Tag Archives: doom-mongering

Keeping It Simple Is A Valuable Concept

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Keeping-it-simple

Keeping it simple is a valuable concept for me and I have armed myself with it in different ways at different stages in my life.

Lately, however, it has taken on new meaning and new value in light of what I have been reading in The Great Waves of Change by Marshall Vian Summers.

It turns out that keeping it simple is not just a preference, something personal, a way to live my life that suits me best, but is becoming a necessity, something essential, if I wish to successfully navigate the turbulent times ahead and help other people do the same. I hasten to add, however, that this is not doom-mongering on my part, but based on a sober evaluation of the world I see around me. It doesn’t take too much intelligence and insight to look around and wonder what the world is coming to. And it is pretty obvious, even to the casual observer, that the world is not coming to much, there needs to be some qualitative changes if humanity and the planet are to survive.

The Great Waves of Change point to a very valuable exercise called the Deep Evaluation.

I was encouraged when I discovered that my way of living of recent years, i.e. keeping it simple, abandoning pursuits I find counterproductive, energy-sapping, and unfulfilling, limiting social contacts to those I find most meaningful, prioritizing my time and efforts, and so on, was not so wacky after all but quite in line with the recommendations set forth in this book.

Here I read the following at the end of Chapter 4. The Freedom to Move with Knowledge:

“Now is the time to look, learn, listen and follow. Look at the world. Listen for its signs. Learn what it is teaching you and telling you about what is coming. Begin to prepare your life, to simplify (emphasis mine) your life, to unburden your life.

“So at the very outset, there must be simplification and clarification (emphasis mine).

“Your relationship with any thing, person or place that is not essential or that is counterproductive (emphasis mine) will rob you of vision, energy, purpose and meaning.

“So many people are living where they should not live and engaged in what they should not be engaged in.

“You must begin with the Deep Evaluation, and this evaluation will cover everything in your life.”

I smile in recognition, for this confirms what I feel I have always known: keeping it simple is a very valuable concept.

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Welcome to Mystery of Ascension! We are students and advocates of the the New Message from God. We are members of a worldwide community. We seek to assist the world in successfully navigating difficult times ahead. We seek to assist the world in successfully emerging into a greater community of intelligent life. You will also find some poetry. Find out more about us here. Contact us here.

Tyranny Is The Prescription When Doom Is The Diagnosis

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Tyranny is the prescription: Winston Smith being tortured in 1984No, I am not ready to let it go, I haven’t finished saying everything I have to say about the doom-mongering books of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries.  I mentioned four such doom-mongering books here.

If Doom Is The Diagnosis…

Suppose the scientific evidence for these books was repeatedly proven. Suppose the scientific evidence for these books was repeatedly demonstrated.  In the Bible, Pharaoh asked Joseph for a strategy in the face of impending famine. What strategies do the authors of these books offer in the face of impending extinction?

…Then Tyranny Is The Prescription

I believe Mark Steyn succinctly describes the solutions offered by the doom-mongers, so I am going to quote from his book America Alone:

“For Al Gore and Paul Ehrlich and Co., whatever the problem, the solution is always the same. Whether it’s global cooling, global warming, or overpopulation, we need bigger government, more regulation, higher taxes, and a massive transfer of power from the citizen to some unelected, self-perpetuating crisis lobby.”

But don’t take Mark Steyn’s word for it, consider the doom-mongering texts.  In The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich suggested heavy government disincentives to discourage Americans from having children.  He suggested mandatory sterilization for men in India with more than three children.  I can see it clearly in my mind’s eye, a local government official in India saying “I’m sorry Mr. Kumar, but Dr. Ehrlich says you need to be sterilized.”

