Is it the end?

I think you'll note that I've written a few columns here about the future and how it might be considered through our various popular culture.  But I thought here that it might be fruitful to look at also some more serious works, along with some fine media choices. Science and the future can be positive.  I am a very big fan of DC Comics' Legion of Super Heroes, and up to a certain point there was so much joy and innocence in that title, series, that I felt that it was a perfect balance to all the various offerings of doom and gloom.

PLAGUES, VIRUSES, AND GERMS.

The current Ebola event in Africa (in the present of 2014) has scared the bejeebus out of many people. The disease is harsh, and the fear of it is reasonable considering the toll. But it is by no means a new thing that disease can throw the world into upheaval. The Black Plague and other plagues changed the structure of society in Europe especially. Money became concentrated in fewer hands because, of course, families were losing members, and sometimes entire families died.  When the elders were gone, inheritance and the lack of siblings created a pot of gold for the survivors to upgrade their existence.

COLLAPSE.

The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,

But swollen with wind and the rank mist they draw,

Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread ...

Environmental collapse, as we see with the bee population, and various extinction events, is a very dangerous situation.  We have very few ways to fix the world, if we get so far as to cause a collapse of any of the important links to human survival. Without bees, their pollination won't occur. If that happens, NO FRUIT, no plants needing pollination. As small as bees are, we could be taken out by the loss of bees. 

HISTORY AS A GUIDE TO THE FUTURE.

Some scholars believe that we can apply lessons of the past to the knowledge of how to prevent disasters in the future. Jared Diamond, Clive Ponting and Alfred Crosby are all very intelligent men who dissect the lessons of the past to demonstrate what the future might hold. As you might guess, the answers they arrive at are troubling. The cost of modernity is high, and as the ancient peoples of the earth learned, the resources of the land are finite, and the greater the number, the closer to empty the land becomes, for resources.

HOPE?

However while each of these books are very well written, and come to conclusions that should shake you down to your foundations, the truth about existence is that we can hear the facts, and stop our forward motion. Thankfully, any tale of warning about the future comes with a potential to change our ways. Also, I think it is important to note that while there is reason to fear, people have feared the encroaching disaster for millennia.  I'm not saying everything is rosie, but I am saying, we can make choices that are better than those we've made. The reason you don't teach algebra in kindergarten is because the child has no concept of theories and ideas presented. But you can teach it by 9th or 10th grade.  The difference is that after 9 years of education, a child becomes mentally conditioned to think. Learning is a good thing, perhaps reading these warnings have fallen upon deaf ears in the past, but if my theory that humans grow intellectually through experience, we have a chance.

In the past it is known that at various times the common people believed in false things. Whether or not it helped them in life is another story, but, at one point in our more recent past, the renaissance occurred because scholars abandoned certain paradigms and said, we need to know better. Not every false belief is bad, not every scientific choice is great, but in this case, the choice to further study and abandon certain beliefs pushed human mental progress forward.  All books presented here are worth your time to read.  You might not agree with the concepts or theories, but at least you'll be better informed to make your choices.

July 2020 REVISION

I am aware that the world is entering dangerous times.  We have famines, pestilence, war, and environmental disasters looming.  We have a pandemic that has changed our normal.  We have a massively important election approaching.  And we have unrest and hate, violence and riots in the streets.  How can we possibly get out of this catastrophe?

Someone I know suggested that while they believed in the abolition of the death penalty, certain things happen when it is allowed. A number of criminals change their lives in a hope of avoiding the penalty, or having found a different understanding of what they are living for, they become worthy of escaping the death penalty, regardless if it is in the end imposed. I'm not suggesting we face a death penalty.  We might.  I don't know. As a person with degree fields of History and Political Science I am not one to know what the future holds, only that what we see approaching is a massive black cloud, that portents disaster.  

What should we do? If we are about to die, should we give up, give in, we will abandon our dreams. I suggest that there is hope. We have hope, however we view that, for a better world, and better individual lives.

