Apocalypse Now And The Asperger Syndrome

By: Andrew_McKillop

CHRISTMAS TALE 2012: CREATE A GOD, DESTROY A GOD
Paul Colin wrote in response to Nadeem Walayat's article "Mayan End of the World 2012 Prediction, Economy and Elite Use of Religion to Control":

In my humble opinion there was originally only one belief and that was of a creator God who created this universe and created us in his likeness as the bible says – every other religion is either a derivation of the original or a replacement for the one true God – this would explain why every society has had some form of deity or suppressed it such as in Russia, because it is built into us, as we were created by God in his likeness to have relationship with him.

This certainly does not apply to the economy, but Paul Colin also said: There is no such thing as evolution (only adaptation which is by design), on the one hand scientists describe a universe which is in decay (entropy) and then on the other hand say that there’s some driving force behind life that seems to have a survival mechanism.

This relates to the economy a lot more than most would think. Equating entropy with decay, which is easy to criticize from the standpoints of astrophysical cosmology and cosmogony (the timeframe), we have this read-out if or when we accepted that entropy = decay. Expansion of the Universe is the only thing preventing the implosion of the Universe "in the time of Planck", which is 10 to the minus 44 seconds. Rather fast, that is. Physicists being pedants say it is 5.39 x 10 to the minus 44 sec. In any case this is vastly outside the range of the shortest time intervals that human beings are able to measure.

Expansion of the economy is - now for certain - the only thing which can prevent total implosion of firstly national, then regional, then global economic stability, if only because servicing the world's skyrocketing national, regional and global debt needs economic growth to prevent debt explosion. In theory of course. The problem is that since what we can call the "evolutionary phase shift' of the global economy - 2008 crisis - economic growth is no longer possible. It has to be imagined. The numbers have to be pressure cooked to seem right. Not so many persons are fooled by the pantomine, but the show goes on for the ultimately simple reason we can't think up something else. Now that really is decay, not necessarily entropic.

CREATE AN ECONOMY, DESTROY AN ECONOMY
How do economies evolve? Certainly we can say there must be traces of "intelligent design" in the writhing mass inside the economic can of worms. How the mass wriggles, with or without Internet and an iPhone, supposedly could or might show adaptation, or on the other hand, evolution. Bringing the two concept words together, we get the choice of adaptive evolution or evolutive adaptation. Concerning Darwninism and biological evolution - unfortunately - there is no trace of either of these. Paleobiology is a long, long story of disasters and wipeouts. Making things easy for religionists, biological "evolution" is a story of mega-jumps and surprise arrivals of seemingly new species to a background of recurring catastrophes. Obviously, they say, God intervened.

Religious philosophy from its absolute first beginnings has however had to talk around the logic of this as well as the "fundamental questions of identity". If as Paul Colin said, canonical religious belief in all 3 "religions of the book" claims there is only one God and this God created us humans "in his likeness", why are we not perfect? Is God therefore imperfect?

Why do we need to evolve and adapt?  For the economy we get exactly the same apple pie reasoning from the Neoliberals: the market is perfect. We only have to adapt to it, by doing nothing. The result is simple: catastrophe. Welcome to the real world.

Darwin himself had problems with the mental gymnastics needed to talk around the "Why arent we perfect?" killer question, because his wife was intensely religious and he was a practising believer. Why did God leave behind all kinds of half-way-evolved creatures below the level of anthropoid apes? In any case, how and why did these anthropoid apes evolve or mutate or change into human beings? There is no answer to those questions. Talk about Alpha Males of 50 000 years ago getting an outlyer whiff of IT-based high frequency trading, today, does not wash.

THE MAYANS WERE NOT TELEOLOGIC
The theory of teleology is a half-way-house attempt at bridging the total gulf between pure evolutionists and pure intelligent design creationists. Teleology says there is evolution by stages towards an embedded goal, the origins of which are glossed over and talked around, or may simply not be possible for human beings to know. Violence-based cultures like the bloodthirsty and degenerate Mayan culture most certainly did not forecast any kind of Happy Ending. Plenty of archeological and historical evidence shows Mayan culture could not adapt to water shortage and overpopulation, among the most powerful slayers of this failed culture which of course developed a fantastically accurate calendar, but could not even develop the wheel, except as a children's toy.

Acting like Mayan soothsayers, spin doctors and seers, American TV talking heads from December 14 onward and the Newtown killings are making a feast of predictions, including the baleful effects of Asperger's syndrome on video game-deprived young male Americans. At least this takes minds off the economy for a short while, before the Christmas sales campaigns can be launched after a Decent Interval. As an example of an almost perfectly anti-Mayan culture, the US Happy Changey Obama-type culture is currently shedding tears on primetime for the Newtown slayings. Apart from this being a serious loss of young consumers, forced to stay at home by fear of being assassinated at school, the Newtown killings in fact pose questions on the Natural Supremacy of American consumer culture - and the growth economy.

Later on, we will be allowed and enabled to think about economic evolution and adaptation using the US and European post-2008 model. Possibly not so much Asperger's but Asparagus Syndrome - too many dipped asparagus sticks in the caviar sauce at central bankers' meetings - this plain, outright refusal and inability to adapt and evolve is the striking thing.

By Andrew McKillop

Contact: xtran9@gmail.com

Former chief policy analyst, Division A Policy, DG XVII Energy, European Commission. Andrew McKillop Biographic Highlights

Co-author 'The Doomsday Machine', Palgrave Macmillan USA, 2012

Andrew McKillop has more than 30 years experience in the energy, economic and finance domains. Trained at London UK’s University College, he has had specially long experience of energy policy, project administration and the development and financing of alternate energy. This included his role of in-house Expert on Policy and Programming at the DG XVII-Energy of the European Commission, Director of Information of the OAPEC technology transfer subsidiary, AREC and researcher for UN agencies including the ILO.

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