HYPERTROPHY OF SOCIAL COGNITION--THE END TIMES

I'd say the world is truly in uniquely dire straits. For example, the Planet has experienced previous waxings and wanings of climate changes, but never has it had the huge human population numbers it now has. For example, with the fully documented melting of the Himalayan glaciers, one-third of humanity--in South Asia, mainland Southeast Asia, and East Asia--soon will be lacking in fresh water supplies.

Yet, I'd say, from observing global history, the world has always been in a steady-state "end-times." Look at 14th-century Europe (with its Hundred-Years' War and the Black Death, when one-third of Europeans perished) as explicated by Barbara Tuchmann, in "A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century." What would the Incans have concluded when the Spaniards invaded in 1520, or the Aztecs, or the Mayans, or the North American Native Americans when their civilizations were being destroyed? Or, the people of Alsace-Lorraine when their region changed hands seven times due to seven wars between France and Germany in the four decades before World War I? Or, the tumultuous and mind-boggling events of 20th-century China with its great famines and warlords stalking the land, the invasion of Japan and WW II, and the communist takeover with the human disasters of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution--that affected hundreds of millions of people? Or, Europe from WW I, through the Great Depression, the rise of Hitler, the Holocaust, and WW II?

It seems that any peaceful lull in history was only a time when dark forces were gathering for the punctuated disasters looming over the horizon. It should be obvious that human history over its entire time-frame has rarely been peaceful. Social breakdown? Read about it any time in the 20th or even 19th-century. Economic recession or even depression in America? Nineteen, I believe, since 1776. Wars? Too many to count. Pestilence? How about the plague of London, in 1665, or the 1917 world-around Great Influenza Epidemic, when perhaps 40 million people died?

The quote above, when the Archbishop Wolfstan stated that the world was rushing toward its end, came just 14 years after a great panic in Europe, when it was widely believed the world would "end" with the turning over of the millennium. Seems humans have in their psychological apparatus a great capacity for "hypertrophy of social cognition," which induces us to see purpose, design, even intention when it is not there. As a boy, I spent some wonderful moments in my side yard picking out the faces in the clouds. Studies have shown that when people are presented with truly random numbers, they do not believe the randomicity, as they believe they detect patterns. Think of John Forbes Nash, Jr. (the Russel Crowe character) in the film "A Beautiful Mind." The human mind is beautiful alright--or, at least adept--in imagining patterns in historical events, especially when it has been influenced by 2000-year-old apocalyptic writings, and a belief in teleological programming. Look for patterns, "patterns" will be there.

It has been a rather steady-state apocalyptic times for humanity in most all world regions. The Four Horsemen have always been galloping toward us. When were they ever not?

HEADKEEPING IN APOCALYPTIC TIMES

Recently a video has surfaced by talk-host Hal Turner who claims the U.S. is preparing to demonetize the dollar and issue a new currency called the "Amero." He claims that the U.S. has minted 900 billion of the coins and they are stored in China!

The Turner video and his claims of a new U.S. currency are as silly as they are false. The Snopes.com article http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/amero.asp about the video should be sufficient refutation of the urban legend that Turner seeks to disseminate.

I was very disheartened by all the conspiratorial urban legends viciously created and continuously--both consciously and unconsciously--(re)circulated about Barack Obama. Seems that America has been especially prone to apocalyptic and millenarian (sell your possessions and wait on the hill) groups and thinking for a long time. It will not cease now.

In no way could the U.S. government unilaterally make such an extremely radical alteration in its currency. First, it would be a cataclysmic destabilization of not only China with whom the U.S. economy is closely articulated (and the U.S. does NOT want a destabilized China), but also of Japan, who holds approx. $880 billion, Taiwan ($260 billion), and South Korea ($230 billion) and also of the U.S. itself.

Alongside the rantings of paranoiacs, we can hold out some hope for positive human behavior during tough times. Yes, always there are people who respond well, even heroically, during adversity, but I think we are already seeing increased negative behaviors as result of financial pressure on people: suicides, crime (banks robberies have exploded in New York City recently), possibly racial/ethnic strife, family problems, drug use (could this get any worse?), and even the Hal Turner-type paranoiac-conspiratorialists.

Seems utopia is nowhere in sight; dystopia is closer to us. But, hopefully, the economic downturn will run its course within two years. In the meantime, we--the whole world--must use the interim to reorganize some critical matters: energy use, transportation, etc. It is an opportunity to rectify some fundamental human lifeways. How much do you think this will happen?

To modify how modern humans relate to the environment in which we are ontologically embedded is a radical project. It's a spiritual endeavor that cuts to the core of how humanity sees itself and its relation to Creation. Religious views necessarily will have to change; but they will not change easily.

No, I do not believe in an Apocalypse. But, now in the 21st century, I do believe in the continuity of turmoil experienced in the 20th century, but not necessarily of the same formation. World history is replete with cataclysms. If you look at 14th-century Europe (Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror is about that disasterous era), it was an astounding cataclysmic time as was the 20th century. If you look at 20th-century China, it was an incredible time of upheavel and human tragedy. There's no reason to think that the world is now somehow immune from at least some of this. But, the scaremongers--the psychotic Hal Turners and dispensationalist Hal Lindsays (remember The Late Great Planet Earth and the Left Behind series? )--of the world do not help. They benefit by their scare tactics.

When many people are even more prone to being swayed by sensationalism and conspiracy theories and demogoguery and "prophecies" and religious extremism, it's a time when rational people must keep their heads straight. I remember the words of Rudyard Kipling's If:

"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs...."

In these times, I'd say headkeeping is psychologically and spiritually tough to do.