Some people might say “Well, Mark Steyn isn’t a scientist, so his opinion is irrelevant.”  While it is true that Mark Steyn isn’t a scientist, it is also true that Jim Steele is a scientist, who has this to say at the end of a somewhat technical post on climate change data:

“Instead of promoting more respectful public debate, he [Al Gore] in essence suggests Americans should hate “deniers” for thinking differently than Gore and his fellow CO2 advocates. He and his ilk are fomenting a new intellectual tyranny (emphasis mine). Yet his “hockey stick beliefs” are based on adjusted data that are not supported by the raw temperature data and unsupported by natural tree ring data. So who is in denial? Whether or not Gore’s orchestrated call to squash all skeptical thought is based solely on ignorance of natural cycles, his rant against skeptics is far more frightening than the climate change evidenced by the unadjusted data and the trees.”

If doom is the diagnosis, then tyranny is the prescription.

The Great Waves of Change has an alternate body of prescriptions for navigating the difficult times mankind will face in the future, but I wish to unpack this body of prescriptions over a number of future posts.

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Welcome to Mystery of Ascension! We are students and advocates of the the New Message from God. We are members of a worldwide community. We seek to assist the world in successfully navigating difficult times ahead. We seek to assist the world in successfully emerging into a greater community of intelligent life. You will also find some poetry. Find out more about us here. Contact us here.

Doom-mongering Is Big Business

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Frozen Statue of Liberty from The Day After Tomorrow, a doom-mongering movie

During my lifetime, a number of commercially successful books have been published, saying that human civilization faces catastrophic collapse, saying that humanity faces extinction as a species from some cause or another.

Paul Ehrlich published the book The Population Bomb in 1968.  What do people remember about this book?  Do they remember that it sold two million copies (which it did)?  Do they remember that it predicted the deaths of hundreds of millions of people from starvation and famine in the 1970’s (which didn’t happen)?

The Club of Rome published the book The Limits to Growth in 1972.  This book was an attempt to mathematically model a sustainable future for humanity. Another step forward of this book was the use of computer simulations.  I read this book as a high school student.  What did I take away from this book?  Without some kind of global management, humanity would either run out of crucial resources, or die in its own poisons.  The fact that there is a 30th anniversary edition demonstrates the book’s commercial and cultural success.  As a predictive success, it wasn’t so hot.

Lowell Ponte published the book The Cooling: Has the Next Ice Age Already Begun? in 1976  It is my understanding that there have been 5 of what geologists call ice ages in earth’s history. We are 2.58 million years into the fifth one, called the Quaternary Ice Age. Inside an ice age, there are periods of more ice, called glacial periods, and periods of less ice, called interglacial periods. What geologists call glacial periods, non-geologists call ice ages. It is my understanding that we are about 10,000 years into one of these interglacial periods, called the Holocene interglacial period. How long will this interglacial period last?  I don’t know.  The interglacial period before this one lasted about 50,000 years. There have been interglacial periods in this ice age lasting as long as 100,000 years.

Al Gore published the book An Inconvenient Truth in 2006, which has gone on to be made into a movie with a worldwide gross income of roughly $50 million.  Al Gore has won a Grammy award, an Oscar award, and a Nobel Peace Prize for this work, making it quite possibly the most culturally and commercially successful doom-mongering presentation in the history of mankind.  Let it be noted that there are differing opinions as to the scientific credibility of the presentation.

While doom-mongering books have been culturally and commercially successful, betting against the predictions of doom-mongers has also been culturally and commercially successful, most notably the Julian Simon-Paul Ehrlich wager.

I’m unhappy that the flaws in all of the above books will make it harder for people to receive the book from the New Message from God about the difficult times ahead, The Great Waves of Change.  It’s not like anyone is making very much money from this, as the e-book version is being given away for free.  Eventually, I’ll get around to telling you a little more about this book.

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Welcome to Mystery of Ascension! We are students and advocates of the the New Message from God. We are members of a worldwide community. We seek to assist the world in successfully navigating difficult times ahead. We seek to assist the world in successfully emerging into a greater community of intelligent life. You will also find some poetry. Find out more about us here. Contact us here.