The World Isn't Going To End, But It Is Going To Change

That's right. You heard me. The world isn't going to end. The four horsemen of the apocolypse are not going to emerge from a fiery, dark ethereal cloud in the sky. Aliens aren't going to swarm over our cities and force us to take them to our leaders. An army of Angels isn't going to do battle with hoards of Satan's minions crawling out from the deepest, darkest crevices of Earth. Sure, that'd be a little more interesting, and certainly more exciting considering our very souls and/or the very planet would be at stake, but it is not the case. Keep dreaming.

What is going to happen, what -is- happening now as we speak, is something so entirely natural in the wider picture of things that we haven't even (for the most part) thought of it. As you all know, Earth changes, the universe changes. Existence is churning eternally in dynamic equilibrium. Nothing stays the same forever except for the fact that nothing ever stays the same. Existence is not static. Oh, sure, our experience can argue that point. We can say to the contrary that a lot has happened within our culture and society, within our species' history, but the world around us has been pretty much guaranteed to stay put. Summer, fall, winter and spring. North pole south pole, cold or hot, mild or dry, foggy and wet or vacant and hot. Sure. Hold on a second though...

Have some people forgotten that humanity, in the eyes (just put yourself in 'natures' higher mind for a second, if you will) of Earth and the Natural Law that governs her wordlessly, has lived for but a few brief moments in time? Mere seconds in millions upon billions more in the long run. To think that these few brief days we have lived and breathed on this planet are going to be the way things always will be is naieve. Like a child in our society believing that things will never change, that he will always be this way, and all around him will remain the same. The child eventually knows better, and so will we.

Change is inevitable. You are all quite capable of understanding that. Day never lasts forever, but neither does night. They need each other to create dynamics. In physics, the law is unquestionable. Scientists and their textbooks speak of 'polarity' in all objects of the universe: that is, all matter having tiny north and south magnetic poles. There is nothing, in our knowledge of the universe, that has only north or only south. This truth echoes through all things. There are dynamics in everything. There will always be change.

So, you say you feel it in your bones. You see the 'signs' in the news and you sense them in the air. I will not argue with you on that, because I see and feel them too. Something is going on, and that something is change - nothing new to Earth, but to humanity having only been around for a brief period, it is something we have never experienced before (in recorded history at least).

If there is to be a great change, as there have been before, so be it. Humanity will experience it, and we will either be engulfed into the rock beds of history, to be discovered by some future race born of our planet (or another's), or we will learn from it and adapt. I tend to hope that we will grow. That is what nature tends to do - grow and dance about in stable equilibrium. I see any major changes as a great wake up call for us. We are not the gardeners of Eden. We are the very roots in which we tend to, the very birds and fish and animals which we hunt for. We all depend on each other, we all create the Law of life. There is no escaping it, there is no controlling it, and there is no governing it for ourselves.

In the words of Daniel Quinn: "You can no more defy the Laws of Life than you can stop yourself from gravity after stepping off a cliff."

As a species, we mustn't worry about "saving the planet", "saving wildlife and nature"... No, we should worry about "Saving humanity." Because, frankly, we are the only ones who are in sight of the end. If people vanished over night, the sun would still come up the next day, and the birds would still sing atop our vacant homes. Vines and greenery would weave through the gridlock neighborhoods until they were engulfed in forest, and nature would continue on as it always has.

So, I suppose you could say the message I am trying to get out is: You cannot defy nature, you cannot escape nature. Instead of thinking "let's save nature", you should think "let's try to save ourselves. What are we doing that will cause our extinction?" If eliminating wildlife is part of the cause, so be it, but that is not the main problem. It's our attitude, our understanding of our place on earth. The world isn't going to end. It's just another change, just another storm. Things are going to get switched up and mix around a bit, and the waters will eventually calm and the days will eventually be sunny again (even if things are altered and moved because of the winds and the rain) - with or without us.

With or without us - I believe that choice is ours.

 

"You cannot defy nature, you cannot escape nature. Instead of thinking "let's save nature", you should think "let's try to save ourselves. What are we doing that will cause our extinction?" If eliminating wildlife is part of the cause, so be it, but that is not the main problem. It's our attitude, our understanding of our place on earth. The world isn't going to end. It's just another change, just another storm."

