The following was cultivated from text generated by InferKit‘s AI-based text generation tool. The feature image was created using Morphogen’s Artbreeder.
The Revolution
The revolution will not be televised. But if it is, it is also going to be wild.
It is to be hoped this doesn’t end the debate over whether fiction is necessary to understand this world, and whether it even constitutes “realism” to acknowledge that one should “put oneself in the shoes of someone in the revolution.”
One idea that might be useful here is that some measures of realism are simply as useful as those measures of pure fiction. A truly fictional story can tell you not just who we see and what things look like, but how the characters behave, who they communicate with, what gets them upset, and how much they like or hate it.
Which is to say that it doesn’t matter if we know or don’t know, because it is not something we will be able to control for the indefinite future. Once the energy in the sun reaches a certain threshold, there will not be enough solar energy to support our ecology as we know it. We can only hope to survive at the current ecological level until the point of collapse.
This is a radical view. It means one thing: Civilization has almost already collapsed, and until it does, we are there. For many people this was enough to motivate them to change their personal lives and work in order to avoid that reality. But they’re missing the point. There is no reason to be afraid of the collapse.
We’ve learned how to adapt, and this crisis will pass.
Adapting to Collapse
We are not accustomed to seeing the collapse. Some of us were born at the end of the 20th century, when it was said that once we reached the end of the world, then it was ready for us. We’ve only recently started understanding the power of those warning signs and warning signals. The UN predictions that the world was approaching the end of its age of abundance were just that: predictions. Who is to say that these can’t all turn out to be false? We have only begun to understand that we’ve been living without food, shelter, water, and electricity for over 50 years. We are helplessly watching our world disappear.
Standing on a small platform in Washington, DC, on January 21st, Dr. Bernard Singletary, the National Co-Chair of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), called upon Americans to find peace and to take steps to create change.
His words came amid violence in the streets and the escalating possibility of an all-out nuclear war.
The burning of a “Trump flag,” which is being considered by many as racist, sends a powerful message. When more than 1.5 million people marched in Washington for climate change action and against racism, we showed the world that these leaders—feminists, artists, scientists, human rights lawyers, families and human rights defenders, and countless others—didn’t have to settle for a world of coal and oil and for a more dangerous America. That is what will make this world a better place, not a worse place. That is why we will never back down. That is why we are so inspired and so proud to have been here.
D.C. is usually a very long way from my home in L.A., but I hope that this country sees what’s going on. When I heard that students in Louisville were going to be paying close to $1,000 to go to a congressional hearing, I didn’t know if I was going to do anything. But I wasn’t going to sit there and watch.
I ran to the hearing to ask a question. I got on the floor, which was far more interesting than I’d expected. The dude I got up against questioned me for 2 minutes. He insisted that the bill was the single most important issue facing Georgia and that you should sign it or he’d kill it. I told him that I could not support something so damaging to our economy and that it didn’t pass the common sense test. He then turned to the girl who introduced the bill and stated that she was the most pro-gun rights person he’d ever met. This was so frustrating. Her real name wasn’t listed. When I confronted her about it, she blurted out that her brother is someone who’s also an Army veteran.
“Her name is Randy Melcher,” said the veteran, who asked not to be identified. “She just implied that my brother is from a terrorist family, and that’s not true.”
The soldier, who claims he is not related to Melcher, first alerted authorities to his sister’s lie after his mother got a call from a male friend of Melcher’s, who said she called her sister to say that her brother had been killed in a training accident, the soldier said.
The soldier’s mother said Melcher made the comment to a friend, and no friend or relative of Melcher was ever in touch with him or her daughter.
“They never saw him, never knew him, and I think it’s very important to note, none of these other children were ever taken into protective custody by the local police, and it is certainly that which is troubling,” said Lynn Sherrard.
The Year Is Yesterday 