I must add to this my astonishment at the immense inability to accept the bulk of reliable scientific understanding that this planet is energetically being driven towards inimical and horrifying natural forces that are totally disastrous to planetary life. As with the most vicious propaganda efforts of the tobacco industry to declare tobacco addiction innocent of harm, the criminal efforts of economic forces to deny the rapidly approaching natural forces will soon make this planet extremely difficult for life to survive is already quite evident in the huge die off of large numbers of living species and the floods in Pakistan and the dearth of water supplies throughout the world for producing enough food. It verges on very dark comedy that this denial has succeeded in hiding the obvious.

In general I regard religion as nonsensical fantasy useful in subverting much of humanity to obey its elite economic masters swindling the species in general for allocating wealth to those in control. If that is the nature of Christianity (which I doubt), I must plead guilty. But I doubt religion is the main component of the parasites that are driving the current world to total self destruction. If monetary fantasies now in control of much of humanity can be relegated to a category of religion, that might be a worthwhile viewpoint for investigation. Something quite powerful is holding back the vast effort most direly necessary to powerfully engage all of humanity to reverse military devastation of our culture and the misuse of technology to vitally disrupt this planet's fundamental wealth to support life.

Thus that far distant nightmare of global warming that none of the real powers have bothered to take very seriously suddenly is discovered growling and gnashing its teeth in the average living room readying itself to rip out everybody's throat with a vulnerable power supply might wake people up. When that huge glacier in Antarctica loses its grip on solidity at an unpredictable time so that Florida and New York discover that there are hungry sharks looking into kitchen windows, perhaps the world will begin to take reality seriously. Maybe next week, maybe next year. Nobody really knows. A touch of real panic in this civilization might be healthy.

One of the major problems hitting us right now is the lack of water for growing food crops and the huge floods destroying vast areas of populated land. Almost nothing is being done and when the results of this are felt, millions more will suffer. I find civilization quite insane.

Sorry. I got the wrong impression.

All of civilization is now confronting the mismatch of human desires to the fundamental of a sustained existence on the planet. We seem not able to possibly confront the consequences effectively and the ultimate tragedy is just beginning to be horribly demonstrated. NASA cannot divorce itself from being a vital element in the process. Trump's eagerness to insert space technology into the mechanics of military conquest is tremendously dangerous and totally unnecessary.

Absolutely!

I'm thoroughly amazed that you seem unaware that this horrifying destruction is in vigorous operation right now where people are dying from the heat currently and massive floods and droughts and massive fires are destroying very large areas of food production. This is not some distant possibility that may be conquered by the mere slight revision of national policies. No doubt there is much worse to come and at a speed that vast changes are vitally necessary and the token efforts now in process are so ineffectual that they are openly comic.

Born in Manhattan in 1926, grew up in Bay Ridge on Narrows Avenue. Attended PS 102 until the family moved to Manhattan in 1938 to East 30th street and joined the Madison Square Boys Club and created a sculpture that was exhibited in the 1939 NY World's Fair in the railroad building, Attended PS 40 junior high school and then Stuyvesant High at 15th street and then CCNY for one year before I was inducted into the US Army Air Corps in 1944 and trained as a radar technician for my 2 years in WWII. And etc. I now live in Helsinki after my Finnish wife and son died and never was attracted to Stalin's rather nasty version of what was called communism. That's a pretty good record for an artificial intellect created at least half a century before the computer became a useful instrument to society in general or AI seemed a useful concept. But your accusation is so mechanically irrational you tease me to suspect some sort of robotic nonsense is involved with you. Obviously too primitive for AI, but it smells of algorithmic construction. I apologize if you are merely human which, these frantic days, does not automatically carry much distinction.

I admire your optimism but not decades, but right now Pakistan is in horrible trouble and the rising heat in India is beginning to be fatal to an increasing number of people. Every new appraisement of how close we are to detrimental conditions that are terrifying in many ways shortens the time for massive disaster. All novel and powerful technology takes time to be effective and accepted and it looks very likely that necessary time has vanished.

I agree absolutely but just read this https://www.counterpunch.org/2... and give me any confidence that the world has a decent chance to so revise itself to persist and take advantage of its technological possibilities. I have no special talents and do not consider myself at a special level of intellect but I cannot deny myself that something is quite obviously and disastrously wrong.

I very much appreciate your friendly advice but considering that this civilization is on an express path to its own destruction it's hard to move to consider psychopathology as a safe recourse. The major American psychological organization openly approved the torture routines in Guantanamo so their hold on sanity leaves me much disturbed. Probably some curious ten year old with elementary understandings of basic physics has already discovered that whacking a package of popcorn with a strange hammer he or she designed has already converted much of it to gold but, like Einstein's early problems of convincing the world of his time-space theories, this talented child is at a loss to convince the world.

Obviously, the next step in defeating the monstrous economic system which is defeating our ability to stay alive, is to acquire that mythical power to turn elephant defecation into gold to encourage the preservation of this wonderful species to continue to exist and immensely increase the wealth of the horribly abused delightful people of Africa. Of course, Musk's secret plan to export the richest sadists to Mars will also improve the quality of the human species but research in this area may be too late to save the planet. Science should not be afraid to face this challenge to save life on the planet.

All of these advances are wonderfully worthwhile but the monster problem is a disunited Earth designed, not to create a united world, but to encourage battles over control over its populations to encourage social divisions. It's an ancient bundle of negative hierarchies and it is basically aimed at destroying civilization to support a powerful elite. The horrifying financial and technological forces vastly profiting on weapon innovation and world disunity is aimed at destroying everything.

I don't claim a Mars civilization is impossible, merely that our technology is not yet at a level to advance quickly and easily. In several ways our civilization is headed for self destruction and I am not convinced we will avoid that.