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The Dawn of the Apocalypse

Chris Hedges

“The powerlessness many will feel in the face of ecological and economic chaos will unleash further collective delusions, such as fundamentalist beliefs in a god or gods who will come back to earth and save us. The Christian right provides a haven for this magical thinking. Crisis cults spread rapidly among Native American societies in the later part of the 19th century as the buffalo herds and the remaining tribes faced extermination. The Ghost Dance held out the hope that all the horrors of white civilization — the railroads, the murderous cavalry units, the timber merchants, the mine speculators, the hated tribal agencies, the barbed wire, the machine guns, even the white man himself — would disappear. Our psychological hard wiring is no different.”

[chrishedges.substack.com]

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skado 9 July 29
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3

We're through the looking glass for sure. What's going to happen in the next few decades is very likely to get very ugly. In America at least I see a retreat from reason into delusion across a broad spectrum of society over my lifetime. I hope I'm wrong.

You’re not.

5

Yes, maybe, but there's also an interpretation that says that while societies generally are becoming more secular and abandoning religion, the dwindling religious are becoming more toxic and fundamentalist and authoritarian inclined. The difference between now and the past is that science is now central to our lives. During the pandemic religion did not sky rocket in popularity. On the contrary. However in America in particular the religious got crazier. Most people saw the critical value of science however. The religious make a lot of noise, well beyond their numbers, and their numbers are declining.

@David1955
Their numbers decline but through election laws and redistricting plus a compliant majority in SCOTUS their power may be increasing.

I selected this paragraph because it speaks about the religious component (because this is a religion oriented site) but the article is not primarily about religion or the U.S. The greater part of the article is from a global perspective, and globally, religion is not dwindling, but growing. The point being that the growing craziness, like religion itself, is just a part of human nature. It’s what humans have done to their isolated resource base everywhere humans have existed. The difference between now and the past is that the isolated base is now the whole planet, and there is no place left to run. This problem will not fix itself. At least not in a way that will favor humans. It might be fixable, if we act now, but we probably won’t. Not without a global civil war. At minimum, it will be messy and deadly for many or most of our species and possibly all life on Earth.

@Scott321 So true, if they can restrict the voting enough and gerrymander enough to dilute the voting of the majority, they can still hold onto power even if they are not the popular majority of the citizens.

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