How does one face day-to-day life in the current state of the world? How could anything which happens to me possibly look interesting when we’re bombarded by madness every day? Our everyday lives carry on with a sense everything they depend on seems likely to fall apart any day soon. Will there be food to eat if oil remains in short supply and alternative fuels for farm equipment have not yet been found? With Russian oil sanctioned to thwart their mad war and Middle-Eastern supplies blockaded by Iran where will we get what we need to run the tractors and other machines on which our food supply depends?

It was madness for Donald Trump to attack Iran without working out how he would keep the Straits of Hormuz open, but then, he’s not noted for his sound wisdom. He thrives on controversy and outrage. It keeps him in the news which seems to be all he cares about. Indeed, he succeeds by creating one outrage after another so opposition is just overwhelmed by the sheer force of indignation but has no time to react before the next shock hits. Any one of his decisions could be open to challenge, but each is eclipsed by the next before the world can react. Rational thought takes time and time is the one thing we are no longer allowed before something even worse lands in front of us.

The world’s demand for energy rises rapidly with the development of AI. How sustainable is it and if the choice comes to supplying data centres or supplying houses and industries who wins? Will we have to be dark and cold to keep the data centres running, or will their anticipated growth be curtailed by the shortage of power to run them? How will the illusory AI-generated world compete with the real food-on-the table world for resources limited both by supply and by humanity’s mad tendency to put those which are there beyond reach?

As we go on destabilising the world and generating an ever-growing flood of refugees we also think we can gain security by cutting overseas aid. Really? Who are we kidding? Certainly not the people whose aid being cut induces them to seek a better life elsewhere? Do we really understand so little? The more the world’s population becomes concentrated in the imagined enclaves of prosperity the less real their prosperity becomes and the more vulnerable they are to global supply shocks. Concentrated populations can’t feed themselves and depend for their livelihood on food imports, so easily cut off or limited by shortages or transport problems, not to mention the actions of hostile powers. Are we really so stupid?

Looking at the world as it is today the answer seems really simple. Yes, we are.