Why We're Probably Not Going to Make it
By Don Bennett, DAS
April, 2018
Why
do I hold this opinion? Read on. But first know that I am not
a pessimist and I'm not an optimist, I'm a realist. I prefer to
look at things realistically rather than through rose-colored
glasses or as an eternal cynic.
More
than 99 percent of all species amounting to over five billion
that have ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct.
Some have gone extinct because of our influence (due to human-caused
habitat destruction and climate change), and some went extinct
having nothing to do with us. But what about us? Is it a given
that the human species will be here until our sun burns out, or
until the next glacial period or a huge asteroid slams into the
Earth? Some say we sow the seeds of our own destruction as a species,
and when thinking about this issue in an unbiased, dispassionate,
logical, critical-thinking manner, taking all things into consideration,
it is not only possible but probable that we will
be the cause of our extinction; i.e., it's not a question of if
we'll self-destruct, but how and when.
The
likelihood of human extinction in the near future by wholly natural
scenarios, such as a meteorite impact or large-scale volcanism,
is generally considered to be extremely low. But many possible
scenarios have been proposed for human-caused extinction: human
global nuclear annihilation, biological warfare or the release
of a pandemic-causing agent, dysgenics, overpopulation, ecological
collapse, and climate change due to global warming. But there's
another cause that doesn't get a lot of press; it's an umbrella
term that is at the root of all of the above possible anthropogenic
causes: lack of sufficient wisdom, or more to the point, increasing
stupidity.
We're
not only a fragile organism compared to many things in our environment
(like automobiles and collapsing buildings), but many aspects
of our civilization are also delicate. It doesn't take much to
cut off food and water to large numbers of people, resulting in
many deaths; natural disasters have demonstrated this quite dramatically.
But we are also affecting our environment: we poison
our water, air, and land, and we do the same to our own bodies
by consuming poisons and toxins like poisonous liquids (liquor,
beer), the deliberate inhaling of toxic smoke (from cigarettes),
the ingestion of poisonous chemicals in our food (that we're told
are safe but in reality are harmful over time), and to add insult
to injury, the treatment of the conditions caused by the above
is with poisons like chemotherapy that tank our immune system,
and meds that damage our livers, with sperm counts going down
and miscarriages going up as a result. To quote Spanky of The
Little Rascals, "We're not so bright."
Then
let's factor in what we're doing to our home... the planet that
sustains us. We're pumping tons of CO2 into
our thin atmosphere, and we're supporting industries that contribute
tons of methane to the atmosphere another even more potent
greenhouse gas which results in a warming of the planet,
which raises ocean temperatures and melts arctic ice which raise
sea levels and affects our climate which affects our weather (climate
and weather being two different things). And this can affect our
ability to feed ourselves, have potable drinking water, and enough
land for all the people displaced from their homes by increased
flooding from increased storm surge, and by the loss of coastal
lands and certain island nations.
As
you can see, it doesn't take much to dramatically affect our civilization.
Yes, this will be "over time", but if overall failing
health, falling fertility, and a less supportive eco-structure
results in "the beginning of the end" of the human species,
who is to blame but us. The vast majority of the world's population
eats a diet that humans are not designed to eat, and the foods
of that diet require way more land, water, and other resources
than our natural diet, and the production of all that unnatural
food is the number one cause of global warming (and is also the
number one cause of what gets written as "Cause of Death"
on our death certificates). By any standard, an insane
practice if a sustainable species is the goal.
But
we seem to be okay with insane practices. As mentioned above,
there are people who go out of their way to inhale smoke, knowing
that doing so will shorten their lives and result in what's likely
to be very torturous final months of life. And many people have
no problem drinking various poisonous liquids that have in common
ethyl alcohol which damages the body and has no beneficial properties
(except to the alcohol, medical, pharmaceutical, and autobody
repair industries). And obviously we consume other things that
clog our arteries, and cause cells to become cancerous while those
same things kneecap our body's cancerous cell control mechanisms.
And when we gain too much weight, we either don't care, or have
it sliced off, or try to run it off which never works so we simply
buy larger sized clothes.
And
when someone shares with us any potentially life-saving information,
if it suggests that we'd need to change our beloved habits, we
employ that trait unique to humans where we choose to believe
what we'd rather believe, and disbelieve what we don't want to
be believe. This accounts for continuing to hold a cell phone
against our head despite a solid case being made for not doing
this, and continuing to eat those things that have been clearly
shown to contribute to heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Could
this behavior be considered insane? Don't all animals have a self-preservation
mechanism? Or have we simply become so good at fooling others
into doing things that are not in their best interests, and at
fooling ourselves into believing whatever big business and their
media minions tell us. (And even if we had a survival
instinct, I don't want to survive; I want to thrive,
and there's a big difference between the two regarding quality
of life.)
