Sentencing the Human Race

[Bob Michael]

Biped destroyers of Nature's good.
(Gurdjieff)

A bright, insightful, and well-intentioned fellow was Gurdjieff. Yet when it was all said and done he too died with his hands up in the air wondering just where he might have gone wrong. Just like so many other spiritual forerunners have.

[mensa-maniac]

Mensa says: "There is no way out, no one can escape the final battle of the two forces good and evil prophesised to occur at the end of the world. Jesus will come in the clouds, all eyes and ears shall see and hear him. People will be awakened from their graves and shall witness the coming of Christ. Be aware of false prophets, they will fool you. You shall know they are lying if they tell you something different about the coming of Christ."

Perhaps I'm a fool then, since I don't buy into this warped and twisted or all-too-human Christian view of things to come to pass.

Mensa says: I am no christian, nor do I want to be thought as one. I am no atheist either. People need something to believe in, I believe in a higher power which humanity calls God. I respect the Bible over anyone else! If the Bible is truth, then there is hope for humanity. If the Bible is bullshit conjured up to bring order, structure and guidance into people's lives, then humanity is living in vain for nothing.

[Bob Michael]

Mensa says: "I am no christian, nor do I want to be thought as one. I am no atheist either. People need something to believe in, I believe in a higher power which humanity calls God. I respect the Bible over anyone else! If the Bible is truth, then there is hope for humanity. If the Bible is bullshit conjured up to bring order, structure and guidance into people's lives, then humanity is living in vain for nothing."

There's hope for humanity all right. But if that hope is for humanity to ever find sanity, love, peace, and true brotherhood in a collective manner, upwards of 90% of the human species must perish. And this view is Biblical prophecy as I understand it and is also made clear by my own observations of the 'fallen' human condition. Which also clearly indicates to me that mankind is blindly, but surely, and without any possibility of turning back, headed towards this necessary mass self-destruction. Or "the abomination that maketh desolate," as Daniel put it long ago.

[cousinbasil]

There's hope for humanity all right. But if that hope is for humanity to ever find sanity, love, peace, and true brotherhood in a collective manner, upwards of 90% of the human species must perish. And this view is Biblical prophecy as I understand it and is also made clear by my own observations of the 'fallen' human condition. Which also clearly indicates to me that mankind is blindly, but surely, and without any possibility of turning back, headed towards this necessary mass self-destruction. Or "the abomination that maketh desolate," as Daniel put it long ago.

Biblical prophesies count for nil in my view. Everybody and his brother try to interpret them based on more and more arcane "logic."

When you say 90% of the human species must perish, I will go you one better: 100% of it will perish, as everyone who is born will certainly die.

But I take it you mean that at some (more or less not too distant) time, the earth's population will be just 10% its current size.

And you are basing this on things written by Jewish scribes who were not even taken seriously in their own time, which was 2000 years ago? The same things people have been quoting to indicate imminent Armageddon for all those 2000 years?

Let me tell you what I look at. The population, which has monotonically increased in the past several hundred years. People have lived longer. Communication has improved dramatically, as has access to education and learning. The ability to transport goods to ever remote regions continues to grow, and if one looks at maps of industrialized nations, one sees tremendous physical room for population expansion. (It is no longer necessary to live along a river or on the coast.)

Having said this, I do concur that the nearly vertical population curve of the past century, despite 2 world wars and nuclear weapons, looks for all the world like evidence of a senescent species.

But the earth is not an agar plate, and humans are not mere bacteria.

I do not mean anything personal by this, Bob, but it has been my experience that those people most likely to see biblical prophecies being fulfilled all around them are also the most likely to be the most Godless, self-important, and above all, self-serving.

[Bob Michael]

cousinbasil: "I do not mean anything personal by this, Bob, but it has been my experience that those people most likely to see biblical prophecies being fulfilled all around them are also the most likely to be the most Godless, self-important, and above all, self-serving."

Bob: I'll repeat myself here: "And this view is Biblical prophecy as I understand it and is ***also made clear by my own observations of the 'fallen' human condition."***

So throw out the Bible stuff if you choose, but nothing changes here.

The end of the present system of things is close at hand. And it's just as well, since the human species has become near-totally dehumanized leaving the vast majority of its members as good as dead spiritually and humanly speaking. But only a genuinely enlightened and painfully rehumanized soul like myself will understand this tragic fact.

