|
For week ending April 22
When you read this I shall be far along the Gold Journey to
Samarkand. "For lust of knowing what should not be known,"
as the poet said. (He was trying to set up a rhyme for Samarkand, I
understand.)
"Why Samarkand?" strangers ask, when I buttonhole them. . .
They never wait for the answer.
"Because its not Timbuctoo," I reply enigmatically (to
myself).
It had to one of those faraway places because I am fleeing
Civilisation As We Know It before it collapses on my head.
When I get back next month, I hope the fall of civilisation will be
complete, the dust settled, and we can improve the quality of our
lives. I suggest you also get away from it all for a while, because
the signs are there. You can always tell when civilisation is about
to come off the rails.
In ancient Rome they through its time had come when the Emperor
empowered his horse as a co-ruler. But the Romans had a lot to learn
about civilisation, because 2 000 years later, appointing the
back-end of horses as national leaders became almost standard
practice. Look what the Americans have set up as some of their
Presidents. Look at the mad monarchs of England of yore, and mime.
More recently, in South Africa we even had a crocodile as president.
No. The fall of the Roman Empire was not due to the calibre of its
rulers. The first sign of its collapse was that taxes grew heavier.
Then the ancient autobahns deteriorated into potholes. Finally,
Rome's plumbing went to pot. Upper-class plumbing was fashioned out
of lead, and lead poisoning made all the senators and top people go
potty.
So Rome fell, to the relief of many.
The toppling of civilisation (as we know it) is not a bad thing, for
what did civilisation give us in the first place?
To paradise in the Pacific Isles, civilised man brought avarice
without the work ethic; syphilis without the remedy; trousers and
bras without natural modesty.
To the rest of the world civilisation brought railway lines blocking
the seafront; plastics blocking the throats of wildlife; telephones
blocking any attempt at reasoned conversation, and TVradio blocking
thought processes.
Civilisation also created guns, poison gas, nuclear bombs, fast
foods, newspapers and the capacity for columns such as this.
It's horrible, isn't it? Civilisation, I mean.
I've been ranting on so, I haven't left sufficient space for the
imperatively urgent point of this article, which was to alert you to
the signs of the collapse of our own frightful South African
civilisation.
An inkling:
Have you noticed the pimples that have started popping up in the
centre of the cross-streets in South Africa's most civilised suburbs?
You may think they are just a bureaucratic trick to irritate you. It
isn't. It is a sign of incipient madness - the signal of the collapse
of You-know-what-as-we-know-it.
Did you know that, while it is an inflexible law that you give way to
the right at a traffic circle, the opposite may be true when
negotiating a suburban pimple? The law adviser who drafted the law on
traffic pimples says it is "first come, first through" the
circle - provided it has all those arrows going round it.
Yet when I attempt to follow the pimple law, crashing and chaos
follow behind - and crashing and chaos are the first signs of a
collapsing stockmarket, never mind just a civilisation.
Then there are cellular phones. They are driving the population
crazy, even if their radio signals or batteries, or whatever, don't
send cancer-rays into your brain. Some people go mad just watching
other people use their cellular phones in the restaurant or cinema. I
go mad at such a sight, because my own cellular phone never, never,
ever works. All it does is evoke a huge bill every month. Are all
those other people merely pretending to phone?
And credit cards. . . but enough for this week.
Next time, while I'm sitting in Samarkand haggling over a hookah or
something simla, this column will be telling you about the horrors of
the plastic card. Not the old stories. New ones. . .signalling the
cataclysmic end of our world, as we know it. |
