The Poker Tournament

September 20, 2022

Old gun barrel protruding from a moss-covered concrete bunker on a hillside in Georgia — From out here, civilisation looks like whatever comes after something.

Day one hundred and twenty-six, Georgia. The Machakhela National Park is a long way from what we call civilisation, and from out here civilisation looks like the aftermath of something: survivors of a catastrophe nobody remembers, working very hard.

People believe they are free. I don't see how that holds when the arrangements they live inside are built to make them otherwise.

Money works like a poker tournament. Every round the blinds go up, so nobody can sit still. You have to keep betting or you are out. At the end a few are ahead, and the last man standing has most of it.

Compound interest does something similar, only politely.

How deep are the states in debt? How many companies have anything put by? All those new cars on the roads — how many of them were bought with money that exists?

Apart from a few, we are all pedalling hard for the daily bread.

The system strikes me as unnatural. It doesn't fit what we are, which — and I am aware how this sounds from a man sitting in a national park — is peaceful, affectionate and rather beautiful when nobody is raising the blinds.

Overgrown concrete ruin with ivy on the walls and empty window openings in Machakhela National Park — From out here, civilisation looks like something that comes after something else.

Looking into a round, rusty metal structure inside an old fortification in Machakhela, Georgia — Someone built this very diligently and then forgot about it.

View through a narrow slit from a dark bunker onto ferns and a forest track in Machakhela, Georgia — Through the slit the forest looks peaceful, and it is.

Moss-covered concrete bunker with a narrow entrance among ferns on a slope in Machakhela National Park — The moss has nearly reclaimed the bunker, no compound interest required.