To
support my opinion, I have compiled a list of the things that
would suggest that we're not going to make it as a viable species.
I've already mentioned the biggies above, so here are some other,
not so obvious ones.
Some of the Reasons We're Not Going to Make
It
*
We seem to loathe standards, preferring instead to have proprietary
ways of doing things, even though having standards has many benefits.
Why must we have multiple names for the same thing? Why is it
called a speed bump, speed hump, and speed breaker? No, this is
not in different countries, these are all in the U.S. Why can't
they all be called the same thing? Why does a light switch in
America turn the light on when in the up position, but turn the
light off when it's flipped up in Europe? Why, for something as
universal as time, are there two different ways to denote it among
the same species? It's 1:00PM in some places, and 13:00 in others.
Why are liquids still measured in gallons by some people, and
in liters by others? Why is something as universal as the speed
of a moving vehicle thought of in miles-per-hour by some people,
and in kilometers-per-hour by others? And why is the steering
wheel on the left side of some cars and on the right side of other
cars? Why is something as universal as the temperature of freezing
water said to be 32 degrees by some people, and zero degrees by
other people? Why are cows cherished by some people and eaten
by others, while dogs are eaten by some people and cherished by
others (never mind that we're not designed to eat animals to begin
with)?
*
THE
TRAIN TORE THE FIREHOSE FROM THE FIRE HYDRANT
*
We say that we drive on parkways and park on driveways.
*
Some people don't wear seatbelts (although this can be thought
of as evolution by natural selection, it's not going to work quick
enough to be of any real help).
*
Some people care more about getting just the right color of toenail
polish or getting those season tickets than they do about their
most precious possession: their health.
*
*
We collectively managed to choose someone who is obviously unqualified
to be the leader of the most powerful country on the planet, and
some of those who were responsible for choosing this embarrassment
of a President are not able to comprehend that this is what happened
even after more than a year of evidence that he conned them, and
instead honestly believe that he is a great President. They are
not cognitively able to recognize that he is, in reality, an incompetent,
indecent, dishonest, self-absorbed, thin-skinned, narcissistic,
manipulative, egotistic, unintelligent, insensitive, spoiled child,
over-privileged, con-artist, misogynist, habitual liar, who, like
a sociopath, lacks empathy and a conscience, doesn't give a rat's
ass about the environment, craves the spotlight, and engages in
nothing but demagoguery,
and whose only real policy agenda, besides his self-dealing and
taking care of those who benefit him, seems to be overturning
everything his predecessor did simply because the previous President,
a black man, made fun of him at the 2011 White House Correspondents
Dinner. (And by-the-way, his own Secretary of State referred
to him as a "f___'n moron".) We're responsible for the
politicians who take advantage of us for personal gain, so what
does this say about us as a species if this is who we're choosing
to manage our country, someone who to get elected
said he'll "drain the swamp" because he knows that's
what we want to hear, and then when in office he increases
the swamp so that the EPA, FCC and many other departments whose
job it is to protect us and our country are cut off at the knees
to favor big business. Why is this not a shock to some people,
and others can't see that this is what happened? Obviously some
people have a problem with their reasoning ability... and it's
getting worse. And if you say that the two viable choices for
President in 2016 were both horrible, what does
this say about a political system where the only viable choices
are self-serving people who consider themselves the "ruling
elite" and view the so-called "lower class" as
merely lowly peon workers, and who laugh at our misfortunes if
they think about us at all, where we once had politicians who
did care about the country, and they outnumbered
the greedy, self-serving politicians... today, it's the other
way around. This is not progress. Oh, and BTW, in a 2019 Independence
Day speech, Trump said, "Our army manned the air, it rammed
the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it
had to do, and at Fort McHenry, under the rockets red glare,
it had nothing but victory." Airports and airplanes in 1814?
I rest my case.
*
The U.S. was pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords because the
President of the United States says that he believes climate change
is a hoax (or does he just want to do what's best for his friends
in the fossil fuel industry). And there being powerful industries
who know that climate change is real, and that they are a major
cause of it, and who don't care because doing something about
it would mean less profits... well, that doesn't bode well for
our species. Think about it: When the fossil fuel industry saw
that the arctic ice was melting because of the CO2 increases from
the burning of their products, they were overjoyed because this
meant that their icebreaker ships could now get to places they
couldn't before because the ice is getting thinner, so they can
now drill more oil. All they and those who profit from their products
like the Koch Brothers care about is money; more money. They couldn't
care less what the use of their products will do to the Earth
long after they're dead. It's been estimated that four percent
of the population are sociopaths; if you think people like the
Koch Brothers fit into the other 96%, you're nuts.
