June 3 2017
OUR NEAR FUTURE.
Of course I am sticking my neck out. Well, it’s pretty short so I can’t venture too far. I am told that if you want to fathom the future, look to the past, so this week I am (re)reading Barbara Tuchman’s THE GUNS OF AUGUST, the so well written prelude to World War I and its first month of fighting in 1914. I have also started for the first time Margaret MacMillan’s THE WAR THAT ENDED PEACE, dealing with the same subject from an earlier perspective.
Tuchman tells me that, on the day the war started, von Moltke, the then German top general, wrote: “this struggle will decide the course of history for the next hundred years.” He was so right. She also affirms that, while politicians dither the generals act, perhaps not always wisely: that’s dangerous for today with so many generals in the Trump cabinet.
I believe that the year 1914 ended that 19th Century of 100 years of peace and heralded the start of that fateful 20th Century, the age I lived through for all but 14 years, born in 1928.
The Age of my life
My life started tranquilly enough, as our family – 9 kids – was quite well off in the depression years. I enjoyed the usual middle class prerogatives: youth choir, music lessons, swimming instruction, regular family vacations.
With supposedly better than average intelligence, I was, after primary education, sent to an exclusive – fee charging – university training school, which, upon completion, would allow me automatically to enter the faculty of law, medicine or theology. My parents hoped that I would choose the cloth. It was not to be.
The Age of my life has been war: World War II in occupied Holland 1940-45, trained for war from 1949-51 as a conscript, the Korean War, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, the entire Middle East.
Today all of us earth inhabitants are willing participants in the Universal War on Creation which is approaching its final stages, leading to the destruction of all we hold dear.
It is my contention that the 20th Century stopped in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell, making it a mere 75 years, followed by an interlude that ended with the onset of Brexit and the TRUMP TRAGEDY.
We now have entered the FINAL period of World History. I know that is quite a statement.
Here’s how I see it.
The TRUMP TRAGEDY has the potential to cause a second American Civil War. Trump will never resign because he cannot admit failure, but he may be forced out once the Democrats gain the upper hand in Congress in 2018. His followers, armed and dangerous and having nothing to lose, will rebel. Result: the end of the USA as a vital nation.
Trump’s divisive stance will greatly reduce America’s status. Of course, nothing happens in isolation. The TRUMP TRAGEDY is a symptom of a decaying world, unleashing the worst in humanity, and as such it will simply accelerate the world’s unwinding process because wars, both environmental and civil, are extremely destructive.
The impossible is still impossible.
There are already plenty of insoluble problems today. Due to the graying of the nations, more and more old people are becoming more and more dependent on healthcare. This places governments and institutions for the impossible problem of funding pensions – both state and private – for longer living elders, and also financing the ever expanding need for healthcare, while the tax base is decreasing and growth is stalling.
Slow or no economic growth is due to mechanization, evident in robotics. This will cause many, perhaps most jobs to disappear. Robots don’t pay taxes, yet unemployed people need income also, so there is another conflict that is impossible to solve. A guaranteed income will simply cause huge deficits.
Technology comes with a disastrous price tag.
The entire ‘computer’ age may prove to be a disastrous development. That millions of jobs have already vanished is a big problem. The greater problem is that people have lost touch with the earth, have calcified their brains due to mind-killing TV watching. There also is diminished community sense and a loss of ‘god’ awareness. All this spells trouble, big trouble, as forced idleness breeds violence. Add to this the real danger that ‘hacking’ may paralyze society as we totally depends on computer power to function, and the stage is set for a complete shut-down of all activities.
With an exhausted environment our dangers multiply.
I have extensively written on this before. Let me repeat that we cannot expect infinite growth in a FINITE world. Expect Climate Change to bite with a vengeance, causing destructive hurricanes, ever more devastating earthquakes, speeding up economic collapse.
The future and us.
The future belongs to those who prepare for it. That today is more valid than ever. Martin Seligman, a well-known professor of psychiatry, writes that,
“We are misnamed. We call ourselves Homo sapiens, the “wise man,” but that’s more of a boast than a description. What makes us wise? What sets us apart from other animals? Various answers have been proposed — language, tools, cooperation, culture, tasting bad to predators — but none is unique to humans.
What best distinguishes our species is an ability that scientists are just beginning to appreciate: we contemplate the future. Our singular foresight created civilization and sustains society. It usually lifts our spirits, but it’s also the source of most depression and anxiety, whether we’re evaluating our own lives or worrying about the nation. Other animals have springtime rituals for educating the young, but only we subject them to “commencement” speeches grandly informing them that today is the first day of the rest of their lives.”
