It’s rare to get a billionaire to share their grand plans for the future, which is weird because billionaires pretty much rule the world. Whenever they do, though, it’s always something incredibly sociopathic, like replacing all jobs with billionaire-owned automation/AI and giving people a Universal Basic Income set by the billionaire-owned government. Or loading all the humans onto rocket ships and sending them to live on Amazon Space Dildos.
Billionaire Elon Musk, who hates unions and wants to implant AI into human brains, has been continuing this trend of idiotic plutocratic futurology with a new campaign to detonate nuclear weapons on the planet Mars. This is not because Musk hates Mars, but because he wants to colonize it; the idea is to vaporize the red planet’s polar ice caps and throw carbon dioxide into the air to ultimately make the planet more habitable.
Scientists are voicing skepticism that such a plan could even work, before even opening up the “Just because you can doesn’t mean that you should” debate. Sending nuclear weapons into space for any reason whatsoever should receive an outright rejection from all of humanity, since getting nukes into earth’s orbit has been the wet dream of war machine engineers for decades and pretending they went to Mars would serve as an ideal cover story to circumvent international space treaties until it’s too late to prevent it.
Musk claims he wants to colonize Mars because a new dark age ensuing from a third world war appears “likely”, and he wants to ensure that there will be humans living off of the planet to re-populate it after we wipe ourselves out here. Rather than pouring wealth, brainpower and resources into pushing for a change in the status quo which has set the world’s nuclear-armed powers on a collision course for a world military confrontation that will destroy our biosphere, this billionaire has decided it’s better to nuke Mars so that a back bench of reserve humans can live on a desert space rock.
This is the class of people who are calling the shots in our world. These are the minds who are choosing our fate for us. I wouldn’t trust them to run a fucking gas station.
And Elon Musk is one of the saner billionaires.
Nuke Mars!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 16, 2019
I’m going to take a lot of flak for saying this, but I honestly believe that the impulse to colonize space is one of the more pernicious cultural mind viruses in our society. I mean, think about it: we’ve got a planet right here for which we are perfectly adapted, and we’re burning it to the ground while looking up at a red dot in the sky going “You know I bet if I nuked that bitch I could build a hermetically sealed house on it someday.” How much more insane could you possibly get?
I’m pushing against a cultural dogma that’s been mainstream doctrine for generations, but I really find all this blather about adventure and the indomitable human spirit of exploration quite tedious and idiotic when it comes to space colonization. We’ve got creatures swimming in our own oceans with brains many times larger than our own, and we’re killing them all off before we’ve even developed any kind of real theory about what they’re doing with all that extra gray matter. There are parts of the moon that are better explored than vast expanses of our own seas. We don’t even know what consciousness is, and science is largely uninterested in answering this question. I don’t believe the spirit of exploration and adventure is what’s driving our longing to break for the stars. I think it’s nothing but garden variety escapism.
We’ve all got that one friend or family member who’s completely miserable and is always quitting jobs and relationships and moving house and changing their diet in a desperate attempt to find happiness. They rearrange their lifestyle for the umpteenth time and they’re barely settled in before their gaze lands on some other aspect of their life and they think, “That’s the source of my unhappiness right there. If I can only escape from that, I’ll be happy.”
Such people are exasperating to be around, because you can see what they’re doing and you just want to sit them down and go “The problem is in you, babe. Moving won’t help; your inner demons will follow you every time. You’ve got to stay put and deal with your issues.”
Our species reminds me of that type of personality right now. So many of us are looking forward to some escape route coming from outside of us to rescue us from ourselves; some are looking forward to the second coming of Jesus, some are looking forward to the aliens coming in to save the day, some are looking forward to the Democrats or the Republicans finally capturing the whole entire government and setting things right with the world, and some are looking forward to billionaires setting up a space colonization program so we can get off this accursed blue orb before we destroy it. But there is no deus ex machina here. No one’s going to save us from ourselves. Even if we do succeed in running away from home, we’ll inevitably bring the same inner demons with us that got us into this mess in the first place.
We’ve got to turn inward and evolve beyond our self-destructive impulses. The only way out is through. The mind virus of celestial escapism stops us from doing this, because it offers us yet another false promise of deus ex machina. It lets us run away from doing the hard but necessary real inner work, just like doing drugs or binging on Netflix or any other kind of escapism.
Bezos Reveals His Ugly Vision For The World He’s Trying To Rule
"Bezos then went on to discuss his plan to ship humans off of the best planet in the solar system and send them to live in floating cylinders in space."https://t.co/Ps7iMvwfwA
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) May 12, 2019
Can you try a little thought experiment for me? Imagine, just for a moment, if we took space colonization off the table. Completely. Forever. We just decided that it’s never going to happen and we all moved to accept that. Really imagine it. Really put yourself there for a minute.
What does that change in you? What does that change about your attitude toward our future? If we’re honest with ourselves, I think it would change quite a bit. For me, when I take space conquest off the table, it takes me in a direction that just so happens to look extremely healthy. It makes me say, “Oh, okay, so we’ll obviously have to get rid of the status quo of endless war and ecocide, since those will ruin this place, and that will mean radically changing our relationship with each other and with our ecosystem. It will mean getting women around the world full reproductive sovereignty and education since that’s proven to reverse population growth. It will mean ceasing to think like a cancer, believing that endless growth is a virtue. It will mean ceasing to believe that the existence of trillions of humans is the best thing we can hope for for our species when we have yet to even scratch the surface of our own potential on a large scale. And I suppose it will mean getting together and figuring out how to detect and neutralize the threat of apocalyptic meteor strikes, too.”
Imagine that. Imagine if instead of trying to figure out how to fill the sky with trillions of mediocre humans we turned inward, healed our inner demons, and realized our full potential. Such a world would be a paradise. I know from my own experience that humans are capable of so very, very much more than what we have attained so far; we really haven’t scratched the surface at all. If we’re going to explore, the direction of that exploration ought to be inward.
I really think the mainstream idea that we can always make a mad dash for the black emptiness in the sky if things go to shit here keeps us from truly confronting our urgent need to preserve the ecosystemic context in which we evolved, and which there’s no evidence that we can live without.
I mean, we don’t even know that space colonization is possible. As of yet we have no evidence at all that humans are sufficiently separate and separable from Earth’s biosphere for survival apart from our ecosystem to be a real thing. Humans aren’t really separate “things”; they’re a symbiotic collaboration of organisms with ecosystems of their own, all of which as far as we know are entirely dependent on the greater ecosystem from which we blossomed. So far all our attempts at creating independent biospheres have failed miserably, and the closest we’ve come to living in space has consisted of nothing but glorified scuba excursions: visits to space stations fully dependent on a lifeline of terrestrial supplies. That’s the difference between flying and jumping. It might be as delusional as our brains thinking they can hop out of our skulls and live independently of our bodies, or some river eddies saying they’re moving to dry land.
Elon Musk's Neuralink is developing a brain implant to connect people's minds directly to a computer. These mind-reading systems could affect our privacy, security, identity, equality, and personal safety. https://t.co/LdHuTTmjlb
— Rappler (@rapplerdotcom) August 17, 2019
And even if it is possible, why would you want it? Do people not know what space is? Are they aware that it’s nothing but boring desert wasteland that’s really really hard to get to and survive on? Have you ever been trapped for a long time surrounded by nothing but man-made things, like on an airplane or a cruise ship? Picture that, but way worse and for much longer. It would be a sterile, artificial existence; even if you managed to bring in plants and animals it would be ordered in a man-made way that is no more natural than the saplings grown on traffic islands. At best it would be like being in a mall your entire life. You’d be cut off from the primordial thrum of your home world. There’d be no real life there. No real soul.
