If it seems like more things are going wrong in today’s world than in the past, you are not alone. It seems no matter where in the world you find yourself looking at, there is some sort of turmoil under way. Some of it is cause by nature, and some has been caused by man. The one difference is man is taking a bigger and bigger role in causing problems.
Looking at nature, events that are not caused by the atmosphere like earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions have nothing to do with man’s influence. However other events of nature in the atmosphere are magnified thanks to man’s influence.
Looking past nature and we see Politics, wars and people’s lack of ability to get along with others is also on the rise. Threats of war from mentally unstable dictators, terrorism and the I want my own nuke club we hear about daily.
There is also human greed that causes harm to others like producing money saving substandard products or bypassing safety procedures. All this and more is in the world today.
Remove yourself by 44 years to 1966 and the number of problems were much less. Global warming had not kicked in and many people never even heard of it. Weather related disasters were about 20 to 30 per year and not the hundreds we now see. There were wars going on but for the most part they seemed far removed from most people’s lives.
One of the problems to all of this is simply our population. Statistically there are more mentally unstable, unhappy, violent, greedy and power hungry people today than there were at any other time in our history. There are also more lost souls who desire to follow someone swelling the numbers of the destructive groups. In 1966 our population was roughly half of what it is today. It is hard to believe we are adding about 6 million mouths to feed every month.
At this rate the fairly common phrase of ‘I wonder if we will survive ourselves’ is starting to take on a surreal meaning. Global warming, population exceeding the planets ability to sustain that huge population, groups bent on killing others who do not share their religious views and so on. With all this going on we are proving to ourselves that we are indeed a self destructive species despite our arrogance that says otherwise. Few other species on this planet have the same self-destructive behavior. Perhaps there were more before at one time that we never had the chance to document because they are extinct.
Unfortunately we are out of control as even collectively we can not stop this behavior. Efforts to stem global warming were impotent at best despite all the hype it was a successful summit. All it takes is one idiot to unleash crude oil into the ecosystem be it deliberate or accidental. The same is true with the power of the atom or any other destructive force including biological.
This is the sad truth of our world and all our tinkering with things that perhaps we should not touch. At the rate we are going perhaps we should stop thinking about all the wonders of technology we will discover over the next 100 years and start thinking more about an apocalyptic future as odds are shifting more and more to that eventual outcome. The fact that Hollywood is producing more apocalyptic type movies suggests we already know our eventual fate.
