October 9 2017
FAST FALLS THE EVENTIDE.
You may recognize this as a line from ABIDE WITH ME, the song made famous by the TITANIC disaster more than 100 years ago.
The greatest danger in most of our Western world is that all seems so normal, just like the Titanic when it was merrily making waves on the North Atlantic, until…..
True, the summer was hot, and rainfall in our area well below average, but still where we live life looked as if the ‘not a cloud in the sky’ saying would also apply to everything else.
Of course I am known as a doomsayer so what sort of Jeremiad is in store this week?
If you have an ear to the ground, you hear the rumbling. Voices echoing severe dissatisfaction are becoming louder and louder. The very fact that there is the Trump phenomenon, the Brexit vote, the rise of le Pen in France and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands points to a general unease in the Western world, still the dominant trendsetter today.
It is quite clear that there especially is a lot of anxiety among the young people, where the Over Dose deaths are rapidly increasing. Yes, in our heart of hearts we too know that the future looks ominous.
There is a good chance that TRUMP of all people will come out on top, and if not triumphant, he will at least be favored by more than 40 percent of the US electorate. Unbelievable. Why? What’s going on?
It’s over!
The entire model on which our societies have been based on for as long as we ourselves have lived is over! Economic growth has stopped. The only growth we have is in cancer treatments and heart bypasses and pollution controls and repairing storm and water damage caused by severe weather. It’s positive growth that’s really negative because it’s financed by tax dollars and insurance money. That sort of growth makes us poorer in the long run.
Basically there is no economic growth. There hasn’t been any for years. Our entire economic system is based on 2-4 percent growth so that our governments can keep their promises of old-age security and unlimited health-care for all: but that is impossible when tax revenue is flat or even declines.
What have we done? Lack of interest income has been replaced by borrowing money, made possible through ultra-cheap debt. The Washington bureaucrats have doctored employment figures, making untold millions disappear from the labor force, showing low unemployment. Both in Canada and in the USA smart government operatives have changed the method of calculating inflation, telling us that there hardly is any increase in prices. And most of all there’s debt, public – 50 trillion – and private – 100 trillion – that has served to keep an illusion of growth alive and now increasingly no longer can. That works out to $22,000 per person DEBT for every human being on the earth! Correct me if I am wrong: $150 Trillion divided by 7+billion on the earth. The IMF supplied the debt figure!
Those eliminated statistically from government screens are suddenly appearing on Trump rallies, and clamoring to be heard. Dulled by stupidly watching Fox News and mal-informed by right-wing radio commentators, and piously led astray by the religious leaders, they now are flocking to false prophets who equally deceive them with phony fairy tales.
You know what this means? It means that THE DEVIL HAS GONE FULL-TIME in the absence of the proclaimers of THE REAL WORD. The masses are awakening and reason has been abandoned. The old system is being found wanting, and the new has not yet appeared, and never will because we have burned all our bridges. We are smack in the middle of the most important global development in decades, even in centuries, a true revolution, which will shape the world forever.
We now face the consequences of no growth, of globalization and the rapid advent of THE ROBOT SOCIETY. It spells the doom for such goodies as Old Age pensions, Universal Health Care and other social benefits. The American plebs already experiences this doom and sees irrational Trump as a solution. God help us, but He is hiding his face – seeing what our end will be (look up Deuteronomy 31: 17), so the Great Adversary, here personified by Donald Trump, is seen as the savior. Indeed God help us, but since as a society we have destroyed the world God loves, we also have burned all bridges to him, unless we repent.
Soon we will be back to conditions of 100 to 200 years ago, except that then, by and large, people and nations were self-sufficient. This is no longer possible. Already the political scene is fundamentally changing. The Republican Party in the USA is disintegrating before our eyes. It has been hijacked by a lunatic. The Democratic Party there is deeply divided and will also disappear in its present form. Blame it all on forces that are beyond our control, that are bigger and more far-reaching than our mere opinions, even though they all are the results of our own actions.
It’s has been brewing a long time. The Republican Party, by their own actions of non-cooperation, by their crazy religious notions, by their stupid ideas of simple solutions to complex problems, by denying that all people have needs, not just the rich, has generated its own demise.
Oh, yes, history tells us that revolution always devours its own people.
Our Finite World.
The cause is simple: we live in a Finite World, and we have reached the End: we have used up our allotted inheritance, and now we face extinction. It’s the Prodigal Son Parable all over again. That, in blunt terms, is what we are experiencing. That takes some adjusting. But, as true fanatics, we are redoubling our efforts, even though we have no idea where we are going. Trump is a clear example of this irrationality.
Thanks to the temporary presence of Fossil Fuels, we’ve had a ball. Now the ball is deflated and impossible to kick down the road, because it has become filled with lead. Super hurricanes, super typhoons, rain bombs, super droughts, you name it, will soon be regular features, and the weather channel the most watched of all programs. Don’t expect the insurance companies to pay the damage, don’t expect the governments to bail you out: they all are or soon will be broke.