Imagine never feeling the starry spatter of a shower of rain on your face. Imagine never ever again hearing the roar of wind on a wintry night or experiencing the thunder of the ocean on a big surf day. Imagine never again being blown away by the brightness of a rainbow or the thrilling crack of lightning or the astonishing beauty of a sunset or the first rays of springtime sunshine fondly warming the back of your neck. Imagine never again coming across a friendly squirrel or a shy possum or a little feast of wild blackberries. Imagine never again lying in the dappled light filtered through a magnificent tree. I don’t know about you but I would just miss the breeze playing in my hair too terribly to ever leave. I love it here and it loves me like a mother loves her child. This is not just my home, I grew from the earth as surely as a mushroom or a seahorse. I am a part of the earth and the earth is a part of me. We belong together.
It’s easy to feel helpless. The wise ones do not have any money and therefore any power. We are being run by a handful of coddled man-children and it seems like they might have the last word. But I have been thinking about Rupert Sheldrake’s ideas on morphic resonance a lot lately and I’m increasingly convinced that even just one of us bringing consciousness to an aspect of our collective darkness is enough to wordlessly and instantly inform the herd. So, do me a favor if you are willing. Go and run one more experiment for me. Go outside now and place your hand on the ground and say to the earth these words — “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.” Say it as many times as you feel like. Say it, and mean it.
And then let’s see what happens next.
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108 responses to “The Oligarchy’s Plans For Our Future Keep Getting Dumber”
Exactly!
The problem with world leaders is that almost all ARE sociopaths. None ever wants to become a world leader if they don’t first look upon the end-game as being able to lord over other people and manipulate them. And they back this up with reasoning like, “The only problem with (insert other leader of the past’s name here) is that he didn’t go far enough.” None of them ever explain how their proclivities will be held in check, and why their ideas are better than those that have already been tried.
The ability of a world leader to pick the most beneficial solution is indirectly proportional to the distance from the problem. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be so many sociopathic world leaders.
Caitlin, you fans have said it for me: Caitlin, excellent essay and response – people must realize nothing is sacred outside your place of worship, even so, as Caitlin suggests, it is only decent to respect the belief of others irregardless of circumstances. This by no means limits critical debate in a public or private setting, places of worship set aside. As Caitlin and I are non-believers in God, it still requires us to respect those that are believers. But, if those believers wish criticize our comments in a public arena then all bets are off. We must respect each others position and comment appropriately, leaving our ego at the door. I have studied Buddhism for many years and believe with all my heart that Buddha is the closet I will get to ANY belief system. Buddha’s basic teachings is the Middle Way – if you wish to know what that is it will be my pleasure to oblige. Take care and may you path be true…
Elon musk… Isn’t that aftershave with viagra in it?
Yes, and the resulting scandal will be Elon-gate. (Couldn’t resist.)
“Brilliant”!
(Couldn’t resist.)
A gentleman man Art K. above wrote a response that deserves an A+.
To Caitlin, say what you will about Musk, but the electric car is mainstream because of this man. Watch the films “Who Killed The Electric Car?” and “Revenge Of The Electric Car.” If you want to discuss conspiracies I have yet to see any articles of you mentioning oil companies and automobile manufacturers who have done little to nothing in getting electric vehicles always with the excuse they will have something in 20 to 30 years in the future.
Yet, there are countless articles of oil companies that knew that petroleum and it’s byproducts are contributing to poisoning the environment.
SpaceX has innovated and help commercialized space travel AND has made it cheaper while improving safety and getting astronauts closer to the moon and eventually to Mars and beyond. Last time we landed on the moon was over 40 years ago.
Speaking of the climate change, Bill Gates is trying to bring advanced new nuclear energy and has dedicated millions to reactors that generate electricity AND help to destroy nuclear waste leaving so little of it that the radioactivity lasts less than a century instead of thousands of years.
Nuclear power has its controversies, however it is clean energy that does not emit CO2. Despite three major accidents of Chernobyl, Fukushima, and three mile island, it is one of the safest forms of energy production. Unlike wind turbines it does not kill birds or bats in strikes. And with the new generation of reactors being proposed they are designed with destruction of radioactive waste as a key element.
You are a resident of Australia. Gina Rhinehart who is the heir to coal and is the country’s main source of electricity, you have a problem with pollution and extremely high costs. Elon Musk has brought in large batteries to assist in Australia’s grid.
You call yourself a progressive? Research this yourself.
“Nuclear power has its controversies, however it is clean energy that does not emit CO2.” — Conservative Writer
This sentence alone shows that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
And the greenest car is the one that is not produced.
The dubious ideas of morphic resonance are not necessary to be able to envision the widespread change in consciousness necessary to make our societies start behaving rationally and non-destructively. Memetics is sufficient, at least in theory. Think about how the behaviour and capabilities of your phone or computer are changed by adding apps. Analogously, the way you think and view the world is affected by ideas and beliefs that you have largely absorbed from your culture, as memes. Get the right memes spreading around and, in theory, society as a whole can start to see more clearly.
I don’t think it’s fair to act like musk hasn’t invested in changing status quo. Tesla’s primary mission was to accelerate the transition to more sustainable transportation. They accomplished they.
Why is ubi so crazy?
Hmmm
Telsa’s primary mission was to make a few people money.
There is no evidence to date that definitively proves that “electric cars” are actually any more “sustainable ” than traditional gas or diesel fuels given it takes a huge amount of energy to generate the electricity in the first place. “electicity” is still overwhelmingly generated by fossil fuels. And in many cases around the world it is coal. In other words, the pollution from the cars is offset by the pollution from the power plants used to generate the electricity…..
Billionaires remain Billionaires in the same manner in which the got there in the first place. Not to put to fine of a point on it, it wasn’t because of the charity in their hearts for the common man, let alone mother earth……
It requires a complete lack of big picture thinking to proclaim that EVs are no better than ICE cars. EVs have a path to to clean air because they can use alternate clean energy like solar. ICE cars have no such path. Your narrative is a disingenuous deceitful oil industry promoting lie!
Hmmm
Obviously you failed to realize the full import of your statement which in part reads: “EVs have a path to to clean air because they can use alternate clean energy like solar” At some point, and assuming that carbon neutral energy sources like “solar” actually do replace fossil fuels as the primary source of power for electrical generation, THEN and ONLY then will “electric” cars offer a clear advantage over current fossil fuel technologies.
As for your idiotic assessment: “Your narrative is a disingenuous deceitful oil industry promoting lie!” talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Sorry sweetie, the facts simply don’t support your position. Which is not to say that sometime in the future Electric cars will not carry the day. But in the mean time, you are the one that is basically full of sh*t……
Have a wonderful day.
Wise words! This is my home. This is my choice. I’m staying put here on this good green Earth with Caitlyn.
Peace be with you.
Rise and Resist the Corporatists within The People’s “government”.
Reclaim for People & Planet! This is *our* planet. *Our* world!
Musk is wrong, because we just won’t have the time to terraform and settle Mars before the global catastrophes happen and incapacitate us. We just need to take measures to prevent the global catastrophes from happening in the first place, and that’s what he should have been using his money for. However, CJ’s objections to Musk’s idea almost make me feel like agreeing with him.
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>the ecosystemic context in which we evolved, and which there’s no evidence that we can live without.
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Ahem – since prehistoric times, we have made enormous changes in the ecosystemic context in which we evolved, and we have proved that we can live in contexts that are extremely different from the one in which we evolved. Almost all of us currently live in such contexts.
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>As of yet we have no evidence at all that humans are sufficiently separate and separable from Earth’s biosphere
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As of yet we have no evidence that they are not. It’s true that we haven’t succeeded yet, but the idea that we can *never* find a way to create an inhabitable environment independent of Earth has no basis; if there is anything that humanity’s history has shown, it’s that one should never say never when it comes to technical achievements, especially when it comes to making uninhabitable places habitable.
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>even if you managed to bring in plants and animals it would be ordered in a man-made way that is no more natural than the saplings grown on traffic islands.
