December 11 2016
ANARCHY
Curiously the SEPTUAGINT, the Greek translation of the (Hebrew) Old Testament by 70 (Septuagint in Greek) Jewish rabbis starts with almost identical words “EN ARCHE”, which means: In the beginning, the first words of the Bible in Genesis 1.
That ‘beginning’ was marked by ANARCHY, in Biblical language called CHAOS, which, like ANARCHY, means: leaderless, without a specific goal, empty, undefined, having no real substance.
That is how I see the next four years in the Western world shaping up, exactly the opposite of what is needed, because these years will determine the fate of the world.
Yes, ANARCHY is in the cards: authoritarianism is on the march as well, violence is in the air, awaiting a spark. Most people are ‘against’, without being able to define their opposition. Everything is up for grabs: military alliances, trade pacts, political integration and legal framework. Dictators everywhere exult in the sudden surge of the unpredictable Donald who has 666 written all over him, who wants to make America great again, and will accomplish the exact opposite.
No wonder I feel depressed, for me an entirely new sensation. Gone will be any climatic moderation. Gone will be any fiscal frugality. Gone will be Christian charity, welcoming the down-and-out of this world.
This new cruel harshness, this pitiless approach to the international refugees will create tremendous hardships and severe suffering: brace yourself for strict laws to forbid TV crews to broadcast these heartrending scenes.
Jobs? Forget it. Robots, Artificial Intelligence, technological relentless advance will doom many more millions of angry young men to become surplus, and, with no meaningful work to fill their time, violence will increase as “idleness is the root of all evil.”
So Trump promised economic growth. He also boasted to provide health care ‘at a fraction of the current cost!’ Those gullible American voters! They are in for a rude awakening. Healthcare costs are skyrocketing. More old people, the fastest growing segment of the population, will require more of all that makes healthcare so necessary and so expensive.
So Trump promised economic growth. This too shows his ignorance. There is an ocean of difference between a promise and a fact. Facts are Trump’s stumbling block, and will be his direct downfall. Too bad that his speedy demise will increase anarchy, something he will advocate, blaming everybody but himself.
Why is economic growth no longer possible?
Well, history is a good guide. It has been said that the further forward you want to forecast, the further back you have to look.
So let me go back a while. According to the historian Angus Maddison the annual rate of growth in the western world from AD 1 to AD 1820 was a mere 0.06 per cent per year, or 6 per cent per century. Almost everyone lived on the modern equivalent of $400 to $600 a year, just above the subsistence level.
Then—just a couple of hundred years ago—people started getting richer, and richer and richer still from, say 1820, first thanks to coal.
Growth accelerated even more after the US Civil War in 1860, when other countries too made stupendous progress. Western Europe and Japan largely caught up to the US in the second half of the 20th century, and China and other emerging nations are well on their way, but that single 100-year period, the “special century,” from 1870-1970 was more important to economic progress than any other so far.
Then, some 50 years ago, growth slowed.
And now growth is stalling altogether.
Back to history.
A child born in 1820 entered a world that was almost medieval: lit by candlelight, in which folk remedies treated health problems and travel was no faster than hoof or sail. Three great inventions of that next half century—the railroad, steamship, and telegraph—set the stage for more rapid progress. The Civil War showcased these advances when northern trains sped Yankee troops to the front and steamships blockaded supplies to the South. Compare that to the War of 1812, when news still travelled so slowly that the Battle of New Orleans was fought three weeks after a treaty had been signed to end that war. But by the time of the Civil War, daily newspapers published the outcomes of battles mere hours after they occurred.
Let me point out why it is now impossible to repeat the aspects of the post-1870 economic revolution.
In 1870, rural and urban working-class North Americans bathed in a large tub in the kitchen after pumping water from outside in pails and warming it over an open hearth. All this was such a nuisance that some people bathed once a month. Similarly, heating in every room was once a distant dream—yet it became a daily reality in the decades between 1890 and 1940.
The flood of inventions that followed the Civil War transformed life. When electricity made illumination possible with the flick of a switch, the process of creating light was changed forever. When lifts allowed buildings to extend vertically instead of horizontally, the nature of land use was changed, and urban density was created. When small electric machines replaced huge, heavy steam boilers, the scope for replacing human labor with machines broadened beyond recognition.
So it was with transport. When cars and other ‘auto-mobile’ vehicles replaced horses, the quarter of agricultural land devoted to feeding those animals was freed up. Progress in transport has been stunning; it took little more than a century from the first primitive railroads which began replacing the stagecoach in the 1830s to the Boeing 707 flying near the speed of sound in 1958.
The transition of the food supply from medieval to modern also occurred during this century. The Mason jar, invented in 1859, made it possible to preserve food at home. The first canned meats were fed to Northern troops in the Civil War, and during the late 19th century a vast array of processed foods, from Kellogg’s cornflakes and Borden’s condensed milk to Jell-O, entered American homes. Clarence Birdseye invented a method for freezing food in 1916, although it took until the 1950s before people had domestic freezers. In 1870, shoes and men’s clothing were bought from shops but women’s clothing was made at home, and the sewing machine had only recently reached the mass market.
