This is a grim post. Those easily depressed might want to give it a pass.
By the end of this century, our
planet will have, depending on who you believe, and on the impact
of any global catastrophes, between nine and fourteen billion people.
North America's population, barring physical and military blockades
blocking access by billions of desperate immigrants, will soar to
between one and one and a half billion, with all of the increase from
today's levels attributable to immigration. North America's
metropolitan areas will grow rather more slowly than those in
struggling nations, but will on average be five times larger than they
are now in population, and thanks to urban sprawl, seven to ten times
larger in area.
Your reaction is probably to say "it will never happen, it's
inconceivable". That's what the planners said in 1980 when these kind
of projections were made for Lagos, Nigeria. It was unimaginable that a
city that in 1950 contained merely 300 thousand people would grow, in
half a century, to become the world's third largest and still fastest
growing city at 15 million people, increasing by a million people per year.
But, as George Packer reports in a stunning report in this week's New
Yorker (not available online) this is precisely what has happened.
photo from the New Yorker by Samantha Appleton
Lagos is a city that most of its own residents acknowledge to be hell
on Earth, but still struggle and scrape through each day with the grim
determination to survive and, just maybe, buck all the odds and climb
out of destitution. This is a city of staggering inequality and
inequity, with a Gini index nearing a 'perfect' 1.0 -- almost all the
wealth is held by a tiny minority of corrupt officials, criminals and
mob leaders, and corruption and crime pervades all economic activity.
This is a city of horrific and constant violence and the threat of
violence -- dead and mutilated human bodies are ignored the way we
ignore roadkill. This is a city of absolute hierarchy -- everyone is in
thrall to those (ogas, --
literally 'masters') one step higher in the pyramid, from whom they get
'security' and a chance at the few pitiful jobs, and to whom they pay
90% of what they earn. This pyramid is entirely unofficial, but
ironclad -- the cost of disregarding it is often your life. The
struggle to survive is a 24/7 ordeal, so that, as one of the people in
Packer's report puts it, in Lagos, "if you sit down, you die".
This is a city that doesn't have slums, it is
a slum, all fifteen million people in every quarter of the city. It is
a city where garbage and sewage and toxic waste is everywhere, where
clean running water and flush toilets are virtually non-existent. Where
disease is everywhere and ever-threatening. Where pollution is so bad
that residents' faces are grey. Where police, authorities and gangs all
extort money from anyone who wants anything or dares to enter their
turf. Where fuel dumps and waste fuel spills lit afire constantly light
up the night and choke the lungs with toxins. Where the only
significant change from year to year are the endless streams of new
immigrants and the building husks left behind from rampant arson. Where
most of the population sleeps outdoors, often surrounded by mosquitos,
garbage and sewage. Where gang wars between Moslems and Christians,
often precipitated by trivial events, kill thousands.
Packer says "the human misery of Lagos not only overwhelms one's senses
and sympathy but also seem irreversible". He quotes a city district
senior administrator who describes the city as "an impending
disaster...a powder keg...it's just going to boil over" as it grows to
23 million people by 2015, and by another million a year after that.
When Packer asked the editor of the city's largest newspaper what keeps
the people of Lagos going, when they have no homes, no basic government
services, no utilities, no jobs, and no order or security, he replies
"They never believe there's no chance". Religion is big business in
Lagos, and the people not only cling to the hope of salvation in the
afterlife, they cling to the promise of capitalism and civilization
that if they work hard enough they will succeed in pulling themselves
out of their desperate situation. Both promises seem leaps of
impossible faith, since there is no evidence anywhere to support either
of them. This, it seems, is the nature of humanity -- no matter how far
we fall from the grace of a joyful, easy, natural life, no matter how
grim and brutal and full of pain and suffering our lives are, we
plug on, never seeing how far we are from where we once were, never
giving up, never becoming so full of grief for what we have lost, and
forgotten, as to diminish our faith that, despite the fact that what we
have been doing has got us into desperate straits, doing a little bit more of it will somehow get us out, lead us to salvation.
We have no choice in this. This is who we are.
I read this report right after re-reading Tom Robbins delightful article In Defiance of Gravity, in which he describes how he overcame near-suicidal depression and weltschmerz and rediscovered crazy wisdom, "the
wisdom that evolves when one, while refusing to avert one's gaze from
the sorrows and injustices of the world, insists on joy in spite of
everything". I have tried to embrace this wisdom, but it provides no
protection against the bleak vision of the future that Packer presents
to us.
If we are be joyful in spite of everything we must do it the way John Gray suggests: do nothing more than becoming more our animal selves -- reconnecting with the
rest of life on Earth and with our primeval senses and instincts, getting
outside our heads, coping with contingencies, relearning to play, living in the
moment, turning back to real, mortal things, and simply seeing what is.
That means giving up trying to save the world, and just working to make
things better within our own communities, and creating working models
that might be useful for those of our species that survive the fall. To
some extent that means we have
to "avert our gaze" from the truth of what we have done and what is
likely to come. If we are not insane already, staring too long or too
closely at that horrific truth will surely plunge us over the edge. And
then we won't be of any use to anyone.
So here's to seeing the truth and then turning away. We have so much
work to do. And so much of life's joys to experience, while we can.
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7:33:03 PM 
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
