Cool: Species Nearly Destroyed All Life Before

Earth. The Dark Side. Homo. It has become standard to point out that the genus Homo may destroy life, or, our species, or, at least, civilization itself. This is related to the “Fermi Paradox” (“Where is everybody?” asked Enrico Fermi around 1950…) The idea was that civilizations self-destruct, hence no civilization is visible in the galaxy. To which I retorted that we overestimate the likelihood of advanced life in the galaxy, for a galactic sized number of reasons:

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/40-billion-earths-yes-no/

One argument I rolled out is that life was nearly extinguished on Earth by life itself: consider “Snowball Earth”. This weapon of mass life extinction was generated by the advancement of life itself. Let me quote myself:

“Primitive bacterial life is probably frequent. However advanced life (animals) is probably very rare, as many are the potential catastrophes. And one needs billions of years to go from primitive life to animals.

After life forms making oxygen on Earth appeared, the atmosphere went from reducing (full of strong greenhouse methane) to oxidizing (full of oxygen). As methane mostly disappeared, so did the greenhouse. Earth froze, all the way down to the equator:

When Snowball Earth Nearly Killed Life

Yet volcanoes kept on belching CO2 through the ice. That CO2 built up above the ice, caused a strong greenhouse, and the ice melted. Life had survived. Mighty volcanism has saved the Earth, just in time.

That “snowball Earth” catastrophe repeated a few times before the Earth oxygen based system became stable. Catastrophe had been engaged, several times, but the disappearance of oxygen creating life forms had been avoided, just barely.”

Intense chemical weathering by massive acid rain is the likely cause of the end of a period known as the Marinoan glaciation, which happened form 650 to 635 million years ago, according to a paper published in the journal PNAS. This was the last occurence when nearly all of the Earth’s land and seas were frozen over, known as snowball Earth, with glaciers as thick as 2km. Other times, on the right, Earth had no ice at the poles… Present day civilization can survive a warm Earth (right)… Not a Snowball. However, to get from what we have now to no ice, in a geological blink, means ultimate war…

What does this mean philosophically?

Most philosophical systems in the traditional sense don’t consider the truism that, to get creation, one needs destruction, and the more creation, the more destruction. Why? That sounds childish, thus unwise. But children encounter the primeval. Philosophy extended to religion revels in destruction. Actually the Deus/God/Allah destroys the entire universe to establish Heavens.

The universe is a brutal place: not only do planets get flung into space, stars explode, but even entire galaxies get destroyed. The universe is also a happening.

In the greater scheme of things, a war where, say, seven billion people got killed would be nothing special: that was the world population in 1803, when the imbecile Napoleon, having mightily endeavored to reestablish slavery, losing an army in the process, sold a third of the present day US to the USA for 11 million dollars.

In the movie Terminator, Artificial Intelligence takes over, causes a nuclear holocaust, and tries to extinguish humanity. It is more likely though that more and more formidable wars would accompany a Hot Earth scenario… which is what we are going towards, quickly. As I have argued in the past, 2C Is Too Much! Under 2C of global warming, a chain reaction of tipping point would unleash itself, and self-accelerate:

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/2-c-is-too-much/

Now the idea is hitting the mainstream, nine years later. See: “Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. There, scientists argue that there is a threshold temperature above which natural feedback systems that currently keep the Earth at a nice temperature (around 15 C, global) will unravel. At that point, a chain reaction of climate events will thrust the planet into a “hothouse” state. Though the scientists don’t know exactly what this threshold is, they said it could be as little as 2 degrees C (4 degrees F) of warming above preindustrial levels. We are above that half-way point…

As they put it in scientese: “We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a “Hothouse Earth” pathway even as human emissions are reduced. Crossing the threshold would lead to a much higher global average temperature than any interglacial in the past 1.2 million years and to sea levels significantly higher than at any time in the Holocene. We examine the evidence that such a threshold might exist and where it might be. If the threshold is crossed, the resulting trajectory would likely cause serious disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies. Collective human action is required to steer the Earth System away from a potential threshold and stabilize it in a habitable interglacial-like state. Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System—biosphere, climate, and societies—and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformed social values.”

People are deeply unaware, they believe that the planet’s climate is more stable than it really is. The episodes of Snowball Earth show that this is not the case. This erroneous feeling of ecological stability is the main source of the indifference which brings the destruction of the planetary climate.

The apocalypse, in the greater scheme of things, is not apocalyptic. After all, an apocalypse, etymologically speaking, is just an uncovering… And this is precisely this normalcy of the abnormal, which will make go so smooth…

Patrice Ayme

 

Destroying Civilization, Stone By Stone

Civilization is under attack. By some measure, the holocaust of the biosphere, the greatest attack ever.

