Spoiler

Where will it end?

I found myself asking this question the other day, out for a walk, and I thought of the above song.

The lyric does something quite common in pop music – takes a common idiomatic expression and gives it a new meaning in a different context.

At present, the human race exists in time, in history, with the suspense of the question, where will it end? I'm not sure that that is the meaning of the song, but that's what I was thinking about. In fact, I was writing about suspense just the other day.

There's a film that I often recommend that people watch if they are feeling depressed. It is Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters. Actually, I haven't watched the film for some time now.

I'm going to post a couple of clips from it here, from the end of the film. Needless to say, the clips contain 'spoilers'. In what to me is the crucial scene, the Woody Allen character describes the resolution of his long existential crisis. If you don't have time to watch the whole film and you don't mind spoilers, here are the clips, with the scene in question starting about seven and a half minutes into the first clip and going over just a little into the second clip.

Now I'm going to write something that's a bit of a spoiler, so read no further if you want to avoid such: The basic message is that we don't know where it will all end, but that we might as well enjoy it while we're here. Sounds trite when written like that, but in the film it's not trite (I don't think). There's also, to me, a suggestion that part of the enjoyment of life comes in the not knowing, a sense that perhaps the most rewarding attitude to take to life is that one takes to a film or story, not knowing how it will end, and not wanting to have any spoilers.

Earlier today, I read this article (or one like it) about Obama's declaration that it was too early for a climate deal to be agreed at Copenhagen. I read some of the comments under the article, too (which I can't find under this one, so it must be a different article). On the whole, I find comments on the Internet depressing, and something of a reminder of what many people claim are the shortcomings of democracy. This was another such depressing experience. I can understand, to a degree, skepticism about climate change, but what I don't understand is the very prevalent denial. In very simple terms, if a number of people were sitting in a house and one (or most of them) said, "I can smell burning", what kind of person would say, "Shut up! Nothing's burning, you irrational, religionistic doom-monger!"? The answer, of course, is someone who was afraid that something was burning but didn't want to believe it or do anything about it. And this is the feeling I get from those who think that climate change is a hoax.

On the other hand, there is something, I think, that exacerbates this kind of denial. I have e-mail subscriptions to newletters from a number of environmental organisations. I got an e-mail from one of these with the title, "Who is the Scariest Climate Action Opponent?" I almost expect the words "of them all" to be tacked on at the end. I find this tone to be patronising. It's a talking down, as if to children (who shouldn't be talked down to anyway). Unfortunately, I've noticed just this tone more and more in the e-mails I receive, and I begin to think that it's no wonder people have the impression green activists are "religionistic", or whatever ridiculous, illiterate, Internet-age, made-up word they want to use, if this is a sample of the tone and attitude of the activism.

I suppose – I'm just guessing, in a writing-a-blog-post kind of way – that what the deniers and this particular kind of fixated activist have in common is fear. Of death, probably.

Where will it end?

I actually think, at the moment of writing, that it would be a shame if we let the film come to a premature end, through one kind of fear or another. To be accepting of the fact of death, of the end of the film, might make the film more enjoyable, and might make it possible to watch for longer. I suppose it has to end some time, but it seems to me that we haven't got to the really good bits yet. If there are any.

Sorry if this is trite.

I was going to link in David Bowie's Saviour Machine to this theme somehow, but I'm not sure I have a neat, seamless way of doing it now. I'll inset the clip, anyway.