Paranoid Enough for You?
BLOG
Written on March 14, BEFORE “that attack” (the one in New Zealand)… We interrupt our regular programming etc., etc.
On January 1, 2018, I posted to Facebook my expectation that this would be the year of a world-threatening internet meltdown of some kind, pleading with my friends to back up their files of all kinds to drives offline and disconnected from their usual computers. That event, obviously, did not happen. But my disquiet has only grown since then. Now I’m editing what I wrote, on March 16, thinking, blowup first, followed eventually by meltdown. Bang, then whimper.
In our brilliance, we are coming full circle, back to blind, suicidal stupidity. Connection might just kill us.
The response to “that attack,” if it’s a backlash in a similar vein, will only beget more of the same. Of course, it didn’t start there, it’s just a symptom of who we have been since we called ourselves human.
Now… the more connected we become, with IOT (the Internet of Things, fitting nicely into Star Trek’s IDIC, the Vulcan phrase of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, resulting in IDIOTIC), the more vulnerable. Doors and locks, fridges and kitchens, computers, cars, phones, utilities, lights: what else at home can we cram into connectivity, and thus surrender control over to “bad actors” of either the DNA or digital varieties? To say nothing (except I will) of the scarily larger infrastructures: transport of people and things, finance, education, medical facilities, borders, defense, communications, and whatever else one can have nightmares about. My cough has a nasty HACK to it lately. Guns and bombs can do some terrible damage, but this? It’s insidious. A “Legend in my Living Room,” as my favorite singer put it once.
The burgeoning network can either be attacked or, like us, lied to more and more easily, with the stakes growing higher and higher if it crashes as one unit; or it can more easily (attention, sci-fi fans!) achieve “consciousness” and put us pesky humans out of the picture now that we have handed existence and autonomy to it while demonstrating flawlessly our utter disregard for organic life, ours perhaps especially included, on the entire planet.
Suddenly the Little House on the Prairie side of my life in rural Svaneti starts to look good. Yes, I do have a laptop and modem. But my wife and I can also grow our own food, heat and cook from local materials and supplies, drink clean water by purely mechanical means, use some small amount of solar energy for electricity [Note to self: Work on getting more solar capabilities]. All the door locks are mechanical. I can cut and split my wood by hand if I have to. Cellphone service and its internet add-on won’t survive past a single desperate message that “We’re OK,” though, because they’re a national system. Off goes the news, by all media. We’d still have satellite TV, as long as power lasts and the birds don’t get knocked from the sky or just EMP-blasted into inertia.
But we won’t starve immediately, or freeze. We’d need weapons for defense, though I’ve never used these. Money will become worthless, replaced ultimately by something we can use simply to exist: seeds, I think. Our well-stocked shop—now I’ve done it, let the cat out of the bag! All we could do is either hoard and fight to the death, or share before being demanded to, and cheerfully support the whole community.
Our small stocks of gasoline and diesel won’t last long. The former powers the chainsaw (needing repair anyway, about to be joined by an electrical one), the 5 KW generator for the fridges/freezers and the car (would I WANT to go to the lowlands, when most people might choose that escape route? Better growing season, no relatively long and extreme winter… But up here might be good enough, with temperate fruits and vegetables, and local livestock. Although I might also expect lawlessness, in resurgence up here already today, to flourish once again, as it did from the USSR’s breakup to the Rose Revolution. I’d have to debate it with my wife and come to a consensus: I wouldn’t split us up. We might all decide to dynamite Svaneti’s only two roads in and out, returning ourselves to a pre-communist donkey track connection.) The diesel I have little use for, except starting fires more easily.
The house is plenty big enough to host many more than just the two of us: it is a guest house, after all! If others required entry to stay, we couldn’t really refuse them without violence. Medical issues and treatment would become tricky without good knowledge, equipment and supplies. Alcohol and marijuana production would not have to suffer much if at all, for better or worse. We could even grow our own grain and use local water mills to make flour! So, quite a mixed bag.
I should brush up on some lacking knowledge: electrical, agricultural (with my wife’s help), engineering and construction, much more my late father’s specialties than mine. Stock up on the all-important duct tape, not much known or used locally but so multi-functional! And figure out: what’s important enough to fight to keep (answer: not very much), and what can we just let go of and not really miss?
This has been a test, only a test, a thought exercise if you will, disguised as a Conspiracy Theory-style rant. One way another, tribal warfare or Matrix, feels like it’s coming. I don’t want to make myself, or you, afraid; just ready. Next week we return you to your regular etc., etc.
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with nearly 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri:
www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
By Tony Hanmer