Putin has a solution: follow him, he is our new guide. Civilization is under attack. Actually, it is being invaded, and the plan (unsaid) is to occupy it. No, not “Occupy Wall Street”. Instead, it’s the obverse: “Wall Street Occupy Everything”. All successful invasions are heralded by a diversion. When Genghis Khan decided to utterly annihilate Khwarezmia, he made a diversionary attack, in the obvious place, while his main field army went all around through thousands of miles of desert. The invasion of France in May 1940 was also made possible by a diversionary attack on the Netherlands. Christianism itself can be viewed as a diversion organized by Rome’s greatest plutocrats, to anchor their rule in God (by the Fifth Century the wealthiest, that is, tax-free, families all had a bishop in their ranks). The Christian God’s Heavens was the ultimate fascist instate. And the emperor its servant on earth.

This 2,000 Year Old Temple Was Destroyed By Islamism.

Islamism was established by mimetism from Christianism (mimetism from Greek mimētēs, imitator). As Islamism was directed towards less civilized people, it was much more primitive than Christianism. Christianism had to bend over backwards to seduce the semi-intellectual class, and the New Testament started by pretending that the “logos” itself was “god”.

(Even then, the counter-attacks against superstitious Christianism by secular Parisian and Athenian philosophers nearly succeeded as soon as the Fourth Century; see the story of emperor Julian.)

Christianism destroyed the largest temples and public buildings of the Greco-Roman empire. It was important to claim there was nothing before Christ. Islamism has long done the same. The so-called “Islamist State” can only do the same.

There is no history, but the history of Islam, and Muhammad is its prophet!

ISIS representatives say they are combating “shirk”—the sin of idolatry or polytheism: in this case, reverence for something other than Allah. The Qur’an punishes idolatry with death.

The apologists of fanaticism claim Islamism says no such a thing. Fanatics are always saying that reality is different from what it, obviously, is. This is the definition of fanaticism (fanum being the temple, fanatics come out of the temple).

Quran (9:5) – “So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captive and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the tax, let them be.”

(This ayah is, chronologically, from the penultimate sura (At-Tawbah) in the Quran.)

This is clearly about planning future lethal attacks. Not self-defense. It’s about killing, ambushing,  recalcitrant pagans (‘idolaters’). But, if they’ve already truly converted (‘keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate [zakat]’), then leave them alone. (But let them beware: if they are thought not to be believers anymore, the Qur’an orders to kill them, for apostasy.) Assuming the Quran is the word of God, faithfully related, this murderous aya, known as the verse of the sword, is plenty enough proof that Allah commands conversion of Pagans by lethal force. (In context of sura 9 (Al-Tawbah), Meccans weren’t fighting Muhammad: they were merely resisting his authority. Yes that contradicts  the Quranic injunction against compulsion in religion. This is an example of Quranic abrogation: a later revelation contradicting earlier ones.  Allah is not always rational. He changes his omniscient mind, and becomes very angry if asked about his murky relations with Djinns and Satan (he actually threatens in the Qur’an those impertinent people who would ask such questions).

Allah is much more murderous than Muhammad. At some point He gets angry against the Messenger, who has been too lenient with the enemy:

Qur’an (8:67) – “It is not for a Prophet that he should have prisoners of war until he had made a great slaughter in the land.”

Qur’an (8:12) – “I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.”

Qur’an (8:39) – “And fight with them until there is no more fitna and religion should be only for Allah”

‘Fitna’ is disbelief. Muhammad by that time is in power, and prior injunctions for self-defense and having no coercion in religion are not needed anymore.

Qur’an (5:33) – “The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement”.

A natural question arises:

Chris Snuggs: (September 21, 2015): “Has any member of the establishment facilitating the takeover of Europe by Islam actually READ the Koran?

Patrice Ayme: Non-Muslims who read the Qur’an, the establishment tells us, are full of prejudice. Why don’t you read the Bible or the Torah, the establishment points out: they have their Dark Side. As if we were presently still threatened by a take-over by the Catholics, Lutherans, and Orthodox Jews.

The establishment rules over us, having grabbed all the levers of power, while continually increasing said power by gathering ever more money through (legal) tax avoidance by all sorts of tricks (anonymous trusts, etc.). The establishment is afraid that we will find out, in a timely manner, that it has organized the greatest theft of all times (by capturing the money machine). The establishment is afraid we will realize it is the greatest Mafia ever: the Mafia of all Mafias. That we will realize this, before its take-over is irreversible.

