many of the politicians and media who complain about fake news today themselves justified wars of aggression (for example against Iraq) with fake news? Hasn't mankind been steered into one economic and ecological crisis after the other by a self-adulating establishment that touts itself as having no alternative?

The deep insecurity that has arisen from these experiences in large parts of the population can easily be diverted into anger towards scapegoats. It is a politically extremely clever move by the new right to choose science for this purpose, because it kills two birds with one stone: on the one hand it can distract from systemic issues, and on the other hand it can remove obstacles to further expansion of the economic machinery. This is why scapegoating science is so attractive to powerful economic groups

But this strategy also means that there is no longer any foundation for truth. With the rationality viewed as a facade, any lasting trust in a firmly established order collapses. We know from history that a certain ideological stability, with a frame of reference generally accepted and not called into question, is essential for social systems to endure. But where is this stability to come from when more and more people feel that order in the world is eroding and that there is no longer any criterion for truth,, except the loudest megaphone? 

.....

In this respect, the Corona crisis and the biopolitical state of emergency have replaced the war on terror, which had already lost a great deal of its power of persuasion as a reason for legitimizing authoritarian measures for a certain period oi time. The rhetoric in both cases is astonishingly similar: Heads of government such as Emmanuel Macron (France), Pedro Sanchez, (Spain), Giuseppe Conte (Italy) and Donald Trump have declared a ‘war against the virus". "The enemy", said President Macron, ‘is there, invisible, intangible, and it is advancing. This requires our total mobilization. We are at war." The pattern is familiar: The nation must pull together in the face of a treacherous and ruthless enemy, putting aside internal conflicts, civil rights and all other issues in general.

It is not a matter of questioning whether states should take protective measures in the face of a pandemic like Corona. However, it is obvious that, beyond sensible strategies to prevent infection, the crisis has been used by many governments to reinforce the already discernible tendency towards authoritarian structures. The measures in 2020 have made it clear to all citizens that their democratic rights can be very quickly withdrawn by the state. For many politically sensitive contemporaries. it was as if a window had suddenly been opened through which the icy wind of a rising dictatorship passed for a moment. Even if this window is successfully closed again: We now know what it could feel like when our rights are suspended overnight (an experience that people in many countries of the global South have already had more than enough). The enemy to be fought, the catastrophe which makes any means legitimate, will probably be different. But the mode of shutdown has already been practiced, including house arrest, bans on assembly and demonstration, total surveillance, control of social contacts, and denunciation of dissenters.

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What if your government has decided to kill you? An interpretation by Antonio Turiel

In the 1976 movie, "Logan's Run," the law is that everyone must die when they turn 30. And everyone accepts that law. 

"Necroeconomics" is a concept used by some economists to describe the results of the collapse of the Soviet Economy, in the 1990s. Apart from the pure economic disaster, the collapse led to a trend of population decrease that, in some cases, is continuing to this day. The term may have a more general meaning and Warren Montag discusses how a purely market economy might deal with workers in a situation in which there are no sufficient resources to keep all of them alive. The idea that the state might decide that some people need to be eliminated has been called "necropolitics."

These concepts do not necessarily imply that your government has decided to kill you. The extermination may be the unwanted result of wrong policies or one of the unavoidable consequences of the overexploitation of the resources that make people live. But what if the government secretly decided to eliminate a fraction of the population, judged to be a useless burden for society? We all know that it happened in some states in a non-remote past. What form could it take today?

This idea has been explored by Antonio Turiel of the "Oil Crash" blog in a story published in Spanish two years ago and titled "Good Vibrations." When I read it the first time, I found it fascinating but hardly prophetic. It seemed to me just farfetched that people, anywhere in the world, would meekly accept to be ordered by their government to take a drug that they knew would kill them. But, today, I think that Antonio may have been more prophetic than he himself could have imagined. So, I translated the story into English, and here it is. Not for the faint hearted!

