Thanksgiving 2029: Nobody's Grateful

"What about your declining environment, the exhausting of your energy supply and the madness of honey to rules your lives? Surely, you don't deny those things!"

"I deny none of it!"

"Then how can you keep on partying like everything is OK? What about those facts I just mentioned?"

"We have a foolproof way of dealing with facts here: we ignore them! As proof of our success, I show you all our shiny, happy faces!"

"For today anyway."

"On what other day would you have us live!"

-In the Land of Sir Real

Damn, turns out we'd been grateful all these years for nothing. Call us the ungrateful dead. Ever since last September when the Final Report came out declaring the earth ruined beyond all repair, chaos and despair rules the planet as never before. Wild theories abound of hope and nonsense, prophets of doom declare we'll blow up the world for sure now. Martial law is the norm as jackboot thugs have their day at last. How did it get this way? It had all been Necessary.

The century started off in horror with an attack on American shores. It became Necessary for us to go to war. And no point was war ever deemed Unnecessary. The religion of greed, sanctioned as Necessary and holy by all, ran rampant, driving more and more souls into the streets. For a while a mirage of human will appeared and lulled us back to sleep, but the mirage evaporated, finally culminating in the food riots of 2022. Oil is $550 a barrel and gasoline rationed to allow for the maximum amount of fuel for the delivery of food. It is never enough. Oil, above all, was the lynchpin to all things Necessary.

Eh, turns out we really couldn't handle the truth!

But no amount of money - which was supposed to save us - or military might - which was supposed to save us - or religion - which was supposed to save us - can do anything at all about our permanently deteriorating climate. All sorts of emergency measures were passed and hollow words spoken in appeasement to the gods, but it is Too Late. Our planet is the Titanic only we have no way off. And I wonder: were all these things really so Necessary and unquestionable?

So now we get up in the mornings and say: What now? What does anything matter? We kidded ourselves we were good people, proper and dutiful, doing as we were told, blind lemmings led over a cliff. Everyone's angry and finally wants to do something and fix everything and question our world. But what does that mean on a planet destined to become unlivable? Our eyes turn to the witches we crucified in the past, the ones who told us we traveled down the wrong path but we literally hated them to death. Now death becomes us.

Man has no say here anymore. We've forfeited our right to determine our destiny. We abused the gifts of God. God has no need to judge us, we wrapped our own fate into a nice, tidy package simply by defying the laws of nature - laws made by God herself. The dream is over. We demanded the car keys and promptly totaled the responsibility given us, seeing only its perks and mocking the dangers. We thought we could wish our way to paradise, making reality as we fancied. But there was no love in that.

And yet, even now, there are those who say it's still the time for love.

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