At Barnes & Noble a group of us talked and listened for almost two hours. The topic igniting the discussion: fervent desires when acted upon, change the course of the future in expected and unexpected ways. One member at the table observed that every living thing is involved with adapting to an environment, therefore pain is inevitable, baked-in to the trial and error process of evolution. My words -to describe his summation of the situation. Misfirings, the catastrophic event is seen as unavoidable, common to our ‘progress’ toward a future.

Today, memories of the evening’s discussion were reinvigorated by several paragraphs written by Jean Baudrillard in 1993. The author writes that we Americans (rich nations) struggle with first world problems that are symptoms of our excess, linked to the surplus of everything (streaming entertainment, social media, processed foods, advertising, micro-plastic pollution, opioid addiction, etc.). We are haunted by the consequences of our wealth, the plethora of means at our disposal.

From Baudrillard’s angle of view, there’s marked difference between a slower moving, natural catastrophe which no one expects such as earthquake and tsunami, and the man-made artificial disasters such as the wildfires resulting from extreme weather induced drought… Such a fire, or the monster hurricanes savaging our southern and east coasts are linked to technological progress, our technology infused way of life that averts natural catastrophe.

But now, the third kind of catastrophe awaits: one that is deliberate, experimental, pre-programmed, impulsive, exponentially violent.

A name need not be named, – excess incarnated, American success personified…

The drama of the overdeveloped,
of the rich nations.

The psychodrama of congestion, saturation, superabundance,
neurosis and the breaking of blood vessels which haunts us
-the drama of excess means over ends
-calls more urgently for attention…

That is where the most imminent danger
of catastrophe resides,
in societies which have run out of emptiness.

Artificial catastrophes,
like the beneficial aspects of civilization,
progress much more quickly than the natural ones.
The under-developed are still at the primary stage
of the natural, unforeseeable catastrophe.

We are already at the second stage,
that of the manufactured catastrophe
-imminent and foreseeable
-and we shall soon be at
the pre-programmed catastrophe,
the catastrophe of the third kind,
deliberate and experimental.

And, paradoxically,
It is our pursuit of the means
for averting natural catastrophe
-the unpredictable form of destiny
-which will take us there.

The Illusion of the End, by Jean Baudrillard, trans. by Chris Turner, page 71