Excerpt #116 from my book, Religion, An Obstacle to Human Progress
The real-world situation that’s spontaneously combusting today is a perfect storm of extreme environmental degradation and rolling infrastructure collapse.
It’s by no means the first time this has happened.
Previous civilizations bought the farm because of selfinduced environmental catastrophe, but in the past, the damage was localized.
LIFE IS ALWAYS TEACHING; WE’RE NOT ALWAYS LEARNING.
As Jared Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, pointed out, these societies met their demise by cutting down forests, eroding topsoil and building burgeoning cities in dry areas that eventuallyran short of water.
Sometimes hastened by sudden climate change, the ensuing disintegration occurred suddenly—in a matter of a decade or two after a society reached its peak of population, wealth, and power.
Because that pinnacle also marked maximum resource consumption and waste production, it produced unsupportable environmental impacts.
But there’s more to it, Diamond says. “They had foolish leaders . . . who embroiled them in destabilizing wars and didn’t pay attention to problems at home.
They were overwhelmed by desperate immigrants, as one society after another collapsed, sending floods of economic refugees to tax the resources of the societies that weren’t collapsing.”
Diamond studied the ecological downfall of Mexico’s ancient Mayan civilization.
He determined that the final strand in its unraveling was a crisis of political leadership.
“Their [leaders] attention was evidently focused on the short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with one another, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all these activities.”
WE ARE FALLIBLE, POSSIBLY FATALLY.
People worldwide reject the deification of the market over environmental and human rights.
As Amory Lovins said, “Markets make a great servant but a bad master and a worse religion. Markets produce value, but only communities and families produce values. And a society that tries to substitute markets for politics, ethics, or faith is seriously adrift.” – (Excerpted from Kenny Ausubel’s opening remarks to the Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, California)
We are intoxicated and made ill by unhealthy food and drinks, alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, pharmaceuticals, drugs, religion, violence, excessive sex, et al.
We are out of touch with reality.
WE ARE MOSTLY VICTIMS OF OURSELVES.
I have often read and heard from people, who purport to know, that we are unique incarnations of a “spiritual force” that unites us.
What “spiritual force?”
WE BELIEVE WHAT WE CHOOSE TO BELIEVE.
Why don’t we acknowledge that we are connected?
That all of life is connected . . . and that has undeniable implications.
There is nothing “spiritual” or “religious” about it.
It’s a biological reality.
But we complicate things and introduce esoteric concepts that are inexplicable.
To what end?
To the ends of man’s ego and insatiable need for power, so someone can claim that they understand and has a relationship with this “spiritual” dimension.
It’s not the esoteric concepts that keep us from a better world.
It’s that we don’t do the simple things right.
We don’t even yet know how to eat and drink without driving ourselves into obesity.
EXCESSIVE PARTYING ENDS THE PARTY.
It is the fate of the paranormal and the supernatural to be subsumed into the normal and the natural. In fact, there is no paranormal or supernatural; there are only the normal and the natural – and mysteries yet to be explained. It is the job of science, not pseudoscience, to solve those puzzles with natural, rather than supernatural, explanations. – Michael Shermer
Each of is responsible.
We each have creative potential.
We create.
We are creators.
As responsible beings, do we create that which is constructive or that which is destructive?
That which nurtures or that which destroys?