Concerned looking old ladies this week. The world has changed drastically since I have been alive and I often wonder what it would be like to be the generation above who have lived long enough to see everything that they were conditioned to believe was good and aspirational has become mostly evil and destructive. Increased technology, relentless economic growth and the incessant act of consumerism were sold as things that would lead to happiness and fulfilment but actually turned out on a long enough time line to be the causes of almost all the ills in the world. These goals have been pursued to such a degree they have destabilised the spherical organism we live upon and we must now attempt to steer the human race onto a new path.

In all honesty infinite growth in a finite space can’t have ever seemed like a great long term plan but I guess they just didn’t think we would ever fill the space  we live in but we have. Between ourselves, our constructions and the waste they  created there is now not much room left, a seemingly impossible idea back when the women featured this week were young.

I keep returning to WALL-E as the scarily and eerily accurate prediction of what was the vision of a future but has, in fact, now happened…but even with all the signs that are screaming “stop or suffer the consequences”, still it continues. We need to find a new version of living that doesn’t just revolve around buying and selling shit which then fucks up our habitat and our health in the process. We have to find another path, another way of living. And we need to convince those in charge of the same and get them to abandon this utterly broken model. Would that be so terrible? I don’t see current society making many people that happy. As the saying goes ‘modern life is rubbish’ or maybe more appropriately ‘modern life is full of rubbish’. We need to stop adding to the landfill or we will end up on it. We must devolve to evolve to survive…

I cannot think of anything in my lifetime that is comparable to the events that I have witnessed and been a part of last week and into this week with the Extinction Rebellion’s shutdown of London. I tried to return to normality this week both in my posts and in my everyday life but it has been hard because everything feels different and I now know we will have to keep up this fight to have a chance in hell of instigating genuine systematic change. We cannot carry on the way we have been and we cannot go backwards. The only path ahead that is not a dead end for our species is one where we alter everything we do and the only way we can do that is, not by individual choice, which will only get us so far, but by the Governments of this world acknowledging the climate emergency and telling the truth of the severity of the problem to its citizens before instigating a genuine assault on our collective carbon footprint.

In all honesty its pretty scary stuff but there is no longer time to switch off. In the words of Greta Thunberg: I want you to panic. But that is not to freak out and hide with our head in the sands. It is so we can act accordingly and join together to demand a different world that future gens will be able to live in. And I know it feels impossible when you consider how and what we consume and what resistance there will be but to do nothing seems more impossible to me. We must replace anxiety with action. We must tackle this head on.

As a species we are the most resourceful and adaptable and intelligent beings to ever walk this Earth, why now, when we have wrestled and conquered every adversity we have ever encountered along our way, are we now ready to just lay down and be defeated? It is out inability to give up that has got us this far, why not use it to go the distance?

Despite trying to show a return to everyday existence in my selected photographs this week (and give you a mini break from the rebellion) I ended up  choosing shots of concerned and troubled looking individuals. They are from all walks of life as wanted to highlight that this will affect everyone no matter what. The rebellion against a society driven by profit over people is a movement that goes beyond race, religion and politics. You might convince yourself that the XR aren’t your ‘sort of people’ or you don’t agree with their methods but that is not a reason not to join as long as you agree something must be done. And you don’t have to be arrested to be a part of this. There are many other ways to get involved…

https://www.facebook.com/events/313546356029054/