Social Consciousness and Civilization's Sustainability
Yesterday was the birthday of Rod Serling, creator of the iconic mid-20th Century television program “The Twilight Zone.” According to the Writer’s Almanac, “Serling believed it was the writer’s job to ‘menace the public consciousness’ and considered television and radio as a means for social criticism.”
And what a terrific job he did. Those of us old enough to remember will call to mind episodes whose premises included the implication of mindless conformity, the horrors of mob rule, the potential for cruelty that lies within all of us, and our tendency toward xenophobia – all presented with terrifying realism, normally with a brilliantly clever ironic twist at the end.
Of course, writers have been challenging their readers to think critically about humankind’s relation to one another for thousands of years; think of Aristophanes, Jonathan Swift, Voltaire, and so forth.
It sure will be interesting to see what happens in the coming couple of decades as more people start to realize that our civilization’s current path really isn’t sustainable – that it literally cannot continue its current direction. For instance, the extreme weather events of the past few years have caused tens of millions of Americans to realize for the first time that perhaps our ever-increasing dependence of fossil fuels, could be ruining the only planet we have. In turn, this drove the recognition that perhaps we have some responsibilities to our neighbors here today, as well as our descendants.
I’m betting that, when the world fully wraps its wits around the amount of long-term environmental damage that is in process, and the massive PR cover-up associated with denying this reality, we’ll have a new breed of social critic so fierce they’ll make those of the past millennia look like lapdogs in comparison.
The likely to be interesting decisions that we make after we come to terms with the notion that humanity waited too long will, I’m sure, be the stuff of great writing if one was capable of fictionalizing it in the here and now. We will most certainly melt the land ice of Greenland and Antarctica. The physical outcomes of that have been well studied. The part that’s interesting are the actions of humanity as these events come to pass. Mr Serling would be capable of doing something fantastic with this were he still among us.
“Mr. Serling would be capable of doing something fantastic with (the melting of Greenland and Antarctica) were he still among us.”
Yes indeed. Many of these episodes dealt with the threat of nuclear Armageddon in the Cold War years during which he was arguably at his prime. He’d be having a field day with this, to be sure.
One need not be old to be familiar with The Twilight Zone. The programs are being rebroadcast, including on channel 33.3 here in Albuquerque, along with the following:
Perry Mason
The Fugitive
The Honeymooners
Elliot Ness
And several others.
Reuters reveals that, following on a new World Bank climate impact report, “A coalition of the world’s largest investors called on governments to ramp up action on climate change and boost clean-energy investment, or risk trillions of dollars in investments and disruption to economies.” These investors, who together manage $22.5 trillion in assets, said, “The investments and retirement savings of millions of people are being jeopardized because governments were delaying tougher emissions cuts or more generous support for greener energy.”
Truthdig.org discussed the World Bank report, Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must Be Avoided. “A bleak new report by the World Bank says no nation will be immune to the impacts of climate change. However, the distribution of impacts is likely to be inherently unequal, and tilted against many of the world’s poorest regions.”
“The World Bank warns that temperatures on Earth could rise more than 7 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) by 2100, bringing along with them some catastrophic consequences. It warns of ecological harms and increased human suffering, noting that the effects of climate change will counteract benefits seen from economic growth and development initiatives.”
So, even the bankers now say we must act to minimize climate disruption. It’s a deadly reality denied only by head burying sand breathers, and by those few denial funders with a heavily vested fiscal interest in the fossil status quo.
The UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reports that, “Between 1990 and 2011 there was a 30% increase in radiative forcing – the warming effect on our climate – because of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other heat-trapping long-lived gases.” The WMO’s research shows that human activities – including fossil fuel use, cattle breeding, rice agriculture, landfills and biomass burning – all emit the five major gases that account for 96% of the warming climate. The worst of the five – carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide – all broke new records in 2011. We have been meddling in the primal forces of Nature.
