We Will Burn the Future To Keep the Present Numb

It is 12 March of the year 2026. It’s 10:10 PM, or 22:10 depending on how you speak of time.

International energy agencies are cracking open emergency stockpiles to blunt the shock from an oil supply crisis tied to a near-closure / blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. 

Iran—under attack in a war that, from where I’m sitting, looks like another chapter in the long-running book titled “Men With Flags Set Things on Fire and Call It Strategy”—has every reason and capability to treat shipping lanes like a light switch. And with allies like the Houthis sitting near the Red Sea chokepoints, there’s no reason to assume the region stays “contained,” because nothing ever does. 

I don’t have a dog in this fight. This is a war between authoritarian regimes dressed in different costumes, and the only people suffering are people—my people—the ones who are not in the Epstein class.

Honestly, instead of war, we should take the leaders of nations who want to go to war and lock them in a room together until they either figure it out or kill each other. Leave everyday citizens out of it. No drones. No speeches. No national anthems. Just consequences.

And all of that said, I’m struck with a glaring fact:

The world has a lot to learn from harm reduction and recovery communities when it comes to addiction.

Let’s not fool ourselves. What the U.S. and most of the world have with petroleum can be clearly defined as an addiction: a compulsive need to engage in an activity that actively harms you and limits your life’s scope and options. We can dress it up as “energy independence” or “market stability” or “national security,” but it’s still the same behavior: we will burn the future to keep the present numb.

As economies spiral out of balance—as if there ever was balance in an extraction system—and billions are spent in the pursuit of destruction, I see a civilization that has not hit rock bottom.

What is rock bottom? Well, my friend, it’s different for everyone. It’s probably different for civilizations too. It’s the point where you feel you’ve lost all control and supports, have no interest in life, and simply live to fulfill your addiction. A path to oblivion that erases the present suffering from past and current harms.

It’s sick and shattering. It changes you fundamentally.

When you’ve reached it, there is no doubt, and only two ways out: true death or rebirth.

So how does this apply to a war with Iran?

I’m sure you’re starting to get it.

Iran sits on one of the largest proven oil reserves on the planet. And the U.S.—meanwhile—has become one of the world’s top producers, flooding markets when it wants leverage and tightening them when it wants discipline, with most of the benefit flowing upward to people who had money in the first place. 

Put it together and you start to see the outline of a strategy that’s older than any flag: gain control of the fuel, enforce it with force, call it “stability.”

And now—does anyone have the brain capacity to remember our dear friend global climate change?

Yeah.

That never went away.

It’s just been drowned out by a giant sucking sound: “leadership” on one end, and a population several generations deep into a domestication program on the other. We keep proving, globally, that we cannot reliably choose good leaders—or maybe leadership itself is the broken structure. Because the job attracts the people most willing to lie, posture, and sacrifice strangers for the “national interest,” which is a phrase that somehow always translates into profit for the few and pain for the many.

Were I to paint a picture, it would be a blend of The Great Wave of Kanagawa and the short film Bambi Meets Godzilla.

In short: we are fucked, and only have ourselves to blame.

A lack of intellectual, physical, and spiritual integrity—and imagination—has led us here. We can’t stop burning, even while the room fills with smoke. We can’t stop escalating, even while the foundation cracks. We can’t stop calling this “normal,” because the moment we admit it isn’t, we’d have to change.

Maybe we need to quit instead of scraping the pipe.

Anyhow. Just a few grumpy thoughts.

Everything is stupid, and I hate it.