CommentsGUEST COMMENTARY - Is "end of times" or an unprecedented new beginning of times near?
Whether you personally believe human beings evolved or were created, we are nonetheless more and more unambiguously seeing a horizon before us, beyond which we can’t as yet see, but from which there are only two radically different and opposing extreme possibilities that as of yet have not definitively declared themselves.
One of those options leads to an end of days, global warming, and a general regression forward to a new prehistoric time that we cannot even imagine or survive under.
The other more positive alternative future, that is still possible, is something hinted at in the ancient Hebrew prophecy about the coming of the messiah- for either the first or second time- where humanity has a real possibility of creating nirvana here on earth.
Ironically, the single greatest factor that will determine which of these paths humanity will take is the same. One facet of this single factor is the relatively recent science driven industrial revolution and the life-threatening carbon emissions that it has and continues to create. This is on the verge of driving human society to extinction. And the other much more palatable possibility is also dependent on the same body of scientific knowledge that for the first time in the history of life on this planet is now capable of allowing us to literally deal with and fulfill all objective needs of all life on this planet without destroying the biosphere in the process.
In choosing which use of science to employ, which should be a no-brainer, up until now the most exclusively determinative factor has regrettably always been how much corporate profit it would generate with little or no consideration being given to sustainability of the biosphere over time.
What should have been an obvious and critically related question that has up until now never been asked is how much profit is enough? And at what point does increased monetary profit clearly and irreparably actually diminish the quality of life on this planet for both the rich and the poor?
Fighting a seventeen-year-old war in Afghanistan or Iraq for a trillion dollars each has never been juxtaposed with one of these yet scrupulously avoided questions as to what standard of living the expenditure of a trillion dollars could have created in these countries without war. And would not such a Marshall Plan alternative to war obviate the necessity for violence in the first place?
After the murder of dissident Saudi reporter Jamal Khashoggi, then President Trump, was asked if he would consider cutting off the $110 billion in sales of military hardware to Saudi Arabia, that they used in their criminal war against civilians in Yemen. Trump replied, “The Saudis would just buy it from the Russians or the Chinese.” Again, profit still seems to trump everything else, since by such logic, Trump would have probably sold armaments to Hitler in the 1930s during the Nazi military buildup leading up to WWII, because the Nazis would have just gotten it from somebody else. Come to think of it, even then Hitler didn’t have to go looking elsewhere, because Henry Ford gave them what they needed- no questions asked. So I guess things haven’t changed that much after all.
Maybe the 5000-year-old idea of “the coming of the messiah” was not referring to the coming of a person, but rather about the final and yet belated recognition that there is, and has been for a long time, enough for all people, if a relatively small minority finally stopped taking more than they need or could ever use. In fact so much that even they don't live as well as they could, if they took less.
Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He was a second-generation teacher at LAUSD.)