PREPARING FOR COLLAPSE
September 1 – Labour Day 2014
Start of a new weekly column
Nothing makes sense anymore
The hand formed to feed us has become the fist that fights us.
Now that the summer is over – well for students of all ages and teachers on all levels at any rate – and with about half of my veggie harvest stored away (it’s been a great growing year) it’s time to return to a weekly routine of writing a column after having posted 3 long monthly articles in June, July and August. I was glad to see that the number of visits on my blog has remained quite high during these three months: well over 12,000 with more than 26,000 hits, some days numbering more than 350 visits and 500 hits. Only the Lord knows whether I have influenced anybody.
It seems to me from my rural perch in Eastern Ontario that the world is stuck in a destructive pattern where any fundamental change has become almost impossible even though different thinking and action is sorely needed. The reason is that any attempt to fix dysfunctional systems steps on the toes of deeply entrenched vested interests that profit from the broken down Status Quo because people in charge of institutions devote every resource in their command to water down, co-opt, divert or defeat any reforms that reduce their share of the national income or curtail their political power or affect their powerful position or outdated doctrines.
As a result, true reform has become impossible, also because (1) politicians are elected to give everyone more of what they want so nothing changes while economic conditions deteriorate, and (2) corporations’ profits suffer when environmental controls are enacted. Alberta’s Tar sands and North Dakota’s Oil Fracturing boom are prime examples. The result is that sooner than later societal institutions will break down and no amount of make-believe or bogus statistics or happy talk can mask the rot.
Nothing makes sense anymore
Take the stock market.
In spite of slumping retail sales, static or declining income, rapidly shrinking workforce and dreaded deflation, the stock market is again close to an all-time high.
Makes no sense.
Take money.
When I studied Economics at Queen’s University, the money rate was then seen as the current inflation rate plus 1 percent for administration, plus 2 percent real return, for a minimum of 3 percent above the Cost of Living Index. My first and only mortgage in 1962 was $15,000 at 6.25% and that was seen as normal. My payment was $100.67 per month. Now the rate is 3% so my $100 now buys $30,000. No wonder house prices are up, but it means a negative return on my savings, and foreclosures when rates go up, which they will.
Makes no sense.
Take Climate Change.
More than half of US citizens don’t believe that this is taking place with politicians and church leaders out in front denying this man-made curse. Consequently America does nothing to combat it while the rest of the world pays lip service.
Makes no sense.
Take food.
It now is saturated with sugar and salt while most meats contain contaminants harmful for humans and, filled with antibiotics, have made this medicine ineffective. No wonder cancer and obesity are rampant. With a rapidly aging, unhealthy population health problems will skyrocket.
Makes no sense.
Take politics.
In name we are a democracy. In reality the lobbyists for financial institution, the arms industry and the big corporations call the shots. No wonder people have become cynical especially about politicians.
Makes no sense.
Take our soil, air, water.
We now use each year in natural resources the equivalent of close to 2 earths. How long can this last? We are increasingly using more than the earth can deliver.
Makes no sense.
Take economic growth.
Politicians and economists want, demand, do everything possible to foster economic growth, forgetting that in a finite world infinite growth is impossible.
Makes no sense.
Take war.
We know from history that nobody gains from waging war, yet today, while environmental conditions are deteriorating globally, war is everywhere, including in the USA where racial strife is still rampant. Fifty days of fighting between Israel and Palestine solved nothing. Two thousand people dead, destruction galore. Should I mention Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine?
Makes no sense.
Take wars on cancer and drugs. There billions have been spent ever since Pres. Nixon 40 years ago, declared it, yet cancer and drugs are still proliferating.
Makes no sense.
Take the fracking business or the Tar Sands.
Optimists now call North America Saudi America, but extracting its oil is very costly, very polluting, and very fast depleting. It has created the impression that we can burn oil ad infinitum, ignoring decades of warnings that by burning through the Earth’s finite reserves of fossil fuels just as fast as they could be extracted, the industrial world has backed itself into a corner from which the only way out leads straight down. White’s Law, one of the core concepts of human ecology, points out that economic development is directly correlated with energy per capita; as depletion overtakes production and energy per capita begins to decline, the inevitable result is a long era of economic contraction, leading to the collapse of most economic and cultural institutions.
Infinite growth in a finite world makes no sense.
Take the church.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer starts his book Creation and Fall with these remarkable words “The Church of Christ witnesses to the end of all things. It lives from the end, it acts from the end, it proclaims its message from the end. The church should be there to prepare ourselves for the Coming of the Kingdom, God’s Perfect Cosmos. Instead its main message is heaven oriented, in essence calling God’s world evil. Believing that Heaven is our final destination is the greatest heresy. Exploiting the earth is the greatest sin.
Makes no sense.
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 – 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: 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, thanks to oil, which is a finite product, and also highly polluting.
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.
No wonder nothing makes sense anymore.