The End of Many Things
As the old saying goes, “Things, they are a’ changing…”
Recently, Scientific American raised an interesting issue in its cover article, “Eternal Fascinations with the End.” Is it the end? Are we truly facing our own demise? If so, how do we respond to this? Or do we just ignore it?
The facts of the world and what is happening is being bantered about a lot, but how the world will actually change is not at all predictable. The book, “The Next 100 Years” also does a fine job of showing that as much as we think we can extrapolate from science, technology, religion and environmental issues, we still don’t have good way to predict significant outcomes. So, the doom and gloom forecasts that cover the news headlines are really no more reliable then a rosy outlook.
Does this mean we should ignore all the bad news in the environment and the pending disasters? Should we bury our heads in the sand and just hope things work out for the best? Not at all. It just means we need to get comfortable with what we don’t really know. We can not model the future to any accuracy or certainty an outcome worthy of a good gambler. But we can not stand still. We need to act.
We know that the atmosphere composition is changing and that man is pumping ominous amounts of poisons into the air. We know the chemistry and species of the oceans are changing and man is dumping poisons by the giant ship load into them. The soils that grow our food are being depleted and exhausted and run off into the oceans, repeating the toxic cycle. The bio diversity of all creatures is shrinking at an alarming rate, interrupting the natural cycle of life. And we know that the ground we’re standing on is being dug up for all of the earths finite materials. Yes, the world is changing and we, the people, are mostly responsible for this change.
Recently, Scientific American raised an interesting issue in it’s cover article: “Eternal Fascinations with the End” Is it the end? Are we truly facing our own demise? If so, how do we respond to this? Or do we just ignore it?
We can’t know what the true net effect of all this change will be. One thing is certain, however. If you liked what we had in the past and what we still have today, you had better find a way to embrace change. That is unavoidable. And it will not be pretty. If you want a good dose of global reality read “Eaarth” by Bill Mckibben. It will scare the daylights out of you.