MAYDAY (1)
May 1 2016.
There is a call MAYDAY, which has nothing to do with the Month of May, but is simply a phonetic pronouncing of the French M’AIDEZ, which means HELP ME, a distress call, one that now is heard much more frequently. It is a prayer, somehow, a request for assistance.
Today the earth is calling MAYDAY, reminding me of Romans 8: 22, where it says: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth.” What that really means is that the earth is pregnant and soon a new earth will be born. But before that happens we all will experience a lot of LABOR PAINS.
Last week I ended my column with these words:
Brace yourself. Bad times are coming. My guess, it will be worse than in the 1930s as climatic conditions will greatly aggravate the food situation and trillions of debt will cause major inflation. Then, in the Dirty Thirties, Governments believed in balance budgets, causing untold hardships, which could quite well have been one of the causes that triggered World War II. Now, facing a Filthy Future, the unleashing of unlimited liquidity, by catapulting cash into the economy to cause inflation, this avalanche of money will destroy whatever is still valuable.
This was again confirmed by an article one of my readers sent me last week. In it a man with the name of Satyajit Das, living in Australia, born in India, having been a banker, corporate treasurer, academic and author, thus possessing a wide range of experience, is interviewed in regards to a book he wrote: THE AGE OF STAGNATION: WHY PERPETUAL GROWTH IS UNATTAINABLE AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMY IS IN PERIL.
He too believes that tough times are ahead. Here’s what Mr. Das says: “Food production has to increase by roughly 50 per cent by mid-century to feed a larger population but also to meet demand for different types of food. As people get richer, they want more protein. This requires larger scale production facilities. The amount of arable land on the planet, about 3.4 billion acres, has not changed very significantly for decades. It is shrinking because of climate change and other problems.”
And that is just one source. Actually negative news has become a monotonous melody that is putting people to sleep. Of course we are running stuck. Of course with a population growth of more than 350 percent in my lifetime, while the arable and is quickly being eroded, somewhere soon we will see frightening inflation and deepening deflation, the worst of all worlds: deflation of the goods we own, houses, cars, vacation properties, and inflation of the stuff we need: food, utilities and clothing.
Today all signs point to perilous times. We can ignore the signs, convincing ourselves that my jeremiads are overblown. But that is not a good strategy. Somewhere I read a quote: THE HAND FORMED TO FEED US HAS BECOME THE FIST THAT FIGHTS US. That certainly applies to a Carbon-based society including agriculture.
White’s Law, one of the core concepts of human ecology, points out that economic development is directly correlated with energy per capita> As more pollution affects production and per capita energy use begins to decline, the inevitable result is a long era of economic contraction, leading to the collapse of most economic and cultural institutions. Of course infinite growth in a finite world is simply impossible. Excessive heat in India has already immobilized 330 million people.
The Teacher wrote in Ecclesiastes some 3000 years ago “There is a time for everything… a time to be born and a time to die”. That also applies to our era where we witness the last gasps of humanity as it speeds towards extinction, foolishly accelerating the inevitable, ever faster running toward self-annihilation. Einstein’s observation is now more relevant than ever: “The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”
Our stupidity personified in Donald Trump and bewitched as we are by having 200+ energy slaves at our disposal night and day, provided by coal, oil and gas, has caused the earth itself to become our enemy, the very source on which our life depends: indeed: the hand formed to feed us has become the fist that fights us. The struggle for the remaining energy slaves has placed us and the planet in mortal peril.
Now our entire world is in suspense, anxiously suspecting that the next phase for us is the arrival of the unexpected, the improbable, the final stage of humanity. All sorts of hints are out there, but few take them seriously.
Declining Intelligence.
I had long suspected it, but now a Dutch scientist, Dr. Jan te Nijenhuis of the University of Amsterdam has found proof that we have much smaller brains than our ancestors. That doesn’t mean that you or I are dumber than our forefathers, but it does mean that, on the average, we, the human race in general, have gotten more stupid. His study indicates that we have lost 14 I.Q. points on average since the Victorian era, which roughly covers the 19thCentury.
How did he do it? Dr. te Nijenhuis and colleagues analyzed the results of 14 intelligence studies conducted between 1884 to 2004. Each study gauged participants’ so-called visual reaction times reflecting a person’s mental processing speed, considered an indication of general intelligence. In the late 19th Century, visual reaction times averaged around 194 milliseconds, while in 2004 that time had grown to 275 milliseconds.
Why are we getting dumber?
Here are some indications:
(1) Toxic chemicals in the environment can reduce intelligence. Examples include flame retardant everywhere in furniture, lead (found in many lipsticks), certain pesticides, fluoride – used in many city water systems – and radiation, which can reduce brain size. When a tsunami overpowered the Fukushima nuclear plant, radiation spread covering the Pacific, now reaching the shores of California. Expect even dumber TV shows and movies to emanate from Hollywood.