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Your hatred of humans is remarkable. Human-made things are actually natural, since humans are, as you keep pointing out, part of nature. Also, you are mistaken in your belief that humans’ artificialness hopelessly contaminates everything beyond repair: once brought in, provided that they survive at all, plants and animals order themselves in ways that nobody has predicted. Witness dingos, mustangs, European foxes and sparrow in the US etc.
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>You’d be cut off from the primordial thrum of your home world. There’d be no real life there. No real soul.
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Your romantic hippie obsession with ‘naturalness’ (i.e. with chaos) is not shared by everybody. If a life separate from The Great Outdoors is, to you, worse than death, most people don’t feel that way. Bushes, bugs and the like can be fun and are technically necessary, but the liveliness of *my* life and the soulfulness of *my* soul are not crucially based on the presence of any bushes, bugs or whatever. That said, any functioning new biosphere would contain imported bushes and bugs anyway.
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>I love it here and it loves me like a mother loves her child.
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You may change your mind about whether ‘it’ loves you if one of those big poisonous spiders/snakes/jellyfish/octopuses that Australia abounds with happens to bite you, which is just a matter of chance. I’m sorry to break it to you, but this love that you convince yourself that you are the object of is completely imaginary. However much you may deserve to be loved, inanimate objects and abstract systems of objects simply can’t appreciate your charms – for that matter, most animate ones can’t either. Such is life – you can’t please everybody.
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>Go outside now and place your hand on the ground and say to the earth these words — “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.”
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Wow. Should I offer it sexual services, too? Seriously, this is about as crazy as religion – no, actually, it pretty much *is* religion, complete with the delusion, the imaginary friends/parents, the misanthropy, the self-humiliation and the conservatism. Contrary to some charlatans’ pseudoscientific claims, it is perfectly clear that the earth as a whole is not a living creature, let alone a feeling creature, let alone a thinking creature, let alone a creature to whom the specific human social concepts expressed in the abovementioned utterances mean something, and even if it were all of these things, there would still be no reason to expect it to understand English of all things. You are confusing the earth with the non-existent omniscient God.
You are likely here, typing away, because Caitlin and Tim have written stuff that you have agreed with, 100%. What drew me here was what Caitlin wrote about John McWar. No other writer said what she said, which IMO absolutely HAD to be said.
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After I landed on this site, I found that I agreed with much of the other stuff she and Tim wrote.
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I feel much the same way that you do about other, more religious, things that Caitlin writes — this article, for just one example among many.
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I know many people who are, to put it succinctly, “believers” in some sort of Sky Fairy. I know that there is no such thing as Santa Claus, Zeus, Athena, Poseidon, The Holy Trinity, etc., but, even so, out of something that I for the moment will call “respect”, I do not march into a packed cathedral or mosque or synagogue, etc., march right up to the front of the assembly and shout at the top of my lungs that “The object of your worship does not exist!” (I might also get my ass kicked to the curb, so that’s another reason I don’t do it, but not the primary one.)
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In short, I think you crossed the line of respect for your gracious, non-censoring hosts. IMO, Caitlin and Tim’s beliefs do not deserve your harsh criticism, but you decide for youself. Go ahead and let me have it, too.
I just noticed this response a week after it was posted, so you probably won’t read it, but I will answer anyway. No, I wouldn’t consider it appropriate to march into a packed cathedral and shout that God doesn’t exist, but I would certainly say that to a believer in a public discussion forum, especially if they tried to proselytise me or make policy proposals justified with their faith. The reason why I wouldn’t do it in a cathedral is that a cathedral is not a place intended for public reasoned discussion by everybody regardless of their beliefs, it is by definition a place where believers in a specific religion gather to conduct their rituals. They have the right to have such a place and not to be disturbed there.
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This blog, however, is not a packed cathedral of any denomination, it’s a place for public discussion, where people – primarily the blogger(s) – address various assertions and admonitions to the general public, and members of the general public are given the opportunity to express their reactions in the comments, where they may agree or disagree. Therefore, I do not consider it inappropriate to express my reaction to what the blogger(s) say, including criticising it. The metaphor of hosts and guests is inappropriate here: there is no self-evident rule requiring that a blogger shouldn’t have their statements criticised in the comments.
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I also do not think that assertions and admonitions based on so-called faith as opposed to rationality are entitled to an exemption from rational scrutiny and criticism. Even if we granted that faith is only people’s private business and hence shouldn’t be discussed – which I would dispute – the moment the believer admonishes me to do something or asserts something to me (thereby enjoining me to modify my mental picture of reality in one way or another), that becomes my business, so it is only reasonable that I should question and criticise the admonition or the assertion. Furthermore, the author of the article did not even explicitly write it as a statement of belief in a religion – it was supposedly a series of rational arguments, not a sermon pre-supposing or demanding irrational faith – so it couldn’t possibly be expected that it should benefit from such a hypothetical exemption.
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If the blog had a sign that said ‘only believers in the Earth Goddess are welcome to comment here’, I obviously wouldn’t comment at all. Likewise if it had a more general sign saying ‘Only people who agree with the author are welcome to comment here’. There is no such sign, so I do not believe that I am ethically obliged to abide by such a rule. Therefore, the fact that the blogger(s) have not censored my comment just for disagreeing with them does not, in my opinion, constitute some exceptional graciousness; it’s just basic decency, and your depiction of it as graciousness subtly expresses support for potential censorship. In sum, I don’t think your reproach is justified. Its objective effect is to verbally enforce conformity (with the majority of the fans of the blog) and obedience (to the owner of the blog), and conformity and obedience are as noxious within a blog as they are in society at large.
Caitlin, excellent response – people must realize nothing is sacred outside your place of worship, even so, as Caitlin suggests, it is only decent to respect the belief of others irregardless of circumstances. This by no means limits critical debate in a public or private setting, places of worship set aside. As Caitlin and I are non-believers in God, it still requires us to respect those that are believers. But, if those believers wish criticize our comments in a public arena then all bets are off. We must respect each others position and comment appropriately, leaving our ego at the door. I have studied Buddhism for many years and believe with all my heart that Buddha is the closet I will get to ANY belief system. Buddha’s basic teachings is the Middle Way – if you wish to know what that is it will be my pleasure to oblige. Take care and may you path be true…
Thanks for the suggestion. I’ve read a bit about Buddhism, and it has some good and interesting points, but no, I couldn’t possibly believe in it or embrace it as a philosophy overall. Personally, I have a weakness for Younger Avesta-style Zoroastrianism as a story and a metaphor for a worldview, although I obviously don’t believe in it either, and I don’t condone cruelty to cats or other animals in any way, shape or form. 🙂
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As for ‘respecting the belief of others regardless of the circumstances’ – this is where we disagree. I don’t see any reason to ‘respect’ any beliefs that I consider to be wrong, especially obviously wrong and/or harmful, and I don’t see any reason to make an exception for religious beliefs in particular. Needless to say, in practice, you often have to be diplomatic with people, regardless of how wrong you may think their opinions are, but this is due to practical considerations, not ethical ones.
Caitlin, then we must agree to disagree. Because everyone is entitled to their a view of life – my only objection, as I said in my earlier comment, is that their views do not harm others or induce violence towards any religion, creed, ethnicity, color, including cats and dogs. If you eat meat then you condone the violent death most animals endure as they are taken to the death camps. We will never move forward unless we can debate intellectually with those we disagree with. If they are unable to discuss differences then I end the debate, politely of course.
F, I’ll be more specific. IMO, the last paragraph of your initial comment was unnecessarily harsh. It also indicates to me that you missed the main point of what you quoted from Caitlin’s article — to fully appreciate that our lives depend upon the relatively thin layer of “ground” that we can touch/feel/reach with our hands and that we should appreciate that we are collectively eroding that ground’s, for lack of a better expression, ability to continue to support human life.