*
We still appear to have the ability to see others as inferior
based on the color of their eyes, the tone of their skin, or the
country of their birth, i.e., we have the ability to think we're
better than someone else, when we're not. It appears from recent
events that racism, white supremacy, and anti-Semitism are all
alive and well, and that some of these folks are "fine people"
according to the current President of the United States.
*
*
Even carnivores don't prey on each other, yet humans do. Some
of us have no problem stealing money from others with pry-bar,
trickery, or legislation, and some humans are ready willing and
able to take advantage of others for personal gain at the expense
of people's health, quality of life, and even their lives, without
batting an eyelash... and they even joke about it. We can chalk
up a lot of this non-empathetic behavior to not living in accordance
with our biological imperatives, and despite the best efforts
of environmental advocates, vegans, and political change movements,
this behavior isn't going away fast enough... just like greenhouse
gas contributing behaviors.
*
A steadily decreasing IQ. The increasing number of movies like
Dumb and Dumber, banal TV shows, and TV commercials for
expensive things like new cars aimed at a dopey demographic, along
with less dietary iodine available to the public, are all harbingers
of human's downhill devolution.
*
Americans' life expectancy is declining, yet the age at which
you can apply for full Social Security benefits has been raised
from 62 to 65. This would make sense if we were living longer,
but we're not. And our quality-of-life as we age is getting worse.
These things do not suggest that we'll be a thriving species.
And the pharmaceutical industry is happy that more of us will
require more meds as we age. And this is another reason we're
not a viable species.
*
We can't have a global standard for denoting something as universal
as the date. Some people use month/day/year and some use day/month/year,
so 7/11/17 can be both July 11th and November 7th depending on
where you live! And you can't tell the difference by looking at
it unless it's a date that only makes sense one way, like 22/11/16.
Face it, it's 2017, so we're a stupid species.
*
We couldn't even be consistent with how a telephone
was designed. In North America, the dial went from 1 to 9 and
then came zero. In Europe it went from 0 to 9.
*
There are now "Zombie Walking Laws". In Honolulu Hawaii
police can now fine pedestrians for walking while texting on their
phone. This is an example of a "it's for your own good"
law, which governments in the U.S. do not have the right to enforce
unless you give them permission by signing something. And I don't
remember signing anything that gives government the right to punish
me for texting while walking; parents can do that with their children,
but not the state with the citizens unless we authorize them to
do so on an individual basis. The government in communist countries
can do this without the people's permission, but
not countries that have a Constitutional Republic. So are these
laws the new normal? Are we too stupid to understand that these
laws are illegitimate? Can we not understand that the parent-child
relationship only applies to parents and children and not to governments
and citizens?
*
More than half of the young adults in the U.S. believe astrology
is a science.
* There are lots of people
who are convinced the Earth is flat.
*
We're still selling birds in cages and fish in tanks.
We still have not come to realize that this is wrong. Living beings
are not things to be bought and sold. Seriously, we'd never do
that with humans... oh wait, we did used to do that. Oh wait,
this is still being done (human trafficking). Hmmm, another F
on our report card.
*
It's the 21st century and about half the population of the United
States believes the Earth and the universe are thousands of years
old, as opposed to their actual ages of 4.54 billion years and
13.73 billion years. The inability to accept settled science,
and reality in general, results in climate change deniers, which
results in essentially nothing being done about human-induced
climate change except making it worse because of the profits that
can be had.
* It is assumed that we will
all need to be on a number of drugs when we're older. What's sick
is that, for many people, this will be true. Why do we need them?
We didn't need them many millennia ago, and it's not that we did
need them but since they weren't invented yet, older people simply
died prematurely. So why are they needed today? It's a combination
of three things: 1) needing them because our health has been so
degraded by our modern lifestyle, 2) a very powerful industry
wants to sell them, and as much of them as possible; the more,
the better, and 3) not really needing some of them but taking
them because of #2. When ill-health is good
for the economy of a species, and very powerful people with no
conscience, morals, or ethics influence the economy, that can't
be a long-lived species.
*
Not getting rid of American football even though it is clear that
it shortens the lives of players (a fact denied by the NFL). Again,
too much money involved to do the right thing.
*
*
Boxing and professional wrestling.
*
Wars and war mongering for the sake of profit.
*
*
One of many
thousands of pieces of misleading BS
*
McDonalds in hospital lobbies.
*We
keep inventing things like the above and using more oil to make
them because we've become too lazy to do things like simply slice
a banana by hand.
*
It's 2017 and there's still a tobacco industry.
*
*
Over 75 medical doctors who realized that there are better therapies
for cancer treatment that are far more effective than the conventional
treatments and don't tank the immune system and instead supported
the body's natural cancer-controlling mechanisms, and who changed
over their practices to these superior methods have met with untimely
deaths that were deemed "suspicious". But of course
no human being would give the order to "deal with this"
that would result in someone hiring someone to hire someone to
resolve the problem, even though these doctors represented a huge
threat to the profits of some very powerful industries. I mean,
there aren't people who would actually kill someone for personal
gain... oh wait, there are. And they might have IQs ranging from
the very stupid to the highly intelligent (but morally bankrupt).