Good Vibrations. A story by Antonio Turiel 

From "The Oil Crash" Sept 2018 

Translated from Spanish by Deepl Translate, revised by UB

I was coming down the stairs and I was almost on the street. In a hurry, as usual. I had to find a taxi to go to the airport or the station, I don't remember anymore; I know I was going, once again, on a business trip. I had just left my house and right there, in the doorway, they were waiting for me. No, they were not: they had just arrived, because they were getting out of the car when I showed up.

I immediately saw my sister Marcela. She wasn't crying, but she had certainly been crying until maybe a few seconds before. When she saw me, she came running towards me and hugged me. I was perplexed: I didn't expect to see her there, because she lived far away; but when I saw other members of my family I understood at once that they had brought her and that it must be an important matter.

I hugged my sister and gave her a kiss on the head, almost on the crown of her head. The years had passed for her, just as they had for me, but she still had very beautiful hair. My little sister, my poor little sister.

I had to hold back the crying. I hadn't been a good brother to her. I don't mean when we were little: when we were children and lived together and happy, she was everything to me and I was everything to her. But everything was easier when we were kids. We had grown up, I had an important job, obligations, a family... And so did she. Well, she did.

I held her tight. When her family died, in that terrible way, I called her right away. I said words of comfort and encouragement that sounded hollow and hackneyed to me - why wasn't I able to say things that didn't sound like gibberish a thousand times over? -and I listened to her crying with a heavy heart. On the day of the funeral I had a very important meeting on the other side of Europe - a contract with many zeros - but I cancelled everything and was there. My hand on his shoulder, my shoulders like his handkerchief. They were all in black, everything was black and dark on that day which had the little decorum of being bright. The contrast made it seem as if we lived in black and white, and so it has always been my mood remembering sad things, in black and white. As the coffins descended I was reminded of her husband - an admirable and loving man - and her precious children - my nephews and nieces. It hurt to remember. I looked at my wife and children and realized, not for the first time but perhaps more intensely than ever, how happy I was.

Afterward, I can't explain it. Nobody likes to look at the bottom of a dark well. I loved Marcela and I called her often, I forced myself to call her because I felt I owed it to her. Maybe I was too aware that I was forcing it, but I really wanted to help her. I had put a reminder in my mobile phone book and, wherever she was, every Friday at the same time, I called her. Like an on-call service. Almost mechanically.

She gently slipped out of my arms and out of my guilt. Marcela knew a lot about guilt. How many times would she have blamed herself if she hadn't been there? She couldn't reproach herself for surviving the accident where others perished because she wasn't even there at the time, and that, instead of making her feel less guilty, made her feel more guilty. Because she would have liked to have had the opportunity to die with his loved ones, even if in the end the (bad) luck would have made her survive. But she didn't even have the option to die with them when it happened. It had been a year now, my sister, and she was still dead in life, receiving my empty calls every week, without being clear who was consoling whom from the absence of happiness.

Marcela looked me in the eyes and said:

- I can't take it anymore. I'm going to vibrate.

I looked at her in astonishment, not understanding - or not wanting to understand - what she was saying to me. I raised my eyes and my wife gave me a meaningful look. I looked at my sister again, in her eyes, after having avoided them for a year.

- They say - and she tilted her face slightly while with a slight movement of her shoulder she designated our relatives behind her - that I should first talk to you. That you understand much more of these things, and that you always give sensible advice, - suddenly, I felt her piercing gaze overwhelming mine - and it had been a long time since she had given me one. So that's why she came.

There are times in a person's life when they have to know exactly what to do. These are things that happen quickly, where there is not much time to decide, but where what is decided will be crucial. That is why it is so important to know how to recognize those moments when they come. And there are not many of them: perhaps three or four in a lifetime, but they are the ones that define it entirely. At that time I didn't know that my sister needed me - because I had already known that for a year - but that this time I really had to help her. That I had to commit myself. I understood it in one second, I accepted it in another. Something changed inside me and she certainly saw it in my eyes.