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When we say what Caitlin suggests we say to that ground, we are actually addressing ourselves — making ourselves more fully appreciate the vital role that ground plays in all our lives.
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“Apologizing” to that ground would be IMO like making public a New Years resolution to lose weight that may or may not be fulfilled. At least the one making it knows there’s a problem and wants to correct it.
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We have to live with people who still believe in Sky Fairies or that inner reflection, rather than a thorough examination of the mistakes of human history, will somehow lead humanity to Utopia. (It won’t, no matter how deep you dig.)
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How do we not only get along with these people, but entice them to get with OUR program, whatever that program is? IMO, you have to employ parts of what they believe in in such a way that they will end up behaving in a way that supports your goal, in this case, not shitting where we BOTH eat.
I don’t think you’re right in your interpretation of CJ’s last paragraph. Both her citing of Sheldrake in it, the overall context in this article and many, many other things she has written indicate that she doesn’t see the Earth and Nature in general simply as a vital ground. Nor would her chosen way of expression make sense, if that were the case. You don’t say stuff like ‘I’m sorry, I love you’ etc. to your belly when you promise to lose weight, or to a house that is crumbling over your head, or to a boat that is sinking under your feet. You just try to make sure they don’t crumble/sink: veneration and general anthropomorphisation are irrelevant and even likely to conflict with efficient practical measures. As for your suggestion that the quasi-religious currents in environmentalism would help to attract believers – on the contrary, there’s nothing that irritates them more than the feeling that a new religion (Earth worship) is being foisted upon them, displacing their own. In general, I believe in being honest with people, not manipulating them so as to elicit a certain behaviour; and in this case, I think it’s plain that the most honest attitude is also the most efficient one.
Another sane piece – well done! My question is very simple, is the human race worth saving, it seems to never learn from history so why would we learn if we moved to Mars – we would just do the same things there. Until we can become thinking human beings aware of the world we live in and start repairing the damage we have caused there is no hope for us. Technology was meant to make us more intelligent but the opposite seems to be the case. We are both mentally and physically sick, and need desperately to become aware of this fact – we eat garbage, listen to garbage, have garbage as our leaders, so we become garbage. And we want to ship this garbage to Mars. Well? here’s my solution, let all those garbage feeders move to Mars and leave us in peace.
You know Caitlin, you’re right, Elon Musk and many others just like him are really dumb, but the sad fact is is that most people are so incredibly dumb, that it’s really sad, so sad that if they were anyone else they’d be butchered by thousands everyday, just as a source of meat; and I’m so glad that so many people enjoy you, because you are enjoyable, but it’s really incredible how you’ll be speaking on something serious and no one seems to get the point and will say something dumb like, “I like science fiction too”, but at least you enjoy it and most of your readers seem to intellectually above most, but still mostly fit only for making hamburger of.
What puts my mind in a twirl is the thought of billionaire nutcases and government psychos, with too much spare time on their hands, harboring fanciful notions of us leaving our throwaway planet, at the same time as thinking evil aliens are busting to come here.
Though Stephen Hawking may have had a brain bigger than most Earthlings, he once suggested aliens might pose a deadly threat to the human race, ergo we should do something about it. Like worry, I suppose. I just can’t see it. I mean, why on Earth, out of all the zillions of planets that could support life, according to boffins who know such stuff, if they could get here, would aliens want to? To spend holidays here lying on the beach? I think not. I can only surmise Hawking must’ve believed we might taste awfully good to them.
I think Hawkins meant that we should reconsider our efforts to communicate with aliens with beacons sent from earth advertising our planet, even if that is likely to fail.
It doesn’t make sense to propose this if you believe that we can change the way we live and stop or slow the catsstrophic global changes already in motion. And it doesn’t make any sense if you believe we can do this in the vanishing time frame we have.
However, it does make sense if you have the resources and worldview to think it is a necessary survival strategy. In the movie “2012” ultra rich and ultra powerful people built enormous “life boats” in which to survive apocalyptic global catastrophe and get to safe ground and a new homeland. In the face of the REAL forecasts of global catastrophes we live with today and of the prospect of the human world coming truly unhinged (climatic change resulting in social/economic/political collapse, revolution, war, famine and plague) the ultra rich and powerful are proposing the construction of enormous, real-life life boats to leave Earth for a new homeland.
In the movie, wealth and power determined who got a ticket and chance at survival. The idea being floated for us now is of building ships to leave Earth for the good and betterment of our species. And it certainly could work out that way. It could also be that in the event of catastrophically accelerating climate and social collapse, any schedule for a grand purpose of species expansion would be abandoned for the simpler purpose of providing a very few wealthy, powerful people with a chance of survival for themselves, their families and all they hold dear. But the story we are given has a nice spin on it. It sounds almost noble to be building a vessel to spead humanity, and this in the middle of 9 billion people wanting to live their lives with enough food and water and without any hope of escaping what’s coming
Whether gradually or abruptly, if the humans of today are to spread beyond Earth it will be with the very powerful traveling First Class and their intentions and ideals at the controls.
Here”s what it takes to get three people to the Earth’s moon and two of those people down to its surface, without any intermediary stops:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Co8Z8BQgWc
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The mission lasted from July 16, 1969 – July 24, 1969. The weight of the Saturn 5 rocket, the apollo module, the lunar excursion module and food was aprroximately 6,540,000 lb. The first stage of the rocket produced 7.5 million lbs of thrust; was used during launch for about 120 seconds and burned 40,000 pounds of fuel PER SECOND.
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A one-way trip to Mars takes as little as 150 days. Therefore, 150 days worth of food and water (the latter can be recyled to a certain extent) has to be carried for each member of the crew. (How often do you go to the grocery store; how much do those groceries weigh and how much space do they take up?) Air has to be kept breathable.
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People who have been on the ISS, weightless for 5 or 6 months, have to be literally carried from the Soyuz landing modules and are pretty useless for at least weeks after their journey. Unless the journey is made in a “2001- A Space Odyssey”-type craft with centrifugal ring or pods that can produce an artifical gravity in which the crew can spend a lot of time, the crew will be similarly useless when they reach the surface of Mars.
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To say that the journey itself will be a great challange is an understatement. The struggle to survive after landing may very well turn out to be impossible, let alone for the crew to procreate and have descendants and their descendants etc. survive.
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In short, this whole notion of moving humanity to say Mars is ludicrous. The truth is that not all things that can be imagined can be accomplished, and permanent colonization is definitely one of the impossible. IMO, the more planners seriously study the logistics of colonization, the more they will come to realize that it is indeed impossible.
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If humans can create smart phones but cannot alter their own collective behavior in order to keep their own Mother Earth habitable, how in hell are humans going to travel to and survive on Mars for literally generations?
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All the Elite of humanity would have to do is announce a completely voluntary one-child or no-child policy that would remain in effect for say only 100 years and the human population would naturally decline to a fraction of what it is now. This would have an immediate effect of REDUCING humanity’s impact on the biosphere of Mother Earth and only increase as time goes on. IMO, this would be a very easy “sell”.
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But the Elite will not do that because the present arrangement could literally not survive a reduction in the human population. There would be too many losses on too many “investments”. For example, the housing industry would be devastated shortly after such an announcement. As the percentage of the population that is old increases, and those people put their houses on the market, increasing the number of previously-owned homes on the market, the prices of pre-owned houses would almost certainly drop like a stone. Do you want to sell your home for half of what you paid for it? This has been going on for decades in Japan. There are now ghost towns in the rural parts of Japan. But this is what must be done to keep planet Earth habitable with increasingly clean water and atmosphere, etc. Is “suffering” loss on investments easier than colonizing Mars? You’re damned right it is!
Caitlin’s most stimulating article so far, but I take issue with it. We can walk and chew gum at same time. Any elite GW believer is not making decisions on presumed escape to Mars, but more logically expect to migrate to greener pastures,. Even our sleazeball POTUS is thinking about Greenland real estate as he goes about accelerating the demise of his dumb-ass cult followers.
