Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch - 6

Civilization is not mortal

I. Introduction

From the first post of this series the quote from historian Arnold J. Toynbee has been resonating.

The quote we focus on is one reason Toynbee eventually fell from practically universal approval.

The same thing happened to Sigmund Freud.

They both had the propensity to call it as they saw it rather than having the propensity to flatter society.

Toynbee said: "...a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former...", while Freud said: "Men have brought their powers of subduing the forces of nature to such a pitch that by using them they could now very easily exterminate one another to the last man. They know this --hence arises a great part of their current unrest, their dejection, their mood of apprehension." (Dredd Blog quotes page).

II. Mortal vs. Immortal

What Toynbee meant, when he said that society does not die of natural causes, is that unlike people, civilizations have an open door to exist in perpetuity (so long as their components are all properly maintained).

For example, Egypt, Greece, and the United States (to name a few) have existed far longer than all of the individuals who began those societies, and will continue on as long as they perpetuate themselves.

Individuals do not fit into the same realm (our minds and bodies are mortal, we can't perpetuate them).

There is, then, this concept and reality of individual mortals living within a potentially immortal culture (Choose Your Trances Carefully, 2).

The book "Being Mortal", pictured at the top of the post,  points out that our culture's medical philosophy and practice treats citizens as if they should be immortals, feverishly trying to keep them alive.

In fact, statistically (according to the author of the book) the most likely time we will have an operation (serious surgery), is in the last week of our lives.

However, the leaders of our civilization ("civilization's doctors"), now that the Doomsday Clock has been set to 3 minutes until lights out, are not doing what medical doctors of individuals do, which is to pull out all stops to keep alive those people who are dying.

To a fault we try to keep individuals alive, while to the contrary, we are quite risky with our society when it comes to official behavior concerning our two greatest threats (e.g. Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch - 2).

In a nut shell, that is suicidal (e.g. foreign policy @ Russia / Ukraine, cf. How Russia Plans To Retaliate For The Saudi-Driven Collapse In Oil).

III. Inevitable News Coverage

Ed Shultz of MSNBC has good hearing, and he hears the cries of our dying civilization (see video below).

Next week Mr. Shultz is doing coverage, in a 5 part series, of the Climate Change Catastrophe.

A predicament that has covered the eyes of some in government with a fog, with religious dogma, or with a trance of denial of some sort.

For example, the Gulf of Mexico, as well as the shorelines surrounding it (where people victimized by BP of Oil-Qaeda's Deepwater Horizon catastrophe are still being made sick and are still dying both literally and figuratively), do not receive coherent attention.

What main stream presstitutes report, instead, since Oil-Qaeda buys them off (by spending huge sums of advertising dollars to benefit them), is "no problem, nothing to see here folks, move along."

If the gulf was a person, an individual in their last week of life, there would be operations, surgeries, frantic attention, and all out efforts.

But, since the environment is not an individual, it is "only the environment", they want to pull the wool over our eyes, let the environment die, and bury the story.

Which is clearly suicidal.

IV. Conclusion

People from climate scientists, Pentagon Generals, the Pope, and all the way to the President of the U.S., are saying that terrorists are not the greatest danger to civilization, climate change is.

If only the environment was an individual in the last week of their life ... oh wait ... that could be the case.

"Hurry! prepare the operating room ... " (New Climate Catastrophe Policy: Triage, cf. this, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11).

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