The Age of Fantasy

Almost a decade ago when I was attending the extremist Moody Bible Institute, Tim Sigler mentioned how the Age of Enlightenment would have been better named the Age of Endarkenment. At the time I wondered how he could say such a thing about the rise of systematic empiricism and reason, but now I'm coming to see that his position is increasingly common. Not only are the fundamentalist Christians giving up on reality, it is becoming increasingly obvious that humanity globally is entering the Age of Fantasy.

On of the ways humanity is giving up on reality is the increasing abandonment of faith in academia. Even intelligent people looking into subjects outside their speciality are often only able to find a terrain of conflicting 'expert opinions'. This leads people into a chaos of confusion, not knowing who they can trust about some of the most basic facts of life. Very quickly the falsities pile up, leading to frequent arguments based on ignorance (I'm sure you've encountered some). Only the very best of our kind will stop an argument to agree that neither of them know enough, and so return to research more.

George Monbiot recently posited the question: "Why does a crazy set of beliefs in one field seem to migrate into unrelated subjects?" He concludes his thought with the following:

To dismiss an entire canon of science on the basis of either no evidence or evidence that has already been debunked is to evince an astonishing level of self-belief. It suggests that, by instinct or by birth, you know more about this subject (even if you show no sign of ever having studied it) than the thousands of intelligent people who have spent their lives working on it. Once you have have taken that leap of self-belief, once you have arrogated to yourself the authority otherwise vested in science, any faith is then possible. Your own views (and those of the small coterie who share them) become your sole reference points, and are therefore unchallengeable and immutable.

Indeed, it is this leap into self-belief that so many have now taken. Adrift in the postmodern Sea of Uncertainty, people increasing settle for escapism and don't even try to find reality. And our world certainly does offer an array of fantastic escape routes - supernatural or virtual, temporary or ongoing. "Anything is possible in Second Life" claims the popular online game. Primitivist John Zerzan writes, "Immersive and interactive, [virtual reality] provides the space so unlike the reality its customers reject. ... It is 'less lonely and less predictable' than the life we have now. This inversion of reality is the consolation of the supernatural of many religions, and serves a similar substitutive function." As humanity looks to the extremes of religion and technology, the world around us gradually loses its existence.

John Dominic Crossan claims, "since the Age of Enlightenment has been replaced by the Age of Entertainment, the future clash would not be between science and religion but between both of them and fantasy." He continues, "In 1999 I never imagined, even as prophetic nightmare, the speed with which faith-based thinking would morph into fantasy-based dreaming to infiltrate medicine, education, domestic program, foreign policy, and even news reporting." That was in 2007. The shift to the fantastic has hardly slowed down since.

We're in a newly emerging age. This is an Age where fantasy seeps into every area of our lives. This is an Age in which every US Republican Senator denies human-caused climate change. This is an Age where people prefer to escape reality than face it. This is an Age of increasing confusion, increasing blindness, increasing non-existence. This is the Age of Fantasy.

GM Salmon Poisons our Future

Unfortunately the FDA is considering approving Genetically Modified Salmon. They're almost there, and if they approve it we could see GM salmon on supermarket shelves in 3 years. In many countries of the world (including the US and Canada), GM products are not required to be labelled, so the GM fish will stealth their way onto your table without you knowing. But there are significant dangers associated with GM technologies.

For example, the herbicide used on most GM crops (typically rice, soy and corn), RoundUp, causes birth defects if mothers are exposed to it during pregnancy, and the 'safe' levels are often found to be exceeded 10 times over. And that's just one well-documented example. GM life has been linked to cancer and other life-threatening diseases. But that's just the risks to you.

GM crops have never significantly improved yield (as promised), have not reduced the use of chemicals (as promised), have enslaved farmers economically and dramatically increased farmer suicide rates, have given rise to superweeds that are immune to common/safe herbicides, and have spread into the wild to pollute and damage natural habitats.

GM producers have narrow vision. They have repeatedly proven that profit is their God, and they will stop at nothing (including intimidation and even murder) to make money. They encourage mono-cropping (decreasing biodiversity and increasing habitat fragility) and deforestation, and their 'recommended' farming practices lead to desertification. They are destroying the fertility of the soils, and so are reducing the worlds' potential agricultural yields.

GM animals and fish will fall down in all the same areas. They are bad for humanity, bad for the planet, bad for life, bad for everything. Unfortunately the FDA is run/controlled by pro-GM lobbyists. They have no concern for the environment or human health. If GM salmon is allowed, we all get one step sicker.

The FDA don't even have a suitable process to determining the GM salmon's safety. They are using the animal drug safety procedure to approve this fish - now doesn't that make you feel safe!