(2) Humans used to eat a lot of Omega 3s when wild game animals were part of their diet. They have much higher levels of these essential fatty acids than domesticated animals. If we only eat the modern, mostly processed food stuff without getting enough omega 3s, expect even more health and intelligence problems.
(3) The Science Daily notes: Exposure to specific bacteria in the environment increases learning behavior. We ingest these bacteria when we spend time in nature. Since most of us are city dwellers, we don’t inhale any of these good bacteria. Also most native culture used a lot of fermented foods containing healthy bacteria. Eating lots of yogurt and sauerkraut is good for the brain.
(4) Exercise boosts intelligence. Run, bike, walk. I get my best ideas when I run. Our forefathers and –mothers – were always physically active. Television has mostly been a curse for society. Shut the boob-tube down and start reading.
(5) Stress reduces sound thinking. With many people working several part time jobs high levels of cortisol – the chemical released when one is under continuous, unrelenting stress – and poverty can physically impair the brain and people’s ability to learn.
(6) Relaxing activities, such as meditation, keeping a journal and prayer have shown to enhance growth in certain areas of the brain.
(7) Lack of sleep reduces our thinking capacity. Many of us suffer from a chronic sleep deficiency.
We must prepare for collapse
Why do I list these items? They are all prerequisites for preparing for collapse, where we’ll need all our wits. Not surprisingly they also are necessary for entering the Kingdom to come. It seems to me that the Lord wants people there who are alert and open to new ideas.
You will notice that many of these 7 conditions have one feature in common: live close to the earth, grow as much as possible our own food, don’t be afraid to get dirt in your system, all of which promote intelligence. Listening to the earth is our holy duty.
Here is a new-old- idea. The Bible on several occasions state that The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom. (Psalm 111: 10; Proverbs 1:7; Prov. 9: 10), which, in essence, says that intelligence starts with ‘fear of the Lord.” This is another reason (#8), perhaps the most important one, why we are losing our marbles: we got rid of biblical religion.
A word of warning.
Today, in a society totally different than when these words were written 3000 years ago, we have little idea what ‘the fear of the Lord’ means anymore, so we give these words a pious twist and leave it at that.
What do they really signify? First the word ‘fear’. It has nothing to do with anxiety, being afraid, trying to avoid an encounter with God. The opposite is true. The world’s greatest composers and painters are a good example. The ‘fear’ of Bach, Rembrandt, van Gogh – fill in your favorite artist – is the beginning of getting to know them better by listening to their music and admiring their works of art. “Fear” here means ‘awe, admiration, deep respect.’ The same is true of “The Fear of the Lord”. By closely studying God’s work of art, his creation, we can only state: “How great Thou art.” Proverbs states that “In wisdom He made everything.” The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, because getting to fully know his creation takes more than eternity.
Our Western civilization, which is often called Christian, has a faulty view of reality. We correctly believe that God and humanity have a relationship. However for most church goers ‘nature’ is subject to human exploitation and has little or nothing to do with God, so we can destroy it freely, which we do and continue to do in spite of creation suffering severely. Again the “heaven” notion plays dominant role, something which I will touch upon in the next blog.
Here is how we usually see reality.
GOD
|
|
HUMAN
|
|
|
EARTH
We have a connection to God, but, based on an erroneous interpretation of Genesis 2: 15 where the old translation used the word ‘dominate’, we eagerly implement this faulty view, forgetting that, just like Jesus who came to serve (Matthew 20: 28) we too must ‘serve’ creation. This is shown in the triangle below.
GOD
/ \
HUMAN —————— EARTH
This basically illustrates that God is supreme. We depend on him. So does the earth. But the earth also depends on us and we on the earth. We all are mutually dependent, a truth that is valid for eternity. Bonhoeffer has said: God, Humanity and Earth belong together. The Earth- not heaven – is our eternal habitat. Therefore we must treat it as such.
I am reading The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Its subtitle is The Impact of the HIGHLY IMPROBABLE. Taleb’s main thesis is that Collapse cannot be predicted, and I agree with him. But when it does happen, it is analogous to the death of society because our life, yours, mine, everybody’s, depends on a guaranteed supply of liquid fuel and electricity.
Eliminate the one or the other of these energy sources, both Black Swan events, and within a day total chaos ensues, followed by deaths in the billions. These are not the only dangers: our entire financial system too is built on trust. Once this is gone, so goes our economy which cannot function without money.
Why we cannot change
There are several reasons for this. One is plain lethargy. Another is a line Upton Sinclair wrote: ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary or livelihood depends on his not understanding it.’ Take our beloved motor vehicle. We all need cars to go to work. At least 20 percent of all jobs are related to our highly polluting automobile, from traffic cops to insurance agents, from highway construction to TV ads, from its manufacturing to money lenders and salesmen of new and used cars. I should add funeral homes and our medical system to this list as well. One million people die in car accidents while 20 million are injured. Yet we love our cars, and refuse to own up to our dependency. No wonder that Green House Gases are higher than ever.
More about this next week.