Do you have any idea how many synthetic chemicals are in our system? DO YOU ??
Nobody else does either because the people responsible for pumping them into US will never tell the truth, even if they have to admit to some of it... nobody's watching them. You can defy nature, scientist absolutely have done so already !
And it's not gonna come out in the wash no matter how much Tide it gets flushed with!

IT's tainted, infected, and it was not designed to reject or absorb synthetic chemicals.

IT's not going to end, WE are going to clean it up !

 

Hold on a sec...

Re-arranging chemical structures is hardly what someone would call "Defying nature". If we couldn't do it, it wouldn't happen.

Secondly, do you honestly think playing with chemical structures is going to stop civilization from collapsing? Okay, maybe it would... If you could find a way to alternate and synthesize the chemical structure of our lifestyle? It's our lifestyle, our culture, our system that is flawed. Not the plastic getting dumped in the wildlife or the smog being pumped into the air, because you are right - those other things can be fixed. (Also, try to stop major earth changes from occurring with chemical synthetics... in this century or so?)

You're missing the big picture. We can clean up the ailments but we're not cleaning up the source of the illness.

That illness right now has picked up speed and is hurling itself forward pretty fast. The civilizational juggernaut has picked up momentum, and though people are trying to help by curing the ailments, more are popping up (not necessarily with wildife, but internal struggles). We cannot worry about ailments as much as we should worry about the source - the flawed source. It takes quite a lot to stop this beast from rolling, and I am unsure how much time we really have.

 

Just another thing I would like to add about synthetic chemicals. You say Earth was not designed to handel them? I don't think I can agree with you on that. The Earth has been through a hell of a lot more than synthetic chemicals being introduced into its bio/atmosphere. It's dealt with comets and meteors and ice ages, the polar ends switching, supervolcanoes and mega tsunamis. A little plastic and a little pesticide for one century (no matter how vast its amount is) cannot compare to the billions of years of rough-housing this planet has already had. Sure, it's not a good idea to use them... It'll mess things up big time for us now, and perhaps desolate the environment temporarily, but you give Earth time and she will heal, as always. It may not be time -we- consider to be short, but in the large scheme of things it will be a brief few days of rest.

I'm not advocating us to continue the way we have been, I'm just saying we are a bit arrogant in thinking that we have the planet's life in our hands. We have -our- lives in our hands. Controlling nature is not the way we will succeed. We have only begun to understand nature. It's childplay at the moment. There are things we hardly understand at all yet. Before we worry about saving the planet, let's save ourselves (Because the only real species in danger is us. Life will continue and regrow in other forms... But us as this one species really have to consider the circumstances.)

Side Note on Defying Nature: It is not that we are defying nature by discovering loopholes in the time continuum, creating black holes in labs and diving into quantum physics. The laws aren't being broken, they're being re-discovered in a new light. We are doings things we thought at one point to be impossible. It's not breaking law, it's re-defining it.

You may say: "Well, what about finding loopholes in Natural Law?" And I say "Sure." But, first, show me the loophole within simple, basic laws that have balanced the biosphere for a billion years. There may be some, but I do not think we are at that level just yet...

 

I'm right there with what you're saying. I actually wrote a slam poem (which I live-mic'ed a few months ago) on this very topic. I'm sure you could sympathize.


The earth is five billion years old
With five billion to go
If those ten billion years were experienced as a man
Who lived to be fifty years old
The whole of human history would pass by
In a half hour of celestial television that you miss
As you watch your own

A sitcom between Ice Ages
Man these characters sure are funny
How about that laugh track
Intermission for a Constitution
Generations of stories lived
Stories told stories lost
While you sit on your couch watching
A commercial digging up the past to advertise the future
When all you ever wanted
Was the present

A flick of the remote
A flick of a dream all for the ratings of natural selection
In an ocean of channels of energy
That anyone can watch
But no one ever does

So off goes the tube now let's go outside
How about a space race
The ape race to the final frontier
You can't see or hear
Ten thousand satellites up in orbit
Now get these mosquitos off of me
Stinging and biting
Making me scratch the itch on my skin
So I can't scratch the itch in your mind

The age of oil goes by in the time it takes
To wash your face with the soap of human resource wars
See the monkeys dance while you clean your pores
Sounds great
Can I buy that in bulk

Save the planet
Screams of apocalyptic disaster bringing fear
Doom and gloom the end is near
As the earth looks over its shoulder with a tear
And a chuckle Hey Jupiter
Pull my finger

The crock pot recipe of human evolution
Fifteen minutes prep time
Seven hours cook time
Five minutes to eat
Serves One

 

Awesome poem, thanks for sharing. You're right, I do sympathize with it.

