Collapse, metaphorical and literal

Over the last three and a half years, I've read and also written a lot about the great reset. I've read some fairly deep dives on how the Covid 'crisis' was leveraged to accelerate the great reset and written a few myself along the way. There's been a lot of attention on bringing to light those who are pulling the strings when it comes to the implementation of the great reset and what their agenda is. This takes in looking at so called smart cities and the control matrix we're all getting sucked into.

Yet, at the same time as all of this, I can't help but notice how the system we live under feels as though it's being increasingly beset by failures. Ones that all too often happen as a result of a lack of foresight, a lack of holistic, joined up thinking and, a surfeit of hubris. It's a bit of a weird dichotomy between all of us being pushed into a giant digital panopticon on the one hand, and on the other, living in a world where things are literally falling apart and failing. On the one hand, the string pullers behind the scenes allegedly know exactly what they're doing, yet on the other, it appears that those responsible for our physical and digital infrastructure haven't got a f**king clue what they're doing.

It begs the question that if we're going to get corralled into a dystopian digital panopticon, is there actually anyone with the technical skills and ability to think holistically to implement it in a way that will nail us all down? Or will it be just another bug ridden heap of shite that those of us with a rebellious streak will be able to circumvent with relative ease?

What this piece will attempt to do is to try and reconcile these seemingly opposing trends and work out, as best I can, what's really going on. To date, in the course of human history, there has not been a civilisation that has endured and grown. History is littered with the fragmented relics of failed and collapsed civilisations. Our 'civilisation' may have been around for a good few centuries but, all the indications are that a process of collapse is under way. Not just metaphorically but also, literally...

This piece is focusing on the physical manifestations of this collapse with the necessary passing nods to the intellectual crisis that appears to be facilitating this. The moral and spiritual collapse is something I've alluded to in previous pieces but, there are writers far better equipped than I am who deal with this. Anyway, let's start looking at the physical manifestations of collapse, literal as well as metaphorical...

Falling apart

Here in the UK, we've got a situation with a number of schools not opening or only partially opening for the autumn school term because of the 'discovery' of faulty concrete used in their construction that could lead to a collapse. This is how it's being covered in the media: School closures RECAP: Fears more schools could shut over crumbling concrete - check list 1.9.23. In a number of the schools affected, pupils are having to return to remote learning from home until the defects in the school buildings have been rectified. What went wrong with remote learning during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 is now coming to light and hey presto, as a result of what can best be described as a clusterf**k, a fair number of pupils are going to have to endure that all over again.

It's not just schools that have suddenly been informed that there's an issue with the concrete used in the construction of their buildings. It turns out that a fair number of hospitals are affected as well as a range of other public buildings, as detailed in this very informative piece: NHS trusts need hundreds of millions to stop hospitals’ roofs collapsing - Rob Hakimian | New Civil Engineer | 10.10.22. It would appear that those in the know have been aware of the issues with the Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete used in the construction of these buildings for some while. However, because of the eye watering costs of replacing this material with something more stable and long lasting, successive political administrations at a local and national level, regardless of their political orientation, have effectively been ignoring the problem, hoping that it won't blow up in their faces. Well, it finally is blowing up with consequences that will lead to a further deterioration in already poor public services as buildings have to be shut.

Staying with the issue of concrete, there's this going on down the road from me in Bristol: £50m repairs plan for Cumberland Basin roads amid fears of 'catastrophic' bridge failure 31.8.23. This is a series of bridges, overpasses, underpasses and junctions to the south west of the city centre, near to Ashton Gate, built in the 1960s. It's Bristol's answer to the infamous Spaghetti Junction in Birmingham. This complex of roads is carrying way more traffic than it was originally designed for. In part, that's a consequence of the piss poor state of public transport in and around Bristol leaving many people with little option but to drive.

With the works that will be needed to inspect, then repair and remodel as deemed necessary, drivers using this road complex will be facing years of delays and lengthened journey times. Facing them at a time when there will be no significant improvement in the public transport infrastructure that would offer a viable alternative means of travel. Yet again, it's one of those issues that any clued up civil engineer would have been well aware of for some years, possibly even decades, but which has been sidelined by the city authorities who were reluctant to deal with the complexities of getting the problem fixed. Well, the longer you leave a problem unfixed, the more difficult and complex it will be to resolve it, as the people of Bristol and the surrounding areas to the south are going to be finding out!

Then there's the ongoing crisis with cladding on buildings. A crisis that was brought to everyone's attention with the Grenfell Tower tragedy in which 72 people died after a fire set light to the cladding on the outside of their tower block in West London back in 2017. Cladding which was poorly affixed to the outside of the tower and, in and of itself, posed a fire risk. There's a comprehensive review of how this crisis unfolded in this entry on Wikipedia: United Kingdom cladding crisis. One of the ongoing impacts of this crisis is that leaseholders of flats in blocks with cladding on that needs to be replaced are finding it impossible to sell and are stuck with properties that are effectively worthless and unsafe: We’re trapped by the cladding scandal and can’t find a way out 12.4.23. So, here we have it, a crisis brought about by a culture of shortcuts, short termism, profits before safety and a superficial fixation with image as opposed to substance and longevity.

These are a just a few of the many examples of infrastructure faults and potential failures that have been identified by the relevant professionals, simply being ignored by short termist politicians until what could have been a resolvable problem becomes a crisis. Which as outlined above, has the potential to turn into a massive clusterf**k. Moving away from physical infrastructure failures, there are information technology failures, a couple of which I'll highlight next...

