THIS WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS
January 11 2015
End Times? CNN thinks so.
If the end of the world arrives, chances are you aren’t going to be watching CNN. But just in case you are, the cable news network has a video ready for the Big Sign-off. That’s according to blogger Michael Ballaban who posted the purported footage online.
The clip isn’t much, really – just low-resolution footage of a US Army band playing a mournful rendition of Nearer My God to Thee, which takes a little over a minute. The tune says it all: the same tune that serenaded the doomed passengers of the sinking Titanic would usher the world’s population into the Great Hereafter. The tune then fade, presumably, to the rapture, apocalypse, giant comet impact or whatever coup de grace fate has in store for our little blue marble. So far the comment.
False Beliefs
Of course no mention is made of the Lord’s Return, which, for the majority of Americans has no meaning, as Rapture has conquered the church, and so misled practically all of North American Christianity. In that sense it has been Satan’s greatest ally by allowing him a free hand in destroying the earth, God’s so precious possession. Is a greater distortion of the Truth imaginable?
Just as Rapture- with its Latin root ‘rapio’ from which we have the word ‘rape’ – is a false belief, so is the concept of ‘Infinite Growth’. With elections coming up in Canada this year, and in the USA next year, and with both countries struggling economically, the theme of Economic Growth will be front and center. Growth will be pursued whether it makes sense or not, and it doesn’t make sense. If we manage to generate growth, something which will benefit us in the short run, today or next week, perhaps, but which will mortally harm us in a few months or a year, then that benefit will soon become a liability.
This came home to me when I ordered a sofa bed. I had seen one in the nearest city some 45 km away, but it needed to be delivered at a cost of nearly as high as the bed itself. So it was not a bargain. Now after Christmas, and that same merchant eager to show ‘growth’ at all cost, he offered free delivery, which, I calculated, would cost the firm more than all possible profit. Makes no sense, but for me it was a good deal.
The same is true of the current gasoline war. Economists keep on telling us that it is money in our pocket. True. But the cost to society at large is immense: all investment portfolios are based on $100+ per barrel of oil. Its collapse means less future pensions, higher government shortfalls, which translates into higher future taxes. It already has caused stock markets to plunge and unemployment to soar very quickly, which again means more pressure on Federal and Provincial finances, squeezing the poor even more.
And then there is Europe
Politicians are queer animals. Actually they are worse than that. Animals have the common sense to make provisions for hard times, or in the winter go to areas where food is more abundant. Bears hibernate. So do frogs and snakes. If we were smart, we would make provisions for what is called ‘the rainy day’, when life is less abundant. Politicians are also a cowardly bunch. The only time they speak the truth is when they inadvertently misspeak. Instead of governing, which means leading the way, they follow the lowest common denominator of public opinion, which usually represents yesterday’s outdated desires. We are today in a different world, where we all thrive or fall together, thanks to the connectedness that the computer has made possible. The computer and its now indispensable offspring, the Internet, is so vulnerable that every day we live by the grace of God. The word says it all: Inter-Net, which means it connects everything with everybody. Yet it is so insecure that it poses the same threat or worse than a nuclear war which gave us the acronym MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction.
Orwell’s masterpiece, 1984, portrays a global society of total control in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree with the corporate state. There is no personal freedom, and advanced technology has become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven society. Snitches and cameras are everywhere. And people are subject to the Thought Police, who deal with anyone guilty of thought crimes. The government, or “Party,” is headed by Big Brother, who appears on posters everywhere with the words: “Big Brother is watching you.”
Make no mistake: the Internet of Things is just Big Brother in a more appealing disguise. It is evolving at an alarming rate, and the Internet and its multiple offspring, called Apps, are coming to a dwelling near you, even in your very room. You will see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You will feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. Is that what the Bible calls: 666? Now with turmoil everywhere all this surveying will only accelerate.
Back to Europe, the so-called Old World, with its beautiful churches, castles, museums, glorious music. It had a dream: no more wars, of which the 20th century saw two utterly devastating examples. It had magnificent ideas of universal health care, worry-free senior years, liberal unemployment benefits: everything to make life as close to perfect as humanly possible. It all cost money, of course, but infinite growth would be with us forever. It reminds me of Africa. We – my wife and I – were there when our youngest son worked there for 2 years. One of the Africans told me that it is custom on that continent to share good fortune with all the relatives, reason why nobody ever got rich. Europe had the same idea with the Euro, counting on all nations to be honest. Greece cheated, and for a while, as long as growth was there, matters ran smooth. Now the entire Euro concept is threatened, with fatal consequences for the global monetary system. The modern world has been built on the concept of growth, a fatal misconception. Now that growth has stalled, we have no plan B. Actually it is worse than that. Because the past 10, 20 or even 40 years have not actually delivered any growth, once you look beyond the propaganda. All we did was accumulate more debt.
