Is the end of the world such a bad thing?

A few years ago, I held hands with strangers in the middle of a main road in Glasgow and locked stares with the wall of policemen that had surrounded us. It was 2002 and we were among the millions of people across the world demonstrating against the impending war in Iraq. Our efforts were futile, of course, and once we had cooled down, we all returned to our schools, universities, and jobs to participate in the system we were rallying against.

The incident was brought to mind last week when I was watching Steven Bloomer’s Boiling Frogs at the Southwark Playhouse, a play inspired by the picnic protests in Parliament Square. The piece explores the correlation between terrorism, the loss of civil liberties and the rise of the police state. The action centres on a prison cell with mirrored walls that contract as the three main characters—a policeman, a professional protester and a man who “never reads the news”—are forced to look in on themselves, each blaming the other for their predicament and unwilling to admit their own complicity. The maelstrom of accusations and confessions lead to a bloody denouement.

Politicial scientist Dr Nafeez Ahmed makes a similar connection between denial and complicity in his book A user’s guide to the crisis of civilization. In a post-play discussion at the theatre, Ahmed outlined why he thinks different global phenomena, particularly climate change, are contributing to the making of a police state. The crisis, Ahmed argues, is systematic, but our tendency to ‘otherise’ cultures means we do not look into ourselves for the source of the problem. Rather, we reinforce our society by belittling these ‘others’ we define ourselves against. Underpinning this is the belief that governments are there to protect us.

Civilisation in its current form won’t exist beyond the 21^st century, he argues, because oil exploitation will have reached its peak (something he suggests may have happened already), whilst rising global temperatures and overpopulation in developing countries could threaten the security of developed nations. What's more, attempting to "democratise" threatening states has not tackled the problem. What we’re doing in Iraq and Afghanistan hasn’t made the world a safer place. A “business as usual” attitude doesn’t address the issue, he says, because change is inevitable. Only 500 generations ago, humans were just beginning to evolve from hunter-gatherers to crop cultivators.

Ahmed’s monologue was met by some disdain from the audience who questioned his outlook as unnecessarily pessimistic and scaremongering. It doesn’t have to be pessimistic, he replied, but the model has to be changed.

Earlier in the evening, as I watched a stagehand spray fake blood across the face of an actor, I had thought about my own experience with the law and whether I had really been willing to change things that day in 2002. Maybe I hadn’t. Maybe it was just a way for me to assuage my own guilt and get back to “business as usual” feeling like I’d done my bit for democracy.

Boiling Frogs is on at Southwark Playhouse until 2^nd October.