The Peak of Sanity - 10

Peak of light

I. Sanity Is

This series does not concern "intelligence" nor its antonym "stupidity."

Both intelligent people and stupid people can lose their sanity.

The same goes for groups, nations, and civilizations.

So, this series about the peak of sanity concerns the peak of the ability of groups, nations, and civilizations, to grasp reality and deal with it (whether that group, nation, or civilization is intelligent or is stupid).

I thought I would mention that distinction first off, because sanity is sometimes confused with intelligence.

By the same token, a lack of sanity is sometimes confused with stupidity.

II. Ignorance Is 

Likewise, "ignorance" is not the opposite of either sanity, intelligence, or stupidity.

Actually, ignorance is an aspect of ignoring elements of knowledge or awareness which a person, group, nation, or civilization could otherwise attain, whether that person, group, nation, or civilization is intelligent or is stupid .

Ignorance, in my opinion, is a seed that grows to eventually diminish sanity and thereby increase insanity in either intelligent or stupid persons, groups, nations, or civilizations.

And so, in today's post, I want to focus on the cultural circuitry that is used to propel the components that diminish sanity, thereby creating the down-slope of the peak of sanity.

III. Agnotology Is

Which brings us to "agnotology," which is "the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data" (Agnotology: The Surge, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17).

An example of a book that would be placed within the realm of agnotology, is "The Merchants of Doubt" (see The Private Empire's Social Media Hit Squads).

One thing we are doing, when we study ignorance generators, is to search for some of what ends up being the origin of some of the dementia in society.

That is, in one sense dementia can be a loss of the sense of who, what, when, where, how, and/or why we are (You Are Here).

In other words, agnotology is in a very real sense, the study of designed disorientation.

IV. Dementia Is

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog has taken a look at several aspects of some origins of some social dementia (Etiology of Social Dementia, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13).

That exercise, like the book mentioned in Section III above, is an exercise within the parameters of the discipline of agnotology.

Since, in this hypothesis, ignorance can lead to dementia, when we look for the origins of some social dementia, we "follow the money," that is, we follow the immunity (Follow The Immunity, 2, 3).

We do so because the king of the ignorance which leads to dementia "can do no wrong" (Sovereign Immunity Source: Toxins of Power?, Sovereign Impunity: A Child of the Supreme People).

V. Reality Is

Reality begins with the environment a person, group, nation, or civilization lives in.

In the overall sense, we live in the Earth environment, and so our reality begins there.

Whatever we do to our environment we do to ourselves.

Destroy it and we are destroying ourselves:

Guy McPherson is a professor emeritus of evolutionary biology, natural resources and ecology at the University of Arizona, and has been a climate change expert for 30 years. He has also become a controversial figure, due to the fact that he does not shy away from talking about the possibility of near-term human extinction.

While McPherson's perspective might sound like the stuff of science fiction, there is historical precedent for his predictions. Fifty-five million years ago, a 5-degree Celsius rise in average global temperatures seems to have occurred in just 13 years, according to a study published in the October 2013 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A report in the August 2013 issue of Science revealed that in the near term, earth's climate will change 10 times faster than during any other moment in the last 65 million years.
Prior to that, the Permian mass extinction that occurred 250 million years ago, also known as the "Great Dying," was triggered by a massive lava flow in an area of Siberia that led to an increase in global temperatures of 6 degrees Celsius. That, in turn, caused the melting of frozen methane deposits under the seas. Released into the atmosphere, those gases caused temperatures to skyrocket further. All of this occurred over a period of approximately 80,000 years. The change in climate is thought to be the key to what caused the extinction of most species on the planet. In that extinction episode, it is estimated that 95 percent of all species were wiped out.

Today's current scientific and observable evidence strongly suggests we are in the midst of the same process - only this time it is anthropogenic, and happening exponentially faster than even the Permian mass extinction did.

(Truthout End of the World ). Additionally, one might consider the bizarre reality that perpetuates the dilemma (When the End of Human Civilization Is Your Day Job).

We, as a civilization, are not taking it seriously:

If you only focused on the United States, you might think coal's days were numbered.

The dirtiest of all fossil fuels once provided more than half of America's electricity. That has since dropped to 39 percent, thanks to competition from cheap natural gas, a tireless campaign by the Sierra Club to shutter old coal plants, and strict new air pollution regulations. Add in the Obama administration's upcoming crackdown on carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants, and US coal will keep waning in the future.

But that's not true globally. Far from it. According to data from BP's Statistical Review of Energy, coal consumption has actually been accelerating worldwide since the end of the 1990s:

(The most important climate story today is the global coal renaissance). One nation's progress is outweighed by another nations backwardness.

Why?

VI. Analysis

At some point in time, way back in past decades, the fatal choice was made, by those who steer the direction of civilization (The Private Empire's Social Media Hit Squads).

The Peak of Sanity / Criminal Epoch

Their decision (not yours), was that the lifeblood energies of civilization, being used then, would be replaced with a different lifeblood, oil, and civilization would thus become addicted to it.

That was the peak of sanity and the beginning of the final epoch (The Criminally Insane Epoch Arises, 2, 3).

The venerable Freud saw this coming, and hypothesised that a group-psychoanalysis discipline was needed to treat groups that were losing it:

If the evolution of civilization has such a far reaching similarity with the development of an individual, and if the same methods are employed in both, would not the diagnosis be justified that many systems of civilization——or epochs of it——possibly even the whole of humanity——have become neurotic under the pressure of the civilizing trends? To analytic dissection of these neuroses, therapeutic recommendations might follow which could claim a great practical interest. I would not say that such an attempt to apply psychoanalysis to civilized society would be fanciful or doomed to fruitlessness. But it behooves us to be very careful, not to forget that after all we are dealing only with analogies, and that it is dangerous, not only with men but also with concepts, to drag them out of the region where they originated and have matured. The diagnosis of collective neuroses, moreover, will be confronted by a special difficulty. In the neurosis of an individual we can use as a starting point the contrast presented to us between the patient and his environment which we assume to be normal. No such background as this would be available for any society similarly affected; it would have to be supplied in some other way. And with regard to any therapeutic application of our knowledge, what would be the use of the most acute analysis of social neuroses, since no one possesses power to compel the community to adopt the therapy? In spite of all these difficulties, we may expect that one day someone will venture upon this research into the pathology of civilized communities. [p. 39]
...
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. [p. 40]

(MOMCOM's Mass Suicide & Murder Pact - 5). We failed to develop such a discipline within psychiatry, preferring to stick with personal, individual psychoanalysis instead.

We have been going down hill ever since.

Now, as criminal addicts, our governments talk an empty narrative as they addict civilization to more and more of the oil-drug that will lead to yet another civilization that will have committed suicide.

VII. Conclusion

Religionists may call it the epoch of sin, scientists may call it the Anthropocene, and Dredd Blog may call it the criminally insane epoch, but it all translates into extinction.

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