May 22
PRO TRUMP? ANTI CHRIST.
SICK BODIES, SICK MINDS
Last week I wrote that the disappearance of trees deprives the people in the world of the power to combat the polluting pests that invade our respiratory systems, our lungs and throats, and mold us for a multitude of maladies.
No wonder ill health is now a global issue. That America is in the throes of a systemic health crisis can no longer be denied. According to the U.S. Department of Health And Human Services, more than two-thirds (68.8 percent) of adults are overweight or obese. (Overweight is typically defined as a body-mass index (BMI) of 25 or higher. A BMI of 24.9 is not exactly featherweight; I would have to add 20 pounds to reach a BMI of 24.9. )
The health risks of being overweight or obese include:
• type 2 diabetes
• heart disease
• high blood pressure
• nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (excess fat and inflammation in the liver of people who drink little or no alcohol)
• osteoarthritis (a health problem causing pain, swelling, and stiffness in one or more joints)
• some types of cancer: breast, colon, endometrial (related to the uterine lining), and kidney
• stroke
It’s even worse elsewhere. According to the influential medical magazine THE LANCET, 90 percent of the world population already suffers from some sort of disease.
Yes, the general overall health is poor.
I blame the use of carbon-based products. There is not a person in the world free of chemical contaminants, due to the universal presence of airborne particles originating from automobile exhausts, electricity generating stations, pesticides and fertilizers. Yes, the tens of thousands of compounds originating mostly from our oil-based industrialization have invaded the very essence of humanity. I expect that, once a PANDEMIC has a foothold, the onslaught will be unimaginably fierce and deadly.
Body and mind are intimately connected. There is a Latin stating that MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO, which means that a “sound mind and a sound body go together”. The opposite is true as well: an unhealthy body leads to a deranged mind: sick bodies, sick minds.
That’s what we have today: a lot of deranged minds. It does not take a great number of them to create a lot of havoc. I taught high school for a few years – wasn’t very good at it – and discovered that a few bad elements can throw the entire class in disarray. The same is true wherever. Anger, frustration, and plain stupidity are poisoning society. They are roiling the ranks also of the educated and people you would normally think of as the protected class.
Take the USA, a good example of SICK BODIES, SICK MINDS. Donald Trump comes along and says he understands and sympathizes with average Americans; and he’s the one who expresses that frustration in terms that a majority of the unprotected can understand. Other candidates may sympathize, too, but what comes out of their mouths sounds like conventional political yak-yak. Whatever you want to say about Donald Trump, when you hear him speak he doesn’t sound like a normal politician.
What is true on the political scene also applies to the economy. There too the old investment models no longer work as the underlying tectonic plates are shifting under our feet, making our old models spit out unreliable predictions. So it’s time to seriously think about throwing out our patterns for political predictions, because we’re in the middle of what is likely to be an epic generational shift in voting procedures. There too past performance is not indicative of future results.
Regular readers know that I am not very optimistic about the fate of us humans: we have created a society that is rushing to the abyss. The problem is that we see ourselves as gods, and have assumed infinity as our hallmark and live accordingly. We have forgotten about the GOD who really is infinite. We have ridiculed this GOD: worse have ignored him and so have lost the wisdom that comes from fearing the true GOD.
With us as gods there is no place anymore for the real God. So God has abandoned us. The rebellion we see in the voting public really is rebellion against God. Pro
Trump? Anti-Christ!
That has been especially evident in our treatment of creation, GOD’s crown jewel, the very object of God’s love.
Not everybody undergoes a true conversion, a life-shaking experience. I did in 1972-3. Then two books then changed my outlook on life: a Dutch book questioning heaven as the destination for Christians and pointing to the new Creation as our eternal habitat, and LIMITS TO GROWTH by Dennis Meadows. Realizing that not heaven but a renewed earth is where I will dwell forever and ever, caused me overnight to become an ardent earth-lover, reasoning that when our ultimate destination is this very earth, then I must now live that life of eternity. Meadows convinced me of the FINITENESS of all earth’s resources. These books two have changed my life: a true conversion.
Forty years later Dennis Meadows, in January 2013, was interviewed by the German weekly DER SPIEGEL, published in English, at the 40th anniversary of that book. In that interview Dennis Meadows said more clearly than ever that HUMANITY IS STILL ON THE WAY TO DESTROYING ITSELF.
Meadows makes a perhaps somewhat confusing distinction between universal and global problems. His words:
“You see, there are two kinds of big problems. One I call universal problems, the other I call global problems. They both affect everybody. The difference is: Universal problems can be solved by small groups of people because they don’t have to wait for others. You can clean up the air in Hanover without having to wait for Beijing or Mexico City to do the same.
“Global problems, however, cannot be solved in a single place. There’s no way Hanover can solve climate change or stop the spread of nuclear weapons. For that to happen, people in China, the US and Russia must also do something. But on the global problems, we will make no progress.”
