Choices - Part 1

I'm afraid to say this.

'But why Wallace?'

Well when I do, many of you will judge me and possibly think badly of your Lord Mayor... I feel this title appropriate since this is my town.

It's this that I'm afraid to say.

There is a small voice out there. Some of you won't have heard them. If you have, you may have thought 'crackpot', 'nutter', 'extremist'. These people are talking about a potential collapse of this industrialised civilisation and linking it's end to our economic reliance on energy, specifically oil. They talk about the cyclical nature of these collapses and all of them connected with over reliance on a specific form of fuel. The Mayans, Romans, Easter Islanders. They say our lives/lifestyles as we know them now, can't/won't stay the same forever and that there is no way out for us now but to accept the future and to prepare for it as best we can.

'Yeah, yeah Wallace, heard it all before . That's the fucking hippies moaning about the ozone layer and too many short flights on Ryan air'. 'That's the conspiracists that bang on about Cheney and Wolfowitz and all their vested interests. Anyway even if it were true, it's ok, there will be oil enough and then they'll find something else for us to use when it runs out. Don't worry.'

The thing is. I do. I don't worry for the future generations of hairy little Wallace's, because I don't want kids. I don't worry for the planet either - global warming has happened before and eventually the Earth recovered. Granted we can expect the extinction of millions of forms of life, probably human beings too, but what's that to the earth? A blip on it's radar. A fucking tragic blip, but a blip nevertheless.

What I really worry about is what am I going to do with my life in the light of this information, (which plainly I have thus far, swallowed hook, line and sinker). Do I make a choice governed by greed or one governed by a hope that change, at an individual level, can and should happen?

I can take this knowledge, weigh it up and laugh it off, say to myself: 'Look, just enjoy life while it lasts - you could get run over by a bus tomorrow. ' or do I say, 'There is hope. You don't have to shut yourself off and do a Nero. Change can happen. There is still time for you to do something beyond self-gratification.'

Can I make a change in my own life? Maybe bring together other people who also want to make changes? Does my life have to suffer because it's inextricably linked to a civilisation sinking into a gross display of wanton greed and on the verge of collapse? Maybe, (I will use 'maybe' a lot), change could have some sort of impact, maybe at a local level, maybe on a wider one.

But what's the point, if it's all going to go belly up?

Maybe it's partly an instinct for survival, maybe because I want do something that challenges me, maybe the thought of just sitting here on my arse doing nothing because I'm not sure of the future, is beginning to make me feel like I'm trapped. I don't like feeling trapped. Will I be able to hold my head up and say I didn't just give up? I didn't role over because it was deemed unfashionable or weak to ask why we had to perpetuate a way of life that actually we've only known for a realtively short period of time, which admittedly can be gratifying occassionally; I'm thinking: cream cakes and coffee....Guiness and ciggies, internet porn and tissues, mozzarella cheese and swan fucking…. See Halls of Harriet for an explanation.

But you're so good at sitting on your arse.

I know, I know. Don't get me wrong your Lord Mayor will never get tired of that. Maybe a little less inactivity for the time being will provide me with plenty of arse relief later.


So you see the choice ahead. I know some of you think my mind is already made up, although if you really knew me, you'd know this is just another potential obsession - like that one I had with the number 32. All I really know is this: Initially I made a decision to get off the career ladder and to look at how my lifestyle offered me real personal autonomy, by that I mean the freedom to make changes as and when I like, not when it's deemed appropriate by someone who doesn’t know me. Thus far I feel that my newer lifestyle does offer me some freedom, but it's still so entrenched and if the nutters are right, all too fragile.

Further exploration is definitely required. I want to look to the future with a belief that the choices I make will have been based on a greater understanding of what it means to really be free.

Anyway, I've said it. If you want to hear a bit more about what the mad ones think, then check out Rob ‘He lost the plot didn't he?’ Newman’s recent More4 stand-up ‘The History of Oil’. If you can swallow a lot of what Michael Moore tells you, then this shouldn’t be any more difficult and you may well find it a lot funnier. Maybe.

As to my next move? I shall keep you updated on my progress as I embark on a trip with my good friend Barry, to meet 'The Boat People of Brittany'.