Here are 2 responses I have gotten when asking a Trump cult member to examine GW data themselves:
‘ “GW” hysteria was created when Communism was left smoldering on the ash heap of history, where the USA put it….Did you notice the American flags carried by Hong Kong protestors? MAGA!
“Oh my God we are all going to die” in a mocking tone” will laughing hysterically.
In other words no amount of reasoning will convince “Trump religion-Repug” fanatics of the reality of GW until it is too late. Relying 100% upon a large percentage of a propagandized under-educated population to come to their senses is a dumb plan. Musk, a highly motivate genius, is maliciously maligned by many on the left largely as a knee-jerk reaction against his wealth. These “progressives” are fools that choose to assault Musk over others such as the Koch family, even though he is doing far more than any such critic to help our planet by in real terms. accelerating the adoption of EVs and solar energy. At the same time that Musk puts most of his efforts into this effort he makes the logical decision to adopt an insurance policy in a Mars colony. I do not believe he has ever said it will be the equal of Earth. That is not his point.
You should read this.
http://centerforaninformedamerica.com/moondoggie-5/
I think the only people that would believe Apollo moon landing was faked are non-scientist types. Many holes in that fellows arguments.
While other countries increase the school week to include Saturdays AND by making the school day longer allows a two-hour block for family time. These nations seem to care about the well being of children and know that children are NOT robots. Meanwhile, in America; schools pack as many bodies in the white blank classroom as is possible while finding the lowest possibly paid “instructor” to “teach”. By the time a student hits middle school, the love of learning has been annihilated. Fewer and fewer student graduate from high school. Teachers go into teaching because they ache to teach. For teachers, it is too late once they find out the lessons taught in college has NOTHING to do with the real world of teaching. By the time teachers become in debt and stuck with “teaching,” they live with the disillusionment and NOTHING ever gets better in teaching. Year by year, little by little the situation for teachers and students worsen. http://deliberatedumbingdown.com/ddd/deliberate-dumbing-down/
https://youtu.be/tf4IHuO_RZw?list=FLiggCD4Hy3k0NY023ONUq3w
Caitlin, you’re a marvelous bridge connecting the worlds of political and spiritual consciousness. I deeply appreciate your work. I take heart that there are more of us waking up every day. Yes really. <3
I’ll second that; at least with your view points it may open enough minds so that people may realize that they are the very same highly disposable creatures that the billionaires say are, and will hopefully dispose of themselves so that the wealthy won’t have to mess with sticky moral complications of having to do it for them
Brilliant idiots have always been with us. Perhaps it can be said that Musk has done more good than harm but using crapitalism to put so much $$ in your pocket should be a crime.
Too bad that a few ignorant/arrogant humans will die on Mars before the space nuts figure out that it is a long way to the nearest habitable planet, other than earth.
PS: America has already exploded nukes in space.
I put my video game on hold to read this.
“I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.”
Ok, I did it. I only said it once with hands on the ground, but I felt drawn to do it with hands on a particular tree I’ve had reason to apologize to before. Not sure if the tree version counts for this experiment, but it was more meaningful to me.
Although we may not realize it because of our 24/7 brainwashing every day of our lives, our task as members of the Elite’s bewildered, docile herd is to describe in great detail and AGREE UPON the deficiencies of the present whatever-you-want-to-call-it arrangement. If we cannot do that, we don’t need to type anything further. We’re done. We’re defeated.
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For just one MAJOR example of the many deficiencies in the present arrangement, the 3 young human beings who have inherited a factory that has been in our city of 20,000 people for 75 years – one that employs 3,000 of those 20,000 people – suddenly decide to close down the factory and move their capital equipment to a place on the planet where there are desperately poor, starving people who are “willing” to work 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, for food and a place on the factory floor to sleep. Those three owners are going to make much more profit as a result of that move. They’re ecstatic about their decision.
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The employees of the factory who are about to lose their livelihoods are in panic mode because they know full well that there are no other jobs in their city. The owners of the local businesses that depend upon the employees of the factory spending their money in their establishments are also in panic mode.
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These groups contact their political representatives at the local, state and federal levels, but they are told that because the factory is “privately” owned, the owners are “free” to do with their “property” whatever they “choose” to do, including moving the factory to a location on the planet where they can “maximize profit”. “That’s the American way”, they are told.
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The factory workers and local business owners decide to do something in an attempt to keep the factory in the city. They decide to “protest” the factory closure by surrounding the factory to prevent the equipment from being moved. This works for the few days that it takes the 3 owners of the factory to go to a court of Elite law, presided over by an Elite-controlled “judge”. In short, however many government employees carrying firearms it takes to arrest however many protesters it takes to allow the capital equipment to be removed from the factory is put into action and the equipment is ultimately removed.
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So, will the vast majority of people living in this present arrangement think that the above situation is unacceptable and must be changed? I think so. The question is: just exactly WHAT is a better arrangement? Let’s try to agree on what that better arrangement would be, right here, right now. If we cannot do that, again, we’re done; we’re defeated. The Oligarchs will continue to rule the world. Mush may get his Martian nuclear explosion after all.
Here’s my suggestion for a better arrangement:
https://howiehawkins.us/ecosocialist-green-new-deal/
Thanks for the link. Impressive platform.
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I’m 2 years older than Hawkins, but was raised in the NE US rather than the west coast. My birth date was only drawn later in my year’s draft lottery, so I did not have to kill any human beings for the US in Vietnam, etc.
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Howie is a person who would IMO make a good, truly antiwar president. How many votes do you think he’ll garner?
I think he’ll get more votes than Jill Stein did, because the Green Party gets more votes every year, perhaps because more people are getting off the two party treadmill and looking for independent media. Maybe it’s the demographics of younger people being more woke.
I would be surprised if he gets the 5% needed for matching federal money though. What discourages me is not so much the predictable corporate media blacklisting of the Green Party, but the near blackout on supposedly independent progressive media. I feel like I should keep saying Howie Hawkins’ name until he has at least as much name recognition among progressives as Mayor Pootietang or whatever.
“In short, however many government employees carrying firearms it takes to arrest however many protesters it takes to allow the capital equipment to be removed from the factory is put into action and the equipment is ultimately removed.”
In short, you prefer to allow yourself to be raped rather than fight back. That’s not how the Washington, Jefferson, et al dealt with the problem. They got their guns out and said “No!” If you are not willing to do the same, to fight for your survival, then you deserve what happens to you.
Take the three young inheritors of the factory out to the hanging tree, up on a stool, with a noose around their necks, and then ask them if they still want to destroy your lives by relocating the factory. Like as not they will give the right answer. If not kick the stool out from under them.
In your town of 20,000 there are probably 10,000 guns. The authority’s gunmen will not be able to stand against 10,000 armed and united people. But you won’t do that because you would rather be raped than fight back.
Face reality. The world is ruled by violence. You can be its employer or its victim. Or you can escape … to a safer place.
What is going to happen after the three “murders”? Are there similar events taking place all over the US? Was this all arranged ahead of time? How do all the towns across the country behave with each other after this revolution? Who decides that?
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What I’m driving at here is that the time to decide the details of a new “arrangement” is BEFORE the revolution, RIGHT NOW, not after — when there will be a very fragile period of social and political chaos. If such details cannot be agreed upon BEFORE the well-justified-and-fully-supported-by-the-US-constitution revolution, IMO there’s no way in hell that such agreement will miraculously happen AFTER the revolution.
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FWIW, I think that you have the proper attitude — that such behavior on the part of the three new owners is absolutely unacceptable, and that ANYTHING should be done to stop it. However, that “anything” has to be something that doesn’t end up getting everyone in the town killed by the Elite-controlled US Army, Air Force, Marines, etc.
