A Special Moment in History - The Atlantic Monthly
In May of 1998 the Atlantic Monthy print an article called A Special Moment in History
It beings with a caution to:
BEWARE of people preaching that we live in special times. People have preached that message before, and those who listened sold their furniture and climbed up on rooftops to await ascension
and then goes on:
And yet, for all that, we may live in a special time.
The rest of the article goes on to make several points with society, in general, has yet to fully aware of. The article's well worth reading, and should lead to some careful reflection on the values of our world.
"...William Catton, who was a sociologist at Washington State University before his retirement, once tried to calculate the amount of energy human beings use each day. In hunter-gatherer times is was about 2,500 calories, all of it food. That is the daily energy intake of a common dolphin. A modern human being uses 31,000 calories a day, most of it in the form of fossil fuel. That is the intake of a pilot whale. And the average American uses six times that--as much as a sperm whale."
The emphasis is mine.
Comments
The people we should beware of who talk about the future are those who preach (i.e. clergy) those who say the world is coming to an end and that we must be ready for the rapture. These people are the ones who have preached this since the middle ages and time after time of being wrong thier conviction never wavers. It is absolutly delusional as we have seen from the hundred if not thousands of examples since the 1500's.
On the other hand any one man, with some amount of actual knowledge on his side, who has spoken about a certain natural disaster such as an earthquake, fire, ect have all mostly been disregarded by the public. I guess the future prediction of a volcano erupting and killing five thousand people by creating toxic fumes by spilling lava in the lake isn't enough for the local to take heed. Yet once some man in a skillen shirt comes parading about the end of the world the people are all too ready to sell all thier personal belongings get out of the place.