Denial. And I don’t mean that river in Egypt. Most world leaders to various degrees and their millions of followers share this trait to various degrees. Few in politics and circles of power will tell the world or their people the truth about what may come sooner than anyone can imagine. The imminent collapse of our world civilization. What we have done to it may never recover. The evidence is all around us in every direction in nearly every country. Our predatory profit oriented industrial system of mass exploitation and unequal development has trapped us by design, and we cannot escape from it. I’m reminded of what the despairing musician Jim Morrison once sang in his song “When the Music’s Over”, not knowing as a young upstart in the 60s what he had come to believe may be destined to happen to me as well:
“What have they done to the earth, yeah?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged & plundered and ripped her and bit her
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn
And tied her with fences and dragged her down”
I had never fully considered how tortured his mind was, and what he had come to fear that led to his own premature death. In a world that has filled the oceans with death in the form of plastic bottles. And cannot stop doing so. That sends gazillion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and cannot stop doing so. That has an ecological ignorance that pollutes the land with toxic materials and heavy metals and fails to restore it to health, and allows it to degrade and increasingly become unable to provide life giving nutrients. That is plagued by billions of cases of cancer caused to a large degree by our very way of life. That has cling to patriarchy throughout the last 5,000 years and used murder, terror, intimidation, racism and war to preserve itself. That still maintains most of the world’s people in abject poverty. That has fought countless never ending wars that no doubt have killed billions.
The Oceans will rise 10 feet by the end of the Century, how many of us are aware of this?
Before disregarding this rant as overly negative and even paranoid, consider that most scientists are on record that it will occur in a blink of the eye in terms of planetary history, with the oceans rising at least 10 feet. Covering most major city ports in every country on the globe, not to even mention the devastation climatic change and storms will bring. Even if we halted all co2 pollution today, it would be hundreds, maybe thousands of years before planetary recovery is complete. The destabilization of the food chain and industry will one day become unstoppable. We could easily return to the stone age.
Denial and Mega-Lies Block Progress
The political aspect of denial, a form of mind control, has become part of daily world politics, especially here in America. Probably the best recent example of a mega-lie, although there are many to choose from, has been the somewhat successful politicization of our pandemic response to Cov19. If our planet does survive to have a future that has a recorded record of the past, this may be the most baffling lie to those who manage to read about this 1,000 years from now in a logical word. Another mega-lie of course that permeates the media is both the paucity of coverage of the devastating West Coast fires, some of which have been burning 4 — 5 months coupled with denial by Republican media and politicians.
But as we all know, many other things are denied routinely, as the very system that supports us has created them. Poverty itself is man-made, and results directly from our capitalist profit dependent economy whose profit margins are increased by low wages and under employment. Huge resources are spent promoting a false and dishonest history of both our country and the world. I believe after the movements in the 60s — 70s gained traction and brought about many progressive changes, the privileged controlling elites perceived progress as a threat to their wealth and power, and realized that they had to take better control of the media and information. Through their many think tanks and media sources they launched a fifty year plan on how to accomplish this and keep the country away from the progressives. This included both an electoral and information strategy. They only partially succeeded and realized after Trump’s loss that they had to smash what was left of democracy and the threat of a permanent progressive voting majority. But as a result millions of Americans continue to live today in a polarized fantasy word. They have neither accurate knowledge of their own country’s history, or likely of any other country’s. Or the true nature and interests of their political, financial and religious leaders.
When Mari-A Lagos is 10 Feet Under
Wall Street’s competitive and patriarchal capitalism is maintained by the politicians and media they mostly own. Russia and China have retuned to the same ways for the most part. How foolish will the Donald Trumps and Vladimir Putins of the world look when it’s too late and their Mari-a-Lagos and port cities are covered by ten feet of water. I’m reminded when I awoke from a 12 year Catholic School slumber and got a draft notice and was targeted for Vietnam. Replaying in my head was sixties rock star Gracie Slick of the Jefferson Airplane singing: “When the truth is found, to be lies, and all the joy within you dies . . .” Just as true today and even more urgent.
Planetary socialism, seemingly impossible at this point in history if we’re honest about things, might have been a solution. While flawed like all thinkers, Marx and the idealists that followed him were on the right track, but ran into the same patriarchal authoritarianism that plagued the world and industrialized capitalist systems. I wrote this blog not because many of you that will read this aren’t aware of many of the critical issues we face, I wrote it to wake both myself and the readers up to a greater sense of urgency. We are running out of time. Some scientists think our fate has already been determined.
The Engine of Change
If there’s one thing I learned from that era, it’s that we, and not the politicians, are the primary engine of progress and change. As critical as voting is, it’s on the verge thanks to the now fascist Republican Party of being made irrelevant. It’s a task no other generation has ever had, almost to much of a burden to bare. If there’s hope for the future, our young people need to experience this awakening in larger numbers, like we did in the 60s, if they are to have a future and a planet they can live on.