THE CHURCH IN FLUX
Chapter 23
Where is the world coming to?
This is not a cheerful chapter. What we now are experiencing is the calm before the storm. There are so many ominous signs out there that if only one of them would materialize, the world economy – except for Africa – would collapse and billions of people with it. What’s going on? Why this quietness in spite of major threats?
It seems to me we are in the first stage of something pointed out by Elizabeth K?bler-Ross who has shown that tragedy comes in five stages: denial, followed by anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Denial typifies today’s situation. Politicians always must give a positive spin to circumstances. So must the news media. They depend on their corporate advertisers who do not want bad news to influence the media channels, so our papers, television, radio and magazines cannot print or picture or say what’s really going on.
The threat of an Oil Peak is hardly mentioned, even though its logic is so elementary that is defies common sense not to make provisions for it, yet no government in the world is doing this in a sufficient manner. The chances that my house will burn are minute, but I pay thousands of dollars just in case for fire insurance. Where is the national insurance to safeguard our standard of living, utterly dependent on a continuous flow of oil? That it will stop someday soon is beyond dispute, but no nation has adequate alternatives.
The financial policies of the United States especially go against all common sense: their greatest liability is debt: federal, state, municipality and personal. Yet all they do is go deeper into the red through so-called stimulus packages. All authorities are in deep denial.
Booming China is no exception: by soaking up the debt from the USA it now has been sucked into a deep spiral, the sink hole of American dollars as they have advanced trillions of them to the USA: when the moment comes to unload them, both will suffer irreparably. They also, with total communist disregard for the environment, have allowed pollution to poison land, air and water, a bill that has to be paid sooner than later.
In spite of numerous Climate Conferences sponsored by the United Nations, and despite of thousands of scientist warning that the perils of Global Warming are extreme and its onset imminent, the world at large is in deep denial about Climate Change. The reason is that nobody really wants to change their lifestyle to a more simple and self-sufficient one, because we are addicted to a carbon -based diet.
Also the entire world faces a water shortage which will reduce crop yields and lead to a possible mass starvation aggravated by warmer temperatures. A pandemic equivalent of the Spanish Flu cannot be ruled out either. It by itself would paralyze modern life as people would be afraid the go out for fear of contracting the disease. Yes, we most certainly are in an extreme mode of denial.
We are approaching the second phase of tragedy: anger. We already see it in numerous instances where people who have lost their job go on a shooting rampage, always ending in suicide. Gerald Celente, director of the Trends Research Institute, is so worried that all branches of government and the media are on the wrong path that, in desperation, he has issued a warning that the American public is ready to revolt: “Taxed to death, angry at government bailouts, outraged by Wall Street greed, and bitterly resentful of a system that rewards the undeserving rich, the American public is ready to revolt.
He issued not only a warning, but also an appeal to do so: “The Tea Parties and Tax Protests sprouting across the nation, which we had predicted, are harbingers of revolution. But they are not enough. Much stronger and directed action is required. Our call for ‘Revolution’ will galvanize the people, destroy the corrupt ruling systems, and produce a prosperous and more just nation.” That’s hogwash, of course, as revolution often lead to worse circumstances, of which Russia in 1917 or France in 1789, are prime examples.
He writes that “Nothing short of total repudiation of our entrenched systems can rescue America. We are under the control of a two-headed, one party political system. Wall Street controls our financial lives; the media manipulates our minds. These systems cannot be changed from within. There is no alternative. Without a revolution, these institutions will bankrupt the country, keep fighting failed wars, start new ones, and hold us in perpetual intellectual subjugation.”
And here is where The Church in Flux comes in, as his words equally apply to the Church problem when he writes that “I am calling for an ‘Intellectual Revolution’. I ask American citizens to free their minds from the tyranny of ‘Dumb Think.’ This is a revolution about thinking – not manning the barricades. It’s about brain power – not brute force.”
For society to survive and grow, it must wake up and grow up. Americans must acknowledge what their opinions are based on, who they listen to … and why.
