Who will be the next Dalai Lama?

To what extent I wonder is Donald Trump a wrecker of hallowed political theory, which is to say that in politics there is a general, widely accepted albeit slowly realised notion of ’progress?’ What is this progress and did it ever really exist? My view is that there is no linear historical progression, the sort of thing that drew a line from the ’Dark Ages’ through the Medieval period to the Enlightenment then the bliss wrought by the Industrial Revolution which heralded economic liberation and empowerment through capitalist democracy. And Twentieth Century horrors beyond imagining. Today’s globalists dwell on these themes but now they're in retreat, coming to terms with the hubris of their vision. The shock is not just down to one man. Trump is a lightning conductor, not a cause of the overloaded electrostatic storm blowing all our fuses. The thing is, we’re not heading to a Marxist revolutionary moment when people wake up and move through their scientific dialectical gears to the next stage of emancipation and what some people wistfully call ’late capitalism’ (as if the phrase signalled a new benign stage of economic development and the end of exploitation). If ’late capitalism’ has any substantial meaning at all it simply denotes the final death pangs of planetary exhaustion. These pangs will be accommodated in ever decreasing circles, until the last drop is squeezed out of our extraction of their value. Perhaps Elon Musk understands this, although his dream of creating a new clone-like civilisation on Mars is doomed to failure, not that it could happen in his lifetime anyway.  As I write this people are being murdered in Palestine, in Ukraine, in Sudan—and in different kinds of wars all around the globe. More wars are yet to come. Who says we left the ‘Middle Ages’ behind us? Who says Trump (and his sort) is  responsible? He is merely a mirror. (OK yes, a lightning conductor as well).

​ Apparently the Dalai Lama, who is 89 is suggesting that his successor could be chosen from any country, so as to free the choice from the Chinese Tibetan dictatorship. I think I would like to see one of Trump’s offspring get the job. As things stand perhaps it’s time to give the  sheer absurdity of our earthly existence its full due.