Man, know thy self! by Neil Anders

Since the beginnings of the Solar Problem, city officials have consistently failed to maintain any semblance of civil order as we have watched our fair city decay. Daily, we see bombings, murders, police brutality, and the continued suspension of basic rights. Daily, we see people in the streets begging for scraps. Daily we see the infirmed die alone in abandoned and derelict buildings. Daily we see our children cry out for help, and none arrives.

But, what did we expect? This is the society we built. This is who we are.

Before the announcement, our city, our country, our World, was held together by consumerist greed. We fed off each other like vultures on dead carcasses. There was no social binding. There was the necessity of the marketplace, that great usurper of community.

With the knowledge that Earth had as little as 1000 years to survive before being burnt to a cinder by the Sun, what did we as a society do? Did we band together to protect the weakest of us, to find a solution to the Solar Problem, to try and insure a better future for our children? No, we scrambled to grab anything we could get our hands on. We continued gorging ourselves on anything small enough to shove into an orifice.

And when we had consumed all there was to be had, had exhausted everything there was to burn, we turned on each other. We fed on our neighbours and our kin. As we have always done.

This is the society we built. This is who we are. Man, know thy self!

Neil Anders is a freelance journalist in Old Brisbane South's outer districts.