If we take a survey of the social and political attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs of a representative sample of the billions of people on this planet and plot the results on a graph, we end up with a bell-shaped curve known as a “bell curve.”
It’s also known as a Normal Distribution.
The darker area in the center represents average behavior, normal behavior, common ground, agreement, i.e., people who fall into this category get along with each other generally.
There are several shades of “standard deviations” to the left and right of center.
Meaning behavior that deviates from “normal.”
The more we descend to the left or right side of the curve, the more deviant is the behavior.
What does this curve, this snapshot of humanity, mean?
It means that people on one side of the curve have very different–often conflicting–ideas than the people on the other side of the curve.
This results in opposition, conflict, and strife up to and including wars.
This very predictable pattern results in life’s unpredictability, instability, and uncertainty.
This curve represents humanity’s greatest challenge: to overcome the natural differences that are the products of evolution.
But it’s not the only phenomenon that contributes to life’s unpredictability, instability, and uncertainty.
- We have the fickleness of nature with which to contend: earthquakes, hurricanes (also known as typhoons and cyclones), volcanoes, tornadoes, tsunamis, forest fires, floods, draughts, and other severe weather phenomena.
- Also contributing to life’s unpredictability, instability, and uncertainty are the extraordinary number of illnesses we contract and from which we suffer.
- Add to that the countless number of accidents and injuries that occur regularly.
- And all kinds of criminal and deviant behavior that goes on everywhere all day long in every form imaginable.
Let’s pause for a moment and consider what’s going on, i.e., reality.
We live on a very tiny planet that we call Earth.
It’s about 8,000 miles in diameter, 24,000 miles in circumference, and three-millionths the size of the star it orbits we call the Sun.
Earth, with a fragile ecosystem, exists in a very narrow and fragile band in our solar system that allows life to exist at all.
Countless life forms–animal and plant kingdoms–exist on Earth.
- We humans are one of about 5,500 species of mammals.
- Additionally, in the animal kingdom, exist innumerable species of birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and arthropods.
- In the plant kingdom are countless land- and water-based plants.
Our human population increases weekly by an addition of in excess of 1,500,000.
Because of the way things break out for humanity, people fight with each other every day everywhere over everything imaginable.
While this fighting is going on, people–trying to survive–have to deal with what we call “natural disasters.”
Why do we call them “natural disasters?”
Because they are normal (natural) on one of these things that we call planets.
- Natural disasters result in earthquakes, hurricanes (typhoons, cyclones), volcanoes, tornadoes, tsunamis, forest fires, floods, droughts, and more.
- Then, we have the countless illnesses we contract and from which we suffer.
- Additionally, we have all kinds of accidents and injuries that occur regularly.
- And we have all manner of criminal and deviant behavior that goes on every day everywhere in every form imaginable.
If all of that is not far more than enough to deal with–which it is–on top of it all, because we do not understand our reality and the behavioral demands of our reality, we’ve created an interrelated web of life-threatening environmental problems.
- We are depleting our resources: forests, fisheries, rangelands, croplands, plant and animal species.
- We are destroying our biological diversity on which evolution thrives.
- The so-called 6th Great Extinction is going on right now.
It’s the first Great Extinction caused by other than a natural event such as an asteroid striking the planet or climate change.
Four of the five Great Extinctions that have occurred were caused by climate change.
The fifth was caused by an asteroid that struck Earth about sixty-five million years ago.
The current Great Extinction is being caused by something different, something unique: humanity.
- With modern and powerful electric and diesel pumping techniques, we are draining our aquifers and lowering our water tables.
- We are polluting our air, water, and soil and consequently, our food chain.
- We now have microplastic contaminants in our food and water, i.e., plastic in our food and water. That is a consequence of dumping about 75 million tons of plastic garbage into our oceans yearly.
- We are depleting our stratospheric ozone that protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation.
- We are experiencing symptoms of global warming and climate change such as the following:
Heat waves.
Devastating droughts.
Destruction of croplands.
Dying forests.
Accelerated species extinction.
Destruction of coral reefs.
Melting glaciers.
Rising sea levels.
More frequent and intense storms.
Coastal flooding.
More rapid spread of disease.
Acidification and poisoning of the oceans.
Famine and starvation.
Human migration.
Heat deaths.
Economic collapse.
Social conflict and potential wars.
All of the above are associated with global warming and climate change, which many people deny exists.
Even more people deny that we are the cause of the warming with the “greenhouse gases” we send up into the atmosphere.
Greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels (the burning of the remains of dead plants and animals) coal, oil, and gas.
How much global-warming, climate-changing, carbon dioxide do we send into the atmosphere?
An estimated 2.6 million pounds of carbon dioxide every second.
Despite all (failed) efforts to reduce that amount, it continues to be on the rise.
The above is not an exhaustive list of environmental problems.
What’s more, problems of this scale, interact with each other and cause other ominous, unpredictable, and unprecedented problems known as “multi-hazards.”
This thing we call life is fragile and perilous.
It’s up and down like a seesaw.
We are sitting on that seesaw.
It is not an accident in the theatre where we have been telling the stories of our lives that we have for symbols the masks of comedy and tragedy.
Joy and sorrow.
Life has always been like this.
For answers, we have turned to two diametrically different disciplines: science and religion (addressed in other blogs on this website).
