Our Cranial Problem

evolution

Could it be that there are inherent evolutionary cranial/neurological deficiencies in our DNA makeup; so deeply embedded that we as a species now in this industrial age are unable to comprehend ourselves as a threat to our own future existence? Could it be that this is the reason our response to our desecration of the planet and its biosphere is so muted? Could it be that this deceitful cranial/neurological DNA side of us will lead to our painful end?

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Recent scientific observations are warning us that we have become a threat to our continued existence on this planet. Violent weather aberrations and record global temperatures are now occurring. Ice in the Arctic and Antarctic is melting. We are hearing about future events from high temperatures such as a deadly Methane Hydrate Feedback Loop in the Arctic. We are being told that by the end of this century oceans will have begun inundating coastal areas inhabited by as much as a quarter of human civilization.

This is not the way it was supposed to happen. Early on the Nation of Israel was told that the “earth” was given to them by their God. Their God told them to care for it. He also told them to multiply. And that was all He said. The Abrahamic faiths and civilizations that followed accepted this. These words became a guide for our world planetary relationship.

Now Planet Earth is telling us that His words were far too simplistic. There was no reference to the planet as a finite domain. There was no warning of human population size limitations. He did not tell us that our economic and technological advancements could one day destroy the regenerative resource capacity of the planet’s biosphere if we dump into that biosphere hundreds of millions of tons of highly toxic chemical waste, much of it non-biodegradable.

So we in the West as products of that early tradition are left with its inadequacy to address a 21st century Homo sapiens existential reality. And as for those in the East, their foundational thought says little more. As a result, many throughout the world today are asking: Where did we go so wrong? Certainly we, West and East, have had time over these past several thousand years to the think about the reality of our existence on this planet.

Could it be that the pattern of our thought process laboriously pieced together over one/two million years, then given full expression six/ten thousand years ago beginning with the bronze/iron/agricultural age is now working against us? Could it be that there are inherent cranial/neurological deficiencies in our DNA makeup so deeply embedded that we as a species are unable to comprehend ourselves as a threat to our own future existence? Could the cranial/neurological DNA side of us be our problem? Is this the reason our response to our desecration of the planet and its biosphere is now so muted?

Could it be that these elements in our thought process are so dangerous as to now be bringing on our end? And finally there is the question: How could we, the most clever and brilliant primate ever be bringing this upon ourselves?

There is evidence that from the very beginning of the bronze/iron/agricultural age we have been fully cognizant of the fact that we do have a problem. The following ancient biblical verse speaks to this:

Jeremiah 17:9

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it?”

He identified one of our weaknesses. He said that we cannot know our own deceit.

Is this the reason our extinction possibility is not understood? Is this the reason that in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence we refuse to recognize the danger in continuation of carbon CO2 release, methane CH4 release, acidification of oceans? Is this the reason we have exponential population growth, resource depletion, extreme poverty, dysfunctional government? And the list goes on.

Only pockets of human concern come to the surface. What care I; most of us say? All of that is too far away, out of my vision. The pleasures of this life are all that matter.

The result; threats to our continued existence remain hidden away, buried in the depths of our human dysfunctional brain. Many simply ignore the whole thing and go about their business. And for others, when the harsh ecological facts are revealed, narratives are cleverly fashioned to remove those facts from reality. So for most of humanity life goes on in a perpetual “Disney World” kind of existence. Tomorrow will take care of itself. Or my God will take care of it. And for some within the Abrahamic traditions; there will be an Apocalypse after which everything, at least for the faithful, will be OK.

Sources

POPULATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT John Scales Avery July 21, 2018

Chapter 9 AVOIDING EXTINCTION A warning from the World Bank

“Scientists warn that if the transition to renewable energy does not happen within very few decades, there is a danger that we will reach a tipping point beyond which feedback loops, such as the albedo effect and the methane hydrate feedback loop, will take over and produce an out-of-control and fatal increase in global temperature. In 2012, the World Bank issued a report warning that without quick action to curb CO2 emissions, global warming is likely to reach 4 C during the 21st century. This is dangerously close to the temperature which initiated the Permian-Triassic extinction event: 6 C above normal. During the Permian-Triassic extinction event, which occurred 252 million years ago, 96% of all marine species were wiped out, as well as 70% of all terrestrial vertebrates.”

 

http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Population-And-The-Environment-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf

 

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Craig Dilworth   Uppsala University, Sweden

 

Quote from his book: Too Smart For Our Own Good. The Ecological Predicament of Humankind. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

 

“Due to the power/interest structures of global capitalism and the juggernaut-like momentum of the global economy, it is most unlikely that any of the radical changes to society and the economy proposed by environmentalists‑especially changes in philosophies and worldviews, will be adopted in time. Consequently human civilization‑primarily Western techno-industrial urban society, will self-destruct, producing massive environmental damage, social chaos and mega death. We are entering a new age, with great dieback.”

 

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NATHANIEL RICH

Nathaniel Rich is a writer at large for The New York Times Magazine. This report is extensive.

