The 2008 Arès Pilgrimage began, just as it has done every year, on June 21st. Every day we sister Christiane and I drive from Bordeaux to Arès (an about 65 Miles round trip). We are pretty less in funds than the emirs of Arabia, so this daily ride costs us a lot, and as on Wall Street rumors begin circulating that the oil barrel will soon cost $200, we figure that some day we will not go to Arès every day, but every other day or every third day.
And then oil will grow scarce and we will pay a small fortune for fuel or gas, so “we will go to Arès by wheelbarrow, either Christiane or Michel sitting in the wheelbarrow and the other taking turns at pushing it, because either of us will be too old to walk the complete journey,” say we in roaring with laughter like two good oldies stark raving mad. We add, “On the sole condition that there will be a few marks left on our wheelbarrower’s licences, because politicians, who nevermore stop at anything completely absurd—just as their 35-hour week law was intended to give jobs by means of restricting jobs, their “marks driving licence” is intended to make the French model drivers by making them forbidden to drive—politicians, as I was saying, are milking the most reasonable travelers by the bucketful of warm full fat fine+punishment! Lately, 95 instead of 90 Km/h… Wham! One mark less on the driving licence. 53 instead of 50 Km/h… Wham! One mark less again. However, not only do you have to watch the speedometer, but also the road (as to me, I drive watching the road in front of me, don’t you do so?), I challenge any of you all to detect just by ear the difference of engine revs between 95 and 90 Km/h or 54 and 50 Km/h. Any reasonable driver is diddled out of some marks and money by each radar he or she passes. We are living through days when politicians and oil traders are growing more stupid and malicious than good oldies are becoming stark raving mad. I do not judge (Sign 35/9), I only see for myself, and that’s it.
Accordingly, I legitimarely wonder what the future has in store for us.

A stronghold of the middle age of the future.
Photo : JerzyGórecki (Pixabay)

Few people are aware that China holds more than a quarter of the world’s exchange funds Rulers that give their employees $45/month wages are necessarily all wealthy. Every day, while we Westerners try hard to buy oil a bit more cheaply, China’s man in New York raises the bidding, because China wants to make its industrie the first in the world and stops at nothing to provide it with all of the necessary energy. So the price of oil rises a bit more every day, it never goes down. That energy race is going to drive billions of basic humans back to a new middle age.
I can remember when, not that long ago—in the 80s—Jacques Ellul wrote “Bluffing Technology”. I then had someone give him a copy of The Sign. My messenger told me, but I’m unsure if it was true, that Ellul had harshly made fun of this holy book. Well, we can see today that technologists are not bluffers, at all. They are devouring all the energy from earth, aren’t they? Not very distant may be the time, when the iron beak (technics at the peak of its hazardousness) will wipe away even the sea like sweat (Sign xii/8). The sea, which has already been impoverished by overfishing, and which has already been polluted, and the tide power of which is going to be caught worldwide, and the fresh water and hydrogen of which are going to be extracted. It is from the sea that the energy man will no longer be able to draw from oil will be drawn, one way or another.
Let’s note that the sea will not be the only source of exploitation. The air will be so, as well. Rumors are circulating that coal mines will soon be reopened. How about wheelbarrow factories?

I wonder if the slave quarters will be also reopened, if man does not enter into penitence.