Why We Are Failing To Save Civilization

[GliderGuider]

Anyone who reads every line of this link (and it's not even very long) will immediately become an initiate. Those who spend a day, week, month or year thinking deeply about the implications of what it says will become a Magister Ludi. This piece is a true Course in Miracles - miracles that arise from within one's own soul, as true miracles always do.

Why We Are Failing To Save Civilization – We Have Seriously Underestimated the Existential Threats Facing Humanity

Humans are incredibly naive. I see this everywhere, even among the most learned, respected people in the world. Some of the brightest minds have issued stark warnings on what lies ahead, but then turn right around and make unfounded claims that things are going to work out. This has always puzzled me, but cognitive dissonance isn’t something Harvard graduates are immune to – it affects us all.

I’ve spent years documenting events and effects leading up to the collapse of civilization, from sources all over the world. But I’ve never published a blog summary of everything I’ve uncovered.

So here’s one. It’s a long post, but very easy to read (bullet statements) and understand. This is worth reading. It’s not mine, and it has left some things out, but it’s enough to amply demonstrate that the longer we go on pretending everything is going to be ok, the worse it’s going to get when there is incredibly little time left.

And some of you wonder why I get a little excited at times… well, spend 5 – 7 minutes and READ THIS. It’s not even about climate change…

I use information like this to re-focus my attention on those things that really matter to me right now. I take it in, chew on it, digest it, and let it become part of the context from which I act. This process has helped make me acutely aware of the importance of love in my life - and acutely aware of the irrelevance of most of the stuff I used to think was important.

[The2ndWheel]

1. We say we want to curb the excesses of humanity

But everything we do ends up giving us the ability to exacerbate those excesses. Then there are always more people that don't have enough, so they need more too, as that's only fair.

Those excesses are of course the reason we have the time that we do to create society. Society, and civilization, rely on the excess that we produce by concentrating the resources of the planet for a single species.

We think we want to care, but we're not built to care. We're built to survive today, like the rest of life. We're not built to care about polar bears(or whatever). Since abstract human imagination is basically limitless, we think we can have everything. We can have all the things that make human progress possible, and take care of the problems caused by our quest for...well, whatever it is at the end of the progression. If it has no end, then again, we're just increasing our chance of survival today, with no actual goal in mind. However, if we live on a finite planet, then we can't have everything.

We like to think that there is a problem and a solution, but we also think that something called the year 2016 exists.

[LouisvilleDem]

2. If you want the threats to be taken seriously...

...you have to start making accurate predictions.

In science you first come up with a theory that predicts certain outcomes in certain situations. If those predicted outcomes do not come to pass, your theory was wrong. Period.

People look for all sorts of complicated explanations for why society ignores the warnings being issued. They talk about cognitive dissonance (but ironically never think it applies to them), about normalcy bias, motivated reasoning and a whole host of other dysfunctions as possible explanations. They fail to look at the obvious explanation.

It is not complicated. It is simple. When you have been wrong over and over and over again people stop listening to you.

[GliderGuider]

3. This is a list of facts, not predictions.

Very (very, very, very) few people are going to take the implications seriously, whether or not there are associated predictions. In any event, most predictions made with limited local information, within the context of an inconceivably complex planetary system will be wrong. If they are right it will be largely accidental. This isn't test-tube science.

We (the national and international "we&quot are not going to do anything about this. It cuts across too many lines of denial and vested interest. The only reason I share things like this any more is to encourage those who can actually hear the message to start getting their personal shit together.

[LouisvilleDem]

4. Not true

There are plenty of predictions in that list:

- We must produce more food in the next 50 years than we have in the past 10,000 years combined.
- We need 6 million hectares of new farmland every single year for the next 30 years to do this.
- Humanity has only 60 years of farming left at current world soil degradation rates.
- We already passed world peak production growth-rates in 2006 for wheat, soy, corn, wood and fish.
- In 10 years, 4 billion people will be short of fresh water, 2 billion will be severely short of fresh water.
- We are running out of cheap, accessible potassium and phosphates.

These are not statements of fact, they are opinions--opinions that have be expressed before and been wrong before. You are as familiar as anyone just how many times statements of the form "We will run out of X in Y years" have been proven wrong. Heck, the 'Limits to Growth' report from 1972 is chuck full of examples.

[GliderGuider]

5. Suit yourself.

I have no need to convince you of anything.

[Binkie The Clown]

6. It's so sad that you can put a simple fact right in front of someone's face and they still deny it.

We treat facts as if they were opinions and opinions as if they were facts.

So much denial, so little facing up to reality. The human race is, I'm afraid, a failed experiment.

[Bigmack]

7. Thanks for this post.....there probably are

a few "facts" here that COULD also be described as "opinions" but the VAST majority of the FACTS posted in this piece ARE FACTS. Read it and weep. Ms Bigmack