 

I suggest you first read the Prologue and then the Epilogue. Here is a quote from the Prologue:

 

“The world has warmed more than one degree Celsius since the Industrial Revolution. The Paris climate agreement — the nonbinding, unenforceable and already unheeded treaty signed on Earth Day in 2016 — hoped to restrict warming to two degrees. The odds of succeeding, according to a recent study based on current emissions trends, are one in 20. If by some miracle we are able to limit warming to two degrees, we will only have to negotiate the extinction of the world’s tropical reefs, sea-level rise of several meters and the abandonment of the Persian Gulf. The climate scientist James Hansen has called two-degree warming “a prescription for long-term disaster.” Long-term disaster is now the best-case scenario. Three-degree warming is a prescription for short-term disaster: forests in the Arctic and the loss of most coastal cities. Robert Watson, a former director of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has argued that three-degree warming is the realistic minimum. Four degrees: Europe in permanent drought; vast areas of China, India and Bangladesh claimed by desert; Polynesia swallowed by the sea; the Colorado River thinned to a trickle; the American Southwest largely uninhabitable. The prospect of a five-degree warming has prompted some of the world’s leading climate scientists to warn of the end of human civilization.”

 

Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change

 

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By: Marc Morano   Climate Depot   July 21, 2018

 

“Climate Depot note: The New York Times survey found that climate ‘worry’ comes in at 11% — 2nd to last out of 18 reasons cited — for why young adults are not having kids. So much for all the claims that people were forgoing having kids due to climate fears!”

 

New Gallup Poll: Americans do not even mention global warming as a problem – 36 ‘problems’ cited, but not climate

 

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By Chris D’Angelo ENVIRONMENT 08/01/2018

 

The planet bombed its “annual physical” with another year of record heat and rising seas.

 

Another Year, Another Warning The Earth Is Screwed

 

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Adam Frank is a noted Astrophysicist and author of The Constant Fire Beyond the Science vs Religion Debate.

 

“We are pushing on the dynamics of the Earth’s climate, and that climate is a delicate system that could respond with frightening speed and force…..human civilization finds itself facing, for the first time, a truly common threat of mythic dimension.”

 

“Human induced changes to our planet are calling into question the long-term sustainability of our civilization, and indeed, most of present life itself. 

 

Astrophysicist Adam Frank describes the shifting state of planet Earth and alien planets with journalist Chris Hedges for On Contact.

 

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AP Phoenix ANITA SNOW July 23, 2018

 

“Temperatures approached 120 degrees in parts of the U.S. Southwest on Monday, and forecasters said this week could bring the region’s hottest weather of the year. Phoenix reached a sweltering 115 degrees (46 Celsius), which broke the previous daily record, according to the National Weather Service.”

US Southwest sizzles as temperatures near 120 degrees

 

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ENVIRONMENT    08/01/2018

 

“The most populous region of the biggest polluter on Earth – China’s northern plain – will become uninhabitable in places if climate change is not curbed.”

 

Unsurvivable Heatwaves Could Strike Heart Of China By End Of Century

 

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Exponential Population Growth by Jason Brent

 

IT IS ALMOST CERTAIN THAT CIVILIZATION WILL COLLAPSE BEFORE 2100 CAUSING THE DEATHS OF BILLIONS AND EVEN POSSIBLY THE EXTINCTION OF THE HUMAN RACE

 

“The most important problem humanity faces today and the most important problem that humanity will ever face in the future is the potential collapse of civilization before the year 2100. This paper is not some academic exercise to be read and put aside. Humanity has one choice, and only one choice, if it desires to survive on this planet for a reasonable period of time. That choice is to immediately impose coercive population control.”

 

For the paper email [email protected]

 

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Posted by Todd Miller at 7:21am, December 7, 2017

“Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands.  The U.S. got clobbered. Three category 4 or 5 Atlantic hurricanes of  startling intensity, a record  for any single season, whacked the country. Records were also set for  rainfall  and destruction.  Two of those mega-storms, Irma and Maria, their power  intensified  by waters growing ever warmer thanks to fossil fuel emissions that continue to heat the atmosphere and the oceans, hit Puerto Rico, one glancingly, one full force.”

 

The Market in Walls Is Growing in a Warming World

 

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By John Branch, Jennifer Medina and Henry Fountain   July 25, 2018

 

“OSEMITE VALLEY, Calif. — Gone were the massive granite monoliths of Half Dome and El Capitan, lost in the shroud of a ghostly and acrid layer of smoke. Gone, too, were the cascading waterfalls that plunge to the floor of Yosemite Valley, their famed beauty uselessly out of sight. Most eerily, gone were the people. The iconic valley, usually smothered in tourists this time of year, was instead blanketed in plumes from a raging nearby 38,000-acre wildfire that forced evacuations and turned one of the country’s most popular national parks into a virtual ghost town on Wednesday afternoon. The closing is the largest in nearly three decades at the park.”

 

Yosemite National Park Evacuated Amid Threat From Fire

 

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TOM ENGELHARDT 07/27/2018

 

“Since Lucy walked upright by that African three million years ago, this has been a remarkably welcoming planet for the human experiment. If, in the coming century, climate change hits full force, it won’t just be a matter of refugees in the hundreds of millions or individual deaths in countless numbers, or some failing democracy that became an empire. It could mean the failure of the whole human experiment in ways that are still hard to grasp. It could mean no more chance for failure.”

 

Is America Sclerotic or still Youthful Enough to take on Imperial Presidency and Climate Change?

 

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Bio

David Anderson brings together a wide range of interests in his writings, namely; theology, history, evolutionary anthropology, philosophy, geopolitics, and economics.

He has written three books. A fourth is near completion. It is about a necessary geo political, social, religious, economic paradigm shift for human survival.

See:  http://www.inquiryabraham.com/new-book.html

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