Our choice is clear. Civilization is caring about each other, conserving and sharing from our collective resources, and from the fruits of our labors and talents, and carefully planning together for our mutual prosperity and that of our coming generations.
Avarice lacks even the dignity of the law of the jungle; it is destroying all the progress that our species has ever claimed beyond its prehistoric animal roots, and is digging graves for what’s left. By its blind rape of our Mother Nature, greed is quickly robbing our beloved progeny of their future. Father Time will not be kind.
Your reference to Mother Nature and Father Time at the close here is some real poetry. I think I’ve made this comment before to your posts and comments, but you really need to be a professional writer; you’re squandering a considerable gift otherwise.
Hi Craig, I wholeheartedly agree with you as to Cameron Atwood’s succinct and insightful comments. He is a born wordsmith. At Earth Corporation (To be officially launched in first quarter 2013) we need people like Cameron to join our media activism programme. Using the power of film and video to shape attitudes and to launch a ‘wake-up call for the world’ (funded by concerned corporate citizens), is one powerful way to galvanise humankind into action. The problem is that we simply do not think we are threatened – mostly because many of us will not suffer the consequences of what we are doing now because it is beyond our lifetime. The rabble is not at the door- the enemy is not invading our borders. Or so we think. But it takes just one grandchild to know we are stealing our progeny’s future.
Reg Wessels
I’m with you 100%. If you want to hire Cameron, I know he’d love to have that conversation. Please let me know.
Hi Reg,
Thank you so much for your kind words. I’d love to learn more about your goals and ideas.
It’s often said, among folk who love our planet, that we don’t inherit it from our parents; we borrow it from our children. As a species, we’re fast running out of time to comfortably change our ways, and a sense of urgency is perilously rare and fleeting.
I’m keenly interested in exploring opportunities to use my strengths and passion to awaken people to the reality we all face.
How right you are!!! I wish all of these ‘investors’ would talk to the oil companies and maybe, just maybe withhold their money. That is what THEY can do! It is not just governments that need to act, they play a part too. The current estimate is 6-7 degrees by 2060. We have NO time to waste!
Have you seen Thrive or gone to thrivemovement.com? They have the solution.
Yes, I’ve seen it, but I’d sure like to see some validation. Is there a working model or anything else that would make a scientific mind believe in this?
I haven’t seen it. However, it has been rightly said that there is a solution for all problems, simple, clear, and wrong.
Rarely will I watch videos, especially lengthy ones. I’d rather read the material. That is much faster and, if there is something I don’t understand, I can re-read it as many times as necessary.
Sorry – Thrive has lied about its supporters and it is VERY heavy on us versus them a model that needs to die. They are NOT the solution!
Politicians have all the perks, feathering their nest andflying everywhere at great expense and huge co2 footprints. The solar flares/solar energy cause more heating of the planet than fossil fuel. China’s coal plants cause the most pollution. We need less government intervention, and more free enterprise to create the solutions to less fuel use. Say no to socialism and communism and yes to capitalism.
Along with my degree in business administration from the University of Minnesota, I acquired a minor in economics. Among other things, I learned that it is possible to expect too much of free enterprise and capitalism. Unbridled free enterprise, i.e., laissez faire, results in wide-spread corruption and a lack of concern for the public at large. That is especially obvious to all of us who have lived for a few years in a country where the government lacks the motivation or ability to keep abuses under control.
Does anyone really believe that the dangerous health-damaging air pollution in Los Angeles would have been cleaned up without strong government action? The problem did not go away until emissions restrictions were implemented and the auto industry fought the restrictions tooth and nail which certainly does not indicate that they would have done anything without being forced to do so. Auto executives sitting in Detroit would have had little motive to help Los Angeles deal with its serious air pollution problem. Expecting free enterprise to solve all problems indicates a lack of knowledge of history.
