Friday, June 22, 2007

Apocalypse Now, Damnit! NOW!

Melanie Phillips’s Diary » The global warming scam is a must-read. Any honest and intelligent person must surely come to the conclusion that there is no scientific consensus on global climate change and that those in control of many taxpayer-subsidized institutions who insist otherwise are motivated less by a grasp of any scientific certainty than by a desire for certainty taking the name of science, in a perverse misunderstanding of what science, a slowly-expanding field of knowledge in an infinitely complex universe, is really all about.

What those who take our tax money and lie to us are really all about is self-interested promotion and worship of another false god for those who have lost faith in humanity and its fundamental existential and transcendent truths. People who cannot live humbly and quietly in coming to terms with humanity's uneasy, uncertain, perhaps pointless, perhaps Divine, existential condition, need to make us and the "incredibly important time in which we live, our last chance to save ourselves," into something more, and less, than we and it actually are.

As we wait the inevitable decades for climate science to mature to the point where we can reasonably ground any sense of a consensus in hard-won facts, we must ask first the human question: why is there such a desire to believe in a coming, rather soon, apocalypse, for which there are no end of human scapegoats to blame? The desire for apocalypse is, like climate change, nothing new. It has always been with us. It is rooted in our existential condition, in the life of a species for whom the greatest threat to peace, mental health, and physical security does not come from mother nature but from our fellow men, as is our fate as highly mimetic and disorderly creatures who get on each other's nerves, to the point where many snap not having the ability to put their trust and faith in something higher, sharing in further truths about our transcendent Being, as the meaning of this tortured life.

In this respect, those who blame humanity as a whole for the apocalpyse that is supposedly soon to come upon us, have grown slightly, intellectually, above those who once blamed the wrath of the gods or the witches, or the Jews, etc. etc. But they have only grown slightly for in blaming all of humanity they are no the less willing to make of any particular person or group a scapegoat as they, in the name of "science", see fit on any given day. The duty of all of us in face of the continuing madness of the human race is to fight against all forms of apocalyptic and utopian thinking, promoting the faith that whatever changes come our way in the global climate, if we work together from love for our fallen humanity, we can find ways to adapt together and we need not put up with fear mongers who would destroy the economy in some hysterical fit of finger pointing, or destroy civilization in deference to a desire to return to some more primitive religion enforced on everyone.

At this blog, we have our Cassandra moments too. At times we suggest that the human future will not be bright, in the short to medium term at least, unless we get a grip on the various hysterias that characterize our age. Ultimately, dear reader, it is up to you to decide who are the true Cassandras. She may not be always right, but sometimes she is, sometimes civilizations and societies do fall apart. So, instead of looking for consensus, keep thinking, and ask yourself who, in the endless human games of criticizing the Other and the others, who is in reality most likely to be promoting the expansion of human freedom at the expense of those fear mongers who would put themselves in charge of whipping humanity for its sins. Have faith that there is a reality greater than any of us.

I sincerely believe that we here want you to be free; we don't want to grab the same centre of attention as, say, a David Suzuki or a BBC reporter pronouncing on the end of any legitimate doubt about climate change, and asking you to pay tribute to their centralizing elitist cause. We want to make the world into shared covenants of many little centres, with no more big taxpayer-subsidized men and women crying Apocalypse Now! We've been there, done that. Time to move on in reason and faith.

2 comments:

Dag said...

When these fools make pronouncements from on high, i.e. on television shows, they seem god-like in their wisdom; but sit them down in a chair at the local library and talk to them and you'd see damn quick they aren't nothin of the sort, being just stuffed shirt fools in person.

It's essential that we meet in pubic face-to-face so we can question each other, challenge each other, and bring to the common round a truer version of our accounts than the one-sided rubbish dished out on TV. No one would sit and listen politely to the crap we experience second-hand from the screen if it were happening in front of us at the library. We sit, and I have to back-track and fumble and grin and bear it many times each evening when I blurt out things that would otherwise pass for infinite wisdom were I spouting such nonsense on TV. It works in person because our friends are quick to spot the trash and salvage the gems from a night of talk in person. We get the best and leave the nonsense where it belongs. And we get good from this every time.

The Internet is a great place to make arrangements for person-to-person meetings. It's a good venue for stating polemics; but the dialectic comes in the agora, in the face of those who must be challenged. Thank God I get challenged each time. Right there with no lapse to brag and strut. I celebrate each of my humiliations. I learn, and then I go on to make new and stupider mistakes. When I do there is the peace of knowing I'll find myself challenged again and that in time I will come to a fuller, deeper and better understanding of my self and the world I live in with you.

Global warming? I could melt from the red-faced embarrassment I feel often, forget the weather. So, should I spend my time on TV spouting hot-air instead as if I know what no others know and then get away with it? No, that's a pain I won't suffer willingly. Those who do deserve all the torture they live with, and good on em.

Come out and meet the people. Forget the sneering TV lackies of the side-lines who fear the world of people. Come and get challenged. Challenge me. I'll even spring for the coffee, the steam from which will likely harm the ozone layer, as if I care.

truepeers said...

Well said Dag. We are all much more ignorant than we are knowledgeable, a fact of which I am constantly reminded. But how many public forums are designed not to mask this fact? We live in a world of talking heads, presuming to deserve a quiescent audience, and, indeed, no one likes to hear a talk constantly interrupted by the righteous who think they know better, even if they do. The world's status game hide more than they reveal. And then there are our ordinary friendships that have developed for various reasons at various stages of life, but they are not the same as friendships that begin with the frank purpose of serious political and cultural discussion without any self-serving agenda attached for the foreseeable future. There are often all too narrow limits in most of our friendships on what can be said or discussed, for various reasons, without abusing the friendship.

This is why our kind of open public meetings provide a needed niche where we can have the kind of free conversation that gets at truth even as we reveal our ignorance to each other. So, since I don't say this enough, my deep thanks to all who attend on Thursday nights.