In a nutshell, the past four decades have given us added layers of gadgets at the price of unaffordable education and ever more expensive health care. We have no idea what to do without growth. There is no economics class that teaches “How to live in a No-Growth Society”, and we don’t have the brains to come up with an answer. Yet, a No-Growth world is on the way, for the simple reason that perpetual growth is impossible. It’s on the way, basically it is here already, and that means that we will see unimaginable damage, mayhem and bloodshed. The world-wide mayhem, with youth unemployment escalating, are just the initial rumblings. Fanatic religious expressions is another.
A Radical Change is needed.
A radical change is needed. No more growth, because growth kills. And what is it we want to grow into? Why incessant growth? Like Cancer? Once we have food, clothing and shelter, what else do we need? Will a bigger TV set make us happier? Or a larger house? Why more growth, when we know that it means more pollution, faster Climate Change? I’ve never seen that properly defined. Isn’t it true that if we don’t know the answer to that question, we are by definition blindly chasing a mirage? If we don’t know where we’re going, or why we’re going there, why go at all? It all boils down to us.
We can’t be part of the solution if our lifestyle is part of the problem. Our present situation where we have 24/7/365 an equivalent of 200 slaves at our disposal, can no longer be maintained: it really is as simple as that.
That is the main reason of the increasing turmoil we encounter everywhere and in everything. It’s not only terrorism, it’s not only the drop in oil prices, it’s not only the weirding of the weather, it’s not the erratic job market: it’s simply the end of a state that is not sustainable.
The BBC and also the CBC had an interview with a scientist from London of which the key message was that keeping global temperature rise within 2C means leaving in the ground 80% of known coal reserves, 50% of gas and 30% of oil. The University College London authors invited investors to ponder whether $670bn, the amount they say was spent last year on seeking and developing fossil fuels, was a wise use of money if we can’t burn all the fuel we’ve already found.
How then shall we live?
The Pope does not pass the buck. I can see him assassinated because of his stance on Climate Change. Headlines warn us. He’s throwing down the gauntlet. Forget “Prince of Peace.” It’s 2015. Pope Francis is igniting WWIII. He knows capitalism is already at war everywhere, destroying the planet’s environment. So he is taking command, launching a counter-offensive, demanding action, leading his army of 1.2 billion worldwide, inspiring environmental activists everywhere.
This is Christianity versus the World. It’s 2015 and Pope Francis launched a full-on, major assault on capitalism, like D-Day, a major battle, a counter-attack promising to dominate global headlines for the year, as opponents scramble, regrouping to repel his war on climate-denying capitalists.
The thunder is already roaring: “Pope Francis declares war on climate deniers” reads a New Republic headline. And the Guardian headline throws jet fuel on the flames: “Pope Francis’s edict on climate change will anger deniers and U.S. churches.”
Anger? No, he’s provoking, infuriating, enraging! Because this “radical, anti-capitalist revolutionary’ Pope is a huge threat to everything capitalists stand for, a clear and present danger to the ideology driven Big Oil, Koch Bros, conservative billionaires, and all GOP senators and governors already on record as climate-science deniers, opposed to all taxes and regulation of their profits and toxic carbon emissions.
The Pope has become Public Enemy Number One and the Billionaire benefactors of Infinite Growth and Pipeline promoters and Tar Sand exploiters, will try to thwart his appearance on the United Nations, perhaps even try to sabotage his plane or cause some other seeming accident. When I agitate against environmental destruction, so what? I am a nobody. When the Head of the Vatican State, the Prince of the church, the Holy Father, thunders from the world podium that Global Warming is SIN, then this is a different story.
TIME magazine in 2014 chose the Ebola Fighters as the People of the Year. So early in the New Year, the 2015 Person of the Year has already made his debut. No other person in the more than 11 months to go will top what Pope Francis has already accomplished.
Of course for the majority of the people nothing will change. If Jesus Himself would come down from heaven and say the same thing, nothing would change either, because we can’t change anymore. That is the sorry state we are in.