the fallout of war

at the end of the second world war the world was left holding onto a very sticky problem, Chemical weapons and the associated industrial complex. What gainful use could the harmful weapons complex be put to? Like always humans pivoted and we had the revolutionary miraculous agricultural revolution. The chemical weapons complex was rapidly repurposed and repackaged as brand new state of the art research into pesticides and fertilizers that would boost yield and minimize wastage. Everyone bought into this dream because the world was hurting there was widespread hunger, specially in countries that had newly gained independence. Next followed the adaptation of the gain of function genetic research into the stupendously successful implementation in the field of GM crops. Between the chemical farming and the genetically modified cropping the scientists had us by the balls effectively so to speak.

It was only as late as the end of the 20th century and the start of the 21st that the world understood what we had done, what a huge gaffe had been committed in the name of development and progress. We had poisoned our ground water, destroyed the original nutrient dense produce and come to a point where we were not sure if we were eating food or rubber (think broilers versus free range chicken). Then began the tedious trudge back to organic farming and non-GMO food. Monsanto and Syngenta who used to be Gods during the heights of the supposed green revolution have today become overnight villains for most right thinking people. Villains who sold us a present by stealing from the future. Much like an energy drink high in caffeine, what the world consumed was energy from the future. Pretty much what we see today is in some manner the fallout, reduced immunity of human beings, increased potency of viruses and an ever greedy industrial complex refusing to give up on their quest to exploit. Exploit not optimize.

The current scenario is not much different from what we have seen in the past. However the beauty of history is that we never learn from history. And when you never learn from your past you are bound to repeat the mistakes you made in the past and keep tripping over your own self over and over again. We are at war with a non organism, a virus isn’t even capable of surviving outside of a host and yet here we, supposedly the smartest most evolved species, are decimated. This fight we will eventually win, for the time being, however the fallout is what one needs to be careful about. Like with the world wars there are and will be specific industries that are setup to fight this war against the virus as well. What happens to those industries once the war is over? The profit motive almost always dictates that we repurpose the capacity that has been built for some other seemingly profitable utility. Chances are that in the short term this utility might actually seem very apt. As humans we need to stop thinking profit if we are to avoid the increasingly sinister death traps that we keep guiding ourselves into.

One of the very lucrative repurposing of the latest war effort which I forsee is Work From Home. While it is absolutely no questions asked the best way to work, I’ve been a proponent for over 15years now, the fact remains that on the back of this positive fallout the industrial complex will aggressively push more powerful communications networks, 5G! We are still not out of the woods on Chernobyl, we do not know for sure where Covid19 came from and yet we are rushing headlong into a potential disaster for the human race. Before we have optimized what we already have, we are willing to rush headlong into that which is still in research and development stage. That is the shortsightedness which hopefully we will avoid. Looking back at history and counting the number of over enthusiastic tech evangelists, fat chance that a sane opinion about taking it slow will be heeded. There are enough means of communication already in place, people are getting addicted to their devices like never before, case in point this oncologist who I pass multiple times while out walking in the morning, he is perpetually glued to his phone screen even while jogging, it’s insanely not funny, in fact it’s downright stupid but then who will tell the poor sot about it. Chances are in another couple of generations we would have babies being born with a communications device implanted and synchronized to her parents (in their case surgically implanted) and a heads up display integrated into her cornea, evolution!!

So yeah we all need to think about this potential danger of repurposing of the military industrial complex which has come up to fight this war against Covid19, oxygen plants, drug manufacturing units, vaccines (and I’m not even going into the fallouts of these half assed quickly spliced together untested vaccines, leave aside all the fungal infections related to steroid abuse), all the billions and billions of face masks and mask manufacturing units. It’s important to think long term and not just about investments made in setting up of these units and how to recover/maximize the yield. A potential fallout of so much oxygen generation capability that I see is more pollution (yes it sounds stupid however we were and still are pushing in pesticides and fertilizers into the ground water so don’t tell me humans are incapable of stupidity). The argument would be we have all this extra oxygen generation capability why not supply it to residential areas and relax pollution norms so that industry can flourish (again my arguments are rudimentary right now but trust me our governments are more than capable of refining my juvenile attempt at justifying more pollution because we have more oxygen argument). Guard against it because 50 years down the line our kids will be realizing just how naive the previous generation was while they try to undo the damage that we might do today.