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David Harcourt
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| Joined: | 12 Jul 2006 |
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| Posts: | 1074 |
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Posted: 26 Dec 2007 07:58 pm |
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In another thread [see The Future] I have been speculating about the prospects of humankind finding a second home, somewhere out there in Deep Space.
These prospects seem to me to be very slim, not least because our chances for survival depend upon us making sensible decisions for many hundreds of years on end. One significant error of judgement on the Ark could doom that expedition to failure.
Mankind depends for its survival on the capacity of its leaders to act rationally in the face of global warming, Islamic extremism, and any number of possible internal and external threats which have yet to manifest themselves. Given the recent track record of our leaders, I am a little sceptical about our chances. Consider the facts:
* The Japanese government of the 1930s and 1940s and Hitler's Nazis embarked on campaigns of world conquest which, had they been more successful than they were, could only have ended in a final, cataclysmic battle between the Japanese and German Empires, for how could the Nazis have managed for long to rule half a world in which the other half was governed by Asiatics?
* Across the world today Muslims are making assumptions about the role of Islam which haven't been made since the days of the Ottoman Empire, when Turkey sought to rule the world. Militant Islam threatens to damage every country on the planet, and to frustrate every effort to foster international efforts to deal with global problems such as hunger, water shortages and global warming.
* And in the race against time to save the planet from destruction through global warming the most powerful nation on Earth is doggedly resisting efforts on the part of other nations to deal with the issue.
And so on.
What hope is there if our leaders behave so badly? What hope is there is we who follow them are so easily prone to resort to crazy beliefs which serve to distract us from the many real issues which face us?
I have before me a book entitled Success with Feng Shui in your garden.
My wife tells me that Feng Shui is pronounced "Feng Schway".
It worries me that she knows this.
Consider what this book says. Here is a passage selected at random:
"Herbs, vegetables and berry bushes can be well integrated even in a small garden. They taste a lot stronger if they are freshly harvested and they contain more vitamins and minerals than bought groceries. The chi is also incomparably better..."
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David Harcourt
Administrator
| Joined: | 12 Jul 2006 |
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| Posts: | 1074 |
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Posted: 26 Dec 2007 08:20 pm |
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And what, I hear you cry, is "the chi".
I am indebted to Success with Feng Shui in your garden for the information that:
"Chi is invisible yet omnipresent. Chi is the cause and effect of everything. No matter whether it is hidden away or directly observable. Chi is the essence that causes mountains to form, that saturates the air and which we perceive whenever we feel particularly full of well-being in a certain place. Even apparently lifeless objects like stones and garden accessories are made of this basic substance and should, therefore, be perceived as living - although, admittedly, this is a slightly unusual idea for us to grasp, with our view of the world rooted as it is in the hard facts of scientific thought."
It is good of the author of Success with Feng Shui in your garden to admit this last point - that the concept of "chi" is "slightly unusual" - for lacking such an admission I might have suspected him of talking complete rubbish, through 64 pages of a highly colourful book published by the good people at Murdoch Books in Sydney in 1999, not 1699 or some more appropriate date in the evolution of human thought.
Really, it's enough to make me spit. Every day I hear people talking about God, and what she/he is thinking, and wants us to do. Most Americans, we are told, believe in the existence of such a person and pay lip service at least to her/his teachings, whatever those teachings are be held to be at the time. How is this claptrap about "God" any different in essence from Feng Shui, Horoscopes, Scientology and other systems of beliefs which depend upon assertions about the real world which have, and can have, no foundation in reality?
I think I should be told.
Meantime, our future as a species depends on sufficient of us at any one time having the strength, intelligence and courage to hold on to what we know and love on the basis of demonstrable facts about our world, and working together to preserve this planet for what one hopes will be many generations to come.
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