I love reading good science fiction, and this excellent piece makes me think of the writings of Kim Stanley Robinson. Awhile back, he wrote an excellent series of good science fiction books about the colonization of Mars. They begin with Red Mars and proceed to Green Mars and Blue Mars as the story develops. They are good hard science fiction, in that they begin with relatively near future technology to set up the first settlements on Mars. They aren’t comic book level stuff. Robinson also writes a lot about the social movements and impacts and what develops and that part is fascinating as well.
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Recently, he wrote another book, this time about trying to colonize another star system. It begins on a generation ship nearing the end of a long voyage. The people on board are the seventh generation, so no one has ever really known a life outside its habitats. The ship is constantly on the edge of breaking down, as they are complicated systems that need precise balances of minerals. If anything is out of balance even by a small bit over these many generations of human lives, the system breaks down. One mineral becomes too scarce, while others accumulate in overabundance. Its not a sure thing that the ship will even reach its target.
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I don’t want to give spoilers to either, because they are good books and people should enjoy them. But it appears rather obvious that by the end of this latest book, written some 25 years after he started the Mars books, his attitude towards interplanetary and interstellar colonization has changed from optimism to “There’s No Place Like Home”
I was trying to keep that short, so I left out a couple of things. One is that the idea of nuking Mars ice caps to get water is a part of his Mars stories. And the parts about social movements is about a Mars environmentalist movement that grows up among some of the early settlers who want to leave Mars like it is. The second is that from this piece I really think Caitlin would enjoy the last part of Aurora. 🙂 I’d say more, and I’m tempted, but I hate spoilers. 🙂
Having reached its geographical limits, the colonialist mindset becomes forced to stretch its imagination in order to find new domains to colonize. When the North American colonial force reached the west coast it looked for new territories even further westward, in the Pacific. After annexing the kingdom of Hawaii, the Spanish-American war provided new spoils for colonization: Samoa, the Philippines and Guam. When there was no more physical territory left to colonize, western mankind turned its focus to space. Not only outer space, but thanks to the emerging neurosciences, to inner space as well.
Something similar happened before, in prehistory. The neolithic agricultural revolution caused such a rapid population growth that people were forced to migrate from the Anatolian planes into Europe, bringing their agricultural techniques with them. Every time a new territory became saturated with offspring, people spread further westward, until eventually reaching the Atlantic shores of western Europe. Unable to spread further, they used their expendable population to erect huge megalithic monuments in order to interact with the heavens: phallic dolmens, menhirs and stone circles (eg. Stonehenge) are just as much the expression of people unable to colonize any further as the space dildos of kooky billionaires.
Ugh, corrective spelling mistake. Anatolian plains (i.e. modern day Turkey), not planes.
Dang, and just when I was going to make a funny comment about Trump saying that America’s founding terrorists (as they were regarded by the aristocracy of England) were capturing the old airports …. which I now see were used by the Anatolian planes. 🙂 🙂 😉 🙂
I agree with those that suggest finding a way to give the external escapists what they want… a way out of “here”. If we could get them all on ships to Mars, those of like mind and heart that remain behind could unite and get to work rejuvenating our beautiful World.
Sounds like the Douglass Adams solution. In Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, he tells a tale about a planet that was facing doom. They build three giant space ships to carry the population away. They build and launched the first. But then they discovered that due to the way they had picked the people to go on the first ship, now all their problems were solved now that they were gone. 🙂
How can they colonize Mars. Do you really believe they have been on the moon and came back safely on earth?
You just stop voting in these elections organized by those billionaires or, if you feel guilty to do not vote, vote for independant candidates with no affiliation to establishment billionaires mainstream political parties and the power of those billionaires will be reduced.
The only thing those billionaires are good at is to organize things like 9/11.
Many prophecies are telling us the Second Coming of Jesus is very near. I would add that it could be any day now.
I pray the Rosary to hasten His Glorious Return because I have really seen enough of all the bullshit.
The sure way to make sure nothing changes is to not vote. Stay home and do nothing, and the oligarchs are guaranteed to win.
The one problem the 1% have with even fake democracy is that they are outnumbered 99 to 1. Thus, they have to fool people into voting into the 1% interests and against their own interests. But that is difficult, so they also work very, very hard at trying to tell people not to vote. With the possibility of major lefty campaigns in both the US and UK, expect to see a massive increase over the next year in the “Don’t Vote” campaigns on the internets.
Have you seen something changed because people vote?
And they have been voting for a long time.
And if you want to vote, please vote for independant candidates with no affiliation to establishment billionaires mainstream political parties, that’s all.
Obviously, all of this is becoming obselete with the return of Jesus very very soon, any day now.
And I pray the Rosary to hasten His Return because I have seen more than enough bullshit and I am totally fed up.
LOL. The Messiah is coming from the house of Epstein; look it up! It’s on the internet.
The only time I ever saw Timothy Leary live was at my state university in the early ’70s, promoting the idea of space colonization. Made me profoundly sad to see this pioneer in the evolution of human consciousness so profoundly unconscious of the inextricably interdependent mind/body/Earth aspects of human existence. Not unlike Musk or other wealthy megalomaniacs who have their brains cryogenically frozen until they can be technologically ‘reincarnated’, Tim looked outward for a “fix” for humanity (more likely for his own sense of inadequacy) rather than inward for acceptance, resolution, and reintegration, and expansion of his/our own consciousness. How ironic. I used to think that the psychedelic experience would be humanity’s portal to re-awakening and recovery. Now I see it as quite feasible that the words “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you”might actually be our best bet.
Interesting, I got to see Timothy Leary speak in the 1980’s and he was not talking about space colonization. Not in the slightest.
Sorry, my chronology is off, but here’s a link:
https://theoutline.com/post/1030/timothy-leary-silicon-valley-technolibertarian?zd=1&zi=uks74myd
I don’t know. I think shipping Musk, Bezos, Thiel, and so on — and the people who adhere to them and follow them — to Mars or considerably further might be a really good idea.
Here’s a poem about it, not polluted by their names, yet getting the gist:
http://starrygordon.com/slowlyrising.html
In other news, ‘Thanks for everything you do.’
reality is neither abstract nor complicated.
it’s rather simple and concrete.
stay focused and resist distractions.
read Whitney Webb at Mint Press News.
or Jennifer Matsui at CounterPunch for a shorter and more acerbic version.
yes, connecting the concrete dots is called abstraction.
“Do you question the nature of your reality?” — on the show Westworld, that is a standard diagnostic question that the programmers ask the robots. No is the correct answer, and that means they can go back to being killed and raped by the tourists in the amusement park.
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Lets talk about the nature of our reality being simple and concrete. Knock your knuckles onto a wooden table. Its solid, right? Its real, right?
Yet scientists have known for over a century that the atom, the basic building block of chemistry, consists of a tiny bit of actual matter surrounded by an electric field which is gigantic in comparison to that tiny speck of matter. When you knocked your knuckles on that wooden table, that was empty space pressing against empty space. It was one electric force field of the electric fields of the organic chemistry of the wood resisting the electric fields of the organic chemistry of your knuckles. It was force field meeting force field. There was nothing solid about it.
Do you question the nature of your reality?
Caitlin says, “It will mean getting women around the world full reproductive sovereignty and education since that’s proven to reverse population growth.”
I’m solidly 100% in support of “getting women around the world full reproductive sovereignty and education”; however, it’s my layman’s understanding from casual reading that capitalist-oligarchic resource allocation is more an issue than human population. I’m not clear on this, so I’m wondering if there is definitive information on this topic?
It sounds like you are referring to the balance between population and consumption per capita, and the general unfairness of rich countries consuming more than poor countries with higher population growth.
You might be interested in https://steadystate.org/, which I just discovered today.
Which is the problem – population or consumption? It’s both.
