Ghosts From The Future
‘Ghosts From The Future’ came about in the final year of my bachelor’s degree. As it stood at the time and still does, any vocabulary surrounding ‘climate’ is considered a buzzword.
Growing up in the early 2000s, the vernacular that took shape largely centred around the pitfalls of overconsumption; constantly being reminded about the inevitability of our demise, if left to our own materialistic devices.
These reminders grew up with me.
As I hit puberty, they turned into reprimands. I matured into adulthood, as did the reprimands into realisations.
My body will soon lie six feet deep in the ground, and only then, when even rested wine has lost its grace, will those realisations age into regret. What use am I then, when existence itself is the fading, great unknown.
‘Ghosts From The Future’ came about in the final year of my bachelor’s degree. As it stood at the time and still does, any vocabulary surrounding ‘climate’ is considered a buzzword. To be on the fence on this topic was as good as being considered a crime, but so was taking a stance on it. Truly, to have an opinion is to risk offence – but how does one contribute to the conversation, when those who arrive at the table are either those yet to be educated or wrongly informed?
There is a third, however. Those who are simply overwhelmed by the over-abundance of information that the void beyond continues to fling our way. What does one make sense of when nothing makes sense?
In the endeavour to make sense of that overstimulation, I peered into the minds of those far beyond mine. What better way to comprehend the weight of the world, than to balance it out with the weight of existence itself?
I sought after Kafka, Dostoevsky, and Kant. They were kind to me but still left me confused. They then directed me towards Kierkegaard, Descartes, and Camus. I was greeted as a friend and left feeling unsure what I even was. “Have I learnt nothing," I asked Nietzsche. He obliged politely and left me in horror – one even Lovecraft would not write about.
So how does one begin to ease the pain the world is in, let alone heal it, when it is unclear what it means to even exist in it?
What are the right questions to ask?
What do you do when the answers lead to more questions?
Simple- you still ask the questions.
In my readings, that is the one truth I found.
Fostering change is sometimes akin to faith. The only way to be better is to do better. And the only way to do better is to start doing.
When Mycelium spoke about the Western Ghats, the condition it lay in, and how dire the problem at hand was – it seemed as though a rock that stretched its fingers into the heavens stood between us and the solution.
But something seeming insurmountable is not enough to justify inaction. For inaction breeds regret, and only in death, do ghosts take life.