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The darkness of the future? Part 1 - Global

There is a fabulous view in my mum's house in the little town of Gourock, about 25 miles west of Glasgow on the south side of the River Clyde. 

The view is magnificent when the weather is nice, but it's generally spectacular in any event. 

That view from her front window is burned into my brain.

If you walk out from my mum's house and go a little bit higher up the side of the hill, the view improves even more, and you stare over a geological landscape that is absolutely magnificent if you have even the slightest knowledge of geography. 

I won the geography prize at school just before I left; in fact, when I realised that it was possible that I could go to university (something which came very late to me), it was geography that I was going to study before I fell into dentistry.

The extraordinary thing about the view from the hill above my mum's house is that it looks over a glaciated landscape and where the glaciers stopped in the middle of the Clyde. 

When a river cuts a groove through the landscape, it creates a 'V-shaped valley.

When a glacier does it, it creates a U-shaped valley, which is altogether different and more spectacular (usually), think Norway. 

As you scan the horizon, looking at that view towards Loch Lomond and the glaciated landscape of the North, there are three lochs that are visible within sight.

One of those is Holy Loch. 

Holy Loch is relatively nondescript, a tiny little inlet of water, but in the 1980s when I was growing up, it was blighted by the view of a vast industrial structure, painted light grey to blend into the maritime background like all naval vessels.

That was the US space for nuclear submarines in the Holy Loch.

Two blocks over, just over the hill, is the British base of Faslane, which is much more hidden from the view from my mum's house, but everybody knew they were both there.

All through the '80s (I was born in 1972) and the second half of the eighties, we were terrified of the risk of a nuclear conflict.

Most of the people who had anything about them living in that part of the world completely understood that we had two nuclear bombs (one for each base) targeted towards us to detonate about a mile above us.

In 1983 Pink Floyd released the song Two Suns in the Sunset, written by the now-controversial Roger Waters.

It's worth listening to the lyrics of that song again because we understand what would evaporate when the bombs went off.

When you thought about it, even the prospect of running if you heard some sort of siren was absolutely futile because to be anywhere outside of the blast zone would be to have a fate worse than death.

My point is that it was dark, and the future seemed dark to people in their teens.

It's like that again for a lot of people in their teens.

Nuclear conflict and the destruction of the human race through such a conflict are still high up the agenda of things that could bring the world to an end, together with a pandemic, artificial intelligence and various other problems like climate change.

We look at the world now, and if we do it through the eyes of someone younger than us, the future seems less bright than we would like.

My point is that the future has always been dark for many generations.

We figured that out back in the 1980s. It never paralysed us.

It felt like it made us live more because, in the background, there was always the risk that we were just moments away from our teeth evaporating in a nuclear blast.

I don't think society has reached that point yet.

I think it needs to reach the point where life is more precious, certainly in the West, than it ever has been.

Last year when Ukraine was invaded, and we started to see images of terrible war on the eastern side of Europe, I had a conversation with my friend and long-time mentor, John Gibson.

We discussed the possibility of going to help in Ukraine if that door was ever open to us.

It was much the same as the conversations I had with Jason Wong at the start of the pandemic, where I was locked out of any NHS assistance because I didn't have an NHS contract.

John and I decided that if the opportunity ever arose for us to be able to volunteer to help in Ukraine in some medical sense, both of us would be willing to do that.

I remember in that conversation; I said to John that it was alright for me because I felt that I had lived five people's lives, which seemed to stop him in his tracks.

Since the mid-eighties, when we were paralysed by fear at the prospect of being evaporated by a nuclear bomb, I had the most extraordinary school life at a state school in Gourock, where I was brought up.

I then had the chance to go to university, which I never in a million years imagined I would get to do, and that five years was one of the most precious five years I will ever remember.

During that time, I studied in Dallas, travelled to Canada, made many other friends, and had so many other experiences.

I moved on from that and started to work in hospitals and large teaching hospitals (again, something beyond my wildest dreams) and had the most extraordinary time as a junior in those places.

I was then given the opportunity to build a service in the work that I love working for someone else and then, by hook or by crook, gained the opportunity to build a service myself.

Throughout this time, I've completed iron distance triathlons, ridden my bike in the most extraordinary places with some of the most wonderful people, and been given the gift of marriage and Children. 

Whatever comes next for me is a bonus that is liberating and freeing moving forward.

It's not dark for me; I want to make it not dark for everyone else.

We will find a way through the difficulties that we see now one way or another.

I think he was wrong in Two Suns in the Sunset.

I don't think the human race is run just yet.

By Colin Campbell on 19/07/23 18:00