One point with which both creationists and evolutionists will likely agree, albeit for different reasons, is that collapse of this world is inevitable.
The creationist will see this collapse as a part of God's plan and the renewing of the earth which God will accomplish after the total collapse of the existing world. They will see this as a result of sin and believe they will escape the worst of the coming disasters.
(You notice I didn't say mention a specific religion because I think not all religious people are involved in creationist thinking. Not all object to evolution being taught in public schools. Some believe in environmental laws, feeding the poor (shock of shocks) and wouldn't inherently believe there is an Antichrist among us or that the world has to be destroyed to rebuild it. They might think much like an evolutionist practically speaking.
My concern where it comes to American culture is about creationists. I do think it's about more than a religion but a worldview that is destructive to life on this planet, that would bring about its downfall sooner than nature alone would accomplish. While in our country, creationists do claim to be Christians, many of them espouse ideas totally opposed to what Christ taught; so it's not provable that they even know his teachings. They use for some of their evidence the Jewish Torah which they take as historic. This is a little different take on that -- The Political Intent of the Bible).
To believers in creationism, facts or discussions like that book must not get in the way of 'faith' which I guess wouldn't matter except there are some situations where faith can prove detrimental to survival. I think we are in such a time but there have been others in the past where religious views had to be thrust aside for practical scientific wisdom-- like doctors washing their hands between surgeries.)
The evolutionist also would expect collapse at some point based on what has always happened to species before us and then historically to cultures. It is part of life here. No empire lasts forever. No age of anything is forever.
The earth itself is on a change timetable involving the sun if nothing happens before that. NASA says polar shifts have occurred and might again. Climate changes occur and animals on earth must adjust to them if they can in time. In the case of man, that would be whether he had brought it about or just was here when it happened. We know man has made major climate changes in localized regions. Now that may end up being the whole world. If man's culture is too large when big changes come, a lot of people will die and those who remain will readjust or disappear as another earth footnote.
Collapse is part of the earth plan no matter what you believe, but the difference would be how each philosophy of life would respond to it. A creationist would believe pray, be ready for the Rapture, and figure it'll all be to the good as the earth is messed up anyway.
An evolutionist would be trying to devise plans for what they could do to either avoid the disaster or survive it if they couldn't avoid it. Evolutionism is practical. Creationism is idealistic.
Now an evolutionist might have no fear of immediate catastrophe because these changes are often millions of years apart; but then the age of the mammals did begin 60 million years ago; so maybe earth is due for something big. Maybe not. Looking at history can only tell us so much. Creationists though have always thought collapse is imminent and you see that throughout history-- the group who thought they were to be the last ones.
This following is for the evolutionists because creationists wouldn't believe it anyway.
Collapse is a documentary available on Netflix mostly involving an interview with Michael Ruppert where he discusses his belief, using statistics, regarding what is going to happen to our world in the relatively near future due to energy depletion and our own abuse of resources.
Some, mostly right wingers and corporations, making money from the current situation, say that we have plenty of fossil fuels. Our government doesn't want to spook us, but Ruppert makes the case that not only do we not have enough, but we are dependent on them for a lot more of our culture than we tend to think about.
Fossil fuels are at the core of the shipping network that enables us to feed people in areas where food could not be produced in sufficient quantities. It is what we have built our culture on-- not just this one in the United States but the world. When oil is no longer available to maintain those cultures, what will be the result?
His conclusion is chaos is inevitable. He discusses ways as individuals we can prepare for such a time. There are two approaches to seeing collapse is ahead. One is to try to change a large enough group of people's minds about what they must do to prepare.
Remember Aesop's Fable; The Grasshopper and the Ant. The Republicans, of course, have put out a new version to make their point [Right wing interpretation of Democratic policies to help the poor using the old fable with a modern twist]. I would suggest there might yet be a third with the ant having laid up stores that the grasshoppers attacked illustrating a time of possible world catastrophe which turned humans back into animals.
Basically if a lot of people haven't prepared for dire times and not everyone can, it could mean chaos at the least. There is no way one family can lay up enough stores to survive a nuclear winter without a community or government effort which would both protect and divide what they had stored and frankly even that might not be enough in some situations.
Ever seen the movie Ice Age, the first one? One of its funniest bits (it is the most sophisticated of that animated series for the humor) is the dodos when the heroes come into conflict with them over a melon they want for the baby they are protecting. The dodos say, "This is our private stockpile for the Ice Age. Sub arctic temperatures will force us underground for a billion, billion years." Manfred, the mammoth replies with disbelief, "So you got three melons?" The dodos quickly change the subject to 'doom on you' and go into attack mode.
In life, there are things we cannot do anything about and we just will die; but what a practical culture does is prepare for what they can-- recognizing that cannot cover all eventualities. They try to learn from the past and apply the lessons to their current lives.
Jared Diamond wrote another book on what leads to collapse of cultures-- Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.
Given the situation in our country with such a polarized populace, I don't think our culture can do much as a whole. We can't seem able to agree on anything. While there are a few religious groups that teach stockpiling, that kind of thing takes a lot of management and not many do it effectively.
What the DVD, Collapse, encouraged was forming communities where people will be mutually responsible for each other, especially since some will simply not be able to do the work required to learn basic survival skills, attain trade goods, or be able to store food. [He suggested acquiring gold, but I am not sure I see that it'd have much value in a time of real emergency and food producing tools would probably be more in demand.]