- You'll stay with us, Marcela. All the time you need. I have to take a trip, right now, for two days. But I am going to find information and make a couple of phone calls. Please, don't do anything, for now. My request must have sounded to my sister like a plea, but also like something she needed to hear. She nodded, shaking his head quickly several times. I kissed her on the forehead and turned to my wife and asked her to keep an eye on her. Then, with a quick gesture I called a taxi and left.
Vibrate. I had heard of "vibrating", but always as something distant, something that others do, and always referring to marginal people. I remembered having read a text in a weekly, entitled something like "Vibrating Times". It was all about a medicine for depression or something like that, which was called Vibr, hence the "vibrating", "taking Vibr". The kind of linguistic simplification that ordinary people like so much.

Once in the taxi, I looked up information and downloaded relevant documentation from reference databases - because, effectively, if I was any good at something it was at sifting through data, searching for data and correlating information - and I spent half the plane ride going through the contract documents I was going to sign and the other half studying Vibr. Antidepressant, anti-anxiety, in the amphetamine family. Neurotoxic effect, proven neuronal degeneration even at moderate doses if long exposure occurs, high addictiveness, withdrawal syndrome requiring shock treatment to avoid the most adverse effects - including cardiac arrest... Come on, it was clear that this stuff was shit. But the most surprising thing is that it had been approved as a drug for human use (with specialist follow-up, though). Highly recommended for pathological pain - as I'm sure my sister had been labeled by people much more pathological than she was, people incapable of knowing what love and its loss is.

That Vibr (commercial name of the drug, whose active ingredient had such a long name that ended in "mine" that it could fill in a crossword puzzle by itself) was a drug was even more surprising after reading the few clinical trials that had been done with it, all of them on compassionate therapies. The alarming number of premature deaths with respect to the control had been attributed to the poor baseline condition of the patients (and what the hell was the control group for then, if not to adjust that parameter?) You didn't have to be a big public health expert - I'm not - to know that in light of those studies Vibr should not have been approved as a drug. But it had been approved, about six months ago, for God knows what obscure economic interests.

After comparing the scientific evidence, I was entertained by reading some reports in the general press. What I was reading really seemed like a science fiction story, with certain common points in all the articles (surely, the manufacturer had set certain script guidelines when they "hired" those "advertisers"). Vibr was the new wonder drug for depression. The patients' testimonies testified how all their worries and anguish had disappeared, and how they were once again productive and perfectly integrated members of society. Pure rubbish, I thought.

I didn't have much more time to think about Vibr since I landed, but that night when I got to the hotel, I called an old friend, a schoolmate with whom I had shared decades of life and who at that time was a senior official in the Ministry of Health.

After the cordial greetings and the usual jokes, I let him out point-blank, with the familiarity that came from the years that we had known and appreciated each other:

- Manuel, what can you tell me about the Vibr?

He was silent for two seconds, and answered me, with a hurried tone:

- You're not thinking of taking that shit?

I couldn't see his face, but I sensed that he was regretting his haste. Someone who aspires to be Secretary of State someday cannot say words like "shit", let alone refer to the star product of a major fund provider for an election campaign.

- No, relax, Manuel. It's about a close friend. He was considering it and consulted me. I didn't know anything about that... medicine, but from what I've read I have a clear idea. Thanks for your time, you've helped me a lot.

Manuel didn't say anything else, but because of the trust that existed between us there was no need to say anything else. I already knew what I needed to know, and he knew that I would never expose him. That's how friendship works.

I called my wife right away. I summed up the situation for her:

- Maria, Vibr is a very dangerous substance, very addictive and sure to kill you in a few years at most if taken regularly. It doesn't remove depression, it turns you into a zombie. Under no circumstances should you allow Marcela to take it.

Maria nodded.

- I think it's best if she stays with us for a while," I continued.

- For as long as she needs to - said Maria - as if she wants to stay with us. The children love her, and she is a sweet and good person, I want her to stay too.

- I love you, Mary.

- I know - she told me, and I imagined the mischievous smile she always put on when she told me that.