The explanation that made the most sense to me was in a UN report maybe about 10 or 15 years ago. I forgot the title, but the report was intended to address the question of how many people Earth can sustain. The answer, of course, was it depends on their average consumption. The report estimated Earth could sustain 20 billion, if we all consumed at the rate of the poorest counties, and only about 2 billion if we all consumed at the rate of the richest countries.
We are currently over 7 billion, so consumption in rich countries depends on the poverty of others. If we achieve any sort of wealth equality, and if you would like average consumption to include indoor plumbing, we are most likely overpopulated already. And the answer is we must address both population, and consumption per person, with different approaches for rich and poor countries.
I agree with a lot of your points, but still come to an opposite conclusion. It’s not an either/or proposition. Many decry the cost of space-faring, and it is a lot of money, but a mere pittance compared to what is spent on the infrastructure of killing each other.
Consider the social profit created by the Apollo Project, in which spin-off technologies were developed in many “unrelated” (to space-faring) areas of medicine, transistors, software, improved production techniques, etc. If the great powers of the world, some combination of the US, China, Russia, India, Japan, the EU, were to collaborate on a joint project - a global Artemis Mission - it would cost a tiny sliver of our death infrastructure. Much more than the “cost” in money terms (money is a human construct anyway; it is what we say it is), the importance of such a project is truly in collaborating for the shared aims of mankind.
Working together, instead of having an infantile “race” to colonize the moon will reteach us the power of human ingenuity to solve intractable problems. One of the goals of space-faring must be to improve human conditions on Earth. Developing Fusion energy and Plasma technologies will create not only the means to travel farther, faster, but will also create a new economic platform of unlimited clean energy that will lift all of humanity out of poverty.
There is no objective reason we can’t do this, only as you say the mental shackles we’ve been fitted with by the Oligarchy. The Oligarchy is Zeus, seeking to keep us animals culled and under control. Science and reason are Prometheus, seeking to give humanity higher and denser forms of “fire” and power.
BTW, nobody has to go to space. The vast majority will obviously never leave Earth’s gravity. But I guarantee there will be a lot more wishing to go that can be accomodated. So rest easy on that score.
Here! Here! Nicely stated. It is indeed not an either-or proposition. Sure, there will always be other, and arguably ‘better’, things to do with a trillion or two, but humans need a dream and a grand goal, and this is one. This is a much better one than military spending or a war ‘to unite us all’. Only a few old men have ever walked on the moon, but I and many others were there with them vicariously, and would risk much to do the same ourselves.
Stop breeding. In a hundred years we’ll all be dead.
Bravo. Caitlin Johnstone’s criticism is right on point and a bit scary. One thing I would add is as to where people escape to is very often into themselves – “I have too many other things to think about now, or a job to do, and you want me to think about awful things I can do nothing about.” This escape route is used for everything not just the the threat of our extinction. As Scarlet O’Hara said: I’ll think about it tomorrow.”
I take comfort in knowing that we can always do all that we can do, and encourage others to do the same. History is replete with examples of how small efforts of a few people eventually made for great changes. For example, the way Christ reportedly spoke has profoundly changed the narrative of religion permanently. Even though so much religious feeling is fake or just self-elevation, or a way to stop being self-critical, it still is a great force in the world. Even as most churches have been captured to serve ego, they also serve to communicate what Christ learned.
Thanks for putting in a plug for the authentic teachings of Christ. Activists too often buy into a totally negative view of religion, and unwittingly throw out the precious baby with the admittedly disgusting bathwater.
Great line, great imagery: “At best it would be like being in a mall your entire life.” Nearly spit my coffee out onto the computer screen. And we all know how well those malls age don’t we.
I fully agree with you that the truly wise rarely have any appreciable amount of money, and thus have no real power in this world. The truly wise are generally not listened to, and even more rarely is their advice and guidance heeded.
Much more valued in this greedy, money grubbing world than wisdom is cleverness. The clever all too often gain wealth through their cleverness, but mistake their success at building a massive pile of cash as meaning that they somehow have all the answers to all the world’s dilemmas. The truth is, that except for their overly lauded success at creating a profitable business enterprise, these clever people generally can’t think their way out of a wet paper bag.
HOW TO DESTROY CIVILIZATION 101:
1. CREATE AND CONTROL A MONETARY SYSTEM.
I’m with you on the space program, Caitlin. Always have been, and I’m 70 now. A giant waste of money, just more white colonialism (check out Gil Scott-Heron’s “Whitey On the Moon” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4), and irresponsibility toward the one home we have, earth, rationalizing its trashing. On this subject I like to quote Jimmy Buffett, who is smarter than most people credit him.
We lost our Martian rocket ship
The high paid spokesman said
Looks like that silly rocket ship
Has lost its cone shaped head
We spent 90 jillion dollars trying to get a look at Mars
I hear universal laughter ringing out among the stars
In college I was assured that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was THE American literary masterpiece (before school districts started banning it for naughty language). Slavery’s terror is humanized. Ruling class hypocrisy is slyly exposed. Humorous life lessons are learned. Mayhem ensues. Aaaaaand …Huck lights out for the territories.
Thanks Caitlin, for introducing me to the wonderful practice of ho’oponopono. This method of cultivating unconditional Love is simple and profound.
I agree that space exploration is a dangerous waste of our precious time and energy. It is just another money making dead end in our totally misguided culture. Not to mention that it is also a cover for developing space weapons.
Thank you Caitlin. I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you. Hoʻoponopono. Again and again and again.
There’s definitely something positive to be said about some U.S. cops’ traffic stops where if you have over $100 in cash they seize it and perhaps toss you in the clink until you confess. It’s only the threshold that should be changed: if you have over $100 million…
Yeah… Space Age my arse. We ain’t even close to making it out of the piston age.
This makes more sense than anything that comes out of Elon’s mouth! I hope someone gives him this book for Christmas! http://www.derrickjensen.org/myth-of-human-supremacy/
Caitlin, thank you. You are a beautiful person with a beautiful mind. Please be careful, we need you
” Money ” is the devil’s magic wand! It drains your soul and turns you into an inhuman monster. Some rich people even give some of their money to worthy causes but their souls still remain bleak and void. They are lost!
Mostly spot on, as usual. I don’t think that it is quite true to say that science isn’t interested in consciousness. There is a lot of interest in it, but also a lot of difficulty in studying it, since there is no consensus about what it is, or even how to define it – we accept that other animals are conscious, but don’t know if any of them have the extra “layer” of consciousness that we call consciousness of self or, if the self is illusory, the consciousness of being conscious. Science proceeds by analogy, and at the moment the dominant paradigm for consciousness is computational, with a widespread assumption that if we could build a machine with the complexity and parallel processing power of the brain, such a machine might be both conscious and self-conscious. I’m quite sympathetic to this approach, since the switch from consciousness to self-consciousness that happens in human children around the age of three does suggest some kind of completion of a “wiring” process.
Relax people, this is all simply diversion tactics from the REAL events currently happening on our planet. Many reliable scientists have already stated, until we figure out a way to protect ourselves from the harmful destructive radiation everywhere in space, we wont be going anywhere. The other certainty, is we do not have the power systems required to power any such space vehicle either.
Any talk of space travel is simply SCIENCE FICTION.
It always amazes me that alot of people seem not able to think two steps ahead. Especially the ones with all the power and money. This whole space thing seems to be put in place just to make a shitload of money as usual. Just like the war on drugs and terrorism has.
Advaita means not two. There is one unified field. One consciousness. One ocean so to speak.Nothing is personal. We as waves have no say. We are not in control. Totality is.
That is why phenomena occur simultanously without noticable communication like the summer of love and hippymovement. Freaky action at a distance.
Yesterday i was looking into Elon Musk. Today Caitlin writes about him. This happens alot. We are connected to one energyfield. When you clear away alot of the clutter that distracts you from the silence you become an open channel.
Love you Caitlyn! You’re a national treasure.
