Our world is a strange place. Everyone is talking about the bizarre case in Austria where a father kept his daughter as his sex slave in a cellar for 24 years and had seven children with her. This is a crime. A lesser known and seemingly far less disturbing event occurred in Australia recently where a male politician was caught sniffing the chair of a female staffer. This is not a crime, at least not yet. Are these two very different situations related?

Humans, over millenia, have set up rules to enable their society to work smoothly. Incest has been a strong taboo partly because of the problems of birth defects and partly because children need to be protected from a predatory parent or parents. Sexual relations between members of the same gender, while it has occurred in some societies (like that in Ancient Greece), has been taboo in most societies partly because it threatens the structure of the traditional heterosexual family and because it also disrupts the normal human reproductive cycle, the one which ensures the survival of our species.

One thing that is clear is that humans driven by sexual desire are capable of many activities some of which might be classified as normal, some as merely naughty, and some of which are clearly depraved. However, worryingly, the meaning of the word ‘depraved’ appears to be becoming ever more blurred in Western society.

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Are you one of those people who love video games, the kind where you get to blow up people and monsters by the thousands? Have you noticed something missing lately, perhaps the buzz you used to get as people on a screen succumb to your amazing skill?

If ‘yes’ is your answer then why not make a lifestyle change and kill real people? Imagine if you can being the brave person who fired the tank shell or missile which killed a mother and her four children having breakfast (see photograph) AND, as a bonus, an elderly man plus a teenager who was passing by on his way to school (see full report on Al Jazeera today). That’s six people with one shot! You would become an instant legend among your friends,  a ‘must-invite’ to all dinner parties, a man or woman without peer.

To participate in this ‘must-do’ activity, one that leaves pushing a ballpoint pen for a living for dead, you will be given full training in the complex art of killing real people. There are simply hundreds of exciting weapons that can be used against bones and flesh: bullets, depleted uranium, cluster and phosphorous bombs, missiles, tank shells which release metal darts, you name it. You’ll become a master of many of them and, this is the good part, you’ll be able to practice on real people and get paid for it.

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Given the grim reality of our current world, the new fad which will soon sweep the planet is the Doomsday Party.

Of course, normally a party is a fun thing. People eat, drink, laugh, share experience, play footsies under the table, exchange meaningful glances, argue about religion and politics, tell jokes, swap phone numbers. Why should a Doomsday Party be any different? In fact, perhaps such a party will put real depth and intensity into what is often a pleasant though trivial affair.

The photograph shows such a party just about to get underway, one for five people. Now five is an odd number of people to have, isn’t it? Perhaps one person’s partner has left him or her, or died, or is in hospital readying herself for birth or is filling in a late tax return? Who would know? It’s none of my business.

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To answer this question examine this photograph closely. It was taken in Dresden during WW2. It was the aftermath of one of many carpet bombing raids. The people shown are civilians.

Then ask yourself these questions:

1. Has anything changed in the world since this photograph was taken?

2. Have piles of human bodies diminished over the last sixty-four years (of course, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki there were no piles because the people there were vapourized)? Keep in mind: Vietnam, Korea, Palestine, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Sudan, etc.

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Reuters a day or so ago reported an interesting situation in the Congo. It appears that a cabal of sorcerers were stealing or shrinking men’s penises using witchcraft. Police have arrested thirteen suspects and their hapless victims.

Now, to the average man, regardless of his colour, this is an affront, a tragedy of infinite proportions. Men who’d been shrunk or lost their joystick became angry and this led to attempted lynchings and actual beatings of the medicine men. Reuters reported, "Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur." 

The effect on the inhabitant in Kinshasa was immediate. Radio talk shows were inundated with calls advising listeners not to let anyone wearing gold jewelery to touch their genitals especially on a bus or in a taxi otherwise big trouble (or is it little?) could be expected.

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Well, the year drags on but every now and again we get a shot of excitement. According to Reuters today, Hillary Clinton, aspirant for the Presidency of the United States, has intimated clearly that if she is President and Iran makes a wrong move regarding Israel the U.S. will ‘obliterate’ Iran. Obviously by obliterate she means nuclear weapons (the Bush Administration, ironically, frequently uses similar threats). Fair takes your breath away, doesn’t it?

Now while America is trying to stop the spread of nuclear weapons because of the danger they pose (to itself), it’s not above using a bit of sword-talk along the lines of, ‘Don’t you acquire any nukes and, if you try to, we’ll nuke you.’ There seems to be more than a little touch of hypocrisy in that position. As a matter of fact, a whole lot of hypocrisy! But that’s not what is troubling me. It’s the fact that a female contender for the world’s most powerful job is signaling before she even knows if she’ll be the Democratic candidate that she, like Bush, is into obliteration.

Of course, being female, I realize that she has to try to show she has balls, that she can do what any man could if it comes to the crunch. In this instance, the ‘crunch’ is rather dubious. She would not be responding to an attack on the American homeland but responding to an attack against Israel, the militaristic rogue state that terrorises many nations in the Middle East and which is, like the U.S., heavily into invasion and occupation.

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I swear it’s true! I just saw an advertisement on my television, a Panasonic too, ten years old. The advert showed this monstrous, ugly, box-like vehicle, one that almost needs an attendant petrol tanker to keep it going. I heard an awe-struck, excited voice say quite clearly, "This is the world’s greatest 4WD!" I looked, I saw, and I vomited.

Now see here, I don’t want to crush any one’s dream but I thought that we were involved in trying to come to terms with, and do something about, global warming. I thought that extreme weather events were occurring across the world and the icecaps were melting at an unprecedented rate and that water levels were rising yet here the automobile manufacturers are pushing onto the market yet another petrol-guzzling toy, one designed to appeal to urban cowboys who, desperately afraid of horses but dazzled by clever advertising, covet these noisy beasts.

Now, coincidentally perhaps, Reuters today reported that a survey carried out in countries which represent 56% of the world’s population showed that most people believe that eventually we’ll run out of oil, that peak oil has come and gone. Despite this fact, people continue to drive compulsively. Only Americans, who consume most of the oil, felt that it would run out soon and that alternatives had to be found quickly so their giant SUVs could, vicariously, continue to cater for their primitive cowboy urges while simultaneously providing hi-fidelity music from twenty-six, 100 watt surround speakers and leather upholstered seats. This may have been the moment when I finally gave up on the human race. Suddenly I was filled with a deep sense of despair, a sense of foreboding, a sense of inevitability, of doom.

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Before you make a decision on your next overseas holiday destination, why not consider Gaza? There are many reasons why you should but the following gives a quick overview:

1. You’ll lose weight. Yes, all the residents of Gaza are rapidly losing weight thanks to Israel, Gaza’s friendly neighbour. Food is hard to come by and some residents are actually starving. This shortage will stop you gorging all those McDonalds and cream cakes. You’ll return home so slim, no one will recognize you.

2. If you’re traveling in an SUV seeing the scenes of destruction that are ubiquitous in Gaza, you stand the chance of being blown to pieces by an Israeli missile. Imagine the excitement that possibility will bring to your world. It will put you on the edge of your seat, make you value each second of your journey, help you to rethink your attitude to life. It makes Russian Roulette seem like a parlour game. Imagine the stories you’ll be able to tell your friends from your wheelchair should you survive.

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This photograph may contain the answer to the question contained in the title.

Perhaps our only purpose, like that of all other forms of life, is to procreate, to mindlessly keep bringing more and more humans into the world until there is standing room only.

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