One final warning: The approval of GM salmon will open the flood gates for more GM animals. We are witnessing the destruction of agriculture itself, and with it, the possibility of sustainable food production on this planet.

Moderation, not Freedom

"Freedom without limit ends up enslaving, because the strong are free to prey on the weak."

But surely you can't limit freedom, otherwise the freedom isn't real? Not true. Freedom is not an all-or-nothing, but you can discern levels of freedom spread throughout human experience. And when we cheer for total freedom, we end up moving towards totalitarianism, because the strong will abuse their freedom in order to enslave.

The cry of the Left today has to be for moderation, not freedom, because all too easily the cries for Total Freedom can lure us towards dictatorship, giving us a similar fascism to the political and social result of the Right.

We do need freedom, and freedom should be encouraged, but it should be encouraged at the communal and (carefully) the individual level. But freedom should be restricted, and at times quite heavily restricted, at the corporate the governmental level. Just as we should not allow our government to fall into fascism, we also must stop abuses of power that the biggest corporations and most influential people now wield. We must stop our enslavement through advertisements and (parts of) the media. We must restrict their freedom, so that we have the freedom to live meaningful, healthy and free lives.

This excellent lecture (mp3) by Andrew Simms at LSE details changes we need to make to the global economic system and ways that we could make them. It is well worth the 90min listen (although a little slow to get started, but don't be put off) - highly recommended!

Red Wine Carpet Stains

George Monbiot recently declared "We're losing." He was talking about those who are concerned for life on planet earth, and we are losing to those who wish to continue with the status-quo, regardless of cost. He also recently wrote,

Humanity is no longer split between conservatives and liberals, reactionaries and progressives, though both sides are informed by the older politics. Today the battlelines are drawn between expanders and restrainers; those who believe that there should be no impediments, and those who believe that we must live within limits. The vicious battles we have seen so far between greens and climate change deniers, road safety campaigners and speed freaks, real grassroots groups and corporate-sponsored astroturfers are just the beginning. This war will become much uglier as people kick against the limits that decency demands. (my emphasis)

This split, combined with the fact that we're losing, paints a truly daunting picture of the future. It's not that those concerned with life on earth will eventually win, and that we're just getting there slowly; it's that our arguments and policy proposals are failing, pollution is opened up more than it is being restricted, countries (even formerly nice countries like Canada) are breaking rules without feeling any consequences, bad infrastructure is increasingly built (like coal-fired power station), and wherever you look, we are losing ground.

Not only that, but we're losing time too - climate change is only going to speed up as Greenland's trapped carbon is released, along with other 'tippers' around the globe. We're not going to avoid a 2C rise. I doubt we'll avoid a 4C rise. There's too much power held by the expanders, too much momentum in their favour, too many ways to make profit from climate change.

For our future is one of violence and death. As fertile land turns to desert, whether through drought, vast temperature increases, GM crops or lack of healthy agriculture (e.g. soil being killed by reliance on petro-chemical fertilisers), the healthy land will increasingly struggle to support the (still) increasing human population. And starvation will ensue. But not only starvation. With starvation comes desperation. And desperation in a world with industrial military power (where there's lots of profit to be made) leads to war.

Of course, war will also come because the expanders want to gain increasing control over dwindling world resources - capital that can be mined and used once, and is then gone forever. But the expanders don't care - as long as they profit.

The human population is climbing close to 7 billion people. It is predicted to increase to 9bn. But the world cannot sustain us - it can't even sustain the current 7bn for long, and the rate at which we are expending and destroying global environmental capital (non-renewable resource use, soil-health decrease, fresh-water supply depletion, etc.) means that in the future we will be able to support even less. And by the future, we're talking the next 50 years.

My prediction, based upon all the evidence (from climate scientists, sociologists, global politics, even from seeing the (increasing) power of the climate sceptics), is that 7 billion humans will die by 2060. That could well be within my lifetime, and quite possibly be within yours. Of course, we may be some of the 7bn that die, and so never see it all, but that won't stop so many from dying.

The horror of our future is only starting to be realised, but horror it truly is. Now is the time to lay to rest your belief in an always-improving society, to challenge people's belief in the 'stability' of status-quo, and to start preparing for the worst of it. Now is the time to realise that red stains in the carpet are really not that important, and that although the future may contain wine (for there's always money to be made from alcohol/ism), carpets will become rare and expensive - a valued resource that you can't afford to replace. And so you will need to know that removing red wine from a carpet is really quite easy: dampen the carpet with a wet cloth, pour salt onto it, leave for a few minutes, rinse and repeat.

If you survive the future you won't be able to afford replacements. Reduce, Re-use, Repair, Recycle, Replace Make do!