[cousinbasil]

The end of the present system of things is close at hand. And it's just as well, since the human species has become near-totally dehumanized leaving the vast majority of its members as good as dead spiritually and humanly speaking. But only a genuinely enlightened and painfully rehumanized soul like myself will understand this tragic fact.

Hey, I might share this bleak outlook if I lived in Reading, PA.

Just kidding - I happen to like Reading. I have a wonderful sister-in-law from Reading!

[Bob Michael]

Hey, I might share this bleak outlook if I lived in Reading, PA.

Just kidding - I happen to like Reading. I have a wonderful sister-in-law from Reading!

Reading is going downhill fast. Nor do I think it's a good place to be when the all out nuclear conflagration takes place. That is if one wants to survive.

[cousinbasil]

Hey, I might share this bleak outlook if I lived in Reading, PA.

Just kidding - I happen to like Reading. I have a wonderful sister-in-law from Reading!

Reading is going downhill fast. Nor do I think it's a good place to be when the all out nuclear conflagration takes place. That is if one wants to survive.

Anywhere in the NE corridor seems risky. The thing about thermonuclear ICBMs is that they made targeting obsolete - you don't have to get them right on top of your target to wipe it out.
If you are a day's drive or less from an oil refinery or steel plant, you are wearing a bullseye. Coal and shale regions are in the cross-hairs, too, so no point moving to Scranton. Try Danville, KY.

[Bob Michael]

Try Danville, KY.

So you think this would be a good place to build an Ark?

[cousinbasil]

Who is talking about an ark?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

My view is that the human species has devolved to the point whereby it has become so thoroughly dehumanized and machinelike that the neurological faculties of most of its members have become irreparably malformed and/or damaged. Consequently most of us are totally incapable of ever becoming genuinely and fully human. Though I do hold out hope for a relatively small portion of the species to make the return to full and authentic human selfhood.

Hi Bob, perhaps you want to consider my views on this which have developed slowly over the decades, starting with eschatologic predictions and apocalyptic, "all-in-decline" ideas toward where it is now.

When reviewing history one could realize that dehumanization and machinelike behaviour is not a recent development at all. The astonishing amount of inhuman, cruel, animalistic, blind-sighted and mostly automatic or programmed behaviour in the past seems to eclipse the few pockets of civilized behaviour. While older social and cultural make-up might appear more personable, involving less technology, bureaucracy and egotism, at the same time one finds the iron will of tradition and authority combined with a certain kind of ruthlessness and crudeness, blood-lust even which a modern person would find unbearable. One should really consider the whole picture and not only pine about an imagined "paradise lost".

While I understand your idea of malformed neurological faculties or perhaps "damaged instincts" - one has to go back a long way before one might find some "undamaged" state. Which might look more like an ape than a man. Or at least involves loads of speculation about some lost splendour, a "full and authentic human self-hood". How does something like that look like anyway? Has it ever been realized as society, as culture? And if so, wasn't it really a short whimper, a flash in the darkness before decline and decadence set in, subverting the whole thing?

It seems then that this idea of "End of Time" or apocalypse, the sudden decline of civilisation has been around for thousands of years. It appears to be more often reflecting an inner state, a realization of how temporary and vulnerable it is what humans have wrought, than a type of event which can be somehow predicted or described in any remotely reliable way. Most times, just nothing happened, or only slow moving processes, hardly visible to the contemporary citizens. Check out how the Roman citizens were talking in the last century of their empire. It was indeed an "ending" but not how many at the time imagined.

Perhaps the sentient human is always on the brink and as such also any society of culture which has accomplished something "genuinely and fully human" or anything approaching it. However, one could argue that now, for the first time we've developed the actual means to wipe out more than just a local civilisation, to bring down a physical fiery hell on earth. Then again, one might also argue that for the first time humanity has reached abilities to reach for heaven, to bring some kind of paradise by making alterations to their energy consumption, mental and genetic make-up and change the ways we learn and educate each other.

And hey, I've family around Reading, PA as well :-)

[Bob Michael]

Who is talking about an ark?

