WI, bombs and William James

[creative writing]

There was an explosion on the tube that day - nothing unusual in that - bombs were frequent, nearly as frequent as bomb scares - but it frightened him for longer than usual. It was if his personal elasticity was wearing thinner and thinner - he was already half deaf with tinnitus from being too close to an explosion in the 3rd Afghan War - wasn't one war enough?

As part of their developing role in supporting civil society, indeed in maintaining any attempt at being 'civil' and any attempt at being a 'society' the Women's Institute had established a volunteer group from all 5 sexes known as WISPERS - W.I. Special PERSons. This group was hugely popular because they were reliably fed which was less than secure event in i2020 but also because they often distributed food and clothes to others. And after their role in the Glasburgh famine of i2019 the popularity exclipsed all.

Nobody knew or troubled about who planted the bomb - there were just too many groups possibly responsible and too many outrages. It could have been a splinter group from almost any of the group of Nineteen or any of a host of other groups. Groups were formed, split, mutated, reformed on almost a daily basis - rather like governments. Indeed it was increasingly difficult to distinguish groups of any kind from the government and vice versa.

The old anarchist notion of replacing the government of people by the administration of things had all but happened. It was not necessarily a good thing - indeed how would 'good' be defined in these i-times - the best for the most number of people, or the least bad for most, or to parody William James the good was that which worked. If that was the case then the world wide web was arguably the best good we had but did that make it true?