PREPARING FOR COLLAPSE (3)
September 15 2014
Addiction
I had a close friend who was an alcoholic. For a time he relied on me to help him with his weakness. I couldn’t possibly protect him from his addiction and, tragically, he died instantly in a collision, swerving in the path of a fully loaded log-hauling truck. His alcohol count was double the legal limit; he wore no seat belts.
He once told me that the murderer on the cross next to Jesus on Calvary was his model: he thought he could live it up and in the end, with a quick deathbed conversion, make everything right with the Lord. Well, it did not turn out that way. Frankly I doubt that the conversion of the criminal who hung next to Jesus was all that sudden anyway. I imagine that, while in jail, or even before that, this man had heard of Jesus, witness his rebuke to the criminal hanging on Jesus’ other side. He defended Jesus and asked the Christ on the cross to remember him once he is in his kingdom. Yes, that conversion on the cross, was a miracle- any conversion is – but it was also one of those ‘eureka’ events, when suddenly the truth was recognized, when out of the blue disjointed facts came together.
We all have had those moments of sudden discovery. It happens when all the factors are present, but not quite assembled. Jesus’ attitude on the cross, his active passivity toward suffering, his concerns for others, even in utmost agony, his majestic bearing while dying, suddenly clarified the man’s picture of what was happening to him and who Jesus was.
What has all this to do with Preparing for Collapse? Quite a bit. The murderer on the cross finally connected the dots. It’s about time that we, as a society and as individuals, do the same, realistically look at the conditions we have created, acknowledge the consequences, and have a conversion.
The word Collapse indicates something like a lightning out of the blue sky event, totally unexpected. Our society too suffers from several addictions such as total dependence on carbon-based fuel and an incurable infatuation with economic growth, both fatal. Collapse, like a heart attack, can occur without warning.
I am reading The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Its subtitle is The Impact of the HIGHLY IMPROBABLE. Taleb’s main thesis is that Collapse cannot be predicted, and I agree with him. But when it does happen, it is analogous to the death of society because our life, yours, mine, everybody’s, depends on a guaranteed supply of liquid fuel and electricity. Eliminate the one or the other of these energy sources, both Black Swan events, and within a day total chaos ensues, followed by deaths in the billions. These are not the only dangers: our entire financial system too is built on trust. Once this is gone, so goes our economy which cannot function without money.
Why we cannot change
Can we change our risky behavior? My friend found it impossible. Can society? The short answer is “NO”.
There are several reasons for this. One is plain lethargy. Another is a line Upton Sinclair wrote: ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.’ Take our beloved motor vehicle. At least 20 percent of all jobs are related to our highly polluting automobile, from traffic cops to insurance agents, from highway construction to TV ads, from its manufacturing to money lenders and salesmen of new and used cars. I should add funeral homes and our medical system to this list as well. One million people die in car accidents while 20 million are injured. Yet we love our cars, and refuse to own up to our dependency. No wonder that Green House Gases are higher than ever.
That Heaven Thing Again
There’s another reason why we refuse to face reality: Religion. Most, I’d say, almost all church goers believe in going to heaven, even though there is not a shred of evidence in the Bible that says that this is the case. On the contrary John 3: 13 explicitly says that No one has ever gone to heaven except the One who came from heaven, the Son of Man. Billy Graham, our Protestant High Priest, has drilled heaven into the minds of his followers, and nothing will convince them that this earth, the very soil on which we move, is our final resting place and our eternal habitat. As a kid in the Christian Elementary School in the Netherlands, I was taught a song: “Sluit U aan, sluit U aan, wie mee will naar de Hemel gaan”; “Get in line, get in line, then follow the ‘to heaven’ sign.” Consult any hymn book: multiple songs glorify heaven. The church is seen as the Gateway to Heaven. That’s how our religion works. When I once wrote in an article for a mainstream Protestant church paper that going to heaven is a heresy, a reader replied that I was the heretic. This very heaven heresy is also the reason why almost all church goers have no real compassion for the earth. Nothing can convince them that there is something wrong with our energy-gorging habits. Canada’s P.M. Stephen Harper, a born-again Christian, is also a confirmed creation destroyer.
Reason does not work
On the whole nobody will change their belief systems, no matter the evidence. When people are misinformed, giving them all the facts in the world to correct the errors of their ways only makes them cling to their beliefs even more tenaciously. People who thought WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) were found in Iraq believed that misinformation even more strongly when they were shown a news story correcting it.
Take the most serious issues today: Climate Change and Limits to Growth. Another friend of mine somewhat sneeringly told me that “Fracking” has forever solved the Peak Oil issue. Denial can only be described as business-as-usual for our brains; more and better facts don’t convert badly informed church members or voters into better thinking people. It just makes them more committed to their faith and beliefs. When there’s a conflict between faith and beliefs, and plain evidence, it’s the beliefs that win.
My friend died: no death-bed conversion for him. The church still clings to heaven: too set in her ways to change. Society will collapse still convinced that Climate Change is a political ploy and Infinite Growth still possible.