Ley Lines

Strange place, Switzerland. After all, you have a country that hasn't had a war for 450 years, and whose biggest export is knives. And they still have a safety-deposit box waiting for that nice Mr Hitler to come back in for it. Anyway, the strangest place in an undoubtedly strange country is Geneva. It's one of the only places in the world you can find money-launderers in big, fuck-off shiny offices sitting directly across from do-gooder UN types in equally big, fuck-off shiny offices.

Thing is, you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart. In other words, if you ever encounter a middle-aged divorced man in a nice suit with a receding hairline around Geneva, the odds are roughly even between him saving Darfur and making very rich people even richer through some not-quite-legal-but-not-quite-not means.

Of course, middle-aged divorced men need ways to take their minds off of their ex-wives, their unnecessarily fast cars (you can be the angel or the devil, everyone likes riding around in a big black Merc with diplomatic plates and darkened windows), the secretaries they're fucking (or trying to) and the kids they never see.

So, they need hobbies. Luckily, the Swiss have them covered. After all, everyone likes skiing, right? Takes your mind off starving children in the third world, say, or where your salary's coming from. Consequently, every weekend a bunch of overwrought cunts in extortionately-priced winter clothing go up the mountains in a coach and spend the day on the pistes.

And after that, they talk business over dry white wine. It's deeply surreal watching the NGOs mingle with the white-collar criminals, but it happens; like crossed ley lines. I suppose both groups are in dire need of the escapism, though. After all, mass graves and drug-running aren't particularly pleasant things to think about. So maybe it's easier just to shove all of that into a mental compartment, and keep it locked outside of office hours.

All of which leaves me wondering. Would the world be any better or worse if that coach were to go off a mountain road next weekend? Or would the two groups cancel each other out, morally speaking? I can't imagine there would be many serious consequences. After all, when you don't know your family they won't miss you. And it's fairly easy to replace people in today's global marketplace. But then, that kind of renders it irrelevant, I suppose, when you can just ship in another coachload of suits within the working week.