Squirrel Scribbles

February 2025

February 18: money and collapse

Money is fungible so why do I feel hesitant about using my grandmother’s money? She can’t use it because she’s dead. An old, demented woman died on the other side of the world and left me an ambivalent sum of money.

What do I want to do with the money? I want to buy silk robes and vintage silk dresses. I want to eat jars of trout eggs: spooned onto pieces of buttered toast or on top of sushi rice. I want all my favourite things in excess. I want to rent ridiculous cottages that come with their own pools and saunas.

What will I actually do with it? Buy ETFs and hope to make a return even though I am increasingly convinced by the merits of degrowth communism. Does this make me a hypocrite?

I am a bad leftist because Marx argued, rightly, against inheritance, but I am not giving mine up. I am holding onto it and hoping that it will provide some protection in the midst of collapse.

Perhaps this dissonance is what makes adults so grumpy: consciousness of the ever-widening gap between what you know to be true or right or good and what you believe being practical forces you to do.

February 10: abundance and collapse

I’ve been thinking a lot about the following passage in Beautiful World, Where Are You?:

I was in the local shop today, getting something to eat for lunch, when I suddenly had the strangest sensation—a spontaneous awareness of the unlikeliness of this life. I mean, I thought of all the rest of the human population—most of whom live in what you and I would consider abject poverty—who have never seen or entered such a shop. And this, this, is what all their work sustains! This lifestyle, for people like us! All the various brands of soft drinks in plastic bottles and all the pre-packaged lunch deals and confectionery in sealed bags and store-baked pastries—this is it, the culmination of all the labour in the world, all the burning of fossil fuels and all the back-breaking work on coffee farms and sugar plantations. All for this! This convenience shop! I felt dizzy thinking about it. I mean I really felt ill. It was as if I suddenly remembered that my life was all part of a television show—and every day people died making the show, were ground to death in the most horrific ways, children, women, and all so that I could choose from various lunch options, each packaged in multiple layers of single-use plastic. That was what they died for—that was the great experiment. I thought I would throw up. Of course, a feeling like that can’t last. Maybe for the rest of the day I feel bad, even for the rest of the week—so what? I still have to buy lunch. And in case you’re worrying about me, let me assure you, buy lunch I did.

When I first read this passage, I thought that it captured the multi-level crapness of the current situation in so-called industrialized nations: the things that enable me to experience convenience are made by people who I may never see. They toil in conditions that I might not be able to imagine. Their toil enables a mindless convenience that I don’t even really enjoy, which seems to be the ultimate insult to their work.

As things fall apart, Rooney’s words feel different. We are at a juncture where collapse and abundance appear to coexist but how long can this situation continue? I am afraid of collapse. I have known no other system than the multi-level crapness of late capitalism. As much as I hate it, I have also been a relative beneficiary of the imperial mode of life. Perhaps the only way to get past this fear is to admit that there is no future, at least not one that we can really enjoy or plan for. There hasn't been one for some time.