*
Two self-important egomaniacs who have the nuclear launch codes
are threatening each other.
*
*
Some adults believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows.
*
*
Questions that an astounding number of people can't answer or
get wrong...
What is heavier, a pound of cotton or
a pound of rocks?
Three-fourths of the Earth's surface is...?
What are the three states of matter?
What country did America fight in the
Revolutionary War?
What did the Emancipation Proclamation
do?
In what month do we in the U.S. vote for
the president?
Who did America fight in the Vietnam War?
*
Labels I've seen that are deemed to be necessary:
On a Sears hair dryer: "Do not use
while sleeping"
On a hotel-provided shower cap: "Fits
one head"
On Marks & Spencer Bread Pudding:
"Product will be hot after heating"
On packaging for a Rowenta iron: "Do
not iron clothes on body"
On a string of Chinese-made Christmas
lights: "For indoor or outdoor use only"
On a Swedish chain saw: "Do not attempt
to stop chain with your hands"
*
*
Did I mention that sperm counts are decreasing and miscarriages
are increasing?
*
The ever-increasing fashion to begin every oral paragraph with
the word "So" even though it serves no purpose being
there.
*
Diminishing resources that will inevitably lead to wars being
fought, not over oil, but over drinkable water.
*
*
Dolphin drive hunts.
*
It's the 21st Century and there are people still wearing leather.
*
In 1812 there were one billion people on the planet, in 1912 there
were 1.5 billion, and in 2012 there were 7 billion. It would be
one thing if we were all eating the diet we're biologically adapted
to eat, which is a sustainable diet, but we're not. It's as if
we picked the most unsustainable diet, and the one that was the
worst for us health-wise, both personally and planetary. So tell
me again how are we the most intelligent species in the world?
There
is obviously something wrong with humans today, but most people
can't notice it because they'd be using the same brains that are
happily doing these things to think about what they're doing.
So for most people, self-assessment is of no use. Albert Einstein
said it best:
"The significant problems we have
cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we
created them."
But
just because humans are likely to become extinct at some point
doesn't mean that you can't have a wonderful life.
And there are things that you can do now to help
forestall our slide down that slippery slope; things that can
actually make a difference in the near future and in your immediate
future. Things like:
* Change over to a non-tailpipe
car (EV); this helps to dial back human-caused global warming.
* Eat the diet
humans are biologically best suited to eat, both for your
benefit, and the benefit to the planet. This also sets a good
example for others, especially young people, and it's the best
thing anyone can do to lessen climate change's impact on our civilization.
And a healthy diet and other healthful lifestyle practices also
improves the function of all your organs, including the one that's
processing all the words your eyes are seeing right now. And that
is the only hope for our species... improved cognitive function
that we genetically and behaviorally leave to those who follow
us.
P.S.
In a recent debate where the motion was, "Humankinds
best days lie ahead" 71% of the audience agreed with the
motion prior to the debate, and then there was the 1.5 hour debate
where two speakers on the side against the motion made the case
that while this has been true in the past, it does not automatically
mean this will continue, and that new threats, the likes of which
humanity has never seen before, stand to negatively affect humanity
on a large scale. After the debate ended, the audience was surveyed
again, and that 71% actually increased to 73%, demonstrating
yet another reason we're not likely to make it. Our tendency to
lean towards optimism, and our inability to look at issues objectively,
realistically, all-things-considered, will one day likely have
us fiddling while Rome is burning.
A cow chip
is a dried pile of cow dung that is used at cow-chip-throwing
competitions
We were a warring
species. Now because war is profitable, there is a war industry,
so there will be ongoing wars because it's profitable and enriches
very powerful people.
One of many
reasons.
In reality,
these kinds of instructions were ridiculous and useless, and this
was known, but the goal was to scare the population. So the world's
population was taken advantage of by Big Pharma for the sake of
profit at the expense of health and lives (referring to the Covid
vaccines), and pharma was able to do this due to its corporate
and regulatory capture. And the vast majority of people went right
along with whatever they were told to do... almost zero independent
thought. Almost. And people died from those vaccines... more than
who died from the virus.
Don Bennett is an insightful, reality-based author, and health
creation counselor who uses the tools in his toolbox logic,
common sense, critical thinking, and independent thought
to figure out how to live so we can have the best odds of being
optimally healthy, even if that's not where we're headed as a
species.
Recommended:
The
must-see documentary What the Health
Book:
Return
to the Brain of Eden (explains why we're the way we are
today)
http://health101.org/info
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