Going Backwards To Go Forwards

I've started doing things I used to as youngster, completely without concern for my middle-aged reputation. I know this cannot be my mid-life crisis, as I've had that. It involved me zooming around on a sexy, unstable Vespa and having inappropriate relationships with sexy, unstable women.

Now I am finding my old loves once again - although thankfully the wonky women have been replaced by GGF who whilst she has some psychological quirks is certainly sane. This youth redux includes being much more hairy and forswearing the depilatory process, cursing vigorously at the drop of a hat and complaining at length about anything, and the wearing of slogans on t-shirts and badges. I think I may be becoming a PunkHippy, the human equivalent of CatDog.

The badge above I purloined in Norway, stuck it on an otherwise conservative jacket and promptly forgot I was wearing it until way after several "important" meetings. Nobody seemed to object, despite the fact that the main purpose of the meetings was to make money.

The message "Greed! Consuming Humanity For Over 10,000 Years" is bang on for today's OLDS - i.e. NEWS that isn't new - the latest report by the WWF, which lays it on the line - we are eating our own home. "We are in serious ecological overshoot, consuming resources faster than the Earth can replace them," WWF International’s Director General James Leape said. “The consequences of this are predictable and dire." Comfy, cosy BBC puts it like this: if the world's population shared the UK's lifestyle, three planets would be needed to support their needs.

Sometimes the only way forwards is to go backwards, and this surely is humanity's future. How on Earth are we going to stop this entropic process? Is there any chance at all that we will be able to educate other nations without checking our own material aspirations? I might add another badge to this one to make the lapel-driven message complete - it's a picture of Andy Warhol, with the slogan, "Your Fifteen Minutes Is Up".