So how do we deal with problems that are global? It’s deceptively simple: We don’t.
His core message remains valid today: Humanity is ruthlessly exploiting global resources and is on the way to destroying itself.
When asked whether he believes that the ultimate collapse of our economic system can still be avoided he answered:
“The problem that faces our societies is that we have developed industries and policies that were appropriate at a certain moment, but now start to reduce human welfare, like for example the oil and car industry. Their political and financial power is so great and they can prevent change. It is my expectation that they will succeed. This means that we are going to evolve through crisis, not through proactive change. Even if we want to – and I am one who wants to – we no longer can change the way we live.”
Dr. Meadows is entirely correct. Except for an occasional couple, very few takes Climate Change seriously. TV has as its main source of income the automobile industry, urging people to purchase their polluting products. Oh, yes, governments talk big and perhaps even try to influence people somewhat – not too much because that might backfire – but gradual change will never solve our real big problems. The bitter truth is that we simply will continue what we are doing until we are in the midst of a full-blown crisis. Nothing can avoid that.
The ultimate outcome is the end of the world as we know it: and I say GOOD RIDDANCE. A TRUMP victory – very likely – and Britain leaving the European Union, the so-called BREXIT – also very likely – will only increase the tempo of deterioration, simply because the MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO is no longer the deciding criterion in our day.
My brother in the Netherlands sent me an item about Isaac Newton. On 22 February 2003, the Daily Telegraph (London, England) published a front-page story announcing Isaac Newton’s prediction that the world would end in 2060. Then people thought that 400 years in the future would be the same as an eternity. Isaac Newton was an English physicist and mathematician, most famous for his law of gravitation. He was the man who, in the 17th century, started the scientific revolution. Of course he then could not have possibly imagined today’s conditions, with a carbon-based industry, nuclear bombs, and a world population increasing from some 500 million then to more than 7 billion now. And Climate Change!
Admit it: we have painted ourselves into a corner. We no longer can change course to prevent ourselves from hitting boundaries. We hit the wall face first, and only then do we pick up the pieces and take it from there.
Jacques Cousteau, a French naturalist, was also quite blunt about it:
The road to the future leads us smack into the wall. We simply ricochet off the alternatives that destiny offers: a demographic explosion that triggers social chaos and spreads death, nuclear delirium and the quasi-annihilation of the species… Our survival is no more than a question of 25, 50 or perhaps 100 years.
We see it all too clearly in the weather. Climate Change is not increasing in a linear way but exponentially. Actually everything is on an exponential path. Since Newton in the 17th century, and especially since the Industrial Revolution world population, industrialization and resource depletion have grown exponentially, while our answers to them go only linearly.
True, today we live longer, but we are in many ways much weaker than our ancestors, kept alive by drugs and oil-based conveniences. We have become so dependent, as modern western men and women, on the blessings of our energy surplus and technology that 9 out of 10 of us wouldn’t survive if we had to do without them.
There is a more or less general recognition that we face three global problems/crises: finance, energy and climate change. Climate change should really be seen as part of the larger overall pollution problem. As such, it is closely linked to the energy problem in that both problems are direct consequences of the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
When we use energy, we produce waste; use more energy and we produce more waste. And there is a point where we can use too much, and not be able to survive in the waste we ourselves have produced.
So we change a light bulb and get a hybrid car. That’s perhaps an answer to the universal problem, and only perhaps, but it in no way answers the global one. With a growing population and a growing average per capita consumption, both energy demand and pollution keep rising inexorably. And the best we can do is pay lip service. Sure, we sign up for less CO2 and less waste of energy, but we draw the line at losing global competitiveness.
Small changes won’t do it.
The bottom line is that we may have good intentions, but we utterly fail when it comes to solutions. And if we fail with regards to energy, we fail when it comes to the climate and our broader living environment, also known as the earth.
We can only solve our climate/pollution problem if we use a whole lot less energy resources. Not just individually, but as a world population. Since that population is growing, those of us that use most energy will need to shrink our consumption more every passing day. And every day we don’t do that leads to more poisoned rivers, empty seas and oceans, barren and infertile soil. But we refuse to even properly define the problem, let alone – even try to – solve it.
Almost all people in the world now experience a sense of dread. And they have valid reasons. Sick minds rule. No wonder people are in a state of panic because they sense that the old ways have not worked, so perhaps, perhaps, voting for Trump or Sanders and for Brexit will do the trick. Of course it will not: it will make it worse. There are no answers anymore: that is the predicament we are in.
Let me rephrase that. In John 17 Jesus’ prayer is recorded. There, in verse 14 he states that those who believe in him do not belong to a world of which Satan has taken possession, where God has left us to our devices. There Jesus asks the Father to protect those who live for and look for the New World to come: His Kingdom.
There’s where we are at, there’s our answer: ora et labora, pray and prepare.