Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

Till Domesday

The world is ending. Okay, so some form of life - maybe even human life - might possibly survive, but it will only be in a world unrecognisable to us. We are on the deck of a sinking ship, and we don't even have the option to jump overboard. So, what, exactly, do we do? What do I do? I spend a lot of my time wondering just what the correct response to ecologocial armageddon could possibly be. Not long ago I read an article in a newspaper about this issue. I don't have the newspaper any more, as it has now been recycled, so I can't remember what it said in any detail. It was something about doom-mongering and other such self-flagellation being perhaps understandable but ultimately pointless. Then, a little later, I read an item in Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit? (Volume Two), about ethical consumerism. The verdict seemed to be that it was a fairly shallow response to the problem. It is, said the book, a bit like looking at the impending armageddon and saying, "It wasn't me!" Well, what are we supposed to do, exactly? To be fair, the authors of the book do concede that even ethical shopping is "all to the good". And, if I were feeling petulant, I could point out that Steve Lowe and Alan McArthur are merely two dry British wits selling cynicism as Christmas stocking-fillers. Actually, though, they are quite funny, and they do, on the whole, pick the right targets, and shoot with great accuracy, as here.

Anyway, the point is, there are various people pointing out the inadequacy of our various responses to THE END OF THE WORLD THAT IS NOW UPON US, but there doesn't really seem to be anyone who is coming up with an adequate response. Perhaps there just isn't one. It's not as if anyone has even been inspired to say something profound in the time that's left to us. It's the usual trivia. For instance, Supermodel Naomi admits maid attack, or Complaints of racism on Celebrity Big Brother increase. It's almost as if there really is nothing profound to be said, anyway, as if, maybe the very banality of the universe is what has brought us here to the brink of utter destruction. We just couldn't find anything worth living for. There is a fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, and he is Light Entertainment.



Even I (makes extravagant dramatic gesture) cannot think of anything to say that is really worthy of the occasion. And my general response to the end of the world, is, apart from the lame old ethical consumerism kind of thing, I'm afraid, usually to get really, really depressed and generally not want to get up in the mornings or talk to anyone or do anything at all (what's the point, after all?). Not very edifying is it? But what's the alternative? Choose life, as they say? In other words, a family of more consumers of the world's resources and a job to support them that also diminishes or pollutes those resources. There's no way out of it really. So, let's all join in a chorus of, "We're all going to die!"

I can state clearly that I do not like this world and I do not like life, but previously there have been consolations. One of my favourite writers, Nagai Kafu, spent a lifetime lamenting the encroaching modernism that was destroying all that he most love about his native country, Japan. He also had a philosophical, fatalistic streak in him, though, and occasionally would sigh in a literary sort of way, and, figuratively, say, Oh well! On one such he wrote that, however much the natural beauties that once surrounded Tokyo, and the more picturesque ways of life that once flourished there, might be destroyed, at least beauty would remain in the eternal cycle of the seasons, in the geese flying south for winter overhead and so forth. I remember thinking these beautiful and deeply consoling sentiments when I first read them. Unfortunately, we now know better than Kafu. Not even the seasons are eternal. The encroaching cities have destroyed them as they have everything else - it was naive to think the seasons were separate from the rest of nature in this regard. Vile science has made a marriage of materialism with rampant commerce - the issue of this union is plain to see all around us. Now nothing in nature remains undistorted, and since nature is the ultimate source of all beauty, all beauty has gone from the world, and there is nothing left for me, except, perhaps, in memories and dreams.

And what do I do? Well, as I said, I get depressed, and in other news, I write. Yes, I continue to write, like the Emperor Nero fiddling with himself as Rome went up in flames. As a matter of fact, I have been engaged, as many of you will know, in the rather pointless and hypocritical composition of a grand, apocalyptic novel called Domesday Afternoon. It looks like being such a vast undertaking that the world will probably end before I finish it, anyway, and even if I do finish it, well, it's not as if its publication will somehow avert disaster or have any useful effect whatsoever. So why am I doing it? Well, I don't really know, to be honest, except that, in my life, writing has always been one think I actually can do, perhaps, in a way, the only thing, though I don't necessarily do it well.

I have asked myself why I bother to carry on such a task any number of times. A little while back I came upon something that seemed close to being an answer. It is, in fact, an interview with the late singer/songwriter Elliott Smith:



The interviewer talks to Elliott about the rationale behind the title of his album Figure 8, and reads out a quote (his quote) to him: "I just like the idea of figure 8, of figure skaters trying to make this self-contained perfect thing that takes a lot of effort but essentially goes nowhere."

Funny, I expected 'figure 8' to be some sort of reference to the moebius symbol of eternity that reembles a figure 8 on its side. However, Elliott confirms the interpretation suggested by the quote. The interviewer expressed some surprise, asking if he really feels that music is pointless, to which he replies, "Yeah, of course. I mean, what's the point? Is music supposed to be a tool to get you somewhere else? No, it's just worth doing on its own."

I may have removed a few "like"s and "kinda"s from the quotation there.

Just in case anyone is wondering how I can think that life is inherently meaningful - as I seem to suggest in this blog entry - but ultimately purposeless, I suppose I should add that I think meaning and purpose are two different things. Meaning is diffuse, like the air, and allows freedom of movement in all directions. Purpose, however, is linear and one-track. Purpose builds roads. Usually to nowhere. Or over a cliff, as it now seems. Because purpose has behind it the notion of progress. But to what are we ultimately progressing? How can there be anything? Science, for instance, eschews meaning, but champions progress, or uses progress as an excuse for its own purposeful agenda. But where are we going with this? Who can plot the ultimate destination that the course we are on will take us to, the genetic tampering, so redolent of Nazi ideas of a master race, the mechanisation, artifical intelligence? If we survive that long, it will take us - this is my guess - to a utopia in which life will not be worth living, since there is no meaning, no soul left to live it anymore, only machines (biological or otherwise) purposefully building and maintaining more machines.

(Incidentally, this post is prompted in part by the fact that, at 5.49 pm on the 14th of January, 2007, I finished the longhand version of the first draft of the first volume of Domesday Afternoon. In longhand, the first volume comes to 1,284 pages. I am currently typing it up, and have typed about half. I will send copies of this first draft out to anyone with my e-mail address who writes to me and expresses an interest.)