2.5 minutes to midnight everybody. You may have heard the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists recently made a decision to turn the metaphorical doomsday clock to 2.5 minutes to midnight, as opposed to 3 minutes, based off recent comments by world leaders about nuclear proliferation, and climate change. If you aren't familiar with the clock, please familiarize yourself before reading on. Basically, it's a means of tracking the progress of mankind, where Midnight represents a global catastrophe, like nuclear war: The further we get from Midnight on the clock the more optimistic the future looks. The furthest we've ever been is 14 minutes to Midnight, and that was after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent signing of the above ground nuclear test ban... The closest we've ever been is 2 minutes to midnight, and that was during the Cuban Missile Crisis when the world's superpowers were glistening nuclear weapons at one another, and we were a heartbeat away from nuclear war. We're with a modicum of that point once again.
The question that's on my mind and should be on everybody's mind is: How did we get to this point and what do we do about it? I'll explain in just a moment in my lengthy comment, bear with me:
The new administration has put a gag order on climate change research and is defunding branches in government who regulate the environment. The secretary of state is the former CEO of the oil tycoon Exxon, and the new head of the EPA has anti-environment views. While the middle class is shrinking and wealth inequality increases dramatically this nation's cabinet is the richest in human history, made up of a dozen or so billionaires, bankers, and CEO's: Our legislature has a majority in both houses of the very same group that brought snowballs into the capital building as "evidence" against climate change, and want to let big business run rampant without any sort of impediment. Our Supreme court will very shortly be occupied by reactionaries with regressive views on social issues. NASA receives a meager $15 billion in funding yearly; so little that we're no longer able to send humans or maintain human presence in space and actually rely on the Russians to keep the ISS active: And that will soon be decreased once more, while the military of this nation receives well over $600 billion yearly and is only drastically rising in scope, funding, and influence. The leaders of the two major superpowers have agreed to update their nuclear arsenals as opposed to decreasing them. The alternative won't be found among the Democrats or any other politicians: They are each subordinates of the same party: The Corporatist party, the Elite. The distinctions between them are irrelevant and deceptive at best.
If you're the type of person who doesn't like getting involved... now is the wrong time to sit down and do nothing my friend. This epoch in human history is by far the most important, and the decisions we make are presently the most influential: We are simultaneously capable of creating a future for ourselves and our posterity which is beautiful and rich, and filled with technology and wonder if we only work together for the common good, and set aside our minuscule differences. Or... we can annihilate ourselves, and this earth out from under us, with the single push of a button, or worse... by doing nothing, and allowing greed and malice to be the end of us. This beautiful earth on which we live, and everything on it, both man and animal, can be destroyed by the psychopathy and avarice of such a tiny echelon of us: an echelon that's completely dependent on our complacence and continual support to exist mind you. The very thought makes me sick to my stomach, and shed tears for our poor human race....
But do not despair: none of this has happened yet, and there's still time, plenty of time, to amend our ways and right our wrongs. I know this may seem like the worst time to be alive, what with all the misery and evil that goes on in this world, but it's not. The efforts of many millions to right these wrongs are often overlooked by media and by society. Think of the computer and internet you're using to read this comment right now my friend: We'll never meet each other in real life or interact ever again beyond this forum, but are able to communicate this thought and hold a discourse about it from a world away because of this marvelous creation, which would have been incomprehensible a mere 5 decades ago: The very nature thereof testifies to the goodness of mankind, our inquisitiveness, and is a symbol of what happens when millions of us work together for the common good. Think if what wonders only await us in the future, if we're willing to fight to create one for ourselves.
Don't concede to your own specie's destruction so willingly friends... grit your teeth, and stand with me. For a better future, where science and technology will lead to all men's happiness: and avarice, acrimony, poverty, intolerance, and hatred become rudiments of a distant and barbaric past. Where human beings can explore the stars, cultivate other worlds, live lengthy, fulfilled lives, free of war, poverty, corruption, and destroy the very instruments and hierarchies which allow such misfortunes to beset the human race in its current sad state. Where the future we've so often dreamed of in science fiction may finally become a reality. NOT one where we're destroying each other, and ourselves, for tiny plots of land on a this spec of dust we call home, and ravaging this good earth and all creatures thereon by our own greed and contempt for life.
THAT is something that should be worth fighting for. People who don't feel like getting active, and are content to be spectators to their ensuing demise are what gets us into these messes. The short sightedness of men, our inability to think on the long term and covet such a world above all else is sickening, and ought sicken you like it does me. The answer to this downhill trend isn't republicans or democrats, it's us my friends: WE have the power to make things better with our own actions! We have the power to instigate change, to create happiness, to make this life a wonderful adventure... "The electors of corrupt politicians are accomplices, not victims" as Orwell says. Using this diction, let's get impashioned, let's get active, and let's turn the clock back as far as it gets, so such a medium is no longer necessary to exist- Let's create this ideal world, instead of thinking about it! Let's be our own saviours, instead of waiting on others to save us, and set about to make life tolerable and better for one another instead of quarreling and stagnating over petty issues... Let's not wait on change, but instigate it ourselves!
Ideologues and Demagogues are the enemies of the human race, and of us all. They're short sighted: They serve only their own interests and play with people's lives and futures like they're chess pieces. Don't give yourself to these charlatans: Anybody who promotes violence, disunity, and regressive thinking isn't one worthy of being followed. They are unnatural, self-destructive brutes... Don't stand behind people like this, the answer to our predicament isn't found in sleazy politicians. Once more, it is us!
Do something friend, to make this world a better place to live in, even if it's minuscule: The individual man believes himself to incapable of instigating any sort of change. He's just one man after all, and what can one fellow do to reverse the downhill trend we've been on? That is the attitude that dooms us on the long term. Many many pebbles add up to create a mountain stretching hundreds of meters high, and without the individual pebble, the mountain cannot exist.
Go green, recycle, join a political cause, volunteer for things, anything: food-banks, charities, animal shelters, etc. Join local protests and stand up for yourself and your beliefs, and for the less fortunate. Sign petitions, advocate for views conducive to such a means, donate to groups trying to fix the problem and researching renewable energy, try some solar panels, run for a local office yourself if you have the time and money, plant some trees, perhaps become a vegetarian, make a compost, maybe try that slightly wimpier electric model instead of the gas guzzler, and more importantly Vote: Make note current events, elections, and candidates; don't be swayed by firebrands and ideologues who divide us, and make men hate one another over their differences, or by false news reports, but support and elect those who are willing to fight against the destruction of our planet and bring us all together in a spirit of humanity and brotherhood... Yes such men still exist, believe it or not, even if the prospect seems bleak, let's not loose faith in ourselves and mankind...
This isn't star-trek friends: We don't have a plethora of habitable worlds to flee to if this one is poisoned beyond repair by men's greed. This earth is home to every single one of us that's ever existed so far... Our only home, and if the ship sinks, all of us, good or bad, perish with it, always remember that.
Let's be the change we want to see in others and an inspiration to all, each and every one of us. Let's think of ourselves as human beings above all, before any insignificant nationality, creed, religion, or label you attach to yourself... Do not fly the white flag just yet- We can do it, I know we can! Fight with me, be brave! And let's look forward to the wonderful future of mankind together!
06 Feb 2017, 10:47 am
