Not A Bang But A Whimper

"... An unleashed lust for wealth and power turned them into aggressors, resulting in reprisals, that required their cities to abandon vulnerable outlying fields and intensify production closer to home, eventually pushing land beyond its tolerance.

"Society had evolved too many elites, all demanding exotic baubles." He describes a culture wobbling under the weight of an excess of nobles, all needing quetzal feathers, jade, obsidian, fine chert, custom polychrome, fancy corbeled roofs, and animal furs. Nobility is expensive, nonproductive, and parasitic, siphoning away too much of society's energy to satisfy its frivolous cravings.

...

It was a desperate society that had lost control... Its monuments were soon eaten by the forest: in a world relieved of its humans, man's attempts to make his own mountains quickly melt back into the ground.

When you examine societies just as self-confident as ours that unraveled and were eventually swallowed by the jungle," says Arthur Demarest, "you see that the balance between ecology and society is exquisitely delicate. If something throws that off, it all can end.

He stoops, picks up a shard from the moist ground. "Two thousand years later, someone will be squinting over the fragments, trying to find out what went wrong." -- Alan Weisman, in "The World Without Us"

As I'm reading this book, I'm more and more disgusted by humanity in general. Specifically, I'm disgusted by people living in poverty, the middle-class as well as the affluent. For the most part, I see our society as irrevocably doomed.

The above passage referenced Mayan civilization. Its affluence caused its destruction. Why should America think itself any different?

It should really come as no surprise that watching T.V. burns less calories than sleeping. Sleeping is useful. Watching T.V. is not.

I firmly believe our society will crumble to ruin around us not with Muslim radicals gassing us in the streets but as they watch from afar, horrified, as we eat cake and drink syrupy beverages rotting in front of glowing internet and T.V. screens. They will call Allah's judgment on America justice and poetic for they will believe that it must have been only by divine appointment that He used our greed to destroy us.

Will the Muslim world look on? I don't think it much matters. I actually don't think they will much outlast Western civilization. As Western civilization falls to ruin, would they grow affluent and follow our descent?

The key is this: comfort breeds contempt.

I am beginning to truly believe that if life's goal is comfort and ease then we are quite possibly sick beyond repair. If life is nothing more than accumulation and social status, life is probably not worth living in any sense of the word. What a useless blip on the historic map. Such a life as that is contemptible, worthy of equal consideration as that of a worm or insect. There would be no difference.

And personally, I find that this is the cause of my deepest spiritual struggles these days. I was fed from birth with the idea that life is accumulation, life is comfort. Give money to Darfur and then spend on a lavish vacation. Live longer. Be balanced. Retire early.

I believe all that.

And yet in my mind, I understand that life is only a resource as in time, as in money. Biblically, this is how I see life. But I do not believe the Bible on that point.

I would love to care more about starving children but I'm too preoccupied with my own entertainment. I, like the rest of this society, is doomed. And the fate is far worse than death, an apocalypse of flame or war... would that be preferable to death by clogged arteries and a soft mind thinking dull, worthless thoughts? Living a life of worth and meaning... shouldn't that be far more valuable than a life of comfort and ease? So why won't more people pursue it?

Oh, I know.

Because it's uncomfortable.