A Requiem for Humanity

Reminiscences on what could have been in this world

Reminiscences on what could have been in this world.

Have this music playing while we consider what humanity could have brought to this planet: J.S. Bach: Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor BWV 582

Or, perhaps better, this one playing Bach’s Chaconne, and watch for the note containing the God number, or read the comment reply by Boris Stansky: "Open the Adagio from the 2nd Concerto in E major for violin. The first 5 measures are harmoniously built on the theme of the Chaconne. — Adagio - a person's life is unfairly short. — Chaconna - the whole world."

Or play both those pieces if you are a slow reader.

Have a look at this article in The Bulletin with an interview of a Nagasaki bombing survivor:

(excerpt) In an interview with the Nobel Prize organization, Masako Wada, a representative of Nihon Hidankyo and survivor of the Nagasaki bombing, said, “The world is currently moving backward on nuclear disarmament. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused unspeakable human suffering and raised the risk of nuclear war. I have dedicated my life to nuclear abolition. I feel how sinful humans are. Rather than anger, I feel sorrow, and fear how deep humans will fall into the darkness. We have to keep going forward to convey our wish, our hope to reject nuclear weapons. That’s our mission as Hibakusha.”

“All we, like sheep, have gone astray, we have turned ev’ry one to his own way.” (Handel’s The Messiah, quoting from Isaiah 53:6)

The following applies to all nations: We will engage in any activity except Peace. We will grasp every unclaimed “resource.” We will strive to turn every last undebased remnant of Nature into Profit. We will spread this capitalist contagion onto every reachable orb in Space; greed has no bounds. Military powers facing a lack of strife are engulfed in boundless boredom. We will demean any international organization striving for diplomatic solutions, We will persecute all who challenge the powerful. We enter any newness, whether it be in biology, geology, geography or Space, with the mindset of a thief, to plunder and grasp anything we find of value. And we leave behind us the waste of our gluttony, as an ever-growing “landfill,” even to the point of abandoning human excrement on the Moon, and even supposed “scientists” abandoning broken clothes dryers in landfills in Antarctica. A “landfill” in Antarctica reveals the total depravity of humanity. These failures and others represent the “falling into the darkness” mentioned above. Ever-expanding growth (the economist’s ideal) represents ever-expanding through-put, meaning more and more spent toys going into landfills, eventually the planet becoming one massive landfill. And not just the planet itself. Have you seen the massive amount of Space junk floating by? Have a look at this stellarium-web link and study the night sky a few minutes, you will see the uncountable bits of crap flowing across the sky. That represents a supreme violation of Nature.

From this article: https://www.whp-journals.co.uk/JPS/article/view/855/522 “Overshoot: Cognitive obsolescence and the population conundrum” by Dr. William E. Rees (Professor Emeritus, UBC):

“…despite millennia of evolutionary history, the human brain and associated cognitive processes are functionally obsolete to deal with the human eco-crisis.”

Prof. Rees’ use of “overshoot” applies to population/consumption dynamics.

And in a related article,

Dr. Rees states:

“One might expect that an intelligent social species would devise cultural overrides to rein in potentially dangerous expansionist tendencies on a finite planet. Rather remarkably, the opposite is the case.”

( from: Rees,W.E. The Human Ecology of Overshoot: Why a Major Population Correction’ Is Inevitable. World 2023, 4, 509–527. https://doi.org/10.3390/world4030032 )

But this article, while containing excellent concepts, needs a big rewrite and better development of reasons for its conclusions. I give it a grade of “B-, needs work!” “Overshoot” sometimes refers to a portion of geoengineering policy in which the continuing rise in emissions is not too concerning, because “We” can bring the temperature back down with purported new technologies such as carbon capture and/or solar energy management. Did I just smell some hubris?

Certainly, a person can sit there and dream up the perfect answer to “’We’ should do this (or that),” and you might be absolutely correct in that proposal. But what can you do with it, more than trying to convince all your followers? Can you even begin to move the mass (500 million tonnes) of the human population in another direction? Read Jeff Rubin’s book, A Map of the New Normal and you will see that the emerging new world order is nothing like you still think it is, such no longer exists. Entire power structures have shifted as a direct result of misguided sanctions by USA, with the net result being that “The West,” those nations still suffering under the guidance of USA, are rapidly being sidelined in world affairs. The result is that any influence you thought you had in the world, is now vastly diminished and most of the world is now on another path.

