February 22 2015
PRETEND AND EXTEND
I am always in pursuit of news. And what I see troubles me. Or perhaps what I do not see. I do not see any official warnings that we are in uncharted waters; I do not see that we are sailing into a future that is totally different.
When I was young the world was pretty stable. There was an abundance of small shop owners, small farmers, lots of skilled people. There were a few who had better than average brains and they went on to university, usually the children of professionals – brains generate brains – and in that sense I was the exception in my family, the first to chart a course into higher learning.
It all changed radically a few years after WWII – World War 2 – around the 1950’s, and the advent of the Oil Age, when, to paraphrase Geert Mak, “God Disappeared from the World,” and the god of Economic Growth became the Idol of our Age.
As all idols, they sooner than later want total submission and total devotion. We are now at that phase. In a sense it is the final battle, a battle that started in the Garden of Eden.
The history of the world is like a human life. Let me divide it into four arbitrary segments: age 0-20 formation; age 20-40 experimentation; age 40-60 consolidation; age 60-80 finalization. In the first 20 years we grow up and start to find direction in our lives. We then start to experiment, receive our education, and try to find a spouse or partner and a career. By the time we are 40 we are more or less settled, and look forward to the final years, inevitably ending in death.
In a sense the world is like that, except that the periods are not of equal length. The formation years has taken many thousands, if not millions of years; the experimentation stage started perhaps with the invention of fire which made agriculture possible. I am not sure when that happened, perhaps 100,000 years ago. The consolidation period started with the invention of the printing press, which made the Protestant Reformation – 500 years ago in 1517 – possible. The decades of 1950-2000 were a transition time. We now have entered the home stretch, and I use that term ‘home stretch’ on purpose, because the world as we now know it is in its final stage. Politicians everywhere are desperately trying to halt the decay, but matters have gone too far. Home will be ‘the new creation’ which the Lord is ready to launch. Birth can be a painful matter and we are about to experience this situation. Welcome to the ‘birth pangs’. Read Romans 8 for further enlightenment.
So why am I so convinced that we are in the ‘death-years’ of our civilization?
As I wrote last week: Peaks are everywhere. One that I did not mention concerns ‘science.’ You may remember that in Switzerland the European Union spent in excess of $1 billion to discover a so-called God particle. To trap this elusive matter the CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has built the Large Hadron Collider. Here is some truth from one of the people involved:
Quantum Physicist Dr. Amit Goswami admitted today that he, and his peers, have absolutely “no fucking idea” what they’re doing, and claims they were no nearer than prehistoric man to figuring out the Universe. “We have been just winging it, to tell you the truth,” explained the 78-year-old in an exclusive interview with WWN. “Seriously, I haven’t a clue what’s going on. Either does anyone else in my field. We keep proving stuff that never actually happened.
Over the years there have been just a handful of us pretending to know something about the universe that no one else does,” he went on. “But this is all lies to feed the charade. I’ve had some great times during the years; travelling the world, and giving talks on our pretend finds.
When asked how he got away with it for so long, he replied: “I found out a long time ago that everything can be proven with a mathematical equation. Now, I mean everything; from unicorns, fire-breathing dragons, God and even the G-spot. None of it is true. Me and the handful that know the truth have been riding the Quantum Physicist celebrity wave for quite some time now, but it must end – before someone gets hurt”.
The University of Oregon professor warned that the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, could potentially wipe out the entire planet if the project is not put to a halt.
“I’m coming near the end of my days now and I just want to get this off my chest,” he said. “I just hope the world can forgive us”.
Of course this ‘science’ program near Geneva won’t stop. Too many careers are at stake, and stopping it would be an admission of failure: science cannot fail. Pretend and extend, in other words. It reminds me of the Tower of Babel, where the people wanted to become famous “Make a name for ourselves” says the Bible in Genesis 11: 4, replacing the name, the Kingdom of God, with the human name and Kingdom. Here too the same principle is at work.
I must admit that the CERN people discovered one thing: The Big Bang Theory is no longer valid. Of course not. Just as God has no end or a beginning, so the world has no end or a beginning. For the world there is no beginning and there is no end: “in the beginning” are just words because we cannot understand that there is ‘no beginning’. These CERN scientists may yet blow up the world, but they rather Pretend and Extend than admit that they are wrong.
That same sort of brinkmanship is going on in Brussels where Greece is speaking the truth about Capitalism and the rest of Europe adheres to the Lie, the lie that Austerity can save us from financial collapse. The harsh truth is that neither the Greeks nor the Euro nations have a clue what is really going on. Just as the Collider conspirators know that they, for the sake of obtaining funds and secure prestigious positions, knew they did not know anything, the financial gurus in Brussels also know themselves to be frauds, and, as true fanatics, are redoubling their efforts, speeding up the demise of the global money system. The Greeks are wrong too, but less so. There simply is no solution to the ‘debt’ problem, so everybody pretends and extends.