After two days I returned home, and everything went back to that thing we call normality but which is not, but rather the frenzied frenzy of our usual life. Marcela became part of our daily routine and I was grateful that she was there many times, especially on the days when Mary or I were absent.

Years went by. Vibr went from being a marginal drug to being the big star. It began to be used not only to treat depression, but also for anxiety and conduct disorders, and even for attention deficits in children. I was holding my hands to my head, but like many other issues, as usual, I looked the other way and went about my business. After all, it wasn't something that affected me personally.

There was a moment when the truth of the Vibr was completely exposed. Those who started taking Vibr could no longer stop, there were very few cases of people trying to detoxify, fewer of them survived the withdrawal symptoms and those who did were left with terrible consequences for life. Many of them ended up relapsing. In addition, statistics showed that from the time one started taking Vibr until death came, about five years usually passed. In fact, no one reached the age of 6, although there were quite a few people who died quite a bit earlier, especially the most depressed people. The newspapers were full of reports denouncing the situation of the "vibrants" (that was the name given to the consumers of Vibr, continuing with the same joke), especially when they were terminal. It was no longer so rare to find a vibrant in the street. You could recognize them by their appearance. Somehow, it seemed as if someone was pulling their strings: they were too complacent, too quiet, too moderate. Nothing ever bothered them, they were kind to the point of nausea. That's how they were all, even though the vibrant "terminals" were slower, less reactive. Their kindness gradually turned into indifference. On one occasion I myself had met a very thin, emaciated and dirty young man sitting motionless on a bench, with a lost look and all the typical pose of a vibrant: he was a terminal. I deduced that he no longer bothered to eat. He didn't even look for a suitable place to relieve himself. It lasted a couple of days, I even saw the moment when they took him away in an ambulance.

I thought that when the horror of the Vibr was exposed there would be a popular reaction and that its prohibition would be demanded first in the streets and then in Parliament. But this was not the case. Suddenly, all the media began to publish studies (perhaps it would be more appropriate to say "the study", because in reality they were all the same, a thousand times repeated), in which it was "shown" that although it was true that Vibr killed you "generally in 5 years" people who took Vibr would have "half-dead within 5 years if they had not taken Vibr". Thus, the central idea of the study is that these were equally condemned people, to whom the Vibr gave a better quality of life and that in addition during this "period of grace" that the Vibr gave them "they were productive and valuable members of our society.  which they illustrated with graphs about productivity improvements and decreased morbidity (because the vibrant ones went much less to the doctor and much more to work).

I was convinced that, once the truth was exposed and seeing the low quality of the arguments in favor of Vibr, the fate of the drug was sealed. But, to my surprise, society as a whole swallowed the toad, and Vibr continued to be socially acceptable. No doubt boosted by the success of their marketing campaign, the producers of Vibr managed to curl the curl even more, and spread the idea that when the doctor prescribed Vibr to you, you were undoubtedly already "in the middle" of your life and that therefore taking Vibr was the best option, because the few years that you had left to live would not be a burden to your loved ones and even with your effort and work you would improve the pension that you would leave them. And society swallowed the toad again. I was indignant at what was happening. But I did not exteriorize it in any way: it was an inner indignation. Later, as in many other issues, like most, I looked the other way and continued with my work. After all, it was not something that affected me personally.

It was around that time that I first met a vibrant on the plane, on one of my many trips. It was a woman, middle-aged. She noticed that I had been startled to realize that she was vibrant, and gave me a reasoned and thoughtful analysis of why I had made the decision to become vibrant. After all, with her age she had only a few years left in the company, and she was in danger of being fired sooner. By becoming vibrant, she had demonstrated her commitment to the company, which in turn guaranteed her a five-year contract and a good pension. Her children would have finished university "by the time she stopped vibrating" (I swear she put it that way; my stomach turned) and with her contribution they could start a prosperous and fruitful life. I thought of refuting one by one all the logical fallacies of what she had said, but when I looked into her eyes I gave up. It was obvious that I was already condemned. What was the point, then, of arguing. I am not of a morbid nature, and I felt that if I argued with her, I would end up getting excited and showing off. So I kept quiet and looked, literally, the other way. To her my position, moral and even physical, seemed natural and she respected my wall of silence all the way. I came out of that plane with my head resonating like a drum and with a stiff neck.

