Here we are again, unscathed from the New Year 2000 celebrations months ago. Not one power plant went offline, no telephone call left unanswered, no web user was disconnected, not even the smallest of light bulbs even flickered, no... not for a moment.

You might call it the calm before the storm dear readers. Yes, you may well call it that soon enough. But I promised the executive editors at this esteemed magazine that I would be up-beat about these issues..

They thought I was presenting my ideas in a rather stark format, and that I could be more positive in the coming year. That I could focus more on the bright aspects and highlights of our collective future as mammals.

It may help to take a positive look back at some of the favourite themes previously explored in my published lectures. We've talked about the "Global Trade Scam", and the terrible irony in the way we do things. Let's just say it works a few, but not for many, and there is a much bigger problem, or should I say 'series' of problems, that we as a species will be facing in the near future. It runs unhappily like a sordid tale of our own undoing.

Like locusts people will pile unto each other and devour all that's left. Deals will become less attractive as wells go dry, resources deplete, folks go hungry, on ever larger scales on ever nastier terms. Industrial magnates will become increasingly powerful and systematically dismantle any remaining environmental controls.

Unprecedented tonnages of toxic effluents will roll like thunder over the terrorized population, or what's left of it. Cities will rot from the inside out, as their infrastructures crumble under the onslaught of ever more desperate individuals, hogging, squatting, stealing, dismantling... yes, the violence in the urban centers will make your worst nightmare seem like a walk in the park. Weapons will flood the black markets and all who wish to survive will acquire any weapons they can afford, to stave off the beggars, looters, muggers and con-men waiting at every turn to rob you of anything you have, because they have nothing to lose...

... in any case, we must not forget the positive aspects of working in a sort of relative calm today, before the inevitable arrival of that frenzied, harried brutal and merciless "Global Death March". The smoke, the fires, the insanity of existing in a devastated and ravaged countryside far a way from the, by now lethally toxic and crime-filled, cities.

Like Piranhas devour a large goat in minutes, we are devouring ourselves in a senseless feeding frenzy, blowing our minds into oblivion with gadgets and games, head-games mostly. Life passing us by as we stomp anything sacred and pure into the mud like cigarette butts. Remorseless, unrepentant, incorrigible, and hopelessly lost in space...

Let's hope it all ends well.

WdeJ.