I love William Gibson but it rubs me the wrong way a bit that he (or the author) so casually attributes the apocalypse to flying (among other things) and then, without irony goes on to say that he’s been visiting London for several decades.... I’m assuming by plane, from Vancouver.
Alan Moore (author of Watchmen and many other things) presents a nice interpretation of the Apocalypse here <a href="https://youtu.be/cBc71ROdGxU" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/cBc71ROdGxU</a>
> Agency focuses on an alternate present in which Britain did not vote to leave the EU and the US did not elect Donald Trump as its 45th president. But this is no Remainer fantasy: an unspecified conflict in the Syrian city of Qamishli has brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.<p>Reminds me of Ken MacLeod's The Execution Channel, which goes out of its way to mention that Gore was elected president- and an alternate 9/11 that hits Boston and Philadelphia leads to the War on Terror anyway. Though written in 2006 or so, it felt particularly prescient a peace later despite being pre-smartphones and social media- it capture an increasingly paranoid world choked full of state-sponsored internet disinfo, influential conspiracy theory bloggers, climate change refugees. Despite the weird ending and not the best plot, the world-building and general tone manages to have resonance nearly fifteen years later.
Assuming that his fans on the other side of political spectrum somehow don't understand the message is very naive – you don't have to agree with the author, or even interpret the work in the same way to enjoy it. After the work is finished, author's intent – who was supposed to be the villain, what was supposed to be the moral of the story – matters not.<p>And, well, his thoughts about theoretical "UN with teeth" is such a textbook example of Utopiah fallacy, I'm amazed he's actually saying something like this with a straight face.
The funny thing about ends of the world is they're all so politically correct. What if an apocalypse is caused by something we're taught to believe is good? Some examples:<p>Maybe social welfare and international aid are selectively breeding a race of humans who are unable to sustain their own lives without support of the superior but relatively shrinking productive class?<p>What if repeated famines were the cause of the high intelligence we have today? We stopped famines. Maybe the pressure to outsmart each other has gone too.<p>What if Islam continues to spread? It's a kind of mind-virus filled with techniques to keep its hosts infected (don't ask difficult questions about God, kill people who stop believing, etc.) and to spread (kill or tax people who don't believe, and when you might have killed someone in war, allow them to live if they convert to Islam). Everyone being infected might be OK if it was benign, but it's also anti-science (Predicting future outcomes is usurping the power of God who's the one who decides what will happen). This is perhaps what already happened due to Christianity in the dark ages. Took 1000 years to recover from that end of the world.<p>Maybe modern medicine is breeding a race of unhealthy people who depend on it for survival. Maybe we're in an arms race of humans needing ever-better medicine and medicine having to treat ever-more difficult diseases.<p>How can you defend against a politically incorrect end of the world? The obvious direct course of action is forbidden, which means even mentioning the possibility of those being problems is forbidden socially, which means it might blindside us. We might even welcome it coming. I can imagine future degraded people laughing at their silly ancestors wanting technology and healthcare instead of fighting enemies with their fists like a natural real man. They might ostracize tinkerers who try to build useful things instead of participating in the tribal rituals and fighting.