Maybe my memory is failing me or I'm reinventing the scene, but I'd swear the following happened right after I got back from that trip, maybe right after that uncomfortable flight. I arrived home wanting to spend a few days with the family when Marcela showed up in front of me. Next to her was my oldest daughter, Clara. I didn't understand anything about that performance, until Marcela opened her hand and showed me a blue pill, which had some letters engraved on it: "VIBR". I had never seen one before. I looked at it in horror, thinking that perhaps it had finally succumbed, but the reality was more horrible. "I found this in Clara's backpack," announced Marcela, and her voice broke from her anguish. I looked at my daughter with a face of dread. But, no, Clara was not a vibrant. At least not yet. I didn't know how many pills it took to become a vibrant, although I knew you were hooked from the first one.

- I'm sorry, Dad," said Clara in tears, "but don't worry, I haven't tried it. Some girls offered it to me at school, and they got so heavy that I had to try it that I finally took it to keep them quiet. But I didn't take any, I swear.

I believed her. It's true I wanted to believe her, but somehow I knew she was telling me the truth. She was my daughter, after all.

- Clara - I said, in the calmest voice I could articulate - do you know what THAT does?

- Everybody talks about it, Dad. The kids say it's for fun, to get rid of all the bad stuff.

- And you know THAT kills?

- Yeah, well, everyone knows that the Vibr kills you in five years if you take it often, but the kids say that if you take just one a week nothing bad happens to you and you have a much better time...

- Clara, one a week is exactly the dosage given to Vibrants. One a week, exactly. - I couldn't help but stress that.

I kept looking at my daughter. I was furious. It was clear that the Vibr was a temptation for her: a 16-year-old girl, a good student but, like those of her generation, a bit lazy, always complaining about how much is required of her The offer of an artificial paradise was too tempting, it was clear.

It wasn't her fault. It was my fault. For not having conveyed to her some clear ideas about that poison. For not having been at home more, helping her to lift her burden, supporting her, encouraging her. My daughter had almost fallen into the trap, right under my nose. I looked at Marcela with tears in my eyes and as I could I mumbled:

- Thank you. You're the best thing that's ever happened to this family.

- This is my family too.

The three of us hugged each other in tears.

I cancelled all my appointments that week and asked to have all the days free. In less than a week, I changed my kids from school and high school. It was not difficult to find a place to take them: on their websites the new (and expensive) institutions announced "Vibr-free space" and detailed their strict controls to prevent their students from falling into such a destructive addiction. I did not even imagine that there were schools that made such publicity. Society had changed, adapting to the Vibr.

Of course, my youngest son Juan's new school and Clara's oldest school were far more expensive than the public school and high school they attended before. Fortunately, both my wife and I were "successful professionals", so we could afford it, although the classist stench that distilled out of that bothered me. But it was clear that the Vibr was running at full speed in public schools, even in primary school. Reading confidential reports passed on to me by Manuel (now Under-Secretary of State) I saw that up to 25% of high school students were vibrants. People who no longer even chose to go to university, because it was a waste of the little time they had left.

The government's reaction to the growing Vibr epidemic was not exactly what I would have expected. As more and more children were orphaned, the welfare state was greatly expanded, so that public health and education were completely free, and programs were set up to take orphans of Vibr to university (fortunately, the children of addicts did not develop any addiction per se). The only condition required of orphaned students was that they prove their academic worth; if they did so, they could go wherever they wanted. I always wondered what happened to those who didn't measure up. Besides, I was surprised by the generosity of the state, and I did not understand where the resources to keep the system going came from. Years before such a development of the Welfare State would have been considered too expensive. What had changed?