When all else fails, go to war
When all else fails, go to war. That is what’s happening. The rumbling in the Ukraine, the mess in the Middle East, the tensions in the Far East, the droughts in Australia, the extreme weather everywhere, all point to us humans going to war, basically against creation. They all are omens of the Global Grand Finale.
The most disconcerting aspect of these finalizing times is that they are signaling a total destructive all-out war. Leaders mobilize all forces, refuse to compromise, define their enemies in moral terms, demand sacrifice on the battlefield and home front, build the most destructive weapons imaginable, and employ those weapons to obtain victory at any cost.
It may seem inconceivable that war on such a scale will happen within the next ten years, but it was equally inconceivable in 1936 that 65 million people would die in the next ten years during World War II. We valued all the wrong things and made all the wrong choices leading up to this Crisis and during the early stages of this Crisis. The accumulation of unmet obligations, unpaid bills, un-kept promises and unresolved issues will provide the fuel for an upheaval that will shake our society to its core and transforms the country’s direction for the next years. No longer make our choices any difference. That is not a pessimistic statement: that is the only outcome of what Pope Francis calls, referring to pollution: the sins against creation. The Bible says (Romans 6: 23) “The wages of sin are death.” In this case the death not of the planet, because in the final analysis the planet belongs to God, but of all living matter.
Today we experience all sort of wars. Let me name a few, without elaborating too much. I won’t again mention our war against Creation.
Currency War
The world is awash in sovereign debt, as governments have over-promised welfare benefits, every country is attempting to debase their currency in order to make their debt load bearable. When Greece exits the EU, the currency wars may lead to real war in Europe.
Class War
As Warren Buffett admitted in an oligarch momentary lapse into truthiness:
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
The true class war is between the .1% and the 99.9%. There is a small clique of bankers, billionaires, corporate CEOs, media moguls, politicians, and their acolytes who represent the Deep State, or invisible government, and control the mechanisms of financial markets through their capture of the system.
Generational War
A particular dicey war is the war between the older generations and younger generations. The tension between older and younger generations is palpable. Older generations have accumulated wealth during the good times. The Boomers who didn’t save for their retirement refuse to yield the field and allow Millennials into the workforce. Millions of delusional Boomers utilized the easy debt provided by the bankers to live for today and never save for tomorrow. Well tomorrow is here. The older generations are still going to receive all the social benefits they were promised, while younger generations will get stiffed. They know they are going to get screwed and are unlikely to take the screwing lying down.
Terrorism/Religious war
The war on terrorism, like the wars on drugs and poverty, is unwinnable. They aren’t meant to be won. They are meant to enrich the vested interests, expand their control over our lives, erode our liberties and freedoms, and provoke fear and dependency among the masses.
The war on terrorism is a cover for hijacking the oil under the ground in the Middle East. ISIS is now Satan, Hitler, and Attila the Hun rolled into one, even though they didn’t exist a year ago. They are the existential threat of the day – the excuse for U.S. troops and armaments to flow back into Iraq. The military industrial complex profits will surge.
The Middle East is a powder-keg which could be the catalyst for the start of World War III.
Cyber war
We, the technology addicted masses, are completely oblivious to their loss of privacy and freedom. We are being tracked and monitored through your electronic devices. Our TV is recording your conversations. In cyber war, the playing field is fairly even. Even North Korea can create problems for a superpower. Hackers have already caused billions in damage to retailers like Target, Home Depot, Staples, Sears, and Neiman Marcus. Over 1,000 merchants have had their computer networks breached. Hackers could potentially bring the financial system to its knees with a few keystrokes. Foreign governments have their smartest tech geeks probing U.S. computer networks for weaknesses and will act on these weaknesses when they feel it is beneficial to their interests. Technology will not save the world, but it might play a part in ending it.
Total War
It all adds up to Total War, war on all fronts, cyber, religious, generational, class, environmental, currency, war so total never before experienced, and since it is so total, it will involve every living thing on earth, the fish- already mostly gone – the trees – in a far state of decline, the animals – many species already eliminated – and we poor and sinful humans, the perpetrators of all this evil which started in that beautiful Garden of Eden
Conclusion
All this will affect me as much as anybody else. I’m living in the midst of this Crisis with all the other participants. I’m not happy about the prospect of financial collapse, societal collapse, and war. My wife and I have many children and grandchildren. It’s not fair they are left with the burdens created by decades of bad choices and cowardly acts of us, their elders.
Next week: what can we do; what must we do.