This is a morbid topic, I know, but here are two other short pieces on nuclear war and climate change.
Regional nuclear war could trigger global cooling and famine
This is a morbid topic, I know, but here are two other short pieces on nuclear war and climate change.
Regional nuclear war could trigger global cooling and famine
Not to mention The genetically integrity of our species. If we are gonna Nuke ourselves out of climate warning i want to have teams of genetcsl engineers standing by to repairthe DNA-damage on evrybody that are going to procreate. Not that we yet are capable of such repairs at that advanced level, but still.
ReplyDeleteThe whole idea about nuking our own planet like this is only neaningfull if you plan on letting a very small "elite" live in some sort of biodomes way beliow ground or on the moon or wherever for a very long tume before they repopulate earth.
Sure, the "proles" left to have their DNA fried Will not die out entirerly but they will be a population plaged by countless of defects that will make life hell.
Good points. I envision tribal hordes battling each other for what available food sources are left. Food and shelter would be primary concerns as they were in the Neolithic Age. But perhaps Nature uses Man like a shovel, to dig. Perhaps it is our hubris to think we are necessary to the Earth's lifecycle. After all, we are merely coating the surface, like icing on a cake, with our skyscrapers and 6 lane highways. Scratching out our lives here and there, in Porsches or not! My friend was a jazz drummer who would go on extensive solos. To keep the beat going, in his head he would repeat "What to do, what to do, what to do, what to do" while riffing off magnificent rolls and crescendos. But yes, it an alarming cycle we find ourselves living in. My friend has passed, but I can still hear him repeating himself
ReplyDeleteunder his vanished breath.
Angelranger,
ReplyDeleteIt might be even worse than the Neolithic, since people then presumably had some kind of spiritual consciousness (although perhaps one we can´t really relate to), whereas after a nuclear war, the hordes might be completely and insanely materialistic somehow...
It´s a scary scenario, a kind of zombie apocalypse, almost!
Hugge,
ReplyDeleteYes, that rings true.
That Jazzdrumming thing sounds almost like some sort of pesimistic but kind of calming zen wisdom. Whatever fill ins and fancy Bee bop stuff you play, its still just "what to do, what to do".
ReplyDeleteYou understand beautifully Monsieur Hugge! Perhaps embracing reality is pessimistic. Time for one more true story Monsieurs?
ReplyDeleteMyself was in Canada on a fishing (pike and walleye!) trip. Out early in the morning, in a far northwest Ontario river system, alone, casting out of a canoe; picture being surrounded by the granite-shield islands with scant raggedy pine trees, a rising mist off the water to your left...suddenly a shaft of sunlight takes just the right angle off the mist and *Poof* there, directly in front of my eyes, is the arch of a rainbow. Thinking "I've never been so close to one" and recognizing it as something of a minor miracle, I paused in the canoe and just stared at it. After all, it appeared out of nowhere before my very eyes. One, two, perhaps 4 minutes I sat in the peaceful calm of the river, only to witness *Poof* again, the Earth's axis turned ever so slightly and it was gone, melting back into nothing, just like that.
Being something of a fisherman's philosopher in that moment, I wondered: What would primitive humans have made of that? Call it an appearance of some God? Perhaps a sign of good luck?
It was reassuring to me, as the world turned, that stark naked beauty can arise from nowhere, engage our attention, and then just as quickly disappear. I dared not draw something of a conclusion, but it did occur to me that underneath our chaos is indeed some kind of harmony, far out of our control. But I do think, if there was a Neolithic spirituality, it would be based on observation of just this kind of natural event. What would a "primitive" brain extrapolate from that? Matter of fact, what would we esteemed Monsieurs make of it? It really did happen. The lapping of water against the canoe was not the same pace as the "what to do"...more irregular, unpredictable, eh?
Glad I got the jazz thing right.
DeleteThat kind of moments... I somehow want to believe some deaper mening that is glimpsed in that kind of moments.
I somtines feel very spiritual when i winter swim(Canada must be Great for that by The way). When the water is still and clear and I can look from beliow the surface at sun, its rays looking kind of more solid under the water.
Looks pretty much the same in summer but doesnt feel very special without the adrenaline i get from The cold.
Usually swim naked in winter since i got the beach for myself. Somehow contributes to The primal timeless feeling.
That thing about The water irregulary lapping at the canoe i would Probably percieve as some minor disharmony in an overall harmonious Flow. But somtines a very slight disharmonic feature present together with a massive amount of harmony makes you percieve the haromny even better, i would think.
Hugge,
DeleteYes my thought was "if I can feel amazement in this moment, with modern eyes and science, what would the prehistoric natives sense?"
That feeling of transcendence in a moment engenders Art, Poetry and Music and of course philosophy; even humor.
Although I was in Canada in the summer, we did indeed jump off a dock board, naked, into the river, after a session in the homemade sauna. Especially troublesome at night when remembering the huge Northern Pike we had caught a few feet away from the very dock we jumped from. Slimy bastards!
Nature teaches many things, as much as we have tools to perceive with. Your beach sounds refreshing indeed. Let's hope we survive this current moment in history to jump in bare ass naked once more!
That beach feels like both my temple, terapeutist and pusher all in one. The slight high i get from a 5 min swim lasts for hours. Cant do longer without limbs going numb. Apparently you can increase the time a lot with breathing techniques, such as Wim Hoff is teaching, but im quite satisfied with my 5 min.
DeleteBut if shit really hots the fan it sure would be good to being able to regulate your body temparature at will. Like if there is suddenly no source of heating in your home.
https://www.wimhofmethod.com/blog
And then we have that age old problem (well, not really - it´s mostly a modern problem) whether meaning is "out there" or whether we project our own subjective meaning on a numb and dumb outside world. In this case the rainbow.
ReplyDeleteDon´t have any solution, but I note that our subjective minds are objectively real and hence part of the objective outside world...
Is there a strict dualism between subjective and objective, I wonder? Maybe the "subjective" meaning we feel is part of that objective world?
That being said, the ultimate meaning of the world might be very different from our little meanings...
These are fascinating questions. "the inside is out and the outside is in, so come on..." - John Lennon.
ReplyDeleteI too am stumped. Reading Lawrence Krauss' A Universe From Nothing and subsequent The Greatest Story Ever told...So Far, in an attempt to get at what we may know about our predicament. An astrophysicist I am not.
We know the physics of a rainbow, to impart meaning (as Noah's covenant) is as you say, a projection. I will think on the dualism question, it feels close to the edge of something perhaps unknowable.
One more curious statement from Mr. Krauss...the asymmetry of happenstance. Apparently, in Mr. Krauss' theory, at the moment of "big bang" there were two particles, matter and anti-matter (of course Mr. Scot was correct: "It's the matter anti-matter converter Captain, I dunna think I can fix it!") but the tables tipped in favor of matter. So when anti-matter joined with (bashed into) matter particles, wiping them out, all that was left was *matter* and hence what we know as our universe, which is also Flat in his theory, is essentially the left- overs from that cosmic explosion. Of course I ask: in what space or where did all this take place?
ReplyDeleteYes, the "space-time didn´t exist" thing makes my head spin too!
ReplyDeleteBoth Krauss' books are mind bending, stepping stones that are worthy of
ReplyDeletemandatory status.