Thus the establishment is afraid to be turned into the number one target of a revolution to save civilization. So the establishment needs a scapegoat, and one that will allow to foster the security state: Putin showed the way on how this is done: he wasted Chechnya, imposed his own men, and an increasing control on Russia, in complicity with his own selected plutocrats (“oligarchs”). Thus the establishment has no interest to read the Qur’an. Even better: he has every interest that we don’t read the Qur’an and thus we are told that reading the Qur’an in a critical fashion (like noticing the death threats against various categories of people) is RACIST.

Chris Snuggs:  (Sept. 27): “None of the religious lunatics you mention are like Islam, which is a totalitarian and murderous sect.”

Patrice Ayme’: Far from it. Christianism in its heydays killed tens of millions. Just one million killed during the Crusade against the Cathars/Albigeois. According to the English historian Gibbons (and I concur… with a twist) Christianism killed the Greco-Roman empire. See Theodosius’ murderous laws of 381 CE and his “war against the philosophers”.

Two centuries later, the intellectuals and their books had to flee the Greco-Roman empire. And so on. Fanatical Judaism caused the two terrible wars circa 70 CE and 139 CE, which brought the destruction of Judea, and its semantic and demographic replacement by what the Romans named “Palestina” (to forget about Judea). Later the Romans nearly annihilated  the last the “Samaritans” (2,000 survive today).

The religious wars which affected Europe (including England, Italy and Germany) between the Twelfth and the Eighteenth Centuries killed well above ten million. In France alone, there were  seven religious wars in quick succession at the end of the 16C before Henri IV put an end to it. In France, there are precise statistics. In 1580 there were 20,000,000 inhabitants in France. In 1594, mostly due to religious wars, between Catholics and Hugenots, the population had dropped to 18,500,000. Nearly a century later, when the genocidal dictator Louis XIV tortured, killed and expelled the Hugenots, the population of France dropped by two million around the time of these “dragonnades“.

Saying that the religions Islam was educated by were terrible does not excuse Islamism. That does not mean that Wahhabist Islam is not murderous, totalitarian, intolerant, fanatical. Actually that’s so well known there is another 100 Islam sects (many under the qualifier “Sufi”). Many of these are extremely aware of what you say, Chris, so they changed the teaching of “Islam” completely. That’s why France has put Morocco in charge of teaching Muslim priests (they don’t like to be called priests, but that’s what they are going to become).

Since the USA’s government made a deal with the Devil, at Great Bitter Lake, in 1945, though, the Saudis and other Emirs, flushed with Petro-Dollars, have used Islamism (of the Wahhabist type) as a ferocious beast with which to terrorize and kill their opponents. Then it dawned on them that they could make it the new normal, so Wahhabism has been devouring Sufi Islam, all over the world.
The Islamist diversion is the best distraction world plutocracy could profit from, as it grows, undisturbed, basically tax-free. Better: it will allow to pretend that those who oppose it are Jihadists (this has already been tried!)

Patrice Ayme’

Plutocrats: Adulation A Must

PSYCHO PLUTOCRATS

Plutocrats are embodiments of psychopathology unchained. Plutocracy is in no way a recent phenomenon. The success of republics such as Sparta, Athens, Rome, was entirely caused by the ferocity with which they made plutocracy unconstitutional..

Similarly the beyond-Homeric war between the free poleis of Greece and fascist Persia, was fundamentally a war between democracy and plutocracy. The battle of Lepanto, between Western fleet of free men and the slaves of the Sultan, can also be viewed as a similar clash of civilization.

Democracy & Gracchi Murdered Together

The Gracchi Brothers explained the problem thoroughly, and tried the radical remedies necessary against the fascist/plutocratic cancer that was devouring the Roman Republic. We have the same problem. And we have two major, civilization crushing examples of what will happen if we do not eliminate the criminality of hyper wealth: we will be poor, we will have to live on our knees, and our survival will be compromised.

Krugman ponders in Plutocrats Feeling Persecuted the psycho psychology of plutocrats. Well, as their name indicates,  if some ought to be psycho, that would be them, plutocrats. Let me quote Krugman’s conclusion:

“Well, I have a theory. When you have that much money, what is it you’re trying to buy by making even more? You already have the multiple big houses, the servants, the private jet. What you really want now is adulation; you want the world to bow before your success. And so the thought that people in the media, in Congress and even in the White House are saying critical things about people like you drives you wild.

It is, of course, incredibly petty. But money brings power, and thanks to surging inequality, these petty people have a lot of money. So their whining, their anger that they don’t receive universal deference, can have real political consequences. Fear the wrath of the .01 percent!”

Although I respectfully salute Krugman’s effort, and I do agree with what he relates, let me help with an abstract of my own, much more general theory.

Christ said rich individuals would find it harder to get to heavens, than a camel through the eye of a needle. Why? Plutocrats put greed, for money and power, above all other human values. Thus, they belong to hell.

