Sodom and Gomorrah

'It's said that the ancient gods laughed during the feast of the immortals, replete with narcotics, deaf to the lamentation of mortals. Are we about to leave Olympus now, when it was only our parents who reached it? Worn out with dreary overeating, we entertain ourselves in the evening, on the screens of televisions spread over our mountain of abundance and money, by watching skeletal people die. More than our brothers, are they are children, or, rather, out products? Even more, are they the necessary conditions of our future life? And thus our parents?' Michel Serres



The headlines of the papers today were full of outrage and Britain's rising obesity 'crisis.' How fat we have become in our privileged lives while the world over people die for lack of food. Yet we still keep it, clutching it to our breasts and shoving 'one last' pork pie into our mouths, crying through showers of crumbs "This is mine! Not yours, animal!" It is not when we sit infront of our TVs 'watching skeletal people die,' plates of chips on our knees that we decide to do something but When a three year old child dies in our own country we finally sit up and take notice.

I wonder if there were people in Sodom and Gomorrah who were horrified by the decadance that went on in their city, and if they could be held accountable for the same crime as us? Apathy. Serres points out that we have reached Olympus, we live like gods but we have lost sight of the problems that face the rest of the world. We can't sustain this existence forever and it becomes increasingly obvious that while we think we have dominated the earth we are unable to dominate our own domination. "Eat more, buy more, watch more, don't think, just consume, go on, surely you can manage another burger. What's that? You want a new car? Well, we'll just lend you the money. Anything your little heart desires is yours!' We continue to suck life from other countries, trying to introduce a 'democracy' that will resemble our own state. Progress, progress, more progress, keep going, progress is the best thing for us all. In 20 years time shall we finally have realised that our runaway consumption was perhaps not the best way to go?

I imagine that in half an hour I will not be thinking about this anymore. I'll be writing my dissertation again, probably eating something, definately smoking. Back to apathy. Not that I don't want to do something but I never really know what. Shouting on the streets has proved to be futile, most things prove to be futile. I feel that I, and those like me who actually care, are worse than those who don't care at all. Because we care and don't do anything. At least people who don't care are living their lives as they wish, they can say that they weren't aware, they were doing as they were told. . People who do care are living their lives, aware of the pain and suffering of the world, aware that we will ruin ourselves and still not doing anything. And if someone asked me why I'd reply 'I don't know.'

'Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, surfeit of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty, and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them, when I saw it.'(Ezekiel 16: 49-50)

Our crimes are the crimes of Sodom, lazy and fat, decadent and gluttonous. Perhaps we might say, well look at America, they're far worse. But we are just as implicated. And these crimes might not be so terrible if we did not try to enforce them all over the world. I wonder when it is that Sodom and Gomorrah will fall and if this time anyone will look back to turn into a pillar of salt.

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