Winter is coming

- 5 min read

But it won’t be that cold

For those few of you who aren’t Game of Thrones aficionados winter is coming is the motto of House Stark. In that universe winter also means that various creatures that don’t want humans to live start to wake, bring back the dead, and wreak havoc on the world. I want to talk about a different kind of winter, the one that creates a tunnel that only some of us get through. In evolutionary terms, things like the last ice age.

In chess there is the concept of Zugzwang, (it comes from the German meaning must move) where pieces are set up to perfectly support and defend each other but, the way the game is played, a move must happen that breaks the formation and it is undone. We humans have reached such a place. The mass delusion that is capitalism is running out of people and resources to turn into profit, the climate disaster is in full flow and nothing is being done, the people who profit from racism and murder in places like Palestine, and all over the world, are at their last gasp and don’t seem to realise it. Those of us who used to live in relative comfort from the crumbs that fell from the table of the rich or stolen from the poor undeveloped countries in Europe and America are discovering the crumb supply is no more, and the things we need to survive, never mind make life tolerable, are being taken from us at an ever…