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The 2008 Arès Pilgrimage began, just
as it has done
every year, on June 21st. Every day we sister Christiane and I drive
from Bordeaux to
Arès (an about 65 Miles round trip). We are pretty less
in funds than the emirs of Arabia, so this daily ride costs us
a
lot, and as on Wall Street rumors
begin circulating that the oil
barrel will
soon cost $200, we figure that some day we will not go to
Arès every day, but every other day or every third day.
And then oil will grow scarce and we will pay a small fortune for fuel
or gas, so "we will go to Arès by wheelbarrow, either
Christiane or Michel sitting in the wheelbarrow and the other taking
turns at pushing it, because either of us will be too old to walk the
complete journey," say we in roaring with laughter like two good oldies
stark raving mad. We add, "On the sole condition that there will be a
few marks left on our wheelbarrower's licences, because politicians,
who nevermore stop at anything completely absurd—just as their 35-hour
week law was intended to give jobs by means of restricting jobs, their
"marks driving licence" is intended to make the French model drivers by
making them forbidden to drive—politicians, as I was saying, are
milking the most reasonable travelers by the bucketful of warm full fat
fine+punishment! Lately, 95 instead of 90 Km/h... Wham! One mark less
on the driving licence. 53 instead of 50 Km/h... Wham! One
mark less again. However, not only do you have to watch the
speedometer, but also the road (as to me, I drive watching the road in
front of me, don't you do so?), I challenge any of you all to detect
just by ear the difference of engine revs between 95 and 90
Km/h or 54 and 50 Km/h. Any reasonable driver is diddled out of some
marks and money by each radar he or she passes. We are living through
days when politicians and oil traders are growing more stupid
and malicious than good oldies are becoming stark raving mad. I do not judge
(Rev of Arès 35/9), I only see for myself, and that's it.
Accordingly, I legitimarely wonder what the future has in store for us.
Few people are aware that China holds more than a
quarter of the world's exchange funds Rulers that give their employees
$45/month wages are necessarily all wealthy. Every day, while we
Westerners try hard to buy oil a bit more cheaply, China's man in New
York raises the bidding, because China wants to make its industrie the
first in the world and stops at nothing to provide it with all of the
necessary energy. So the price of oil rises a bit more every day, it
never goes down. That energy race is going to drive billions of basic
humans back to a new middle age.
I can remember when, not that long ago—in the
80s—Jacques Ellul wrote "Bluffing Technology". I then had someone give
him a copy of The Revelation of Arès. My messenger
told me, but I'm unsure if it was true, that Ellul had harshly
made fun of this holy book. Well, we can see today that
technologists are not bluffers, at all. They are devouring all the
energy from earth, aren't they? Not very distant may be the time, when the
iron beak (technics at the peak of its hazardousness) will
wipe away even the sea like sweat (Rev of Arès
xii/8). The sea, which has already been
impoverished by overfishing, and which has already been polluted, and
the tide power of which is going to be caught worldwide, and
the fresh water and hydrogen of which are going to be extracted. It is
from the sea that the energy
man will no longer be able to draw from oil will be drawn, one way or
another.
Let's note that the sea will not be the
only source of exploitation. The air will be so, as well. Rumors are
circulating that coal mines will soon be reopened. How
about wheelbarrow factories?
I wonder if the slave quarters will
be also reopened, if man does not enter into
penitence.
Picture: a stronghold of the middle
age of the future.
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