Man does not live by bread alone, an early revolutionary once advised his followers. 

As Glasgow’s COP26 closes in on a discombobulated world, the climate mob’s feeding frenzy escalates, pushing alarmism to absurd heights. Even the Royals are fearing a catastrophic end of the world in just a few years. How this squares with the Build Back Better mantra is impossible to figure out. Can we be preparing for the end of the world and building back better at the same time? Whatever it is we are supposed to be building back; I’m sure they don’t mean build back trust in the mad media, in institutions, in politics, in science.

The Great Reset-promoted TV ad extolling a future in which “You will own nothing and be happy” is a dystopian concept that totally misunderstands human nature. (That is also the fatal flaw of communism, Marxism, socialism and greenism.) Owning things, per se, is not what makes humans happy. Just scroll through the countless words of wisdom acquired through the centuries about ownership of things and happiness. I’d prefer to think that I will be happy if I were free to say and do as I please: “You will be free and you’ll be happy”. But perhaps that is the opposite of what they intend?  

In the grand tradition of the American spirit, we are entitled to pursue happiness – as we each want to, not as hapless Prince Charles, Greta Thunberg (in her ignorance) or Klaus Schwab of the sinister World Economic Forum want to: “reshape the system” is a euphemism for taking full control. That’s why you’ll have nothing, certainly not happiness.   

The new world order sought by the somewhat threatening Great Reset crowd, speaking with the dismembered, robotic voice of an unseen, dehumanised Big Brother/Sister, is so totally anti-human that it makes George Orwell’s warning of an imaginary freedom-less world seem plausibly real. Human nature has feelings as well as possessions. We can live without possessions, but we cannot live without feelings, intimacy, love, laughter, grief and joy. 

We’d like to feel free of the controlling instinct and ever-present dishonesty of the destructive woke. And we want to be able to laugh: “Laugh and you’ll be happy” is more up my street. The juxtaposition of the Great Reset mindset with nihilist cancel culture and climate alarmism has squeezed all humour from our lives. That is a serious loss, a far greater threat to our mental health than not building back better. 

The pursuit of happiness is enabled by freedom, but the coagulation of the negative forces that will converge on Glasgow for COP26 have nothing to say about that.