So here we are, at the end of... the world as we know it... and the beginning of a world as we don't know it. I'm not sure what to expect. I don't know whether the changes will be rapid and lethal or gradual and steady.

Odds are it will be a little of both.

Just to throw a few random facts out there: Take a look at Earthly changes going on right now, with unusually strong earthquakes, extreme storm weather and global flooding...

I don't know what the earthquakes are telling us exactly, but some sorta shift is going on with the plates I suppose. As far as floods and huge storms are concerned, the ice caps are melting due to global warming. More water = more humidity = more power for storms = bigger and badder storms. It's just logic and statistics really. Scientists even say -something- is going on. Though I do hear this summer to simply be "An unusual summer" by few, and "Due to human activity in global warming" in others. Whoever did it... it's happening. Let's deal with the situation, not the blame. We already know we're naieve with handling things.

 

What are your suggestions for change, Burn? If it's us, what is this root problem, and how do we fix it?

 

Oh boy... the root of the problem... The root of the problem of our extinction (or maybe near-extinction). It doesn't necessarily have to deal with what's going on in the physical world today. Those changes may have been inevitable. However, in all of our humanity's intelligence, we have for the most part overlooked a few things, and taken a few things for granted. Building up civilization the way we have proves that. I'll get into it... It's gonna be a long explanation though. So, head's up.

Our mighty sky scrapers peak into the heavens, while our grand suburbs and road systems creep and crawl over every landscape without fail or falling short. We dominate, we control, we live and breathe this planet's very essence. After all, we are the planet's pride and joy, its special creation, right? Well, unique for sure, but to undermind the rest of nature is to begin striding head-high down the path of arrogance. It is quite possible in our life time that we may watch our city's towers fall like decks of cards in the wind, our gridlock mazes stretching for miles on the coast line be flooded with water like castles made of sand. Nothing lasts forever, and to build a lifestyle upon that assumption is setting yourself up for disaster. The second key to our downfall would be the other assumption: That we are the rulers of Earth, and may do with it as we please. (We're learning that second one is incorrect, but I am not sure how thoroughly, and I do not know if we have enough time to reverse things.. but... still, we must try.)

As I have said a few posts up in this thread, change is natural law. It always happens. No one thing lasts forever. Everything is dynamics. We, being a relatively young race as compared to the planet's lifespan as a whole, have seen what we assume to be a very 'static' world. Sure, there's some odd weather sometimes, earthquakes, natural disasters... But we've seen most of them before. We know what to expect, right? Not exactly. Science has shown us that Earth has what one may call "Seasons" on a grander scale. We've only been around for one, and it's now just about transition period. That's something we've never experienced before in "civilization." Our first mistake which will make it all the more difficult for us.

The second aspect is by far the central error of our civilization, and probably the cause of the first. It is somewhat controversial, even hard to believe how fundamental it is to our way of life. I'll start with saying: Humanity is capable of living more than one lifestyle, a lifestyle that had lasted for thousands upon thousands of years longer than ours. It would have continued (and still does in small areas), but those who began to live our way drowned them out, killed them off, and enticed them to join us.

What am I talking about, you ask? Great question. I'll answer it as clearly as I can. In fact, let's deal with some scientific facts and analysis (No, not too boring. No worries.)

Humans as a species have developed, fundamentally, two ways of living. The first way, in which everyone used for tens of thousands of years, was called the hunter-gathering lifestyle. Humans existed in tribes, lived off of the land and existed as a species in balance with the rest of nature. About 10,000 years ago, something very peculiar happened. Instead of living off of the land, without worry of over-population, widespread disease, crime, poverty, war, famine and starvation, we decided to take up a lovely thing called agriculture. Yes, farming. Farming.. didn't we always do that? No? Hmm, well we learned how to eventually..