I understood the world less and less, and I got more and more fed up with it. On the plane, the number of vibrant people had long exceeded the number of non-vibrant people. In fact, those of us who weren't vibrating couldn't stand to talk to the vibrant ones: it was exasperating. A vibrant seems to speak with logic and reason, but in his arguments there is always a lack of attachment to things. Deep down, a Vibrant doesn't care about anything, he doesn't really have any preference. A Vibrant has no vision of how society should be, he or she adapts to whatever society there is, and nothing, however aberrant, seems to him or her to be a social injustice; for him or her it is a simple fact that must be taken into account, but it is never something that he or she wishes to change for the better because a Vibrant desires nothing.

That is why, after several unpleasant experiences talking to vibrant, he had started paying more for the "non-vibrant" premium bills. We were a caste apart, a frightened minority, sheltering in the front of the plane so that we could get out of it as soon as possible, hastily even, in front of the shapeless mass that patiently and obediently waited behind us to leave in an orderly, martial way.

And then it happened. The Government introduced a bill on the compulsory use of behavioural substances. I couldn't believe it when I read it. I downloaded the document and spent the rest of the day reading it, analyzing it carefully. Then I called Manuel.

- I knew you were going to call me - that was the first thing he told me - we can't talk on the phone. We'll meet at the Café Central at seven. Be punctual, at eight I'll be gone.

Something in Manuel's voice sounded like goodbye. Something was terribly wrong.

I arrived at the Café Central at a quarter to seven. I sat down at our table, and slowly drank the coffee with milk that a solicitous waiter brought me right away. At seven o'clock Manuel entered the café, ordered a cognac and sat directly at my table.

- What's going on, Manuel? - I said, without further ado.

- More respect, young man, you are talking to the new Minister of Health - he let go. He left me no time to wonder - payment for the many services rendered, I suppose. Also, because they have no one left who is medium sized and who does not vibrate.

- Did you write the new law? - I said, and my voice perhaps sounded a little louder than it should.

He smiled bitterly.

- I have fought with all my might, for years, to keep that law from seeing the light. Do you know me so little? But this comes from above. From the very top. Far higher than the President. It's global and concerted.

I kept quiet, assimilating what Manuel was telling me. He took advantage of my silence to take a huge slab off his head.

- Do you know all the times you've asked me where the money to pay for the new welfare state came from? Well, from the Vibr. Not from the sale of the Vibr, of course: the Vibr doesn't cost anything to make, and it's sold at a throwaway price. But the Vibr pays handsomely. Vibr has greatly reduced social security contributions, and productivity has skyrocketed. Did you know that part of the citizen's aid programme is paid for by the companies themselves, for whom the new system is much more profitable than the previous one? No, of course you don't, because we keep it a secret.

Manuel drank his cognac, I remained in silence.

- Many people with little training die when they are still young and highly productive in their unskilled jobs. They don't give costs, only benefits. And there's no shortage of manpower for those jobs. We regulate the migratory flow from much less developed countries with surgical precision. The least skilled workers are always young. Have you seen how the Café Central vibrates?

I looked at him strangely, and suddenly I saw him. All the waiters. Very young, helpful. All vibrant. A chill ran down my back.

- Of course, in the higher categories the replacement is not so fast," continued Manuel, "we don't have many qualified and prepared people like you," and he raised his glass as if toasting to me. - That's why there have been many suitable incentives to prevent the most valuable people from falling into the Vibr.

- But, Manuel, what the hell is this? - That's all I was able to say.

- You know it well, but you don't want to accept it," said Manuel, softly, with a sad smile. "In the end, more than being a big business for the pharmaceutical companies, the Vibr is and always has been an experiment in large-scale social control, which was very suitable for adapting to a world where resources are beginning to be scarce and the environment is very destabilized. Thanks to the Vibr, global consumption is following a gentle downward curve, a controlled and piloted decrease. And everyone is participating in this decline happily and collaboratively. That's the way it has to be.

- But, with the new proposal...

