A desk and screen

It is not the stage I am facing, it was the idea for a short film the story itself might seem known, it was a stage that several have used before, but here I am trying to invoke a darkness from within. A stage we face when we are all alone in an office. We tend to hear things, but not always are these sounds in our minds, they are the sounds all around us. And in some cases for moments our sense of hearing increases with factor 50, as such we cannot identify the noises we hear. Then there is the application of shadows, in this I call towards Nightwatch, the 1994 version by Ole Bornedal, not the remake. The bonus is that we get to see a young and innocent Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, before winter came (ha ha ha). The two elements came to me as a setting on a simple GI at the console of a missile silo, his partner has suddenly taken ill, and that man is releasing his diner through the mouth (aka vomiting), it is at that point that the alarm goes off and the console room becomes isolated. That is the setting, I will not bore you with the details (aka the ending) but as a short movie it should be worthy of some recognition (aka my ego in action). Yet that is not the setting that matters, or the central point of discussion. 

You see, there are bigger fish to fry (optionally served with garlic sauce). Who took notice of ‘Where are Cape Town’s great white sharks?’, as well as ‘Extinction: Freshwater fish in ‘catastrophic’ decline’ (source: BBC). We have been seeing stuff like that for a while, yet to politicians are seemingly in denial. We see this again and again, yet they are ignoring a larger problem, an environmental source gave us 5 years ago “A world without fish is a scary prospect. Without them, life as we know it will not be possible. The ocean will no longer be able to perform many of its essential functions, leading to a lower quality of life. People will starve as they lose one of their main food sources”, now I have had my issue with overextending environmentalists for a long time, but I do not think that this person is wrong. And a key part here is ‘Without them, life as we know it will not be possible’, the stage is even less good when we consider that this decline has been going on for 30 years, as such, which politicians did something about that? To give you a boost with a setting of horror, consider that marine life in 30-40 years will be gone and as such, your grandchildren will at least starve to death (if they are lucky), did you consider this?

So was the environmentalist wrong, perhaps exaggerating? Well we might think that but the impact is already reported on BBC, and the great whites are merely the tip of the mountain, the inaction by politicians and government is a much larger stage, they are all in denial, or perhaps more subtle voiced, they have a Trump view of democracy. 

Sometimes we read things, we see things and we hear things, yet share holders and stakeholders are doing their best to make sure that the noise does not each too many people, it might adversely affect their need for profit. Yet as I mentioned “they are the sounds all around us” and we need to start taking notice. There is overfishing and pollution. If it was only pollution, in my case micro plastics, I would have had an optional solution. The idea came to me when I was watching a woman open her pack of cigarettes, I thought that it might be a solution in solving the micro plastics in the ocean. I am emphasising ‘might’ as it is untested and there is an optional danger to marine life, so I am a little hesitant. The solution comes in two forms a coastal and a deep water solution, one cannot do the other, but I was prepared, or perhaps better stated, my mind was and two versions came to mind. I wonder at times how we can wake the people up, we can argue that this world is better off with 7,500,000,000 less citizens, and it would preferable if the animals are still around when that happens, but I tend to be an optimist. 

I am also considering that we have had 4000 years to grow and we screwed up the planet in the last 100 years, which is quite the achievement. As such when we look at movies like the 5th wave, or play games like Mass Effect where our world is under attack from aliens, these people were optimists. They can just park on the dark side of the moon and wait for 20 years, they can claim the planet, free of life and optionally all the buildings are still there. 

We did this to ourselves, we can only blame us.