If we were to accept for a moment that other intelligent life forms exist in the universe, we might also have to concede that the ongoing shenanigans on Earth may have attracted some attention.

If they are smart enough to be able to travel this far, our extra-terrestrial brethren will also be aware of the foolhardiness of landing on this particular planet. Out there beyond the Solar System, perhaps a visit to see the Earthlings is a rite of passage, a cautionary excursion for wayward teenaliens, or even just good laugh, in much the same voyeuristic way that our own ancestors might have viewed a visit to a psychiatric institution or a freak show. 

If they successfully negotiate the high-speed halo of space junk and satellites^[1] that circle our planet, any prospective visitors could then admire the drifting cloud tableaux and emblematic landmasses. Unfortunately, as they got nearer they would also note the concentration of light pollution in our burgeoning cities, the networks of choking stone ribbons that link them and the artificial boundaries that delineate cultural identities, superimposed on diminishing natural habitats. 

We may not understand our visitors but nor do we understand ourselves and, looking down on our futile seething, most likely neither would they. Who would honestly want us living anywhere remotely near them? Aside from smelling of fried steak and welding^[2], space clearly has other welcome attributes and interplanetary distance is an oft-underestimated quantum. When they see what constitutes quality of life for many people in a world pocked with poverty, spiralling over-indulgence and power struggles, what will they make of us? 

We want the world and we do indeed want it now, and that we also seem intent on trashing the place is simply another facet of the paradoxes we inhabit with such apparent and uncomfortable ease. We, the western outriders of freedom who cruise the malls of choice are not really living the dream, but the dream, for its part, is not living up to its billing either. Far from feeling free, many people are attempting to escape or hide as traditions and parameters erode. And although, in more affluent societies, we luxuriate in the manifold benefits of techno-social advancement, nothing that once seemed clear and consistent is so anymore, the discombobulating speed and complexity of this change is beginning to generate a perceptible sense of displacement.

With all our leisure and technology, if we really have never had it so good, why the apathy and fear, anxiety and depression, violence and crime? If everything is getting better then how come it seems to be getting more chaotic? How can we be progressing if everything is speeding up, breaking down, falling apart or running out? What are these the symptoms of and how did it ever come to this? If we really are moving forward, then where exactly do we think we are headed? Oxymoronic times indeed. 

It is sometimes said that 1950s America was that sweet spot in the parabola of modernity where the new was still new enough to just add piquancy to the old, when plenteous lifestyles blended easily with traditions and relative innocence still had some way to run before hardening into crumbly disillusion. 

When that post-war zephyr made landfall in Europe a decade later it aroused the same tangible updraught of naïve optimism about the future. It became a cliché that by ‘the year 2000’ we would all be zipped into aluminium suits and hovering cheerfully over our neighbourhoods, having eschewed food in favour of nutrition pills, saved by our own ingenuity. But somewhere along the line that hopeful breeze stilled and was replaced instead by a growing sense of uncertainty and anxiety about what the grinning future might be holding behind its back for us.

Then, seemingly without warning, something viral swept the planet, ground our crazed momentum to a halt and locked it down. Suddenly, we were confronted with a wholly new perspective on ourselves and the way many of us had been long accustomed to living. Whatever the ramifications of the 2020 corona episode, things will never be quite the same again. The way ahead is no longer clear; there is no path and we suddenly find ourselves strangely alone and perilously near the edge of something we’d rather not peer over. Unsurprisingly then, there is an aggressive trend these days for looking back in angst to seemingly less vertiginous times.

Is it possible that things could have turned out any other way? Could we ever hope to arrive at a place of harmony without this uncomfortable phase? How could we have leapt from superstition to hi-sci without first understanding the physical laws that govern ourselves and the world we live in? Like it or not, understand it or not, there is a terrible logic to our forward motion.

Four hundred years ago or so, the West set out on a voyage of scientific discovery and now, for all our satellite tracking, we find ourselves strangely adrift. While there is justifiable speculation that this might be that point in history that has been spoken of for so long, within this fractured gathering of the incompatibilities there is also a strange dawning of the mind, as with one who is being roused from a long, deep slumber. We do aspire to unity, liberty and peace, but at the same time we just can’t help ourselves.

Where are we now? Countless hours of discussion and miles of column inches have been devoted to what might or might not be going on yet, for all the drama and analysis, there is a general dearth of understanding about what is happening and why. One thing is clear though: we can’t carry on as we are. The centrifugal force of the times is taking the mosaic of modernity apart, and so we live in a swirling whirlwind – a worldwind even – of cultural debris, deeply analogous to the high-speed eddies of techno-shreds raging above our planet. No society is untouched by the disintegrating intensity, and as we struggle to maintain perspectives on a shattering world view, the storm clouds of change continue to gather apace.
(from The Other Side of the Fish)

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^[1] There are currently thought to be more than a million pieces of disintegrating space junk in orbit around the Earth, 70,000 of which are about the size of a postage stamp and only 9,000 larger than a tennis ball, but travelling at speeds of up to 40,000 kph, depending on altitude. Of the approximately 4,000 satellites launched, there are ‘several hundred’ currently actively in orbit. (nasa.gov)

^[2] According to astrophysicists at the Max Planck Institute, the centre of our galaxy is infused with the aroma of raspberries and rum. Yum.