Civilisation winding down?

The pace of progress our civilisation has made over the last decades is impressive and incomparable with any other period of well-researched history. Mould-breaking developments have been made for instance in medicine, engineering, information technology and have left positive marks on our everyday lives.

Thanks to improvement in information exchanges and growing availability and affordability of long-distance fast transport, the world has virtually shrunk. Places out of reach a few decades ago seem now close at hand. Day-to-day unlimited communication with people is now not confined only to those who surround us. Those processes, as I notice, do not have “ever-expanding” character. We seem to be falling victim to them, or they are self-reversing. Just take a look.

Smartphones are the essential tool of information exchange for today’s youngsters, yet for many they have become the prevalent means of communication with the rest of the world. The quite frequent sight of a group of young people all staring at their phones instead of talking to one another is just one of bleak proofs of excessive dependence on technology.

Nearly any place on earth can be reached by air transport within 24 hours, and plane journeys are affordable for masses, yet there is a growing number of places being a no-go areas for tourists; places which a few years ago used to be popular destinations: Crimea, Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, some Greek islands besieged by immigrants from Middle East just to name a few. Though Poles’ horizons have broadened, their holiday plans have been altered by new global threats, thus Baltic sea shore, despite cold water, changeable weather, wild crowds and sky-high prices of everything a tourist needs, is again the preferable holiday destination. In 1990s Poles would go to the seaside because overseas resorts were out of their reach financially or because they were daunted by the unknown exotic places. Today the seaside is a safer place (with improved tourist infrastructure one needs to admit).

Two years ago, as I roamed around Germany, I did not take into account I could become a victim of terrorist attack in a shopping mall or restaurant. Paris, Munich, Nice until recently used to have all makings of a safe place for tourists and residents. Terrorism is not an entirely new phenomenon in Europe. Munich was attacked during Olympic Games in 1972. Madrid commuter trains were blown up in 2004, London public transport vehicles in 2005. Yet the frequency of attacks and profiles or terrorists have changed. Today we do not witness Al-Kaida taking revenge for military intervention in Afghanistan. Today secret services do not observe terrorists collectively planning an attack together. Today’s fanatic killer is a young brain-washed male on a lonely, unaided mission to murder possibly many people before he dies martyr.

Societies are becoming less tolerant, I wonder whether they will become less outgoing. Will fear of and dislike for the others become a factor keeping people inside walls of their homes?

After the financial tsunami in 2008 many thought the new economic order will change workings of the world. In fact little has changed. Economies have ridden out the storm although one should be far from declaring they are doing well; had they been, interest rates would have been jacked up. Yet the societal change might be imminent. To keep going, people need to earn and spend money; produce and exchange services, yet who how flows between economic actors go no longer is a subject of economic debate, it has become more about politics and social science. From the economic point of view if in a developed economy there are low-paid jobs domestic workers are unwilling to take up, such gap is filled with migrants from less developed countries being a motivated, cheap labour force which moves the economy forward. From the social or political standpoints, migrants are becoming an unwanted element, regardless of their impact on economic growth and well-being of the whole society.

The ongoing social change is reflected in political choices and the victory of PiS in Poland last year is not the most glaring example. Donald Trump’s dreadful popularity in the United States and support for Brexit in the United Kingdom fill me with far more uncertainty regarding future.

I fear that the world is heading towards isolation, on micro and macro scale. Demise of bonds between humans is already perceptible. Decades ago people had a few close friends and had closer (though often not ideal) relationships with families. Today people have hundreds of acquaintances (a good measure is a number of connections on social networks) but despite this not seldom feel lonesome.

Besides, for most of July I felt too comfortably, too carefree, at times lethargic or numb. That state has given way to some sort of anxiety, a gut feeling something bad might afflict me personally in the close future. Hope it is just a mild version of mid-summer blues caused by to humid air ;-)

Good God, under starry skies we are lost

11 September 2001, New York, Washington, Pennsylvania

11 March 2004, Madrid

7 July 2005, London

And a peaceful decade thereafter? Is my memory that short or had there been no spectacular terrorist attack in Europe since then until last Friday? Until I went to bed on Friday around half past nine p.m., no news from the radio turned on had reached me. The tidings I woke up to yesterday were at first more horrible than when the whole picture of the massacre sank in.

In terms of scale and atrocity of the attacks in Paris compare to acts of violence committed in Madrid and London, but one difference deserves to be noted. In Paris victims were folks who sought entertainment, while in Madrid and in London the fatalities and the wounded were public transport passengers. As I attempt to put the attacks into psychological perspective, I wonder whether who terrorist target to kill, instils more or less fear into the society. Commuting to work or school or moving around the city is one of down-to-earth, repetitive everyday activities one cannot avoid. Going to a concert hall or sitting about outside cafeteria is what one associates with pleasure, breaking away from and forgetting for a moment about the daily grind. Would you suffer more if you realised you could be murdered by terrorist on your way to work or when you go out to relax?

When it comes to pure politics, the attacks will quite likely stoke up anti-migrant sentiments across Europe and send support for xenophobic right-wing lunatics on the rise. Those urging to close borders and stem the uncontrolled flow of migrants will not necessarily become more audible, but more will listen to them. A cool-headed analyst would remind you the 9/11, Madrid and London attacks were carried out well in advance of wave of migrants at the gates of Europe. Countries becoming targets of terrorists have one thing in common – they have got involved into the war against terrorism.

A noteworthy question which naturally comes up in such circumstances is how to crack down on ISIS, the vengeful and vindictive enemy. The simplest solution which comes to mind is dropping a nuclear bomb on the territories of Iraq and Syria controlled by ISIS. Simple solutions, however, tend to be silly and do more harm than good. The example above has two primary drawbacks: firstly, nuclear bombing would involve deaths of thousands of innocent civilians (not yet killed or driven out by the ISIS soldiers from their homes), secondly it would trigger brutal retaliation, conceivably even a doomsday. ISIS is not confined to territories it controls but has its envoys spread far and wide across the world and ready to hit no matter how high the price to pay would be. The most reasonable way to combat ISIS would be, in my opinion, to cut them off money they rely on to come by. Let’s face it. ISIS lacks natural resources it could sell, it also does not produce anything, it can only destroy, but in order to get hold of the weapons and keep control over its territory it needs financial resources from the outside. The only question is who their sponsors are and what their reasons behind supporting ISIS are.

Is it (yet another) the end of the world as we know it? After a much more dazzling 9/11 attacks the world looks broadly the same as before them. The main observable difference are the meticulous security controls on the airports, for many passengers being a pain in the arse and oddly enough not abided by in many less civilised airports, as evidenced by the recent tragedy in Egipt.

The world needs to face several challenges with terrorisms coming to the fore as one of the core perils to the Western civilisation in the 21st century. We need to live with it and carry on, otherwise terrorists will win the most important war, the psychological one. I remember well how may parents were scared in March 2004 (it was during my first school year of commutes to Warsaw), when trains exploded in Madrid and many feared that trains of Warsaw underground could also be attacked, since Poland had sent its army to Iraq and Afghanistan… There’s no other way than coming to terms with a risk of being killed by a terrorist, which is anyway probably lower than the chance of being killed in a traffic accident.

Dedicated a few hours of the weekend to the New Employer, with nothing in return. More reflections on this next week…