Do yourself a favor and please, please, please listen to the latest episode of the daily by clicking here. It got me thinking… what if the doomsday proselytizers are actually spot on? Are we heading towards Armageddon or is the turning point actually near? Is the very fabric of western society becoming unraveled or just teased, tested and temporarily stressed? 

Will we need to reassess just about every aspect of our lives or can we all soon resume normality – as if this was just a small blip on the vast radar screen or a miniscule bump in the yellow brick road? Will things like the Olympics seem as absurd as flipping through TV channels and being disappointed by lackluster viewing choices on Netflix and Pornhub? Or, will we soon be allowed to forget about this craziness and just let the past couple of months fade into memory. I wonder.

Is it soon time to reevaluate frozen food and find favorites among dishes like dill and codfish gratin, schnitzel and green peas and other below zero fast-food options? Can we really adjust to not eating fresh food on a daily basis? Bananas, avocados, and tomatoes? Really?

Will those that have farmable land be the new privileged few? I mean, even if you are extremely rich, will the money, in reality, be worth anything once we move into a barter economy where a fistful of raisins is worth about as much as a single roll of toilet paper?

These are of course all seemingly absurd questions and preposterous thoughts. But in our current world where purported value is still measured in abstractions like stocks, hedge funds, and security bonds, my queries might not actually be that far off.

Personally, I wouldn’t mind at all if we started trading solid goods and truly useful services with each other. That said, I’m not sure exactly what I would be able to contribute with. Qigong? Cooking? Painting? Film and Photography? I don’t know if any of these skills would add value to folks struggling to survive. They all seem somehow superfluous. More of a layer that can be easily shed without any real consequences. Then again, my skillset would perhaps be seen as worth more than what a lawyer, office manager or social media expert would offer.

The photo is from the Salton Sea, a Mad Max-ish area surrounding a man-made lake south of Joshua Tree National Park and south east of Palm Springs. If you want a glimpse of sincere decrepitation, this is a real Disneyland after dark.