First of - Colabear, I’m in London this weekend. Be there/available.

I find I’m getting something not unlike deja-vu. The mental image I’ve got is one of those crack-house MTV montages of energiser bunnies dancing in a ring. Whats happening now is just like whats happened before. Age isn’t wisdom exactly, its just the fact that you see the same things playing out again and again.

Case study the first - Gamers versus AURA (Aberdeen Uni RPG Assoc). I’m getting to compare three different cases - Gamers when I was doing it the first time, Gamers now when I’m just a witness and AURA now. Partly its the repetition of forms; the arguments about cliques, the bizarre relationship f-xx0rz which may just be symptomatic of the demographic - but the point is that the same things are happening again and again.

I suppose a part of my thoughts on this is that professionally I’m an analoguer - I find comparisons from the past to use as model for the forecasting of things that we have between no and sweet-fuck-all data for. We don’t know what this well is going to do… but if we glom all the previous wells from that zone together and take an average, well that’ll do for a start. And the funny thing is, more often than not, it works pretty well.

It really is hammering home the ‘you are not a special and unique snowflake’ point which I think I learnt reasonably early on. Its ok to be cut up, its ok to feel put upon and misunderstood but its not the first time this has happened. Things are always bigger from the inside, as a wise friend said.

Which is why I just find it hard to take seriously the spats and the squealings of the ‘clique’ fights and the hair-pulling and eyegouging over girls. Always by boys, over girls mind - strangely girls seem to have an infinite variety of ways to screw themselves and each other up over boys. I suspect this is simply because the ‘why’s’ of girls being hacked off are generally not explained or comprehensible to me.

One very interesting effect of all this is though that suddenly the really aberant behaviour stands out in clear relief. Leprecon was an eye-opener for me, after stepping back, essentially letting go all the niggles and stresses, and stepping back in, I realise that some previous bugbears of mine were my problem, not theirs, and that others are actually malicious freaks who frankly should be banned from human company.

It does make me wonder - should I say anything? Would anyone heed me if I did? Of course not. I paid no heed when someone told me that I should run a mile from one of the worst people that ever happened to me the same night as I met them for the first time. A decade later, I think I’ve straightened things out, but its still amusing to wonder what I would have done with my time if I’d heeded my friend and gone ‘hm, perhaps not.’

It also makes me wonder, if what has yet to come will change not-a-lot from what has gone before, how do you plan your life? Do we keep the faith - expect playing the game to pay off for us as it largely has for the previous generation - ending up with at least a reasonable expectation to retire while still able to do things and not live in poverty for the rest of their lives. Thats the ‘extrapolate from past’ scenario - use whats happened as an analogue for us.

Does it hold?

I’m beginning to read in non-trash sources sentiments like ‘this is the first generation that is expected to have quality of life decline’ which makes me wonder. I mean, we (the working generation) are being run into the ground, chasing the shiny ring, for the benefit of the Boomers. We probably won’t get pensions. We can expect to pay a lot more to support a greater number of retirees - and generally carry a greater burden and live in a world thats just been used up for the Boomers.

This is what the scaremongers say - the ‘realists’ - they say Peak Oil is happening. They say the climate is already gone past fixing. They say global inequalities and tensions will take a generation to fix - work which has yet to start. They say the demographic pinch is going to put the burden of carrying the Boomer generation on us, the MTV generation (born 1974-85) and then leave no-one to pay for our retirements. They say that technology is driving us apart and breaking down the social fabric, they say, they say, they say…

Are we supposed to believe that for the first time since the Dark Ages, we’re about to go backwards? Its an analogue, I suppose, but is it the one we should use? What are we supposed to believe, the near-hysterical doom-cryers or the people who tell us everything is fine - but have a large vested interest in us paying their pensions? Whats best for us?

Either way, I fully expect to be drinking bad bourbon years hence, barring some motherfucker putting a bullet through my brainpan in the Niger delta, thinking back to writing this and wondering where I would have been if I’d done something different now. Look me up, bring some ice, I hope to be somewhere sunny.

Listening to: Sweet Home Alabama - Lynard Skynard

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