All Truth Is Local - 2

In All Truth is Local we said "Sometimes, at the extremes, one person's truth is another person's lie".

In point of fact, it is sometimes very difficult to imagine how anyone could be so serious, so dedicated, so "into" some beliefs.

That is why the U.S.A. has so many "states", which were originally called "experiments", because each state or experiment was allowed to develop its own version of truth in the form of laws, government, education, and state truth.

But some beliefs can be so unfathomable to us that we sometimes write them off by concluding that anyone who professes such a belief "must be lying to themselves".

For example, take the guys who say today is the beginning of "The End of The World", whatever that means, or words to that effect:

But "it’s no laughing matter," Camping told The Huffington Post. “It is not something where it's a tiny, tiny, tiny chance it may happen. It is going to happen.”

He and his fringe group of churchless followers believe that at 6 p.m. on Saturday, May 21, a massive earthquake will make its way around the earth, beginning in Fiji and New Zealand. Graves will open and two hundred million 'saved' individuals will float up to heaven. The doomed remainder will live on an unruly earth for five months before God annihilates it five months later.

(Harold Camping). Another term for the expected event is "judgment day", I suppose, like in The Terminator sci-fi movies.

The Ecocosmology Blog has noticed the similarities intermingled with disparities in both scientific and religious realms of doom rhetoric:

Science says our star the sun will destroy the earth in the future, but there is a way out.

We must go into the heavens and find another home planet to live upon.

...

Religion talks of potential Armageddon but those who are good will be spared, those who are good will go into heaven to a better home.

(Message of Science & Religion - Western). A planet-wide all consuming catastrophe is a subject which both science and religion address in various ways.

Judgment day, it's not exclusive to religion, courts, or science anymore.

UPDATE: It is Sunday already in Fiji and nothing earthshaking has happened.

No earthquakes.

Mr. Camping may be starting another "great disappointment" movement:

The Great Disappointment was a major event in the history of the Millerite movement, a 19th century American Christian sect that formed out of the Second Great Awakening. William Miller, a Baptist preacher, proposed based on his interpretations of the prophecies in the book of Daniel (Chapters 8 and 9, especially Dan. 8:14 "Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed"), that Jesus Christ would return to the earth during the year 1844. A more specific date, that of October 22, 1844, was preached by Samuel S. Snow. Thousands of followers, some of whom had given away all of their possessions, waited expectantly. When Jesus did not appear, October 22, 1844 became known as the Great Disappointment.

(The Great Disappointment). I hope no-one does anything to harm anyone else because of strong, mistaken beliefs.

The Peak of Sanity - 3

In this series we have been discussing, not individuals, but current civilization, in terms of civilization having reached The Peak of Sanity.

A graph below roughly depicts the outlines of this notion, which is (to say the least) difficult to put a finger on.

The fundamental concept is that not long after our industrial civilization began to take shape, that is, not long after the industrial revolution began, a series of fatal mistakes were made.

That series of decisions by industry and government, circa 1850-1920, which eventually addicted all of industrial civilization to hydrocarbons (oil, coal, gas) doomed civilization.

The Peak of Sanity - Criminal Epoch

During the span of time we call "the peak of sanity" depicted in the graph to the right in an area colored purple going up, and in an area colored red coming down, various revealing studies were done by Hubbert and others.

This led to the realization that the peak of production of those hydrocarbons, which civilization was by then addicted to, would "soon" happen.

Hubbert estimated circa 1956 that the peak of oil production within the United States was going to happen circa 1970.

Axiomatically, since those hydrocarbons are finite, he merely calculated the inevitable, that is, he saw the obvious and said so, adding some mathematical refinement.

Nevertheless, civilization, along with its use of those hydrocarbons, skyrocketed onward and upward toward the apex or peak of the availability of this "drug" civilization still demands for its very "survival".

Soon, still in that red zone on the graph, other scientists also began to notice the negative effects of industrial civilization's "drug" use.

For example, as early as 1959 physicist Gilbert Plass warned, in Scientific American magazine, that increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a result of the increasing use of fossil fuel hydrocarbons was causing climate change (New Government Climate Change Policy).

For some interesting history, going back to the 1850's, see this and this.

Flagrantly ignoring those warnings began what Dredd calls "The Epoch of Criminal Insanity", which some call the Anthropocene, when government and industry committed industrial civilization to a horrible demise. [cf Viva Egypt - 2]

Psychologically speaking, the minds of the officials who did the decision making heard the news, but instead of going into renewable energy mode, went into a deep, lasting, and catastrophic denial instead, a condition that is still with us today.

In so doing, in effect government and business began bringing on the mass murder of civilization.

We see those beginnings in the graph above as the red zone just past the peak of sanity, along with the continual demise downward into mindlessness thereafter.

The best the trapped government can muster now, still in their trance of denial, is to develop a policy of triage to deal with the inevitable horror they are taking all of us into.

When one does a Google of "worse than previously thought", "worse than expected", "worse than previously expected", or the like, all of the major crises facing civilization are linked (polar ice melt, Chernobyl, Fukushima, economy, disease, homelessness, wars, species extinction, pollution, ocean level rise, etc.).

The dementia that followed the peak of sanity took various formats, as could be expected when propaganda (the institutionalization of deceit) became the nature of the mass media.

This engendered a national dementia where the populace lives in a "dream world" (worse than expected), "the American dream", not knowing the true nature of the world around them, or even the nature of their own nation.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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(MOMCOM) She's Come Undone, by Guess Who

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Warriors Press For Propaganda - 2

In the first post of this series, Warriors Press For Propaganda, we quoted the head of the Associated Press admitting out loud and in public that the mainstream media of The United States is a propaganda engine.

In The Virgin MOMCOM, we point out again how the media operates like The Papal Bull does or did in religious matters, in-as-much-as a journalist says the media cranks out "military pornography" posing as news.

As an example, consider that we recently discussed in the post Bob Dylan Sings In "China" - 2, how a prominent "journalist" falsely reported a matter involving China and Bob Dylan.

Today we add to that thread of discussion a link to a post which shows how the U.S. State Department censors some matters that China does not: (We Mean Well).

Clearly, the toxins of power at the center of propaganda generate a national sickness which is criminal in nature.

The next post in this series is here.

New Government Climate Change Policy: Triage - 2

In the first post of this series (Sep. 2009) Dredd Blog saw the direction government sentiment for the care of the populace was going.

In a related post on the anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon debacle, we revisited the idea in the post Triage: Still In Deep Water.

Those views were accurate.

At the same time the floodgates of the Mississippi River are being opened to unleash disaster on thousands of American people to protect thousands of American people (the Obama Administration announced a bi-partisan plan that could be called "Drill Baby Drill On Steroids").

The use of hydrocarbons (oil, coal, gas) instead of clean energy fuels is causing global warming, which is causing climate change, which in turn is causing the polar ice caps as well as the glaciers to melt.

This eventually puts too much moisture into the atmosphere which naturally turns into excess rains at various locations, which then eventually gets into the Mississippi and other large river systems.

That excess floods the land on its way to the oceans which are rising as an end result.

To turn up the drilling to further pollute and increase the warming is like increasing the speed of your vehicle after hearing that the bridge is out just ahead.

The longer term policy of the governments of the world condemns them as criminals:

In 1959 physicist Gilbert Plass warned in Scientific American that increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was causing climate change. In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson warned Congress of the risk. In 1979 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences warned against a wait-and-see attitude...

(Scientific American). The catastrophes that will kill millions were caused by a criminal attitude which identifies current civilization's governments.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.