[MD] apocalypse...now?

[Krimel]

gav and dmb,

With regards to revolutions over the past, say fifty years, I would include:

Television, plastics, interstate highways, cell phones, air travel, space
travel, civil rights, the rise of worldwide fundamentalism, the conservative
revolutions of Raygun and Thatcher, magnetic media, digital media, the green
revolution in agriculture, open heart surgery, the cure of most diseases of
childhood, the discovery of the genetic code, the cracking of the genetic
code, lasers, fiber optics, satellites, nearly universal surveillance, the
belief that taxation is theft, cynicism towards our fundamental
institutions, quantum theory, information theory, complexity theory, single
parent families, two income households...

Let me know if you need more.

As for your concern about impending apocalypse or being on the "verge of
something" do you think that's something new? The board of directors of the
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago, has
maintained The Doomsday Clock since 1947. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock

It goes up and down and has for the past 60 years. Nuclear annihilation
spawned epic science fiction and universal paranoia throughout the cold war.
But the Malthusian crisis has loomed large on the horizon since the 1840s.
It was the Green Revolution that pushed the hands of the Malthusian clock
backwards, for a while at least. Real threats aside, we have been bombarded
by wacko Biblical and prophetic predictions of the end of days since before
the Greeks. 

http://www.abhota.info/end1.htm

Notice that the year 2000 gets its own page as there was a bumper crop of
weirdo's speculating on technological meltdown and the numerological
significance of the end of the millennium. Of course now there is a sizable
pack of nut cases led in part by gav's beloved Terence McKenna espousing
2012 as the end of the Mayan calendar and thus the end of time itself.

I have tried not to over emphasize technology in the list above but that is
somewhat inevitable since revolutions are often technologically driven. The
printing press drove the reformation for example. Still I left out the
explosion of the intellectual level that has occurred in the past 10 years.
I know tech talk makes you romantics uncomfortable but I suspect putting the
combined wisdom of all the ages at the fingertips of everyone on the planet
might have dramatic effects.

When you talk about acceleration of the same old same old, dmb, what do you
expect? The "same old same old" is what? Concern for how we will feed our
children? Putting roofs over our heads? The same old same old is Maslow's
hierarchy. It is not going to change. Societies can move us from one level
of his hierarchy to the next but the hierarchy will still be the same.

Not all revolutions lead to progress of course. The Raygun Revolution took
us several steps backward culturally and morally. Consider where we are
today and listen to what the president of the United State said to the
people in:

1977: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tPePpMxJaA 

1979: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwzyvkc1tb4

To paraphrase the charlatan who unseated Carter in 1980. Ask yourself this
are you better off than you were before the Raygun Revolution? Can you
imagine a politician promising not to lie to you and then taking the next
step and actually telling you truths that make you fidget? 

If as you two think, we are on the verge of something awful well maybe but
it is nothing new, it is nothing unexpected; it is a direct consequence of
the paths we as a people have consciously chosen to follow. This is a set of
social and political patterns that have been repeated over and over again
since Biblical times: affluence leads to apathy which leads to disaster.

I suppose you could say that the greatest revolution in our thinking in the
past 30 years has been, to borrow from T.S. Elliot's "Hollow Men", now we
think the world will end: not with a nuclear bang but with a climatic
whimper.

But this is exactly what the American people have asked for. We voted in
favor of it time and time again. Platt, Ham, Craig, Micah and others on this
forum continue to support the "ideology" that produced the current state of
affairs. 

So, to conclude I would say there have been lots of revolutions, lots of
threats to survival, lots of promises made and hopes renewed then dashed.
This is the way of the world my friends. Is the current crisis worse than
waking up every single morning with the potential for mushroom clouds
sprouting by the end of the day? I think not. Is there a credible threat to
our survival? Yes, but it has been ever so. Even crazy Christian preachers
can sound credible. Even Nostradamus appeals to some. Even the tea leaves
and entrails and the vagaries of ancient calendars fuel the paranoia of
many. 

Humanity does seem to have suicidal tendencies but where's the revolution in
that? 

Krimel