Sunday, April 8, 2007

Some crazy thinking -- for a crazier world

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Date Line April 8, 2007

“My insanity” is not really mine. I write of “My insanity” and the next day someone reviews a book (MUSES, MADMEN, AND PROPHETS) which relates a survey; the results of which?

“In one survey, 39 percent of healthy volunteers said they had heard their own thoughts aloud. Another survey found that 13 percent of widows and widowers heard their lost spouse’s voice. In surveys of healthy people, 3 percent or more report a history of vivid auditory hallucination; most do not think the experience calls for treatment “

Scrap the prophecy, the voices, the mysticism, and get down to the reality. I get images, thoughts, conclusions based upon what might be the most subtitle of clues and indicators.

To be valid, a thought must progress logically from a premise. Strangely, it doesn’t really matter if the premise if accurate – if it is “true” – it need only address the observed facts in a consistent and verifiable manner.

Are you ready for the horror?

Are you ready for the global warming that Bush denies exists – just as he denies evolution, and changes in humaity which lead toward improvement of the species?

Global warming. It isn’t going to affect you. Is it?

I read an article which predicted a melting segment of the antarctic – an area the size of Texas, called the Amundsen Sea Embayment – would raise the sea level by twenty feet. I’m in Maine – we have twenty-foot tides. The local tidal river rises fifteen feet at the bridge in town.

Any part of town – or any coastal Maine town – which lies less than fifteen feed above the high water mark is going to be under water for six to eight hours a day; or simply vanish.

New York City will be wash, its subways flooded. Boston will fair no better. You might have read about the faltering housing market, and lower rates of new home construction.

It is not prophecy to say these problems are a direct result of the aging baby-boom and the baby-bust which marked their reproductive aims.

It is not prophecy to say these problems are a result of immigration laws which keep out those who would produce the higher population numbers needed to support housing markets.

And it is not prophetic to say that the housing market will, in twenty years, thrive. The current surplus will be destroyed, as waters rise, and there will be a real demand for “inland” homes – which will be the new shore front properties.

“My personal insanity” considers many crazy things. for example, given current birth rates, any family which has three children, each of who has three children, will – in 450 years – be the only family on the planet.

If each of the daughters had a girls, and the sons fathered sons, that population would, in terms of gender DNA, be the mother and father of the original three.

Did you know that Osama Bin Laden has twenty-three children, and each of them will likely parent more than three. Any chance he wins?

But how crazy, how insane, are such mental games? Don’t react too quickly, don’t react without thought – consider a culture which holds in divine reverence a document that proclaims salvation for twelve thousand of each of twelve tribes.

Consider the sanity of those who believe that six billion will effectively die overnight, or in a war between cultures and religions. Consider another culture which argues it shall provide the soldiers to kill those believers.

Consider the sanity of those who deny the death from war, famine, disease and pestilence predicted by the first two faiths – who account for nearly half the world population.

Consider their sanity when they see, and are told, that their culture – defined by their economy – is changing the environment and will, in fact, cause the four horsemen (horrible causes of death ) which the religions proclaim will end mankind as we know it, and begin a new age.

Now – if you can – define “insanity”; define “rationality”; define both “reasons and logic”. And prepare to die – or have your children die.

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