What are America’s prime information sources? CNN, “The most trusted name in news”? Fox, “Fair and balanced”? CNBC, “First in Business Worldwide”? The New York Times, “All the news that’s fit to print”?
Who do the people listen to? A closed circuit of familiar faces guaranteed to take predictable positions. Authorities on nothing, yet pronouncing upon everything; a cadre of media aristocrats, pretending they’re the people’s voice.
Bill O’Reilly, Steven Colbert, Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann, Sean Hannity, Jon Stewart, Chris Matthews, Jim Cramer, Joe Scarborough, Anderson Cooper, Bill Maher.”
So far the warning from the director of the Trends Research Institute, issued to all subscribers, of which I am one.
The situation in the church is no different. Most ministers try to please the crowds, rather than please God. The sheep flock to Joel Osteen to hear that being prosperous is a blessing; the masses fill mega churches to hear preachers inciting them with a “Rapture” message which means a flight from the earth and its problems to rest forever in the arms of God, just at a time when only Biblical Christians can produce the proper answers.
But the revolution Gerald Celente would like to see will not happen, because, as he correctly diagnosed, it’s about brain-power and thinking. And that’s exactly why this will not happen, because the education system, the television, the church institutes, all have contributed to fashion a populace incapable of thinking and staging a revolution: most people are affected by the mind-disease called ‘Lethargy’, unable or unwilling to think, as the temporary availability of carbon-based energy has paralyzed the Western World, and, since the human body is a unity, the physical inability to exert themselves has equally prevented their minds from thinking lucidly. Their thinking process, their ability to correctly fathom the future, has been stifled by modern conveniences, wrongly assuming that the future is merely an extension of the past, something that is totally unrealistic.
Where is the world coming to?
It is speedily sliding toward a collapse of gigantic proportions, of which the monetary angle is but a small portion.
The coming collapse will take numerous forms.
First, there is the financial collapse, which we are witnessing today. It will continue in spite of valiant efforts world-wide to cushion the impact. This is followed by commercial collapse. Faith that “the market shall provide” is lost. Money is devalued and/or becomes scarce, commodities are hoarded, import and retail chains break down, and widespread shortages of survival necessities become the norm.
The next phase is political collapse. Faith that “the government will take care of you” proves an illusion. As official attempts to stem or temper widespread loss of access to commercial sources of survival fail to make a difference, the political establishment will lose legitimacy and relevance. Once this has happened social collapse is soon to follow. Faith that “your people will take care of you” disappears, as local social institutions, be they charities or other groups that rush in to fill the power vacuum run out of resources or fail through internal conflict. And the final stage is cultural collapse. Faith in the goodness of humanity is lost. People lose their capacity for kindness, generosity, consideration, affection, honesty, hospitality, compassion, charity. Families disband and compete as individuals for scarce resources.
I have a number of books that substantiate these scenarios.
In The Party’s Over, Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, Richard Heinberg paints a realistic future when he wonders what we would do without oil, as the world is about to change dramatically and forever as the result of oil depletion. He correctly states that we are entering a new era as different from the industrial era as the latter was from medieval times. In The End of Oil; on the edge of a Perilous New World Paul Roberts outlines an identical picture: “disruption and violent dislocation are almost assured” he writes.
Thomas Homer-Dixon has written a number of books dealing with the enormous challenges humanity faces. In his The Ingenuity Gap he wonders whether the Western world can solve the environmental, social and technological problems of the future, as we are all caught dangerously between a soaring requirement for ingenuity and an increasingly uncertain supply. In his The Upside of Down, Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization, he outlines the troubles we face, especially Climate change, global oil depletion, explosive geopolitics which all threaten to overwhelm our ability to think clearly and act competently. Homer-Dixon shows that we are creating the conditions for catastrophe, but by understanding the underlying principles he, optimistically I believe, we can still limit the severity of collapse.
What does all this mean for the Church?
More about that in the next chapter.