2016: Year of the Chinese Curse

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P J Media: 2016: Year of the Chinese Curse

BY ROGER L SIMON JANUARY 1, 2016

 

It's not just because I have been reading the English translation of Michel Houellebecq's Submission that I sense we are heading for some sort of apocalypse in 2016. The novel, ironically published in its original French the day of the Charlie Hebdo massacre (7 January 2015), all too realistically describes an election and near civil war in France in 2022, ending in a Muslim takeover of the state (through an alliance with the left). Not even a year after its publication, and the more recent events in Paris and San Bernardino, this riveting book seems, if anything, a bit tardy in its time frame.

As the famous supposedly-Chinese curse goes: "May you live in interesting times."

We will be yearning for a little boredom or, as the Chinese really do say, "Better to be a dog in a peaceful time, than to be a human in a chaotic (warring) period."