The Existential Question of Our Age

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Here is the existential question of our Age: Is there a way for us to break out of our downward ecological spiral? The answer: Yes. But first we will have to examine all of those existing patterns of our thought and behavior we have believed to contain “inherent truths” that are now an existential threat; our lifestyles, our economics, our political systems, our laws, our social and religious systems, our understanding of our “Raison d’etre”. (reason for being)

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Holding us back from facing this is a level of thinking with its origins in Egyptian and then Mesopotamian civilizations.

What followed was one authoritarian autocratic model after another. Then in 1215 A.D. came the Magna Carta. It assumed individual liberty and freedom for all.

Yet, the authoritarian autocratic model still continued to rule. Individual liberty and freedom for all became no more than an afterthought.

This essay challenges:

Both the Egyptian/Mesopotamian authoritarian autocratic model and the individual liberty and freedom Magna Carta model. It makes the case that the underlying economic political religious philosophical thought process that ensued and exists to this day has become an intractable obstacle working against the survival of our species on this planet.

The reason:

It has allowed a human societal form that gives expression and power to the worst of the psychotic self.

My New Book covers this in detail: See

ABSTRACT MY NEW BOOK

(ALSO GO TO BIO/LECTURES)

This ” worst of the psychotic self ”  is a eukaryotic neurotic psychotic Homo sapiens imperfection in our brains.

We brought it with us when we moved out of Africa into this New Age.

It was known early on:

In ancient Egypt around 2400 B.C. there was the weighing of the heart in order to judge the fate of the deceased. This would take place in Duat. (the Underworld) There the dead were judged by Anubis. Upon death the person’s heart was weighed on a scale against a feather. The feather represented Ma’at, the goddess of truth and justice responsible for maintaining order in the universe. Hearts heavier than the feather were rejected and eaten by Ammit, the Devourer of Souls.

About 1440 B.C. it was first observed by the Jews in the Sinai Desert during the Israelite journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. In an act of expiation for all once a year the high priest would take two goats and cast lots for them. One goat would be killed and its blood sprinkled on the atonement cover (or “mercy seat”) in the Most Holy Place of the temple to make amends for the people’s sins.

In the sixth century B.C. Jeremiah wrote:

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

Jeremiah 17:9

Today. according to tradition, it is recognized by Jews on The Day of Atonement – Yom Kippur.

And for Christians there is the ultimate expiation: The death of Jesus the son of God on a Cross for the forgiveness of the sins of the believer.

In our world society today we can observe this sinful deceitful and wicked thought and behavior and absence of truth and justice in our interpersonal and international relationships.

There is however a positive side to us. It too was given early recognition. It can be observed religiously and philosophically. It spread as we moved into Egypt and then into the Levant and to Europe and then to Asia: there with the Hindu and the Upanishad and the Buddha and Confucius and Lao-tzu, the philosopher whose ideas became Daoism.

Over the past several thousand years these two sides of human existence have been given great scrutiny. They are to this day.

However something has been left out of the equation; no acknowledgement of the need for human thought and behavior to focus on a symbiotic alignment within the Planet’s Biosphere. There has been no philosophical religious or political understanding of this need for entanglement. Our eukaryotic neurotic psychotic imperfection told us that the Planet was to be left out of the equation. It was to be used and abused for our material self-satisfaction.

At least the Egyptians could be given some credit for recognition of “truth and justice responsible for maintaining order in the universe”. That “deceitful heart” noted by Jeremiah paid no heed for such order. Nor was it a part of Christian theology.

(Vestiges of Nature symbiotic codependency were however present early on in the pre Egyptian/Mesopotamian period. It was seen in the indigenous peoples in the Americas. Long before, they had moved North out of Africa and then South across the Alaskan Land Bridge.)

Today this Homo sapiens evolutionary deficiency has become our existential problem. With the Egyptian and Mesopotamian transition and then North and East during and after the Roman period we designed political, social, religious, philosophical, economic systems that separated our species from the Planet, without recognition that like any organism within its Biosphere that alienates itself from its Biosphere, the end result is rejection.

We now find ourselves faced with this reality.

If we continue to think the way we think and and live the way we live, in the near future we will no longer exist.

By-an-large most humans refuse to acknowledge this. Yes, some enlightened individuals and certainly most of the scientific community, but all with limited influence. The vast majority of the citizens of the world live in a cloud of optimism bias that allows them to move forward en-masse without fear of harm.

That optimism bias during our evolution had been one of our strengths. It allowed us to take on life threatening risks. It has now become our enemy. Because of it, we refuse to accept the reality that we are under the control of and subject to the planetary forces of Nature.

A reality we refuse to face is the possibility of a Methane Hydrate Feedback Loop in the Arctic. (Confirmed by the World Bank in 2012) We were warned that without quick action to curb CO2 emissions, global warming is likely to increase by 4 degrees Centigrade (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) and that this rise in temperature is dangerously close to the rise that initiated vast amounts of Methane release from the Arctic during the Permian-Triassic extinction 252 million years ago. (Methane is much more potent as a heat-trapping greenhouse gas than is carbon dioxide)

Another reality we refuse to face is that the South Pole is rapidly warming. Surface air temperatures there have been rising since the 1990’s at a rate that is three times faster than the global average. The result: Parts of coastal Antarctica are losing ice. As ice melts oceans will rise. There are implications for billions living in coastal areas.

