I had an incredibly busy week. In addition to my ‘normal’ output, which on its own is almost a full-time job, I was engaged with a great deal of organizing work related to The Manila Times’ upcoming Energy Forum, now less than two weeks away, and work on this year’s edition of The Manila Times 500 business journal, of which I am the Editor. In addition to that, I did a considerable amount of work on behalf of the small solar energy firm for whom I am a consultant, and ended the week by doing some apartment-hunting, something that needs to be successful very soon, as my current lease runs out on May 10 and will not be renewed.
Busy and tiring, but all of this would be, in normal times, quite rewarding; problems being solved, progress being made. But these are anything but normal times, and under the circumstances, it can all feel rather absurd.
There is, of course, the immediately obvious stress of rapidly increasing prices due to the pre-World War III going on in the Middle East right now. Fuel prices went up by about 25 percent this past week; 91 octane gas is now roughly P85 per liter at most stations, whereas it was below P70 a week ago. That works out to about $5.41 per gallon, for those used to the US scale of things, and the prices will go up by at least another 25 percent or so from that level in the coming week; the local fuel companies change them every Tuesday.
Electricity prices are also going up, due to the way commodities markets work – something that is explained in my column for tomorrow, March 15 – and the prices of food and other goods are also creeping upward, by a few pesos every couple of days. For people in reasonably okay financial circumstances, it is so far just an annoyance and a reminder to be sensible in spending. For people who are a lot closer to the subsistence margin – maybe 75 or 80 percent of the people in this country – things are moving from bad to disastrously bad very quickly.
Even so, a serious economic crisis caused by something beyond our control, while certainly worrisome and unwelcome, is not unfamiliar and it’s not the end of the world. It is unpleasant and stressful and takes far longer to recover from than it does for it to happen in the first place – took me about three years to get over the Covid-19 collapse – but it is not an existential threat. And no, before someone accuses me of being callous, that is not to diminish the seriousness of the impact on the poor and very poor, who will suffer the most; but they are, after all, the ones who will be prioritized in any efforts by the government to cushion the blow and to recover from it.
No, there is something very different about what is happening now. I do not say this as a particularly fearful or over-sensitive person, because I am not. In my adult life, I have lived through the frightful period in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the global financial crisis, and the Covid-19 pandemic. And for all the fear and worry all of those things caused, I was never uncertain, even for an instant, that the crisis would eventually end and that I and those for whom I am responsible would be okay; maybe under somewhat different circumstances than before, but no worse for wear in the grand scheme of things. And so far, I have always been right. Spectacularly right, as a matter of fact. Life was good, as of February 27 of this year.
I cannot now, even with all the privileges and advantages I enjoy, even with my overweening faith in my own talents and abilities, convince myself that “this too shall pass.” It is not going to pass. It is going to get far, far worse before it gets better, and in fact, I have reached the point where I cannot shake the feeling that it is going to become terminally worse, and never “get better.”
And that is why going through the motions of working hard, achieving results, anticipating results, planning a future in what I want to be my last home (the condominium unit my daughter and looked at on Friday night was absolutely the most perfect place I could imagine) all feels absurd. It feels like doing…life, while ignoring the first signs of a terrible storm coming over the horizon, or a growing fire just at the edge of my peripheral vision.
I wrote about this, in a vague sense, in my last couple of posts, but the feeling really crystallized today when I read the morning news update. These days, that involves opening the Al Jazeera app on my phone, while holding the phone at arm’s length as though it is a grenade that might explode if mishandled. The first two news item I saw were, in order, a report that the US is deploying a Marine Expeditionary Force to the Gulf region, and a report of a US air attack on Kharg Island, which is Iran’s main oil export facility.
This is very simple, and terrifying. There is no reason the United States of America has EVER deployed a Marine Expeditionary Force, ever since the founding of the US Marine Corps, except for purposes of an invasion of some kind. And Kharg Island is Iran’s main oil export terminal.
This war is not going to be over anytime soon. It is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better, and the danger it poses to the entire rest of the world grows by the minute.
So yes, carrying on with life and work as normal seems absurd right now. But what choice do we have?
