What if the end of the world was good news?

Le Regard Libre N° 55 - Jonas Follonier

For once, Greta Thunberg reminds me of a Michel Sardou song. «Child kings, led by inhuman women / Wicked kings, breathing fury and hatred»: l'An Mil once sung by Sardou, seems to be making a comeback in the West. Greta's infantility, even when manipulated, is quite normal: she's a young girl. More appalling is the infantility of all those, leaders, journalists or citizens, who revere her as a saint - St. John, when you hold us. With your apocalypse.

Greta Thunberg also reminds me of a song by Renaud, Lovers of Paris. «Listen up, you nerds / Environmentalists for show / Pollution isn't in the air / It's on your pale faces». Don't these words from 1975 remind you of someone? In the face of so much self-importance but so little actual seriousness, let's allow ourselves a little humor.

What if the end of the world, as predicted by environmentalists, hardcore and other Johannine prophets was actually good news? Who would regret for even a second the fact that no human being has to listen to the threatening commands of the goddess of the North anymore? And that's not all—just take a look at what follows.

Once the human race is extinct, there will be no more Damso concerts, «gender-neutral restrooms,» or electric scooters driven by a man in his thirties wearing in-ear headphones. No more reality TV or sleazy plastic surgery, no more goas, boas, bobos, or Booba.

When the world is no more, no one will have to put up with verbal tics or other artificial phrases anymore. No more «so,» «actually,» «those,» «male and female students,» «people with disabilities,» «cleaning staff,» «the values of the Republic,» «brainstorming» and the «crowdfunding». No more emptiness—welcome to the void of a universe without Earth!"

Once our planet has been destroyed, there won’t even be climate change anymore. Wonderful, isn't it? There won’t be any mention of the weather in the newspapers of paradise, and in hell—where I’ll be—we’ll be able to talk about whatever we want while grilling merguez sausages, for example: Wagner, Flaubert, D’Alembert, Voltaire—and even Albert the Green.

The age of the image will be banished, for we will no longer have sight. Blessed will be pure intelligence—the intelligence of the cherubim and seraphim. Teleporting ourselves wherever we please, we will associate only with the souls who are our friends.

The words of the accusers and moralizers will vanish. That’s the message I’m trying to convey through this bit of humor: there are people making a difference at every level. And the world is getting better in many ways—though by no means in all of them, of course! But still.

Beware of doomsday thinking. More and more people are getting tired of doomsday rhetoric. And that could very well harm the cause.

Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

Drawing: © Nathanaël Schmid for Le Regard Libre