Let’s be a bit more explicit: human beings, even those most reviled, and most abandoned, are born out of love. Indeed, so fragile they are that, for many years, they are completely dependent upon caregivers. If one gives care, one gives love. Thus love, not hatred, is the most basic instinct. Hence the remorse pulling plutocratic minds asunder.

The Greek “Pluto” depicted a 2,000 year old psychological complex elucidated in Mesopotamia in the religion of Ahura Mazda (later boosted by the most ancient philosopher known, Zarathustra). The ancients understood the vast entanglement of obscurity, the underground, riches, invisibility, lying and dissembling, with all other horrors of the Dark Side.

The antidote to this hell was truth and light. That, too was in the old philosophy of Zarathustra.

For plutocrats, to pose as victims is essential. They want to be adulated. Adulation allows not just to satisfy their greed, and also to increase their power (and be called “philanthropists” and thus pay no tax).

But there is more. Adulation goes beyond vanity and greed. Plutocrats do need adulation, if they just want to be.

Plutocrats know, deep inside, that they are very bad people. Once again, it has to do with the fact that the first interaction with the other is love. Even the worse plutocrats, some day, have been babies and their emotional system’s dawn was called love. Adulation allows them to rekindle vaguely that basic emotion. Love is the ultimate judge, the ultimate god.

The adulation of others, that fake love, compensate that lack of love plutocrats have for themselves, deep inside, as they know all too well that they are the bottom of the barrel of humanity.

Adulation thus allows plutocrats to feel good enough to go on with their abysmal lives. When that adulation is refused to them, only the Will to Power, greed, viciousness, the values they thrive by, are left to inhabit the universe they know. Everything is pain, torture, gloom, dissembling, impossible to ascertain.

No wonder plutocrats hate those who deprive them of it.

But their wrath goes beyond this. Plutocrats are motivated by one of humanity’s oldest instinct, that of man as the greatest enemy of… man. Where did that come from? So it has been for many million years, ever since hominids became the greatest predators.

Then, when too many men exhausted too small an ecology, the only solution was war, and extermination. Even chimpanzees live by that feeling: they go on the war path, to eliminate the chimps in the valley next door, just to make sure.

Typically plutocracy rises when a society becomes too prosperous, too numerous, too undemocratic, wealth concentrates, and fascism starts to peak. Hence the causes of its rise bring further excess, and the need to diminish all this humanity that smothers the ecology (it was no accident that the Nazis were so ecological, and so obsessed by the Lebensraum).

Hence the more power plutocrats have, the more they will use it to satisfy that instinct of destruction. It has happened many times in history.

The longevity of the Roman Republic’s democratic system is entirely attributable to its anti-plutocratic laws, which imposed a limit on the wealth of individuals. The failure of those laws brought the Republic down at the time of the Gracchi brothers. (That was known, and made explicit at the time; there was a direct shock between those, such as the Gracchi brothers, who wanted to impose the existing laws and their spirit, and the plutocrats, who wanted adulation and ever more control.)

Interestingly, the USA’s first billionaire, Carnegie, wanted taxation rates of at least 50% on the wealthiest, and close to 100% on inheritance. Thus, during the first century of its existence, the republic of the Union of the States of America had no real plutocrats. (At least none in the sense of using wealth to deflect the policy of the republic.)

Later, Theodore Roosevelt took direct measures to limit the power of the wealth of individuals on the economy (with his anti-monopoly law.)  American based plutocrats went around all this like their Roman predecessors, by going global (and Germany was the first, and most suitable, victim).

Reinstituting the Roman Republican laws limiting wealth would make the Republic viable again. And we would have to succeed where the Gracchi failed, by limiting wealth and power, globally.

Otherwise, it’s going to be all the way down, and, just as happened under the plutocracies that flourished under the Roman autocrats and in the Middle Ages. If we do not affect to love our oppressors, if we do not kneel and kiss their toes, we will feel their wrath.

Plutocracy, the rule of Pluto, is intrinsically, an insult. At some point, blossoming plutocracy makes it so that it comes to be called “aristocracy“, the rule of the best. Only then do plutocrats get the adulation they need.

There is plenty enough evidence of the sociopathy of adulation blossoming in the USA, and in Europe. The thriving austerity is not about prudent accounting: if we were truly prudent, we could easily avoid austerity by making the wealthy pay just part of the taxes they avoid.

Yet, that’s not even tried. Instead the poor and the public are made to pay for the crimes of the wealthy with austerity schemes. So what is austerity about? Unhinged hatred of the wealthy for commoners.

And this is just the beginning: in both Rome and the Middle Ages, extreme plutocracy ended with not just poverty and debasement, but also the death of most of the population, and direct causation can be demonstrated.

***

Patrice Ayme