We cannot breathe the digital
We believed we knew what was coming, the the seas would rise, the heat increase, that the weather would become more severe, less predictable. That there would be a point of no return if we did not act.
We did not.
What we believed we knew was both correct and incomplete.
We did not know that the 30 year war to fight air pollution could be lost so quickly.
A single match, a spark from the engine, a lightning strike, a short from the desktop power supply; the flame begun, the conflagration guaranteed and now
we cannot breathe.
We did not understand the consequences of how putting out fires could lead to more and worse fires.
We knew that personal property was valued above common sense, we did not know how far this had advanced. We still are unable to correct this course of action.
Our heads are not in the sand because we have used up all the sand to build things. We did not think it was possible to use up something like sand or …
Structural sciences provided a means to build where such things should not/would not traditionally have been built.
We believed we had safeguarded ourselves from all but the most unlikely natural disasters.
We were unable to see far enough forward to know that our actions yesterday would cause worse things to come.
Now,
we cannot breathe,
soon the mountains will move again. We have been here before and barely survived, it is or seems unlikely that we can this time.
They use the phrase ‘perfect storm’ as though this kind of perfection is uncommon.
Today all we experience is this sort of perfection.
The confluence of change, mistakes, and natural cycles, strike us at every turn. So many, so fast that there seems no way to either comprehend or act to, if not prevent, remedy the disasters of now and tomorrow’s tomorrows.
The mountains rumble, the foothills burn, the oceans churn cyclones and hurricanes.
We once decried rivers that burned and chemicals that poison food,water, all living beings. We thought that we could reverse this course by halting and remediation.
The harms continued, we could say that we did not know, but some did and did not stop the harm — potential, evident, and future.
We cannot breathe without masks that hide our faces that the governments find threatening to their security.
We cannot breathe and if we cannot that which we eat cannot breathe as they need to.
Our (as if they are ours — ?) trees are dying.
Our seas are dead, birds fall from the sky or hop grounded yet even so low the air is not clear enough. No calls to mate just open beaks — as if to aid in and exhale.
Air so thick, like hot icy fog lay against the ground. Grasses are damp with morning dew yet brown and lifeless.
Is there a way to warn what comes after us?
They said/believed the digital would save us, hiding the costs in energy in space, hiding the reality the if humanity continued in that direction there would be one moment when all of digital history could be disappeared …
There was not and never will be batteries enough to safeguard the digital.
We cannot breathe the digital, we cannot read or listen or compute the digital if there is no electricity for the digital to exist.
If we cannot breathe who can keep the digital going? Without errors creeping in, without malfeasance from someone with a match, a spark — who, disaster though it may be, is willing to pull the plug and damn the consequences?
This is more than we are the enemy.
And
we cannot breathe