What I mean by an Ark is a body or a community of people who will be able to fully overcome their societal enculturation or conditioning and thereby become fully human and fully alive. Which will be necessary to propagate a relatively small portion of the finally finished and perfected human species forward after the "abomination that maketh desolate" takes place. And, needless to say, this Ark must be set up in a nuke-proof location if mankind is to ever have any kind of a sane and happy future.

[cousinbasil]

There is no such thing as nuke-proof.

[Bob Michael]

There is no such thing as nuke-proof.

A nuke-proof LOCATION. Meaning a location somewhere on the planet that will not be affected by the impending all-out nuclear holocaust.

[cousinbasil]

There is no such thing as nuke-proof.

A nuke-proof LOCATION. Meaning a location somewhere on the planet that will not be affected by the impending all-out nuclear holocaust.

If there is a all-out nuclear holocaust, there will be no LOCATION safe from the fallout and the ensuing climate upheaval. To think otherwise is hazardous. It leads to people actually preparing. Once people start to prepare in earnest, the dominoes of fear will start to fall. Think "degrees of separation." How long before one of the dominoes reaches Tehran? Or Pyongyang? There is only one way to live, and that is free of fear. You know you will die at some point, do you not? No fear. The choice is yours.

[Tomas]

If you were to summarize the human race in a sentence, what would it be?

Perhaps the universe itself is hurtling toward some unidentified destination at a speed which could hardly be stated, perhaps to clear for a better universe which will supplant us, while we rush off to some new adventure.

[Bob Michael]

If there is a all-out nuclear holocaust, there will be no LOCATION safe from the fallout and the ensuing climate upheaval. To think otherwise is hazardous. It leads to people actually preparing. Once people start to prepare in earnest, the dominoes of fear will start to fall. Think "degrees of separation." How long before one of the dominoes reaches Tehran? Or Pyongyang? There is only one way to live, and that is free of fear. You know you will die at some point, do you not? No fear. The choice is yours.

I shall continue to think otherwise. Nor do I speak or act out of any fear. Actually the death of my organism often seems a far better choice than to continue to live on in a world of unthinking and unfeeling human robots.

[Bob Michael]

Hi Bob, perhaps you want to consider my views on this which have developed slowly over the decades, starting with eschatologic predictions and apocalyptic, "all-in-decline" ideas toward where it is now.

Quite a comprehensive and enlightening view, Diebert. I'll get back on it later.

[m4tt_666]

I shall continue to think otherwise. Nor do I speak or act out of any fear. Actually the death of my organism often seems a far better choice than to continue to live on in a world of unthinking and unfeeling human robots.

i agree fully Bob.

i often contemplate my continuance of life after death by visualizing the infinite destruction of what my human form has caused throughout the past while also envisioning positive feelings of what great achievements must lie ahead of us all.

i only hope to preserve this mindset until it is time to face my death head on in complete awareness, but if i cannot preserve such a mindset until this moment i worry not for if this were to happen i would be a completely different person unaware of my previous thoughts, for better or worse, but mostly for the gain of not interfering with my own fate to ultimately regain a sense of common peace.

[Bob Michael]

i agree fully Bob.

i often contemplate my continuance of life after death by visualizing the infinite destruction of what my human form has caused throughout the past while also envisioning positive feelings of what great achievements must lie ahead of us all.

i only hope to preserve this mindset until it is time to face my death head on in complete awareness, but if i cannot preserve such a mindset until this moment i worry not for if this were to happen i would be a completely different person unaware of my previous thoughts, for better or worse, but mostly for the gain of not interfering with my own fate to ultimately regain a sense of common peace.

If I didn't think I have a real working solution to the human dilemma I'd try real hard to enter into mahasamadhi or perhaps even employ a cruder method of self-extinction. Though effectively implementing the solution is surely no easy task. The primary trouble being the scarcity of candidates who are capable of complete self-overcoming. The secondary one being to get some of those who are in fact capable of self-overcoming to enter into a state of complete and total 'letting-go'. Or dying fully to the known, the safe, the secure. Which is necessary in order for the vital 'shift' of brain functioning to take place. Which is then to return again to one's long-lost natural state of mind, body, and spirit.

[Bob Michael]

Hi Bob, perhaps you want to consider my views on this which have developed slowly over the decades, starting with eschatologic predictions and apocalyptic, "all-in-decline" ideas toward where it is now.