Glitches and bugs

Over the August Bank Holiday, technical glitches in the air traffic control system across the UK resulted in numerous flights being cancelled, delayed and diverted. The subsequent meltdown left many holidaymakers stranded, unable to get to their holiday destination or unable to get back home. These are just three of the numerous news reports covering the chaos caused by the air traffic control system failures: Family waited 30 hours at Bristol Airport only to be told flight was cancelled amid airline chaos 30.8.23 and: 'Manic scenes' at Bristol Airport after couple's holiday cancelled 29.8.23 and: Bristol Airport live: UK air traffic control fault still causing cancellations and delays 29.8.23. The scale of the problems caused resulted in many holidaymakers and other travellers not being able to find accommodation, and consequently having to try to grab some sleep in the airport.

The ticket machines across the GWR are noted for going on the blink leading to a situation where the rail company, despite their denials, must be losing money hand over fist. Maybe this is why, with the closure of swathes of ticket offices across the network, there's a push towards buying and downloading digital 'tickets' onto smartphones. There's just one problem with that, namely that the ticket barriers at the stations that have them, can't always read the QR codes that pass for tickets, leading to a back up of passengers struggling to exit the station.

Being on the wrong side of sixty five and having lived a fair bit of my adult life in the pre-digital era, it staggers me how much blind faith has been placed in digital technology over the last couple of decades. What also staggers me is the sense of shock when things go wrong with a technology that's still in its infancy and still has numerous glitches and teething problems.

Is this all part of the plan?

I've listed just a few examples of physical and digital infrastructure failures. Some so serious that they could well lead to a full blown crisis - the Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete issues in a range of public buildings and facilities being a prime example. Here in the UK, it feels like we're living in a country where nothing really works properly any more and things are, literally falling apart. It feels like society has become so complex that no one has any real idea of how it all fits together, with the consequence being that we're increasingly being caught on the hop by physical and digital infrastructure failures. This is despite, as previously mentioned, there being relevant professionals who have anticipated problems and issued warnings, only to find they're being ignored.

So, are we heading for a collapse? I attempted to address the issue in this piece: Complexity, collapse and radical change 24.1.23. My gut feeling is that we're on a trajectory to some form of collapse, albeit a slow one, for the moment that is... A slow collapse brought about by a tangled combination of over-complexity, institutional incompetence and political short termism. Is this tendency towards collapse part of the dastardly plan for the great reset?

To re-make something, you have to break it first. The aims of the elites pushing for the great reset are so far away from normal, decent human values, they know that in order to usher in what they want for us, a slow evolution simply isn't going to cut it. They need a series of shocks and psyops to demoralise and disorient people to get them to the point where they'll be more compliant. That's why the Covid 'crisis' was leveraged in the way it was. This is why the issue of carbon emissions is being hyped to the maximum while every other environmental issue that afflicts us and the planet we live on gets downplayed or ignored.

Here in the UK, we have an infrastructure crisis, both physical and digital. Things are falling apart and nothing really works as well as it could. Is this being deliberately engineered to bring about a crisis that can be exploited to further accelerate the implementation of the great reset? I'm asking the question only in order to dismiss it as utter bollocks! To engineer an infrastructure crisis like the one we have would take a level of collusion that would be impossible to maintain without someone blowing the whistle. Nope, the clusterf**k we're enduring is down to the aforementioned combination of over-complexity, institutional incompetence and political short termism, end of. In other words, our lives are being screwed up by people who really haven't got a clue what they're doing and why they're doing it!

Does the clusterf**k we're enduring benefit the shadowy elites who are pushing the agenda of the great reset? Of course it does, which is why they're pretty content to sit things out while things fall apart and fail. They haven't engineered the multiple crises we're facing but they sure as heck are finding them very convenient when it comes to implementing their agenda. They need the ensuing chaos, dislocation, disorientation and fear in order to break down people's resistance to the control matrix they want to impose upon us. They hope things will get to the point where people will be desperate for some kind of stability, regardless of any costs in terms of lost freedoms.

Where do we go from here?

On the one hand, we have to deal with an infrastructure crisis that's making life more difficult and on the other, we have to push back against the control matrix we're being bounced into as part of the great reset. That's quite a challenge, isn't it? Maybe it's time to start thinking about those parallel systems, although, in a country as densely populated as the UK, we don't have the range of options that our American cousins have when it comes to going off grid. Here are a few posts where I've put out some tentative ideas as to what can realistically be done in a collapsing world: Breaking free... 19.8.23 and: Food deserts, food supply and taking back control 14.8.23 and: Now more than ever, we need to grow our own food 4.7.23.

There's one thing to bear in mind though... Namely that the grunts charged with developing and implementing the digital control matrix the elites want to impose upon us as part of the great reset are by and large, the same grunts who deliver the digital services we're increasingly forced to rely upon in the here and now. Digital services that are glitchy, prone to failure and will never be seamlessly perfect. So, any future digital panopticon will have its flaws and vulnerabilities that will allow it to be sabotaged by freedom loving malcontents with a knowledge of coding:)

As ever, with any analysis of the ever evolving situation we're in, this is a snapshot in time with some attempts at developing a longer term understanding. Getting some kind of grasp on what's being done to us and why will be of some help in developing the strategy and tactics we need to not just get through what's coming, but to build a better world on our terms. Suffice to say, we do live in 'interesting' times. 'Interesting' and challenging, particularly as things continue to fall apart and chaos creeps up on us. Also, when the powers that be try to exploit that chaos for their own nefarious ends. Will we get through all of this? If I wasn't optimistic about our ability to win through, I wouldn't be writing this blog and doing all the other bits of activism that I do...