You're thinking farming is better? The next logical step in human evolution? Think again. In fact, if anything, the agricultural lifestyle is anything but easier. With it comes: War, famine, disease, poverty, crime, rich and poor (Who makes the crops controls the food, becomes important, has workers work for food.. etc... it begins there.. the whole heirarchy thing). Oh, sure, we've achieved quite a lot too, but I'm afraid there is a fundamental flaw in our agricultural work.

Daniel Quinn calls it, "Totalitarian agriculture." As a fact, more food equals more people. You don't believe me? Look at history. The population grows every year, and every year we grow more food. More and more of the world is being swept up for human consumption (not even just for food), and less and less of the world is being allowed bio-diversity, a key to the balance of the ecosystem. By killing dozens of species every day, we are slowly and surely collapsing the ecosystem. Slowly and surely, we are eliminating other species and taking their place. What we must realize is we -need- biodiversity. Without it everything will collapse, and there will be no more food at all, for anyone. The ecosystem will collapse. Yet, every year we cut down more forests, kill more species, make more farms and keep growing and growing. Every year, crime and poverty and war get worse and worse. Yet, nobody thinks anything of it, as if humanity's destiny were in this way of life. As if we are meant to live this way.


Well, I assure you, we certainly don't have to.

If you took a little time to -really- look hard at the facts in our civilization, you'll see that nothing is getting better. All we do is try to plug up the holes in our sinking civilizational ship. We're trying to fix the ailments, but the ship is still sinking. It was never meant to float forever in the first place. What we should be doing is leaving it behind for something greater, something better. We can take what we have learned and try something else, instead of beating to death a system that is fundamentally flawed.

That's another issue this culture has. "If it didn't work last year, we'll do it even more this year!" So every year, we increase money for this, taxes for that, hire more cops, enforce more laws, again and again and again.

I say, "If it didn't work last year, let's do -something else- this year." Especially if it not only failed last year, but the year before that, and before that too...

I'm trying to summarize a whole slew of information into this 'short' post... So I'm sorry for any confusion. Here's what we have so far:

1. Humanity is capable of living other ways that actually have worked better for longer. We can learn from them, and it doesn't imply running back into caves and hunting in the forest again.
2. Our culture, fundamentally, is flawed in thinking we can do as we please with the planet without consequence. We enact this by enacting a system that is eventually bound for collapse, both in the ecosystem and in our own culture. We try to plug up the holes, but it's evident now that the ship is done-for. Our culture is a mess, and that is common agreement among just about everybody.

It's the one thing we do that no other species does (except perhaps a virus or cancer). We break the balance and dominate nature. We drown out competitors (clearing land away and all within it for our species to thus dominate) and thus begin to limit biodiversity. This is not a genetic trait... Just a cultural one.

Our way of life has created heirarchal lifestyle, in which a few take control of the power (those that lock up the food), and the rest work for them. (In native cultures, everyone worked together. No one was better, each had his or her own job in the tribe.)

Inevitably this will bring collapse. It's up to us to change and look for a new way, not an old revised way, based on what we have learned thus far.

It's up to us to learn our place as a part of nature, and not a lord of it.

If you think tribal/native lifestyle was the same as ours, or worse... Please, tell me what you're thinking. I'm pretty sure I can explain things out more clearly, but it will just take a few questions and answers to really define what I'm getting at here... that is... a hopeful future.

 

"The World Isn't Going To End, But It Is Going To Change"

That's like saying; I'm not going to die in my sleep at night, but I will wake up

 

By the time I finish reading all that, the world will be over. Maybe you can wrap it up into maybe 3 or 4 sentences, thhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaankssss.

 

I don't know. I think one day it mit like get hit with an asteriod or something.

 

I admit, it is long, and would be better in a book or something. Here's the short version:

The agricultural lifestyle we lead, and the approach we take to the rest of nature is self-destructive. Every year we make more food, and every year more people are born.

More food = more people.

It starts to get crammed. So...

More food = more people = more space.

We've been doing this system for 10,000 years, and now we're everywhere, consuming tons of resources other than land and food, but also oil, etc. (Ex... knocking down the amazon to drill for oil, pushing for new oil drills in alaskan wildife preserve).