Donald Trump will still lose the election, but it doesn’t truly matter. He will entice people to revolt and, since the low-ranks of the army and the police are with him, expect chaos in November. Better get ready. Don’t ask me how.
So Hillary will win. It will be a pyrrhic victory, because she too will be in the same boat as you and I. Louis XXIV comes to mind or rather his wife Marie Antoinette with her “let them eat cake”, both killed by the revolutionary crowd in 1789 when THE PEOPLE were in charge.
If she wins, her program too, like all the others, will be targeted towards more growth, and there’s no such thing available. And while in a no-growth scenario it’ll be a good thing for America to bring jobs back home, as is Trump’s message, they won’t spell anything that even comes close to growth, because ROBOTS are the looming danger, and they don’t pay taxes and don’t need health insurance either. Prepare for the Fall of the Roman Empire and the French Revolution wrapped up together. How about that for a Jeremiad!
FORTY PERCENT!
Just imagine: 40 (FORTY!) percent of the American population wants change and they precisely are the ones who favor guns. They are angry and won’t take it anymore: they have lost their factory jobs, have no savings, have high deductible health insurance, if any at all, and are ready to go all the way because they have nothing to lose. They also are in debt to their eyeballs. And Janet Yellen is all set to increase the interest rate as soon as Hillary is elected.
And if all fails, there always is war. Syria today is becoming like Spain in the 1930’s where Russia and Germany were waging a proxy war. Now it is Russia versus the USA.
Where are we now?
Today there is a huge divide, typified by the two Presidential candidates. On the one hand there is Hillary and the status quo, building on past glory and the Affluent Society, largely generated by the Carbon-Age. And then there are the angry white Trumpians in the USA and the reactionaries in Europe, such as the “Alternative für Deutschland” and le Pen in France and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. They too are becoming more popular. It’s only these people – so their leaders proclaim – who have the wisdom to MAKE AMERICA, GERMANY, THE NETHERLANDS, GREAT AGAIN.
None of the USA two warring factions has a real clue what’s going on and what is in store. The real truth is that THE WORLD IS TIRED, is exhausted, is running on empty, is depleted of what really counts: fresh air, potable water, healthy soil, plenty of biodiversity but is now full of our toys. We have mined the seas, leveled the mountains and paved the planet, leaving no room for animals and nature-loving humans. But there are McMansions and airplanes and cars, oh yes!
Still Trump has a point. For many groups, especially the less educated working class, life genuinely is worse than it was in the mid-60s. It’s no wonder that such people buy Donald’s paradise-lost narrative. But the real problem is that people have lost faith in the God Creator, who, when creation came into being, saw that it was good, and who, when all systems were go and humanity was infused with God’s Spirit, called creation very good. It is that goodness that we have abused. Once that was lost, humanity became hell-bent on destruction. That’s what we see now: a sure path to self-annihilation.
Already the signs are everywhere. A Trump victory will simply speed up the process, denying the very present evidence of Climate Change, as MATTHEW, not the author of the GOSPEL by that name, but a horrendous hurricane so aptly named, is lingering over ocean waters that are 30 Degrees Celsius!!
As matters speed to its destined end, as humanism and religion wither, despair and doubt have become pervasive. Of course.
FAST FALLS THE EVENTIDE.
We can`t turn back the clock. We are in a phase of history as no other. Ancient China, medieval Germany, the Dutch Golden Age — they all contained some piece of wisdom and had their own strengths and weaknesses. But it was the Industrial Revolution that set the stage for our current predicament. It started simply with the steam engine, powered by coal and led to today`s carbon-saturated state from which there is no escape.
We have chosen that route and will stay there even as it ends up in total disaster. Yes, our way of life has an expiry date, approaching with neck-break speed.
So what now? Permaculture?
Permaculture defies simple definition and understanding. The term began as a fusion of “permanent” and “agriculture”. Even back in the 1970s, two men, Mollison and Holmgren, saw how destructive industrial agriculture was to natural habitats and top soils, and how dependent it was on finite fossil fuels. To them it was clear that these systems were unsustainable, a position ratified by scientific reports today which expose the alarming effects industrial agriculture has on biodiversity and climate stability. These two pioneering ecologists began to wonder what a “permanent agriculture” would look like. Thus permaculture was born.
In the broadest terms, permaculture is a design system that seeks to work with the laws of nature rather than against them. It aims to efficiently meet human needs without degrading the ecosystems we all rely on to flourish.
Put otherwise, permaculture is an attempt to design human systems and practices in ways that mimic the cycles of nature to eliminate waste, increase resilience and allow for the just and harmonious co-existence of human beings with other species. It is predicated on two cosmic truths:
LOVE GOD AND HIS CREATION ABOVE ALL, AND LOVE OUR FELLOW HUMANS OF EVERY STRIPE AND COLOR AS OURSELVES.
Jesus said: “On these two simple rules depend everything and everybody”.
Yes, if you ABIDE by these rules the Lord will ABIDE with you and me.