I thought of ho’oponopono as well. I understand it is said without alerting the target party. Pointing the bone in aboriginal tradition succeeds without alerting the person targeted. I have no idea it it works on a planetary scale. But why not try?
Great essay, so much to respond to, but as you say it all hinges on a small handful of man-children, and their behavior has a certain similarity to those that have an unfulfilled lust for their mother’s. As disgusting as that might seem, just two men caused the deaths of over a quarter billion humans in WWII. In retrospect it might have been better if they had slept with their mother’s. And, no doubt, the others who were caught up with Epstein group also had similar unfulfilled sexual desires that over the course of 70 years claimed the lives of over one billion humans, so maybe we should lighten up on these perverts, it’s not like their or our sacred Gods are all that holy in the first place. Look at everyone’s sacred text; first few pages it justifies the righteousness of racism, pretty much says that the only one who has a right to live is you and a few close friends and everyone else has to die. And, so far all these murderous thugs have been very religiously faithful to their God. But; why? Because they all have some sort of sick sexual desire that their and our Gods say is sick, but as we’ve already seen their God and our Gods are all very sick demented Gods, so maybe we should try to cut these perverts some slack, if for no other reason than to save our species. But, nah, everyone would rather die. So be it. LOL.
Another thought experiment: if the human race were urgently forced to colonise Mars ASAP (because the kakistocrats did let off the nukes) and its survivors somehow could muster the resources to take, say, 20,000, who would be needed? How many stockbrokers? Lawyers? Real estate agents? Cops? Businessmen? Plutocrats? MSM stenographers and ‘pundits’? Now apply this ‘clean slate’ thinking to our planet and think of the social layers and structures, the laws and institutions, along with all the waste and parasitism impeding human survival and development — our historical baggage as it were — that prevent humanity from junking its backward social development to finally match its technological development.
That’s right: what should never be transplanted to Mars should therefore no longer exist here. The task is that big, and a socialist revolution worldwide is the only way we can ‘(re)colonise’ our planet to finally live on it rationally and therefore maximise our chances of survival as a species.
Thank you for another insightful piece. It resonates with something I wrote earlier today…
I’ve often contemplated the parallels between a child’s development through infancy to young adulthood and humanity’s evolution. Currently we are, as a species, behaving like a petulant teenager. We are treating our Mother Earth with disrespect, a grand sense of entitlement, making unreasonable demands with a complete lack of awareness that she has her own life and needs while making messes we expect mom to clean up. We are taking foolish risks that endanger our future with scant appreciation for the potential costs.
The climate crisis – which we have known about for decades – is exhibit A. Procrastinating until the 59th minute of the 11th hour is the epitome of teenage shortsightedness. If we are going to not only survive, but thrive, in the coming decades we must learn to adult – NOW. First lesson: radical responsibility for self and community, including for our piece of the climate crisis.
My theory is that our power is equal to our willingness and ability to take personal responsibility. The more you take on as yours, the greater your power. We take turns being responsible and being in need throughout our lives and in different areas of our lives – this is what makes humans resilient and able to adapt to a wide range of circumstances.
It is time for us to adult, to stop waiting for others to solve the crisis we’ve created. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
And now we’re threatening to leave mom behind because we don’t really need her anymore. We’ll show her.
It’s as if we colonized another planet/moon/whatever there wouldn’t be the inevitable dumb-ass psychopathic megalomaniacs fucking that place up in exactly the same way they are fucking this place up. Let’s face it – if we don’t figure out how to get the people currently in charge settled into nice little retirement cages – and soon – we won’t be worrying about Earth, Mars, or anywhere else, because our monkey-brain species will be extinct.
We are being mentally manipulated again and again by the outer space crowd.
If you go to google news
scroll down to ‘ ‘ Science ‘ ‘
it’s 95% outer space stuff
as if there is no other science than outer space.
“Natural” lost meaning when human cognition developed in Homo Sapiens.
Since then humans have been tweek-ing with every element they get their hands on. That tinkering has brought about the domestication of other animal life for their amusement ( house pets, circuses & zoo prisons ) and factory foods ( meat & fish ).
Included in humankind’s endeavors, but not limited to, are development of chemical compounds, fossil fuel refinement, plastics and nuclear technologies, monumental steel & concrete structures.
If we went anywhere in outer space to inhabit and habituate we could shit in that nest just like we’re doing on planet Earth, IMO.
That’s OUR NATURE!
But when we’re gone from the universe the universe will restore our creations to the way the universe would like it to be.
It’ll take a few centuries and the universe will be “Natural” again.
Mars once had a geomagnetic field, oceans of liquid water and perhaps even a breathable atmosphere and a variety of life forms. In the current absence of an active geomagnetic field to protect it against the solar wind and cosmic radiation the planet will forever remain a dead rock. Nuclear weapons cannot fix this, however, a calculated program of bombardment using selected readily available asteroids could possibly increase the mass of Mars enough to reignite its core to regenerate the necessary geomagnetic field as well as replenish the atmosphere and add bodies of water. It’s a matter of giving back as opposed to blowing up.
Not only are there no such things as “readily available asteroids” that are within our power to move around as we see fit, the mass of the entire asteroid belt is less than 1% of the mass of Mars.
My idea sounds at least as plausible as nuking a planet to make it more hospitable, but perhaps Musk is aware of a non-nuclear fallout option to prevent totally poisoning the “better” atmosphere. Besides, the environmental lobbyists would have a fit, not to mention the locals. 😉 Got a good reference on the relative total asteroid belt mass thing for us? The other option is to introduce a mini black hole to increase mass but we still need to come up with much more water than is currently available, but in the absence of a protective geomagnetic field, Musk’s suggestion is just pissing in the solar wind.
Properly delivered, it doesn’t take very much of an asteroid or comet to implement big changes to a planet: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater
“Judge me by my size, will you?” – Yoda
Fabulous essay! Thank you so much. Love the nod to Rupert Sheldrake and ho’ponopono! Been onto both for many years.
If I wasn’t banned on FB for the next two weeks, I’d be posting your entire piece stat . This is exactly mankind’s pathological problem–and more specifically, that of the the U.S.–which will kill us if we don’t stay with our mess and work to clean it up. Brava!
So insightful! And I love the bit of Ho’oponopono at the end. Thank you Caitlin!
It’s worse than that, outer space is being weaponised with specialised military divisions to enforce US control. For all the info you need on the US project to ‘dominate’ outer space and use it for ‘dominating’ earth, do a bit of reading here: http://www.space4peace.org/
Brilliant, as always!
Not to mention the millions of Americans who are so stupid as to believe in the “Rapture” in which God takes all the good people to heaven and leaves the rest here on earth to rot. There are actually many people who believe this horse shit, and they don’t care a bit about our planet, because they figure they won’t need it for long.
All the good Christian people, that is. Not the others.
The “rapture” as it is commonly understood appears to be a misreading of the Bible. However, Christ is definitely returning to judge the world and gather His people. The correct understanding appears to be that everything occurs on “the last day,” not a “rapture” followed by a “tribulation” period before final judgment. No one is “good,” but some are “saved” and redeemed from not being “good.” Many people appear to be good, however, and God certainly keeps many people from being very evil compared to others even though we all have the potential for far more evil, and people often seem to be rather good because of that.
You can mock this, me, or express all the anger or contempt you want about this, by the way, but it is true. Many of us were like that too. I don’t even prefer some of it to be the way it is, but nonetheless it is true.
Caitlin is one of the best truth tellers and analysts of media and society around, but she’s wrong on this part. it’s understandable though, because nobody can “get it” unless God actually intervenes to show them the truth.
Amen John!
Did you talk to him and he told you that ? Are you really that stupid ?
Excellent and much-needed piece Caity. Thank you. I’ve been saying for years, why does Musk want to spend billions or trillions terraforming an already dead planet when we have a still-living one we can save through regenerative agriculture and the banishment of fossil fuels? It doesn’t make any sense.