Another reality we refuse to face is that we must reduce our population size. (now more than double what it was when I was in High School) Earth’s supplies of habitable land, fresh water, arable soil and mineral resources will not be able to satisfy our needs.

Another reality we refuse to face is that ocean acidification is threatening much of the marine food web. Rising carbon dioxide emissions since the Industrial Revolution have caused the oceans to become 30 percent more acidic. The estimate is 150 percent more by 2100.

Another reality we refuse to face is that Capital markets have grown to a size where they are energizing ecologically destructive parasitical forces of a magnitude never before seen in human history.

Another reality we now refuse to face is that religious extremism on a global scale is releasing deadly psychotic neurotic behavior with wide destructive social ramifications.

And there are many others.

Where then do we begin? How much time do we have? Far reaching changes must take place over the next 25/50/100 years. They need to be of the magnitude that came with our Egyptian/Mesopotamian Age. All of human society has to change the way it thinks and the way it lives. The changes need to be political, social, religious, philosophical, economic.

And if there are no changes, what then? The suffering of future generations will be extreme. First, those billions of humans living on the edge of survival will perish. We are already seeing this die off in many parts of the world. (124 F. in Baghdad as of this writing) Then, the pain will move onto the rest of society.

Planet Earth is saying to Homo sapiens, using its unforgiving evolutionary language of species’ rejection; you must change the way you think and the way you live and you must do it now.

So here is the existential question of our Age: Is there a way for us to break out of our downward spiral? The answer: Yes, there is. But first we must examine those existing patterns of thought and behavior believed today to contain “inherent truths” that have become our existential enemy.

The task will be daunting. It will require a reinvention of much of what we have believed to be sacred, true and justified. We will have to change the way we think about everything; our lifestyles, our economics, our political systems, our laws, our social and religious systems, ourselves, our “Raison d’etre” (reason for being)

Today’s patchwork of repairs and technological fixes will not suffice. We humans will need to find a way to replicate those parts of our behavior  that had successfully guided our early ancestors and then our own unique Homo sapiens evolutionary development  in a symbiotic relationship with Nature. ( see Karen Armstrong reference below )

A totally new societal design is called for; one leading to an entirely new form of society, one whereby all human activity can exist in concert with Nature.

And it cannot be implemented without first examining the core all of our New Age weakness; our dark eukaryotic neurotic psychotic destructive me/me/mine side.

Yet even this examination alone will not suffice. Human survival will require a neurological metamorphosis of the human mind by CRISPR (gene editing) or other sperm/egg biological/neurological means, also the removal from participation in society of those identified as potentially destructive to it and/or incapable of constructively participating in it.

This can be accomplished by mental and physical rehabilitation – permanent facilities for those unable to be rehabilitated, prisons for the most violent.

Also a controlled population birth number determined by population/earth sustainability.

(above approaches being initiated by China and criticized in the West)

Can it all be accomplished? Can there emerge a human society able to move far into the future toward its cosmic meaning yet within and constrained by the Biosphere of this Planet? This is now the challenge of our time.

Albert Einstein

“The problems in the world today are so enormous they cannot be solved with the level of thinking that created them.”

 

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Suggested Reading:

 

A CRITICAL DECADE   by John Scales Avery

For Summary:

https://countercurrents.org/2021/06/a-critical-decade/

A new report, published on 14 March, 2021 in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ journal Ambio, points out that humanity is hurtling towards destruction unless we have the collective wisdom to change course quickly.

For Free Download of Book:

http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/A-Critical-Decade-by-John-Scales-

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MAUREEN DOWD

APOCALYPSE RIGHT NOW

JULY 24, 2021

HTTPS://WWW.NYTIMES.COM/2021/07/24/OPINION/SUNDAY/CLIMATE-CHANGE-FLOODS-WILDFIRES.HTML?ACTION=CLICK&MODULE=OPINION&PGTYPE=HOMEPAGE

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126 Nobel Laureates Issue Urgent Call Ahead of G7 Summit, Demanding ‘Decade of Action’ to Combat Global Crises

https://countercurrents.org/2021/06/126-nobel-laureates-issue-urgent-call-ahead-of-g7-summit-demanding-decade-of-action-to-combat-global-crises/

“A group of 126 Nobel laureates and other experts on Thursday called on the leaders of the G7 nations and the United Nations secretary-general to help put the global community on a path to establishing “a new relationship with the planet,” as the world continues to battle the Covid-19 pandemic and faces a coming decade which will be “decisive” in determining whether the Earth remains habitable.”

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Karen Armstrong:

(One of the greatest minds of our time)

“A part of the human brain known as the reptilian emerged 500 million years ago. This part is involved in “me first” drives and in violence – and in fear (i.e., the fight-flight). Another part of the human brain known as the limbic system appeared perhaps 120 million years ago. This part is involved in protecting and nurturing the young, and in forming alliances necessary for survival. It is involved in empathy, as well as altruism. It is also involved in various forms of love. The part of the human brain known as the neocortex emerged about 20,000 years ago. It is the distinctively human part of the human brain. It is involved in reasoning and self-awareness.”

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