To learn more about the abuses that inevitably occur without regulation, I strongly suggest reading the biographies of the captains of industry who lived during the Gilded Age, i.e, the period between the Civil War and approximately 1910. I especially recommend reading the biographies of John D. Rockefeller and Jay Gould. Reading the history of the Morgans would also be helpful. It is unlikely that people who have done that reading would expect a laissez faire approach to solving pollution and global warming problems to work.
This is not a diatribe against free enterprise and the capitalist system; nothing else seems to work well. Rather, it is a recognition of their limitations and the need of adequate controls to prevent the abuses which would otherwise inevitably occur.
It may be that solar flares cause more heating of the planet than the CO2 emissions of fossil fuels; I don’t know. But presumably if that is true, the heating resulting from solar flares has been constant for millenia and what is causing the problem is our adding to that heating with CO2 emissions. If I have not made this sufficiently clear, perhaps someone else can do so.
For the prosperity and well-being of our parent’s children, and that of our children’s children… indeed, for all the people of the earth …it is desperately crucial for us Americans in this beautiful rich country of ours to reclaim our nation’s status as the beacon of the world in terms of what we can do together – in a fair and just society that values active compassion, shared responsibility and genuine opportunity for everyone. That prized fair and just society cannot reemerge and prosper under the current regime of hoarding and deprivation.
The stewardship of society by the whole of the people, through our government, must be firmly restored. That most essential condition will remain impossible until we have decisively and permanently prevented the wholesale purchase of our candidates and our legislative processes.
We must forever put an end to bribery in all its insidious forms. Until that task is accomplished, the way forward for civilization is barred.
Cameron,
I agree with just about every word you wrote.
Although it is highly unlikely that we will ever be able to end bribery and corruption completely, at least we can reduce them enough so that the damage is minimal. Keeping bribery and corruption under control will require constant vigilance; they cannot be eliminated once and for all.
From my reading, I’ve concluded that corruption and bribery were far worse in the gilded age then they are now, to an extent that few people would believe without reading about that era. And, the harm done was immense. Reforms, including corrective legislation, were implemented when the people became sufficiently fed up. I expect that to happen again but will not attempt to guess how long it will take.
In a previous post, I suggested a reading list to help people become informed about the abuses that occurred during the gilded age. I’m sure that many people would be astounded at the ubiquity of the abuses that were rampant during that era.
In addition to a look back at the Gilded Age, I strongly suggest that a review of the excesses and injustices of the 1920’s, and the responses of the population of workers and their unions during the Great Depression – as well as the vast differences between the strategies that were undertaken in response to that depression by the FDR administration (under significant pressure from massive worker activism), as opposed to those of the Third Reich and elsewhere.
Excellent response!
There certainly were excesses and injustices in the 1920s, and some of the excesses resulted in the Great Depression. Prior to the banking reforms of the 1930s, the economy was very unstable with financial panics and recoveries occurring every few years.
FDR’s performance was mixed, as actually was the performance of all presidents. As we were beginning to recover from the depression, interest rates were boosted and the money supply was contracted in 1938, out of fear of inflation, resulting in a dramatic deepening of the depression.
Under FDR, the west coast Japanese-Americans were forced into concentration camps during WWII; that was a serious black mark on U.S. history.
The Dust Bowl also occurred in the 1930 which added to economic problems. That was largely the result if bad farming practices and resulted in legislation intended to encourage more responsible land management practices.
Hurricane Sandy should be a wake-up call to the importance of limiting global warming.
It would be a stretch to assert for certain that global warming caused Hurricane Sandy or increased its ferocity. However, the storm surge it caused made it inescapably clear that increased ocean levels would endanger low-lying areas, even including parts of New York City. Thus, even the U.S. could not escape the devastating effects of the increased ocean levels which global warming would cause.
GOOD!! GOOD INDEED.