After a disaster is no time to learn survival skills like how to kill, skin, cut up and cook an animal to eat. It's no time to learn how to plant a garden that could be harvested in the future assuming you lived long enough. It's no time to have living seeds on hand that you can plant because a lot of the seeds you are buying today are hybrids and cannot be harvested from the plant to reproduce their own kind. It's no time to figure out a system to protect what you have acquired or develop the strength to recognize you have to do that.
I don't live in a panic just waiting for a collapse. I have found what works for me is doing whatever I can to be prepared for emergencies and then leaving the problem behind for when something actually arises.
I did grow up in a household that had seen the Great Depression and talked of how close we came to a total societal collapse back then. I am also aware of change and the potential of our current network being broken. I have thought of what I would have to do to protect my family if we ended up with such a time leaving us back in a prehistoric mode for how we had to survive.
The ideal thing would be to have a culture as a whole that is doing this kind of thinking for its citizens. I don't think we have such a culture, do you? That means it's up to communities, families and individuals to at least have a general plan in the eventuality we are the ones living when the next collapse comes.
(Ruins in Northern Arizona from an earlier culture, the Sinagua peoples.)
10 comments:
"The world will not end with a bang. It will end with a whimper."
I think humanity is rather like a teenager. We appeared in planetary history relatively recently and we were definitely not born omniscient. We've been flailing around with what we have and now we're at a stage when we have the power but not the brains, kind of like teenagers. Maybe we'll get high on booze and drugs and take the family car out in a spectacular drunken blaze, or maybe we'll get through this a little wiser. Hard to say at this point.
I've been reading a book by William Calvin, thanks to your reference to him a few posts back, and he has some interesting things to say. One that sticks with me is about how climate change has historically been a cause of intense evolutionary speciation events. The effects of climate change are rather bad for individuals and populations but can also be really excellent evolutionary opportunities. I still hold out hope for our current situation to be a really good "learning opportunity", I still think we can be way better than the news headlines.
Thank you for your -- as always -- for your logical and rational thoughts.
Someone told me long ago that God doesn't always give us what we want but what we need.
Maybe -- like all gardens -- we need a good weeding out because we haven't taken care of the garden well. And he can yank this weed any time he wants.
That said, I think we all need ti re-think how we approach our environment.
And to those who think they are going to escape because they are 'saved': one of the seven deadly sins is pride and you are guilty, guilty, guilty.
Thanks again!
Very well done! Best of the already great series.
There isn't anyway I can disagree. Annie's commken is truly optomistic.Optimistic imagination is a human trait necessary to survival.
The photograph you chose was most appropriate. Many wondered why there are not bodies of the missing Anasazi people; they just slowly all drifted away as the environment was no longer able to sustain their culture.
And such will happen to us, the climate is changing and astronomers say that an asteroid hitting the earth again is not a matter of "if" but of "when".
The Mormons stockpile a years worth of food. I think that they hope to be in charge should there be a societal collapse; we will accept Mormonism or go hungry, I think is the plan.
We are close to 7 Billion people on the planet. The census announced today that the US population is 308.7 million. That number is hard to visualize; but if business is geared toward increasing productivity (having less people do more work) then we are at odds with the future.
I heard a lecture by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry about the future of civilizations. He thought that their growth, prospering and eventual collapse were normal cycles and recounted the big ones like the Romans, etc. He said that ours too will collapse and something new will evolve out of that. Even under the most harsh of events, nuclear war, loss of resources... some people will survive and create a new civilization.
We won't be here to see that, fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be.
Hi Rain . . A thoughtful posting. Interesting to contemplate, as your writing always is. I don't disagree, but I do wonder about the word "COLLAPSE". I see the end as more of a "BANG". An instant-then nothing. I have a little trouble visualizing a slow process of decay. But then again, Paul's "WHIMPER" might be more accurate.
The old Greek's also had the idea that the world would end someday, and most of them seemed to think civilization would destroy itself - if something in the universe didn't do it first. I think I'll go along with that . .
Bump
P.S.The comments of "Robert the Skeptic" indicate there is at least one other bright blogger in addition to yourself. You both have the knack.
Yes, I've enjoyed reading Jared Diamond.
Sooner or later all societies have ebbed and flowed, so what makes us think ours would be any different -- it's only a matter of time. As for the world, as we know it today, I think we need to continue exploring for another location to which pioneers can go if we want to sustain some semblance of our life form. Who's to say but what that's how Earth became populated? I don't consider that possibility as incompatible with various religious views, including creationists, and the evolutionists theory about life's adaptions. Why do so many people think in terms of black and white -- one way or another -- when there are so many other possibilities which might incorporate aspects from both views?
It's a question I have heard raised before, joared. I even have a friend who when he was at a group doing regressions to find their first human life on this planet, the others all saw themselves in caves but he saw himself descending in a silver suit from a space ship. The issue though of DNA makes it less likely as we can see, in all humans that have been tested so far, the similar DNA with the chimpanzees today; so it seems unlikely to me.
I came across this link regarding what DNA is telling us about Neanderthals and found it fascinating-- what DNA tells us about Neanderthals. There is so much to learn though and it's good to be open to any and all possibilities as it is fascinating to me. I have always found Neanderthals interesting and wondered if Big Foot *s* could be an offshoot of that. I know I know. No Big Foot has been found, how could they avoid being caught, but it's like so many things, I'd like to think it was possible they are out there or at least were. I read a book recently, which will get into here after Christmas sometime that uses the Yeti in the story based in the early 1900s... Who is to know for sure *s*
Is Bigfoot Genuine or untrue? For around 400 a long time, there are actually reporting’s of a man like beast that's totally covered in hair.
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