Once upon a scorched and crumbling Earth, long after the last Davos summit and shortly before the oceans began boiling slightly on Tuesdays, there sat a ruin of a man by the embers of capitalism – literally.
Clad in what remained of a corporate suit, now resembling burnt tea bags with a lapel, Old Mal sat cross-legged on a milk crate once used to smuggle lettuce. Around him were four soot-covered children – wide-eyed, barefoot, and armed with a generational trauma no productivity hack could fix.
“And though the crops failed, the oceans rose, and the skies burned…” Mal rasped dramatically, gesturing toward the cracked horizon where Sydney used to be.
A twisted sign still proclaimed “Welcome to SYDNEY – THE LUCKY COUNTRY,” although “Lucky” was now mostly used sarcastically, like “bonza” or “human rights.”
Mal paused, drawing breath from lungs that had weathered twelve “once-in-a-century” bushfires. “We did it, kids. We saved the bloody economy.”
The children stared blankly, unsure whether “economy” was an extinct bird, or maybe one of the gods their ancestors had once appeased with tax concessions.
A burnt plank labeled “ASX” crackled in the fire, alongside some kindling made of shredded “Open for Business” signs and a framed certificate of the 2025 Budget Surplus (misspelled as Budeet Surpus 2025, due to a copy editor being relocated to the Metaverse during proofreading).
You see, the spelling errors were actually enshrined in law during the brief reign of the Minister for Streamlining Truth, who declared that vowels were woke and surplus consonants were “budget fat.” There had been great national applause when “business” became “buswinessu,” due to a bureaucratic AI accidentally trained on sushi menus.
It was in that golden era – right after fossil fuel companies were declared “too emotional to fail” – that Australia’s final surplus was achieved. They did it by cancelling aged care, replacing hospitals with “wellness centres” staffed by interns, and introducing a 0.3% income tax offset if you agreed to deny climate change three times before sunrise.
Economists hailed it as “an unqualified success,” which was later discovered to be literally true: no one with qualifications had reviewed it.
Meanwhile, the penguin – Ngarra-guyup-guyup, a sarcastic avian survivor of the Antarctic Real Estate Boom – perched on a weathered box labeled “UN TAMS” (originally meant to read “UN Teams,” but the signmaker was paid in sand and morale).
The penguin, now eating his last Tim Tam, watched Mal with pity. “Should’ve taxed fossil fuels, not future generations,” he muttered, crumbs scattering into the ash like the hopes of 21st-century progressives.
No one laughed. Because they were all dead. Except for Old Mal, the kids, and the penguin.
And perhaps a few cockroaches who’d been in charge of energy policy the entire time.
In the end, humanity did leave a legacy: an economy so healthy it outlived the species it was meant to serve. A bit like framing a perfect family photo while the house burns down.
The fossil records would later show one final, ironic truth etched on a charred slab from Parliament House:
“We chose growth over survival. But at least we grew into extinction.”
The End.
(But, you know, economically speaking… a great quarter.)
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Is this the missing chapter from Tim Winton’s ‘JUICE?’
Prophetic. Time to stock up on the Tim Tams.
But Kanga, you’re forgetting the eternal promise of capitalism — a resurgence is just around the corner!
A bit too close to the truth of what I think we are doing to ourselves. The future of our species is looking bleaker each passing year. Not sure we deserve to survive sometimes…
Steve, forgoing the temptation to indulge in yet another rant (#53 of an ongoing series) on the subject of extreme environmental distress on this pale blue dot, the causes of which have been elucidated repeatedly and which seem to continually circle back to the main culprit, as you aver, being capitalism and its practically limitless consequences on all scales of manifestation, I’m reminded of that boy who cried wolf, and how that played out over time.
Admittedly, I’ve benefited from the wretched curse of the capitalistic burden, as have billions of my semi-conscious hominid brothers, but, as the Yiddish might have said, oy vey, vos a kostn!
When I lived in China I was impressed to discover that there existed the option to withdraw from society; up in the mountains in Shandong, where lies the so-called Great Wall of Qi, a fortification wall that is the oldest in that country, I came across a Daoist retreat, extremely simple, primitive almost, and peopled by a small handful of old men, one of whom volunteered to guide us along this mountain ridge and share its history with us. He told us that he’d lived a productive city-based life until his mid-sixties, whereupon he left his home & family and retreated into this solitary hermitage in the isolated mountains. Quite a wonderful act, courageous, full of faith knowing that he was following a practice that possibly has thousands of years of antecedent behaviour. In common with most Asian countries, China affords these opportunities for those of troubled hearts to retreat from the madness and artificiality of modern life. We here in Australia, not so fortunate.
C’mon Canguro,
We’ve got the Finke Desert Race – back-a-beyond, out past the black stump.
Although so many don’t know who they really are.
Kanga and Clakka, yes, it’s all about knowing who you really are.
It always amazes me that the cultural feature of leaving for the forest after social and familial duties have been fulfilled, developed in both China and India at roughly the same time.
And left us such a rich tradition of wisdom and guidance.
Yet another wonderful thing is that when Buddhism reached China, it was modified by Daoism into something fresh — something quirky, even mischievous, that retains the ability to inspire.