SHRINIVAS
Many great points have been raised. All on topics of group in differences. Some overlap, but most vary in their social scheme and structure. To say we are all apart of the same psycho-trap might be our prime focus. We believe that we have people in place who are looking out for the peoples’ interest…Do we not? What say you if we said that is furthest from? If i said we are all slaves of an endemic iconic symbols infestation that is now more than 3500 years old. Epigenetic in social structure and endemic in our belief that we speak the truth of our WORDS, when in fact we are merely trapped in a made up systemic disorder…where people are pitted against other peoeple for economic advantage. IE: intent based objectives that are in want of what? AGREEMENT. WHY? why do we want to agree more than the objective nature of our being moved to doubt that the actual conflict is mostly advertising and we are trapped inside its maze. we have conned the eyes to belive made-up words as if they are the god of all the credentials we hand out, pay for and distribute for what purpose…jobs for jobs, reason stacked on reasons that what we are doing can be agreed upon. Not so. we need to stop agreeing and wake up to the biological fact there is more to the human nature than processing human beings like dirt..trash. Say what?
Imagine a world that wears more superficial masks of inequity, but called “the good of the people” crap, and that the good built inot the commercial grade reasons for those masks is like sheep following wolves to the slaughter. Albeit that the money trail made and formed the avstract legalism that made all of them them. IE, Politics and religious zealots, of our elected “good guys” whos actual binary [mono-thought processing] JOB that is to actually demean new information, dismiss any new questions as to the what and the why of social sheep herding? Are we not all tagged and labeled? WHY? come on folks, certainly we can grasp slavery 101. If we actually woke up and became moved by the genesis feelings we say we have…the prospects of the word..GOD might very well expunge the bible’s many journals of caution and warnigs. Are we rrady to wake up?
Any one who is not a-part of the “agreement process” is demeaned to flounder around in a destitution of ambigious feeling. But WHY? Is it that IF our bio-feelings the mover in all of us…was connected…that we will be joined, not by word processing-pretense we call: INTENT…the evels of the commercial grade blame world. Nor by agreed subjugation thich occupes more than 85% of the wolds bio-stigma..[feelings laid to waste]. What if we stop agreeing and wake up? The world as we all are taught to know it will change…Govenment instituted FEAR programing runs the one act play with all its achedemic masks, all highly paid to discredit any one who is a NON-PLAYER. Their purpose of all their titles and credentials is totally irrelevent in the grand theme of our real feeling direct knowing matrix. Be moved to BE. what does that mean to icon constructs? What is our sin?
Our sin is that we blindly agree to made up symbols and words of eye-conned pretendedness; the pretense of the stacked words that follow the systemic disorder iteself…in the words…intent, pretext and portent. the word: Truth is merely an installion by the force of the masses all working in blind unison…the icon agrement process itself. wonder why we have armed aggression needed to insure fault does exist, to supply new crimnals, victims, and actually insure human devaluation follows. Is this what make neural decrepitude? Do we see it yet?
A self-de4maning programed into all of us as word- truth derived from sacrificing our dynamic intutative feeling direct knowing is to say that we ARE innately decieved [bio-stigama reflux sickness…mono-dimensia endemic progaming]…We are all apart of a very nasty GAMING plan..Players and non-players fixed to a head game bent to provide fodder for the INENT based scame: legalism. What does this have to do with Technology? what does this warning prophasy? we agree to decieve as we are taught to believe feeling does not matter. When it is not about propritary rights, paper contracts and binary icon stealth we, as human beings, can slow down and actually see what we do to ourselves and others. Until then we play-act. Pretend. the final causation is INTENT base acting out. What is now a BIOLGICALLY event real is eating us alive from the inside out. We are becoming armored for the next Inquisition…less than 50 years away.
The world is white-hot with the pustuals of our inner sickness: blame. The bar of pretensed good is a serious joke played on the syambols believer. Edict destroyed ROME, we stole their EDICTS [what is now legalism] will we fail because the HEAD will eat its own tail? You know it will. Imagine we do not learn form our mistakes… “we merely perfect them?????”