Let us not mince words. A woman in Australia, having watched her town reduced to ash by a wildfire, has built a fire-proof bunker. This is presented by the UK press as a tale of plucky innovation.
I call it a monument to our collective failure. Here is the paradox: we congratulate the individual while ignoring the systemic rot that makes such fortresses necessary. The Victorians built grand civic structures to tame nature.
We build holes in the ground to escape it. This is not progress. This is a retreat into a prehistoric mindset, a burrowing away from the world we have broken.
The bunker is a metaphor: we seal ourselves off, hoard our safety, and call it resilience. It is neither. The real innovation would be a society that does not require citizens to armour themselves against the consequences of political inertia.
Until then, we are all just waiting for the next disaster, each bunker a tiny coffin for hope.