By the 1920s, most women’s clothing was bought from retail outlets that did not exist in 1870—namely, the great urban department stores and, for rural customers, mail-order catalogues.
Many – I among them – now worry that there will no longer be work for an increasing share of able-bodied adults.
Yes, the remarkable period between 1900 and 1970 was indeed exceptional. My mother was born at the turn of the 20th century at a farm with no electricity, and died in the late-1970s in the city. Over her adult lifetime she saw the flush toilet, electricity for lighting and central heating go from being luxuries enjoyed by a quarter or less of the population to becoming universal. She saw radio come into being and then be supplanted by black-and-white and ultimately color television. She saw air-conditioning, washing machines, dryers and refrigerators go from non-existent to universal. Over her lifetime, transportation went from meaning walking, riding a horse or taking some kind of train to being primarily based on cars and planes. When she had my oldest brother in 1924, infant mortality was 75 per 1000 and large families could expect to suffer an infant or childhood death. When her youngest grandchild was born in the 1970s, infant mortality was below 20 per 1000 and life expectancy had risen by more than a decades.
It is striking to contrast the changes during my mother’s lifetime with those during mine. Microwaves have become universal in kitchens. Automotive air-conditioning has gone from common to universal. A much wider range of TV programs are now available and with a much sharper picture. There is a wider array of healthy foods. And even though I refuse to carry a smartphone, most others keep connected all the times.
But….all these changes in my lifetime are purely cosmetic. Still I can easily claim that my generation, those born between 1920 and 1970, are also the most fortunate generation.
Certain kinds of progress can happen only once. Living in a controlled climate, having access to indoor plumbing, largely eliminating child mortality, controlling infectious disease, and being able to communicate immediately in the absence of physical presence are all examples of transformations that can be built on and improved but are impossible to replicate.
We should not forget that all this happened thanks to CARBON FUELS, or should I say CARBON CARNAGE.
Our profligate production of perfidious petroleum products has prompted the all-pervasive poisoning of our precious planet.
Yes, our legacy is largely illegitimate; it is the direct opposite of creational justice. This total act of exploitation of the earth’s treasures, such as air, soil, water, just to name the three elements all of life depends on, will serve as a tremendous drag on economic growth, may probably cause negative growth, making the potential for total chaos and complete anarchy universal. We have squandered our inheritance and no political party in the world can restore the damage done.
We are now experiencing the Age of Aging, not only of the population, cancelling the continuation of universal healthcare because of lack of economic growth, but we also are witnessing ”The Aging of the Planet”. We live in a world where problems are piling up and so-called solutions – fracking, more coal, pipelines, and Trump’s tirades – are making matters worse.
ANARCHY and EN ARCHE, CHAOS and COSMOS.
“In the beginning (en arche) God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty.” God spoke and it came to be. Genesis 1: 1-2.
Yes, the world started in chaos. Out of that chaos God created cosmos, the well-ordered world, where each species had a specific place, forming a perfectly harmonious totality. John, the fourth gospel after Matthew, Mark, and Luke, starts on an identical note: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” That suggests to me that the world, cosmos, and God, are one. To sin against creation is to sin against God. No wonder there is increasing chaos and anarchy.
We now are un-doing God, un-creating Creation: Anarchy everywhere is the result.
Trump and his followers may assert that they will restore that greatness that was evident during that golden age of 1870-1970, but that glorious growth century was an anomaly, powered by poisonous particles, now emerging everywhere and choking off all that lives and moves and has a being. Trump will speed up the process of disintegration and so bring on more chaos.
So what are we to do? What am I to do?
I believe that I must start by acknowledging the true situation, by confessing that we live in a world where matters have run stuck. There no longer are solutions to the world-wide chaos we have created. Our helplessness is causing and accelerating anarchy.
We must realize that, as Jesus prayed in John 17, “we are in this world, but want no part of a world that now is dominated by ”The Evil One”, as is evident from various Scripture passages, such as 1 John 5: 19.
Jesus’ followers belong to the New World to come, of which the Bible speaks in glorious terms. Isaiah 65: 25 pictures such a scene, where current enemies such as the wolf and the lamb will feed together, and where nobody will do or cause harm on God’s Holy Mountain, something we now do continually.
Jesus, God’s precious Son, died to wrest back God’s beloved cosmos out of the clutches of The Evil One. That’s what John 3: 16 is all about.
When Jesus returns, and we in these coming weeks celebrate this, he will do away with all religion. Bonhoeffer writes: ”Jesus takes possession of the world come of age”, initiating a Religion-less Christianity (See Revelation 21:22). Jesus does not call us to a new religion but to LIFE.
That LIFE will be lived to the fullest extent in the New Creation.
To get away from Anarchy we have to start a New Beginning, from CHAOS TO COSMOS.
As always: our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.