The (de/re)cline of the american empire.

(This is back dated as I would like to start the new year on a brighter note.)

After a long day of skiing in the green hills of Vermont, my brother , cousin and I decided to go for a swim followed by a dip into the jacuzzi at the back of the hotel. I haven't seen my cousin in 4 years. He was living in Osaka, now he's studying international affairs in London. We talk about our lives, our plans the status of the world. We talked about how over the years the winters have changed quite visibly. When we were kids, growing up in Montreal, the city street cleaners would dump all the street snow into the park in front of our house. The snow bank would completely bury the "no dogs allowed" sign. These past few years the snow bank doesn't even reach a third of the way up the sign. Things are noticeably warmer in our generation alone. Can we stop this? My guess is that probably we won't. The US won't even sign the Kyoto protocol, and the countries that did are nowhere near meeting their goals. In a couple of years, the new middle class in China will surely consume more resources than the west does currently. And it's driven by the laws of economics. Like evolution the current path is unstoppable. It's inertia is so strong that it would take endless resources to change the way we consume. And here we are sitting in a jacuzzi. I tell them "if human development continues at the pace we're going, we'll hit the cliff full speed. How fast do you think that we'll fall off?"

The current state of affairs reminds me of a set of movies written and directed by one of the most important artists from Quebec: Denys Arcand. He's said this all before in a set of well acclaimed, but misunderstood movies, The Decline of the American Empire and his follow up The Barbarian Invasions.

(Plot spoiler ahead.)

In the first movie, six history professors from the University of Montreal depart for a weekend of debauchery in the Quebec countryside. The gossip and discuss their pet theory: how empires are created and how they collapse. The empire builders are hard workers, humble, puritanical, self sacrificing. They life for their future generations. But at the empire's peek, those future generations are selfish, self-absorbed and suffer from hubris. They unconsciously fulfill the wishes of their predecessors. They live for the day (carpe diem). The history professors not only expound these views but act them out as well. They talk about their sexual exploits and display their joy de vivre. But deep down they know that this course is not sustainable. The end may not arrive in their lifetimes, but it is inevitable. Most citizens of our empire, just like the citizens of Rome, are blissfully aware of the impending doom. This idea is personified by the wife of one of the professors. Being a housewife and out of the loop, she discovers about the affairs, the indiscretions. It's all been happening under her nose for the past twenty years. And their marriage falls apart. Our future generations will look back on us and see us as we see the citizens of Rome; self-absorbed, narcissistic unaware of the comming disaster foolishly worshiping our false idols: the invisible hand of the free market and our own image in the mirror.

Of course what happened next to Rome, occurred here on September 11th. Thus Arcand's followup film, The Barbarian Invasions. Almost twenty years after that faithful weekend, it's 2001. Disaster strikes in New York, and meanwhile one of the professors discovers that he has cancer. His son flies in from the States, and deals with all the red tape of the Canadian medicare system (it would be no better with all our HMOs down here) so that his father could get the minimum - a hospital room to himself. Along the way, the professor meets all his old associates and gets his son to acquire heroine for him. It's all very pathetic. But his cancer (just like ours) is incurable. He leaves the hospital and end his life at the same country house from the first movie. In the company of friends he overdoses on heroine. Despite the morbid sounding ending, his death is quiet peaceful and ideal (and during a picture perfect sunset). Is this what Arcand hopes? Most likely ours will die within the flames of religious war, or by rampant idealism stroked by greed and short term gain, or simply by economic unsustainability.