The books presented last here move me.  Interstellar because in a fascinating and exciting narrative, there is so much more, a refusal to become extinct through determination, spirit, and efforts, and an acknowledgement that just because we do not know now, if we stay in the fight long enough, surviving, we might know later. The Swerve because we get this feeling that, nothing that has happened is important, only the future.  We inherited this earth, we earned all of the lessons of the past.  If we ignore our legacy of knowledge we lose it.

I believe humanity will fight, and win.

(This wasn't meant to be nearly as depressing as it turned out for me to write.  I was meaning to look at various eras when everything seemed to imply that the world was about to end. As it happens, humans have faced the end, and survived a number of times.  I should say, I don't altogether use my history degree to harvest depressing scenarios from the past. Also, let me say, it is perhaps true that we are so troubled by so many things because we know of so many things going on.  Humanity has never had nearly the coverage and information that it has in the present.)

72000 BC The Lake Toba, Sumatra/Indonesian volcanic explosion caused such an enormous kill of people, animals and plants, that human numbers fell to such a low number we can count most of our traits to those survivors.  Some scientists argued that humans were at such a low number that there appeared a genetic bottleneck as a result.

In 536 AD an Iceland volcanic explosion nearly killed humanity by the downstream effects from the ash in the atmosphere lowering temps, blocking sunlight, and causing the death of crops.  Facing food shortages, disease, stagnation of human learning were disastrous. This era was one of lost scholarship, snow in summer, and crop failures in moderate temperature areas, leading to a true Dark age of human history.

In 1346 AD the Black Death arrived in Europe, perhaps brought from Asia from the trade routes by then in use.  Half of Europe and vast numbers uncounted in Africa and Asia were wiped out. Human culture was changed, in numerous ways. Some historians have pointed to the Black Death as the true catalyst for when the modern world began. This is because the effects of the Black Death led to changes, including inheritances, and that money became concentrated, both investment and savings became more constant.

The Triumph of Death by Pieter Bruegel, Elder

The period of  1918-1920 AD was a period of death and disaster, across the globe.  Both the toll of World War One and the Russian Revolution and Civil War were enormous, in the middle 30 million dead range.  Add to that the toll of perhaps 50 million dead from the Spanish Flu, you end up with a very huge number of dead. However, the population was large enough then that it wasn't nearly as threatening to human existence as it might have seemed.

Are the Four Horsemen approaching, or are they already here? Are they called to our time and place Or are they set to appear upon a designated time? Does their arrival mark the beginning, and things will only get worse? They are said to represent various traits, concepts events, and are visible as harbingers of God's final judgment. Are they just figments of a religious mind?  Or would any time of upheaval seem prime for any and all of these portents.

Conquest, Death, Hunger, Plague would seem to accompany any scenario of the events leading to our world's passing. As a Christian I believe the Horsemen are a metaphor, and represent the likely events and beings that will appear at the end of our world.  But, that doesn't mean I don't believe in them.  In other words, It doesn't matter the color of the cat, so long as it catches the mice.

I was asked by a number of readers here about my thoughts regarding the future.  I see a number of future destinations that our world is going in the direction of.

The first and most obvious, is a more dangerous world. Global warming is more than heat, ocean levels, and weather. The changes it causes leads the world to react with emotions not logic, it makes the world more likely to react with violence, due to the discomfort.

A different kind of world is one that has to go through hell before it becomes better.  The societal impacts of Covid are one thing, but the riots and racial tensions have to burn through before there can be healing.  But once we get there, we are willing to make changes to get to a better, happier place.

Covid might have a long term effect upon our minds.  Even if it is a phase and will evolve out of the deadliness, we can't say that from here.  What if the virus evolves into a more deadly, and even more contagious form.  I've been told by people that it is all lies by governments, ginning up the event for the opportunity to steal rights and power.  I think when America is done with it, we'll have 450,000 dead. But that is my optimistic outlook.  If we isolate and social distance, if we hide away, we might avoid getting the virus.  But if there is never a vaccine and it never evolves into a safer form, we might be forever screwed.

But I DO have hope.  Humans have had it worse and came out to build the world we live upon.  I just want the world to be a better place for all living creatures upon it.

Death upon a Pale Horse by JFW Turner