WTF was that?

Fire is a funny thing, as long as it has fuel and oxygen and can produce more energy than is being lost it will sustain itself, if it produces less energy than is being lost it dies down, if it produces much more energy than is being lost it grows, providing the supply of fuel and oxygen remains.

Fire does not just wax and wane, in our modern lives we keep the fire in one place, inside the internal combustion engine, inside the central heating boiler, and we bring the fuel to it.

In nature, to which we have become unaccustomed, fire is a traveller, sometimes a very fast traveller, able to outrun any land bound creature on the planet, even fleet footed four legged creatures.

Proportionally speaking no modern western human has seen an out of control fire, not even a fireman attending a burning building in a town or city… sure, some modern humans have seen first hand an out of control bush or forest fire that devastates hundreds of thousands of acres in a day, but from above, from the periphery, from a distance, on the telly, which tells you nothing… but proportionally speaking this is still nobody.

Almost literally nobody left alive on the planet has seen an out of control fire in a man made environment, we still talk about the great fire of London, and of course there was Dresden, technically Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t burn.

Yet the process of combustion remains unchanged, fuel and oxygen lie around aplenty, and while construction and zoning laws do much to mitigate problems, the real moderator is mains pressure water everywhere and a fire service, so fires get fought and contained early, thanks to sprinkler systems and fire engines.

Turn off the water and the fire can grow up to be a traveller, turn off the electric and you turn off the water…. yahbut yeah but no but maybe but

Turn off the water, or the electric, and the sources of fire multiply a millionfold, from cooking fire to heating fire to seeing in the dark fire, we all know how to start a fire, I start a fire every time I light a cigarette.

But proportionally speaking none of you know first hand that even mains water and electric and a fire engine won’t stop an out of control fire, or what that means to be anywhere near it.

So turning off the mains water or turning off the mains electric does not mean that there is no change to the risk of fire starting, because turning off mains electric to a town of 100,000 people (for example) means turning on 100,000 people who are going to start making fire, people who have no experience of making fire, or controlling it, or how fast it gets out of control, or what constitutes “fuel” for Mr Fire.

Aluminium is fuel, Tesco’s car park is fuel (bitumen) dotted around with other sources of fuel, upholstery, paint, wiring insulation, tyres and of course tanks containing diesel and petrol… get the fire hot enough and even human beings are fuel, our flesh and bones and especially our fat will all burn exceeding well.

When such a fire gets out of control everyone stands around and asks, what the fuck happened? what the fuck was that?

Nothing happened, except a set of trivial events that each triggered other changes, and then all it took was one person to light one fire that got out of control, and in our putative town of 100,000 the odds on that happening became very high.

Turn off the mains water and electricity to any of our modern cities for three days and they could burn like Dresden. A fire-storm so intense it consumes everything, even flesh, and which travels so fast it can outrun flesh.

But enough of fire, it sets a nice example that anyone can relate to.

The nice example is that all the things required are lying around, and all it takes is a few things to change, even if those things have nothing directly to do with fuel or oxygen, because those few changing things will change other things, like the power going off will make people reach for the lighter and matches.

Now, in the west, we face many things changing, as I type this there is a modern Watergate going on with the press and police and politicians right here in the UK, plus there is a financial meltdown in progress as everyone tried to kick unsustainable and unserviceable sovereign and personal debt down the road, so that the inevitable default is not on their watch, thus making the inevitable worse, we have an economic and manufacturing meltdown, we have a society that has collapsed, fuck you buddy, broken homes and disenfranchised fathers with no incentive to play the game, we have an energy crisis made worse by all the green anti nuclear bullshit and our reliance on fossil fuels, I could go on…

Each set of these changes is triggering other changes, we can observe many of them, but as this ongoing process is an ongoing process, predicting which change will trigger which change, which will conspire with another change triggering something else, which will conspire with some one reaching for the matches to stay warm or cook some food or light their way… who knows…

But it would be unbelievably stupid to sail on under the impression that no cumulative changes can take place and no trigger event can be caused and sooner or later things will settle down back to “normal”

Nevertheless, unbelievably stupid is exactly what history tells us human beings are extremely good at, just look back at any of the trigger moments in history… all the main players were unbelievably stupid, and deliberately so as there was better information within their grasp, and sadly this goes for the bit players too…. any jew within 1,000 miles of germany when the balloon went up in 1939 was a fucking asshole, just like the fucking assholes who got stuck in Libya or Egypt or Serbia or anywhere else on a cheap holiday or a well paying contract job or a gap year or whatever.

And then these unbelievably stupid people become the raison d’etre for more unbelievably stupid people to do ever more unbelievably stupid things.

You can draw a direct line from the stupidity of the japanese in attacking pearl harbour and the yanks in being complacent and vulnerable to hiroshima and nagasaki.

Which is basically the situation we find ourselves in now, whether it comes to the currently unfolding press / police / politics scandal, all unbelievably stupid people, the financial crisis, all unbelievably stupid people (not just the bankers, the proles who got 110% interest only mortgages) etc etc

And the thing all unbelievably stupid people have in common is that they spend all their time gazing at their own navels, and ignoring the world around them, and the feedback loops between their actions and that world, so there is a direct correlation between unbelievably stupid people and lazy people.

Animals, en masse, start running like fuck at the earliest signs of a quake or a fire or any other large event…. they don’t sit around with their opposable thumbs up their asses asking WTF was that?

“Running” means figuratively speaking as well as physically speaking.

Politicians should have run like fuck from Murdoch by 2000 at the latest.

Bankers should have run like fuck from deregulation by 1990 at the latest.

Society should have run like fuck from pc touchy feely green feminist bullshit by 1980 at the latest.

No never mind, there is no need to fight against the feminazis, or the secret family courts, or the corrupt politicians, or the Murdochs of the world, because figuratively speaking the water and electric supply is failing, and people are reaching for matches, and everything that was previously apparently both coated in teflon and fireproof will burn well enough.

WTF was that?

That was the future you could have built going up in flames, perfectly avoidable if you hadn’t all been so unbelievably stupid and short sighted and self interested.