Hi Diebert,

My world view has not only developed slowly over the decades (nearly 7 of them), but it is also the product of a being who's been radically transformed in mind, body, and spirit. And as a result fully knows what human life and living could and someday will be as compared to the cold, callous, competitive dog-eat-dog sham that it presently is. Along with understanding why throughout history only a relatively few men have ever transcended the human condition (at least to a large extent), while the vast majority of men remained 'happily' stuck in the ever decaying wall-to-wall human mediocrity. Which has become the norm, the standard everywhere. And also understanding why these men who managed to break out of the mold were by and large unsuccessful in helping any others to break free of it.

What's finally become key that this centuries old end time prophecy is soon finally going to play itself out, is, as you put it, that "for the first time we've developed the actual means to wipe out more than just a local civilisation, to bring down a physical fiery hell on earth."

Yes, and this development and eventual unbridled unleashing of this tremendously destructive nuclear energy will be absolutely necessary for the completion and perfection of the human species. Especially since man has become so blindly and arrogantly intelligent that he's transcended natural law and can preserve and propagate himself and his ecologically destructive ways without limits. Which can and will only lead to a day of great reckoning.

Getting to your other view on the matter that "for the first time humanity has reached abilities to reach for heaven, to bring some kind of paradise by making alterations to their energy consumption, mental and genetic make-up and change the ways we learn and educate each other."

Surely this is mankind's only hope to continue on and someday find peace and sanity. However such an undertaking will never be accomplished by men who themselves haven't first been radically transformed or fully rehumanized, so to speak. Which is say, along with Jung and some others, that a problem can never be genuinely or fully solved with the same sort of consciousness or mentality that created it in the first place. Yet in all the heretofore attempts at setting up utopias, sooner or later the old consciousness or mentality crept back in and quickly destroyed the adventure and returned it to an all-too-human or dog-eat-dog status.

So it's clear here that the species is blindly, predictably, and ever so surely, marching towards a necessary mass self-destruction. And the only hope for not only the continuation of the species, but also it finding its completion or perfection, is the creation of a workable utopia. One in which the light of Truth is so great that the darkness will never gain so much as even a toehold in it. Perhaps it might be called 'The New Jerusalem'. Perhaps a 'Golden City of Light'. In any case, it must come someday.

[Dragonspirit]

Our cosmic legacy will be: "They had it all, but they blew it; they even killed their planet."...

[cousinbasil]

So it's clear here that the species is blindly, predictably, and ever so surely, marching towards a necessary mass self-destruction. And the only hope for not only the continuation of the species, but also it finding its completion or perfection, is the creation of a workable utopia. One in which the light of Truth is so great that the darkness will never gain so much as even a toehold in it. Perhaps it might be called 'The New Jerusalem'. Perhaps a 'Golden City of Light'. In any case, it must come someday.

Are you familiar with Teilhard's Omega Point concept?

[Bob Michael]

Are you familiar with Teilhard's Omega Point concept?

Yes, but I don't think much of it. Though I found the following far more practical or down-to-earth view of de Chardin to have been inspiring over the years. Though the "chain reaction" he speaks of is going to be rather limited in scope and will only set "ablaze" a relatively small portion of the species. The rest of it must and will perish.

"Everywhere on earth, at this moment, within the new spiritual atmosphere created by the appearance of the idea of evolution, there float--in a state of extreme mutual sensitivity--the two essential components of the Ultra-human, love of God and faith in the world. Everywhere these two components are 'in the air': generally, however, they are not strong enough, both at the same time, to combine with one another in one and the same subject. In me, by pure chance (temperament, education, environment) the proportion of each happens to be favorable, and they fuse together spontaneously. The fusion of the two is still not strong enough to spread explosively, but even so it is enough to show that such an explosion is possible, and that sooner or later the chain reaction will get under way. It is one more proof that if the Truth appears once in one single mind, that is enough to ensure that nothing can ever prevent it from spreading to everything and setting it ablaze." (Teilhard de Chardin)

[Bob Michael]

Our cosmic legacy will be: "They had it all, but they blew it; they even killed their planet."...

Nothing was 'blown'. Everything's perfectly on schedule and it's all simply the way things had to be.