10 The Christmas lights have been coming on for days, and with them comes that curious effect where traffic in cities seems to intensify and become even more difficult, more aggressive, more—precisely—impassable. Traffic jams without tone or sound, cars blocking the way wherever they belong, congestion on main roads, horns, horns, horns. A dissonant symphony of horns, loudly proclaiming one of the characteristics of this time of year: the surge in all forms of incivility. People calling out, people pushing, people fighting in the street, in entertainment venues, in shopping centers. "It's the Christmas spirit," they proclaim, while then hurling insults at someone who has just passed by or walked in front of them. Meanwhile, the Christmas lights adorn the streets and avenues, the facades, the shop windows, and even the trees on the street, with those absurd condom-shaped lights that are screwed onto the trunks. Globalization makes the landscape more or less the same in all large cities of the Western world, and Palma, which thanks to tourism has all the disadvantages of a large city but none of the advantages, is an exception.

]]> During the week we dedicate ourselves to working, eating, and sleeping to have the strength to continue day after day. We earn the money the system needs to devour to survive: we religiously pay energy and telecommunications companies, car and mortgage payments, gas, we go to the supermarket... We also buy cosmetics to improve our physical appearance, clothes from popular brands, shoes, and, if we're lucky, one of those big franchises that populate the outdoor areas of some large shopping mall. And we try to go on vacation at least once a year, so that the big airlines, hotels, and vacation rental companies don't have to worry about not making record profits.

]]> After imagining what the Balearic Islands will be like in 50 years, my manias have been reinforced. It's bad news for all those who have to put up with my daily nagging, but I don't feel bad about it. If our only truly effective weapon is consumption, we should use it. Voting as a tool for transformation is a thing of the past. Today, regardless of who governs, our lives don't change much, because there are institutions and powers not elected by the citizens who are unwilling to see the course of our miserable existences change in any perceptible way. And, of course, this makes the vocation for radicalism increasingly devalued, as if going to the root of the problems were an offensive attitude to a bloated system at full speed.

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