- With the new law we adapt to a faster descent phase - Manuel's gaze was lost at the bottom of his cup - only exceptional people can afford not to be vibrants. Like you. That's why I'm telling you: to leave some memory of this. You know? This descent won't last forever, and it will take someone who knows how to stop it, who will apply the brakes when we have come down far enough and before we crash.

- That's crazy...

- "Crazy or not, it's a done deal," said Manuel, and in one gulp he knocked down his glass. Save yourself. - And after saying this he got up and left.

I stayed there still for a couple of minutes, stupefied, assimilating the new reality. Then I remembered that I was surrounded by vibrant people and I was flooded with a feeling of suffocation; I jumped up and walked out the door. I had been walking for a few meters when I realized that I had not paid. Neither had Manuel. I instinctively pulled a ticket out of my wallet, as a clumsy excuse, as if to stop the scrounger accusation of the waiter who had rushed out behind me and whose hand I sensed was going to land on my shoulder. But no waiter was following me. It was then that I understood. Vibrant people don't care, they have no preference. Society was maintained only by habit, only by appearance. The vibrant ones were already lost and wouldn't fight for anything.

I called my wife, Marcela and my children and I'm meeting all of them at home. I had to talk to them, that very night.

Marcela improvised a snack and set it on the table where we all sat. I presided over it. I didn't like having to preside over anything. But on that occasion I had to do it. And I would.

- I suppose you know why I called you, I said.

- "The new law," said Clara.

- "The one that's going to get us all killed," said John.

His mother frowned slightly, rebuking him.

- That's right, to kill us," I said, and Mary stared at me with her mouth open. If I, who always took the iron out of things, said that, then the situation was serious.

- With the new law - I continued - it will be obligatory to consume Vibr "to improve productivity" if certain objectives are not achieved, which will depend fundamentally on age and level of training. What counts, basically, is how much you earn. This is how people will be valued: by what they earn.

I looked at Marcela:

- You, Marcela, with your classes and your crafts, you don't make minimum wage. At your age, which is almost my age, you will be forced to take Vibr as soon as the law comes into effect, the day after tomorrow.

I looked at my wife:

- You, Maria, are a qualified employee. You won't have to take Vibr for the time being, but when you turn 55 they'll check your file again and your salary should have practically doubled from what it is now, and I'm sure that won't happen. So you're not gonna get to retire. I'm sorry.

I looked at my kids:

- You guys are going to college, so you're exempt from taking Vibr until you're 30. It may seem like a long time, but it's not that long. At 30 you'll have to have a job and your salary should be at least 4 times the minimum wage. According to the statistics, the chances are that one of you won't make it. At 35 your salary should be 6 times the minimum wage. It will be very difficult for both of you to make it, but if you work like beasts you might make it. At 40, the salary of the one who is still alive should be 12 times the minimum wage. According to the statistics, even taking into account that you belong to the most privileged 10% of society, you have - the one who survives - a 5% chance of achieving it. To get to 45, 1 in a thousand. I think we can take it for granted that you will not meet your grandchildren.

They were all looking at me in desolation, taking the hit.

- As for me - I said to finish - I am too important for them, and although my salary is not so extraordinary they have made a special chapter for people like me. I'll be retired by the time I'm 70 if my body can take it. After that, they will leave me two years to sort out my affairs, and then I will have the choice between killing myself or the Vibr. Redundancy is worthwhile.

- What are we going to do, Dad? - said Clara, distressed

I looked at my face in the dining room mirror. So many years of hard work and bad life had left me a face that was a cross between Santa Claus and George Clooney. With more of the former than the latter. I laughed, literally, at my face.

I stood up. My back hurt a little, I felt my bones tired from so much traveling here and there, from so many meetings. So much effort to get to this point. What idiocy! What immense foolishness, that of the human race!

One second to think about it, another to decide. I took the ticket for the Café Central out of my pocket, and I left it with a strong hand on the table.

- Now, Clara," I said, in a loud voice, "now we are going to war.

Antonio Turiel
September 2018