Anti-vaxxers demonstrating in the streets. Climate-change deniers pooh-poohing what has become obvious to most as weather-related disasters sweep the globe. China and Taiwan rattling swords as the former vows to “reunite” with the latter by force, if necessary. Tensions growing between the U.S. and China over Taiwan and other issues. The Taliban taking over Afghanistan and immediately imposing an ancient Islamic law system that treats women like chattel. Texas lawmakers, mostly male, imposing anti-abortion laws on women in a supposed democratic country, with other states seeking to follow suit.
Those are just the bigger issues of the current times. There are myriad other issues that keep the media in business.
Yes, I am convinced we’ve all gone down a rabbit hole into an absurd metaphysical world where little makes sense. Even now, I am still in disbelief that man chooses chaos over harmony and greed over the common welfare of all lives and the planet itself. I wouldn’t say that the species is insane, because I think most people yearn for an Eden here. But humans are dumb; they mindlessly allow themselves to be herded by a very small group of so-called leaders with self-serving agendas.
I don’t know if anyone will be able to read these words in, say, 100 years from now because it is not clear mankind will exist then, let alone modern civilization. We are hurdling toward extinction because of our carbon emissions. Much of mankind seems to have forgotten just how small the planet really is — a mere 12,742 kilometres in diameter and just 40,074 kilometres in circumference at the equator
How is it that people don’t understand that pumping 35 billion tonnes (38.5 billion U.S. tons) annually of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels and other sources into the atmosphere would have a devastating cumulative effect on our small planet?
What don’t they get about the fact mankind has been pumping this stuff into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution?
I can understand why industrialists and the politicians they have in their pockets downplay climate change. It’s about greed and other self-interests. Their philosophy may be: live high on the hog today because they won’t be around when the worst of climate change hits. And fuck the future generations.
But the common folk who refute climate change? They’re dumber than the “fucking peasants” of John Lennon’s Working Class Hero, because even peasants who farm the land can tell you about the effects of climate change on their crops and livelihoods.
I’m thinking today of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, based partially on the Book of Revelation. The devil has certainly won the global chess game now. Everything the devil represents has brought us to this space in time.
And karma — or God — is doing its thing.
“When he opened the Seventh Seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.” — Revelation 8:1
Can anyone doubt that the Seventh Seal has been opened, metaphorically speaking? The end is upon us. The half hour is up. Heaven is silent no more. We’re hearing from God now, who speaks in a language children like Greta Thunberg can understand but far too many others don’t recognize.
Sure, maybe it will take a hundred years for the species to pass out of existence, but that is less than a blink in time.
And it may all come much sooner than that. War between the West and China seems more likely each day. Nobody can win the war, of course. Everybody will lose. But the madmen who start any wars are no better than individual mass shooters who take out innocent people before killing themselves. Their rage blinds them. They’ve got the devil inside them. They are evil incarnate — because killing innocent people is evil. Period.
Of course, I don’t believe in a literal devil and a literal god as organized religions paint them — though who knows what supernatural forces might exist in this rabbit hole dimension? I mean, nothing makes any sense. Perhaps we are just the actors in an updated version of Alice in Wonderland, meant only as entertainment for the gods. Are they watching us in some big-screen theatre somewhere?
Whatever the case may be, duality is a central theme of mankind, especially for those who embrace spirituality. And it is obvious that humans are both the smartest and dumbest species on the planet. It’s Human Macro Duality 101.
It’s not really about good and evil at all.
It’s about smart and dumb.
Mostly dumb.
Because you got to be a real dummy to do the bad things humans have done to themselves and to the planet.
Click, click . . .
— Jillian
Jillian Page 
The Fermi Paradox suggests that the galaxy, at least, must be devoid of truly advanced technology because if it were common we would have seen signs of it by now. Various explanations have been advanced but the one that seems most likely is that all civilizations that reach a certain level of technology tend to self-destruct, leaving nothing at all or perhaps a species so crippled it is never able to reach that level of technology again. This is known a the Great Filter theory.
The candidates for a Great Filter are pretty obvious. Climate destruction, war, overpopulation, and so on. There are also uncommon events like large meteor impacts, gamma-ray bursts, monster solar flares, planetary volcanic flare-ups, evolution (or creation) of a super germ. Every one of these has happened before in the history of the planet and often resulted in mass extinctions. Even more esoteric possibilities are high energy experiments gone awry, an encounter with a strangelet or a primordial black hole, vacuum decay, thrown out of our orbit by a rogue planet, etc. Most of these we won’t see coming and will be over before we know what was happening.
Our children and grandchildren are of the generation lucky enough to see if we make it through the human-caused filters. (If someone with lots of nukes gets an itchy trigger finger, maybe even our generation.) If we don’t get our act together in the next 50 years or so, I doubt that doing so is in our nature.
This is why Musk is so hot to get a self-sufficient colony on Mars. He sees a great filter event on Earth as a very high probability and spreading to other worlds before it happens is our best shot at avoiding the filter.
All one can do is pull in the direction of not self-destructing but these things may be controlled by forces more powerful than any nation-state. It may be a law of nature that all technological civilizations terminate.
I’m content to ride until I hear the bell.
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Me too, oh … and… lets all try to keep the energy up to experience some joy till it rings.
Ron
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