Armageddon is just a few steps away

The world seems to be teetering on the precipice of a cliff right now. Just this week the Russo-Ukranian war has escalated to a new and dangerous level, Russian people are fleeing their own country, there appears to be war ‘by other means’ being waged against NATO – evidenced by the destruction of the gas pipeline in the Baltic – and the new British government has scored an ‘own goal’ of apocalyptic scale against its economy, with possible repercussions for the rest of the world’s economies.

Such a concatenation is bad, but it’s come on top of a pile of other issues – including massive social strains on the back of the Covid-19 pandemic. There is a point where society simply breaks. It’s the old story of the jenga blocks: the tower stays apparently stable and intact despite the steady whittling away at the blocks holding it up. Then suddenly it collapses.

The world is at a crossroads, and not one as benign as the one in this photo I took in the Hobbiton Movie Set.

The possibility of a nuclear war in Europe – for the first time in a generation – is disturbing. I think deterrence remains valid, though, at least for now. What worries me more is the economic crisis that’s rolling over us like a tide, for which that war is one clear driver. But there are others, including systemic problems. It’s been long predicted. Back in 2008, major world governments bought their way out of a looming super-depression with ‘stimulus packages’. The problem, then, was the way the neoliberal system had enabled debts, themselves, to be bought and sold without due consideration as to whether they could be paid back. But the ‘stimulus packages’ didn’t fix the problem: they merely kicked the can into the future. Nor was anything done to stop this kind of behaviour continuing.

The General Financial crisis didn’t end

Right now we are in 2008’s future, and it’s all coming home to bite us. Societies worldwide have been under massive strain thanks to nearly three years of Covid pandemic restrictions which – generally – have rendered the governments imposing them deeply unpopular. Ordinary people – mostly the middling classes – have discovered they are powerless to stop the ongoing action of neo-liberal economic structures that impoverish everybody except a small number of wealthy (it’s to do with tax structures). That’s led to a swing to hard-right demagogues – most recently in Italy, which has its first fascist government since 1943. This isn’t because the powerless and dispossessed want fascist dictatorships. It’s because those demagogues have promised to give the people what they want – something that big business and conventional politicians (who rely on that big business for their funds) have not done.

All this is sending the world into a very dangerous place politically. Democracy isn’t automatic – most countries had to fight to get it. The system very nearly lost out, during the twentieth century, to the powers of totalitarianism. To now throw it away seems foolish. But that is what is happening.

The looming economic crash

I can’t help thinking that the looming economic crash will only make that problem worse. The problem is multi-layered. First, everything was under stress during the late 2010s because of the failure to fix the neo-liberal mechanisms. Then Covid crashed the party – leading one central bank after another to blast money into the world’s economies. All that did was fuel inflation. Into this mix has come the Russo-Ukranian war, where the major global impact – even if it escalates further – will likely remain economic. And the British government’s incredible ‘own goal’ this week underscores just how fragile and jumpy the whole system is.

Will the world get out of this mess? What worries me is that everything has happened because of (wait for it) rational decisions. Step by step. And we’re moving closer and closer to the precipice – rationally. In reality, human ‘rationality’ always has an emotional basis. But that doesn’t undo the fact of such decisions being made, apparently rationally. And so we inch ever-closer to inevitable collapse.

I hope everything will stay together for a while, at least until Christmas. But who really knows. Thoughts?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2022