He continues, “A more apt name for our species would be Homo Prospectus, because we thrive by considering our prospects. The power of prospection is what makes us wise. Looking into the future, consciously and unconsciously, is a central function of our large brain, as psychologists and neuroscientists have shown”
Our true future.
Dr. Needleman is right that we must live for the future. Yes, we should be Homo Prospectus, looking forward to the future.
I don’t know how Needleman sees that future. I know how I see it. Today the only future that is really viable has as basis, “The fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom”. This simply means that for us humans the only way to live is “loving creation”.
That love must dominate our lives; only that selfless act has validity and is the total opposite of the TRUMP DOCTRINE. I believe that John 3: 16: “God so loved the world”, is the most important text in the entire Bible. The Greek word used is COSMOS, encompassing all of creation, including humans.
There simply is no future for a depleted earth. There also is no future for a world increasingly dominated by the machine, but that is what I see.
What do I see? People having an arm glued to the ear holding a device; people with their fingers constantly typing a message; people at home looking at TV for hours; people in cars driving everywhere, including the nearby corner store; people sitting on a lawn-mower cutting 20 square yards of green; people travelling on ‘walking trails’ on their noisy and polluting ATVs.
We have become an extension of the machine. We have become HOMO MECHANICUS: Man the Machine.
Of course, I exaggerate. There are many, many exceptions, but they are too few to make a difference.
Still: admit it. It’s over.
The entire model our society is based on has become a fallacy! That’s why there’s Trump. That’s why there is Brexit. That’s why there are terror attacks. That’s why suicide is the leading cause of death among employable men. Trump bases his fictitious budget on THREE percent growth. Sorry, there is no growth. His projection will only make one item great and greater: DEBT. There hasn’t been any real growth for years. The only growth there has been is in healthcare costs and in those who are over the age of 65 year. And in DEBT.
There is debt, untold trillions of it. Debt can only be paid when there is growth, because debt, even in the current low interest situation, needs growth to repay it with the accrued interest. That’s no longer possible. During the past decade or so we have lived on borrowed money, and in an exhausted world the money supply too will end.
We are at the end of the line. It had to come, and it is here. Sorry to be so blunt.
Based on the above there is only one explanation: we are smack in the middle of the most important global development ever. Never before, not when Rome ceased to exist as a viable empire in about 460, some 1500 years ago, declining as a city from millions to a mere 20,000; not when the Black Plague reduced the European population by some 30 percent in the 14th Century; not since the 20th Century, when wars cost the lives of Hundreds of Millions of people; now in the 21st Century we see the potential of the entire world population being in danger of life and limb.
The most puzzling aspect is that nobody talks about it.
We have built an entire economy on the phantom of economic growth. Our entire financial system, the lives of all the people in the Western World, those of pension age, those suffering from disabilities, those in institutions, in the educational and the medical fields, comprising the major part of the population: they all depend on economic growth.
The political turmoil, in France, in Great Britain, in the USA, is an example of what is to come. Traditional political parties, which have ruled their countries for decades, are today at or near record low support levels.
I guess the very reason why this ultimate danger is not mentioned is that there is no antidote. There’s nothing we can do about it. It all is a matter of ‘forces’ moving beyond our control, forces that have their own momentum, forces that are bigger and more far-reaching than our intentions, however noble and well-meaning they are.
Basically I am convinced that this is what is coming. It’s solely a matter of straightforward reasoning. But nobody seems to really know or understand it which is odd, because it’s not that difficult to grasp. This all happens because growth is over. And if growth is over, so are expansion and centralization in whatever shape or form they come in.
Some Biblical advice.
Curiously the Bible has some advice here, because it is quite explicit in outlining how the end will come. For one thing: it will come suddenly, without warning. The last Bible book, Revelation, is named “Revelation”, because all things will revert to its true nature: the true character of humanity will be ‘laid bare’, her accomplishments, her failures and successes. It also warns us that we must expect immense disasters, of which the outlines are clearly visible today.
The book also offers some advice: Revelation 18: 5 suggests that we disassociate ourselves from the kind of society that has caused this disastrous situation. There it says, “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven and God has remembered her crimes.”
Abandoning a sinking economy has, I think, a double significance: if we are able, we must distance ourselves from the mentality that has brought this disaster to happen, but only very few can do what our family has done now more than 40 years ago: leave the city and build some sort of an ARK where, perhaps, the worst of the worst may be avoided. In any case we must learn, wherever we are, to live within rhythm of creation, because that is our future.
I have outlined THE NEAR FUTURE as I see it, sticking my neck out. Of course, I don’t know the Lord’s timetable, but he did warn us to look for the signs around us: these signs do tell me that THE TIME is near.