The New Yorker published an article, back in early June, that posed the following question: "Are We Doomed?"
I have looked through the "back issues" of my daily blog, and I can safely say, having done that, that I am definitely not a "doomer." I have written about "doom," right from the beginning, and while I am often pessimistic about what is happening, I always end up saying that we are NOT doomed.
My refusal to stipulate to "doom," as bad as things are (and, of course, they can get a lot worse, too) is based completely on the fact that we can "act."
I like to think that I can "observe" with the best of them, and what I see out there is profoundly upsetting - and "discouraging" would also fit. The New Yorker's illustration, above, outlines just a few of the existential threats that are all too real: (1) Nuclear War; (2) Biohazards and Biological Warfare; (3) Artificial Intelligence; and (4) Climate Change. This is definitely only a "partial list." Even (5), listing "all of the above," leaves out a lot of horrible possibilities.
As doomworthy as all of these threats are, we do have an antidote. It is often called "human freedom." What human freedom essentially means is that all extrapolations based on past and current practices do not amount to "inevitability," since we have the power to change what we are doing, and to do something completely new, something never even thought about or tried before.
The article in The New Yorker, the one I mentioned at the beginning, reported on a class at the University of Chicago called, "Are We Doomed?" Perhaps the magazine will let you get access to the article, if you click this link. I think it's a fun read, and I recommend it. The "subheading" to the article, following the title, is this: "Here's How To Think About It."
Are we doomed? Think about it the way I just explained. That's my advice.
But thinking about it isn't enough, of course.
We actually need to do some of those "new things," those things never ever thought about or tried before. We need to "act." That means, of course, if we're serious, that we have to change our own lives, on the way to changing the world.
Frankly, I wish I had been teaching that class!
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Now, we are The Resistance, the underground railroad, the union strikers, the builders of alternative services, the tax resisters, the non-cooperators, the purveyors of truth - based on facts, the alternative media, the cheerleaders for the Resistance.
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