As we grow, we destroy and kill off species. In ecology we learn nature needs biodiversity to have balance. We are limiting biodiversity considerably. When you kill the frog in the pond, nobody's there to eat the insects. When the insects eat the plants you grow around the pond, you have no more food. You starve... OR move onto the next place, and repeat the process...

See what I'm getting at here? Very simple. Very factual. We think we're the run of the show, and that we know what we need to know about being the Lords of Earth. Not true. We've been here for a tiny fragment of time and experienced a mere moment in Earth's lifespan. Time for a wake up call.

- And that is the short version.

 

There ya go. thanks

 

Though I think the original explains things quite thoroughly, and that is necessary too.

 

sounds like the premise of the Ishmael books. I agree with it. But saying "we need to change" isn't a solution, it's an idea. We need specific goals, something practical and doable. That's the problem with Quinn: from what I've read, I haven't seen any real solutions. 10,000 years of tradition is hard to turn from, even if the (nebulous idea of an) alternative is more appealing. The change itself would take thousands of years, or else we'd have massive chaos. 6 billion people can't just go back to hunter-gathering or even to less abusive agriculture. There's not enough space (that is, food) for them, the only way we can support them is through our modern, intensive farming.

 

Quinn also said this:

During the industrial revolution, people didn't need specific layouts and programs. They had a vision, and it was an almost unspoken movement to improve, to reach new heights in technology. There was no plan of action, just will and vision - and the results were quite amazing. What we do need to do is stir the individuals into discovering a new vision, and help them realize this way of life does not work - once that is accepted we will search for another way. Once that has happened, things will fall into place. We will find a way.

Imagine yourself as a citizen during the mid 1700's. Life was relatively simple. Horse drawn carriages, little development in what we see as technology. You are sitting in a candle-lit living room with a rather radical friend of yours. He's always had crazy ideas, concepts, dreams - and you are always the one he explains them to.

"So here's my latest one!" He said, high-spirited as usual.

"Go on." You tell him.

"Well, we start getting all of the smartest citizens we have, put them together and begin to create a completely new wave of inventions. Amazing inventions, ones that will change the way we live forever. We'll build machines! Massive hunks of metal that move with the internal workings of clocks! Everything will be metal, everything will be bigger and better and faster. That's right!"

You stare at him, trying to imagine such an odd world. Despite your lack of enthusiasm, he continues just as before.

"Imagine, friend! Flying to distant planets through the gulf of space.. in our machines that we'll invent for that sort of thing. We'll built new ships made of metal. We'll build roads the machines can run back and forth on, taking people all over their nations! Get this... With such power and such invention.. we'll learn to fly! Then people fill be soaring across the skies to new places! Imagine that! Or how about diving into the depths of the sea? It's all possible! We'll build towers that touch the clouds, and cities that stretch for miles and miles. Civilization itself will be a wonder of the world!"

"Well," you say, "it sounds like an amazing world you've thought up. But I don't see why people would suddenly start inventing and building all at once. Some of it seems a bit far fetched anyway, not for thousands of years at least will we be able to do such things. Really man, think practically. We'd need systems to get this massive movement organized. How else would people do it?"

-----------

Vision, my friends, the right vision. Now, you may argue vision then requires practical action. Yes, you're right. Vision didn't just make the steam engine pop out of thin air. We've then got to have the right ideas. We're all smart individuals, let's invent. The will has to be there to change, to discover something else, something new.

Trippin, in the book "Beyond Civilization" Quinn actually acknowledges what you were saying, and makes a few interesting proposals. Check it out if you'd like. I can post one here....

 

I agree on this thread but one day it probably will nothing lasts forever remember that

 

Nothing last for ever, are we sure about that?

What about other planets?
What if mars is discovered in the near future to be inhabitable?
Then humans can immigrate there can they not? obviously by then space travel will be cheap.

 

What is your definition of world? is it just planet earth? If so what if go to other planets?

 

LOL

EVERYHING changes...
Perception of sequential change is what we call time.

The earth will end when it ceases to exist as a planetary body, And not before.
The 'end of the world' is the biggest human arrogance there is.
We are only just comming to the abillity to even 'damage' this panet.
Let alone destroy it
What do you expect from frightened children?

Occam