walter benjamin and the water crisis

The scattered artistic impulse that has me detailing the iron pillars of 19th century Parisian arcades, using technology as an aesthetic homage to the ancient architecture. Thinking, somewhat cryptically, of Walter Benjamin, his devotion to the Parisian arcades in particular, but perhaps a bit more. "Do not start with the good old things, but with the new bad ones." This seems like quality advice, considering another sentiment of his. "Philosophers are interpreters of the world, when the real thing is to change it." Thus we start with the bad new things, and we should take them to there logical conclusions with the power of our reason coupled with past experience, instead of blindly living out those conclusions like consoled idiots.

What strikes me as a 'bad new thing' is the impending water crisis. By the year 2025, two thirds of the world will be without access to fresh water. Though such a terrible fact seems almost clensing in the amoral sense of the word, meaning that I have certainly contemplated the enormitiy of the catastrophe and the fact that it's disasterous implications somewhat justify any action on the part of the people doomed to die of thirst in the near future, I have to admit that the more attractive attitude for one to take is one that is responsibility combined with horror. If I as an individual do not feel responsible for this coming crisis, than how can the individuals within industry who are capable of affecting change feel responsible to any degree?

They surely do not currently, for the only responsibility individuals within industries feel at work is a devotion to the functioning of their company and perhaps more largely some kind of responsibility concerning the management of their personal finances for the benefit of themselves and their families. This is constantly illustrated in the private agricultural industry, which instead of sending surplus produce as charity to regions awash in famine, dump surplus or destroy it in order to keep the market price profitable. Responsibility to the market, not to humanity.

But the problem you see is that the time is coming when responsibility to the market and to the corporate model will destroy humanity, and with it the idiot 'forces' of the market and the corporate ideology. I find myself constantly wanting to say to the world "Stop. Please, just stop," but people continue even if to their own disadvantage or destruction. As Benjamin once said, "Mankind's self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience it's own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order." Hence pre-occupations with figurative and literal apocalyptic thought, as expansive as Mayan doomsday scenarios or a more reduced apraisal of fascimilies of violence and murder being passed off as forms of entertainment. We are so distanced from the tangible forces of humanity and survival that the only force natural to us is that of our own deaths and destruction.