Today, as I’m writing this section, October 24, is the 79th anniversary of the official establishment of the United Nations (October 24, 1945), celebrated as United Nations Day (but certainly not at NATO headquarters). Even with Gromyko’s insistence that UN headquarters be located in New York as a counter to America’s tendency to isolationism (isolation on the home front; imperial exceptionalism internationally), it didn’t take long for the imperial powers of the West to create an end-run around the UN’s consensus agreement system, by the establishment on April 4, 1949 of NATO with its WW-I style of interlocking military alliances. The hope for world peace embodied in the United Nations establishment, has been diminishing ever since, by both neglect and design and the immediate goal of “finishing” WW-II via the Korean War. It has been a downward spiral since the establishment of the UN, with the advent of NATO, the imperial militarization by the hegemon by building almost 800 military bases around the world along with implementation of a shadow-world government comprised of military Command areas, such as United States Northern Command, Central Command, Indo-Pacific Command, etc. The supposed leaders of each of these groups attempt to meet regularly with the civilian representatives of the nations in their Command area. Again, bypassing the United Nations General Assembly. The expansion of NATO up against Russian borders and the work of the Indo-Pacific Command to encircle China has brought us to the brink of disaster. Andreĭ Gromyko in his Memoirs (ISBN 0385412886) stated that the military activities of the USSR were always in response to aggressive actions by USA. For those who swallow propaganda whole and deny that point, look at the present outcome - which country is surrounded by which other country’s proxies? Jimmy Carter used to sometimes sit in his office and give the globe a spin, then plop a finger down on it at random and try to imagine what the world looked like from that place. Try that sometime.

I have tried to contact people in mid-level UN positions (forget the top people, they are thoroughly fire-walled) with the result of total ignore. Same for The Elders, who should be really interested in helping to secure world-wide Peace. Forget about their “Contact us” link, they don’t read it, they are also totally firewalled against input, however serious, from nobodies. Therefore, unless you can come up with some bright ideas on how to achieve even the smallest improvement in this world, wait, do I smell our goose cooking? Yes, you can individually take the important measure of staying on the ground, just stop flying! Any city or nation could grow up and close their airport and airspace, that doesn’t need international agreement. You can all try to live a simpler life with less energy. But back to the first article above, there are absolutely unbalanced people who have the power to push the button and initiate nuclear winter, at just about any minute of any day.

Even after multiple millennia of human attempted “civilization,” humans have not been able to drop the character traits that make an actual civilization impossible: the propensity for theft, murder and covetousness. That applies to all humankind; the Indigenous have no moral superiority.

A partial remedy to this morass involves persistent thoughtful countenance of our every action on the world stage. Watch Kennedy’s “Peace Speech” and act on it, finally, after 61 years.

Here it is on YouTube:

Click on this and watch it now!

Kennedy’s “Peace Speech,” which is included in

On This Day: JFK's Visionary 'Peace Speech'

His speech was given at the June 10, 1963 America University commencement.

“What kind of peace do we seek?” he asked. “Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war but the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living… that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children—not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women—not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.” War, he insisted, makes no sense “in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost 10 times the explosive force delivered by all of the allied air forces in the Second World War” when “All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours.”

Also:

https://www.american.edu/cas/news/norman-cousins-jfks-historic-peace-speech.cfm

And embedded in the speech is one passage whose poignancy has haunted listeners for generations, much like Martin Luther King’s prescient and unforgettable speech the night before his assassination. Kennedy said, “And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”

Do read that article about Norman Cousins, a Saturday Review editor and staunch antinuclear and peace activist.

Mr. Cousins met a couple times as a peace envoy with Khrushchev, who said in their December 1962 meeting: ]]“Peace is the most important goal in the world. If we don’t have peace and the nuclear bombs start to fall, what difference will it make whether we are Communists or Catholic or capitalists or Chinese or Russians or Americans? Who could tell us apart? Who will be left to tell us apart?”[[

From the linked article:

“Cousins urged Kennedy to deliver a stirring speech calling for ending the Cold War and starting a new era of US-Soviet comity. He even submitted a draft, which Ted Sorenson and other close Kennedy advisors built upon without any input from the CIA, State Department, or Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

The delivery of that “Peace Speech” in June of 1963, brought on the commencement of the plot for Kennedy’s demise. Ever since, The Establishment has ensured that one of their puppets holds the presidency.

At this point in history, it is worth considering which candidate is least likely to push the button.

References:

https://thebulletin.org/2024/10/hibakusha-group-receives-nobel-peace-prize-for-demonstrating-through-witness-testimony-that-nuclear-weapons-must-never-be-used-again/