we prefer to close our eyes to dead babies blown into pieces by shrapnel our companies make, so we can have taxable events that lead to good roads and hospitals on the backs of such crimes, than actually consider that — as all of this is true — it might be much better not to be a part any more of this thing we used to call life.
mil williams, 2nd january 2024, stockholm sweden
the problem wasn’t hitler: it was the ordinary german-speaking citizens, business leaders, sports enthusiasts and professionals of the same, and other members of the german and supporting foreign political classes, both of the time and since, who gleefully enabled his rise to power. all in the service of money.
the problem isn’t putin: it is the ordinary russian citizens, business leaders, sports enthusiasts and professionals of the same, alongside so many other members of the british, european, and other political classes of other nations, who have, as a consequence of their action or inaction, wilfully enabled not only his rise to but also his permanence in power. all in the service of money.
the problem won’t be trump: it will be the ordinary citizens, business leaders, sports enthusiasts and professionals of the same, alongside other members of the global political classes of other nations, who will have, as a result of their action or inaction, wilfully and knowingly enabled his rise to and ongoing permanence in power. all in the service of money.
and so the problem isn’t them: it’s never been them. the problem is all of us who prefer to pay a mortgage and get to the end of the month rather than stop a war in its tracks. we prefer to fuck a partner every saturday than construct a civilisation made of good people. we prefer fireworks and instagrams to real works of charity. we prefer to close our eyes to dead babies blown into pieces by shrapnel our companies make, so we can have taxable events that lead to good roads and hospitals on the backs of such crimes, than actually consider that — as all of this is true — it might be much better not to be a part any more of this thing we used to call life. all in the service of money.
and when a terrorist organisation sets up a society where it is both military and health service in one, where it shields itself behind a longitudinal tech- and social network-driven gaslighting, and inevitably provokes a people, who have suffered unimaginably throughout world history, into acts of revenge no one could reasonably have expected them not to commit, is when we just don’t care. we actually just don’t care:
because we always ask our friends if they are ok when they are not. we never quite manage to do so when the opposite is to all intents and purposes how it appears.
and we always attend to violence when the bruises — whether mental or physical — are finally visible. we never do when they are still hidden.
and we only intervene when it’s necessary to protect our legal reputations, and never when it’s the ways of being and enjoying this thing we once rightly called life are imperilled.
that is, we only ever do shit when it’s to pick up the pieces. we never ever strategise — ever.
except that … some people do. the bad people. the hamas sort of types. the trumps. the putins and their hangers-on, whatever country their wealth delivers allegiances from. the hitlers and their chums.
and so this is NOT the world i can support. and i really do NOT go beyond today. not as your journeyman in superficiality at all. no sir. absolutely not.
yes, it’s true: you have been free to, meanwhile, and will continue to do so. and that may be good for your children and families who — when all is said and done, acting in blissful and self-righteous ignorance — SHALL get to the end of the month. but my end of the month is today. and i refuse now to go any place beyond in such a way, any more.
i have spent my life fighting for the good of all. whilst everyone else fights for the good of the small. and in this sense there is nothing to reproach. neither in your approach nor mine.
but you can’t ask me to continue to ignore what is manifestly true: ukraine is — and continues to be — our fault, because we are superficial in everything we do. nazi germany was our fault all along — even down to the social environments that predisposed the burning of books. trump is a direct consequence of the kind of big tech in facebook, cambridge analytica, and related, that we have not only consented to but deeply embraced — because of our inability to go beyond the next personal brand. and hamas happened under the very noses of technology corporations’ deepest total surveillance strategies, simply because we have all this time refused to reflect enough — and far prefer to interject shabbily and usually to facile end instead.
it’s how it is.
it’s not my way of living.
it’s not a good enough reason to die, though. i really have no intention of dying because you are too insanely weak to engage in this world in a way which would ennoble you, and protect babies from shrapnel, and lead to health services that were about health and not about the enrichment of surveillance corporations and cloud companies and ai organisations of the most broken.
it’s just not where it is, is it? it’s just really not where any of us should be.
but you are: you are directly to blame — in your inaction — for what has already happened to our democracies; and for what is happening right now; and for what is about to happen from this year onwards.
it’s not the billionaires who dream, in their effective accelerationism, of thousands of years of pain for the populace whilst they enrich their deep deep pockets.
no. they’re not to blame.
it’s we who agreed, for example, that search was cool all those years ago, as it gutted the business model of the very institutions and organisations of investigative journalism that would’ve prevented their brutal simplicity being imposed on our far more interesting minds all this time.
we could have argued the nature of their change actually wasn’t inevitable: we preferred, however, instead to satnav our brains into inabilities and easily monetisable dependencies that ensured we became less and less human as the years passed by.
so this is not my way.
i cannot live. i cannot die. i cannot survive. i cannot thrive. i cannot watch ukrainians being blown to pieces. i cannot bear the toxic and abusive ability hamas have demonstrated to twist the historical narrative so savagely. i cannot watch my own country destroy, in the name of extreme privilege, what was once a mother of something really worth treasuring.
i cannot watch this and do nothing. and i cannot watch this and do anything.
so this is now my request: can someone do the deed i need done on my behalf? i’d be happier, if at all possible, for it to be a convincing accident that randomly ended a life of no interest.
it would be much better, then, for those who were left and who clearly prefer instagram and interjection, and to believe the nature of change is inevitable.
so is that too much to ask?
i really think it no longer is …
oh.
and a happy new year 2024.
ps it’s not money that’s at the root of all evil. you did know this, right? it’s love of money … love.
that’s right.
love …
it’s not the billionaires who dream, in their effective accelerationism, of thousands of years of pain for the populace whilst they enrich their deep deep pockets.
mil williams, 2nd january 2024, stockholm sweden
no. they’re not to blame.
it’s we who agreed, for example, that search was cool all those years ago, as it gutted the business model of the very institutions and organisations of investigative journalism that would’ve prevented their brutal simplicity being imposed on our far more interesting minds.
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