Hello @oldsoulnewb,
I found you commenting on lucylins blog. And was curious what you write about yourself. I hope you don't mind that I stretch the topic.
At first I thought that the fear that is constantly driving people has been rampant since the beginning of the millennium. Then I thought it had been going on since I was a child. And now I think that it has "always" been the case that people are afraid of events over which they have no influence, but which they want to have at all costs. Where does that come from? Christians have the biblical seven plagues, don't they?
I rarely get an answer to my view that man permanently overestimates himself as well as underestimates himself. The absolute enthusiasm for technology is so popular, just as it is deeply rooted, that someone like me, who casts doubt on the whole matter of what is technically possible, often gets no answer. I say this often and repeatedly that I consider, for example, genetics and other wondrous technological "achievements" to be less ingenious in their effects than is being blasted through the world by the media. (i.e. us).
Events of natural forces are rather rare and in relation to the possibilities of life on our beautiful earth, rather moderate. Where these events do occur (storms, volcanic eruptions, floods, droughts, etc.) they are of course much more noticeable and also dangerous for those affected. But what really makes it so exceedingly difficult to face these natural events more calmly is what man has built up. The entire architecture of buildings, roads, pipelines, energy supply centres, when it is destroyed, it is a disaster for us. But if it weren't for that, we would have a few broken huts that could be quickly rebuilt.
The more advanced material technology is in the form of machines, architecture, etc., the more man fears its destruction. He now believes that with even more technology he can become master of this problem. Which in itself sounds ridiculous.
Those who push this completely self-aggrandising infatuation with technology are not much different from those who want to use and perfect it. They ascribe a power to mathematically generated models and future as well as past scenarios that, in my eyes, they did not and will not have. Modern magic, if you will.
Our knowledge that the earth's magnetic pole changes: what use is it to us? Such a global event is beyond human control. Climatic changes: the same.
I don't think much of particle accelerators, genetics, vaccinations, artificial omnipotent intelligence, because I see the effect attributed to these things as less true to reality and more true to virtuality. The belief in salvation is behind it, but since we cannot save ourselves from earthly natural events, but only live with them when they occur, the whole "science" of predictions and prevention ideas is a big load of crap.
People are not capable of thinking long and hard about things that might occur. Only their firm belief in avoidability stands between them and this realisation. Each of us only ever acts when it directly and immediately affects us. But to believe that one can act and should do so at all costs, even though there is only the possibility or probability that one could be personally affected, makes us all equally affected. The hoover of hysteria and fear of life is big and powerful. But the indifference to it in the same way that such hysteria has in its consequent effects is also a fact. Apparently, one is only capable of fearing a specific thing, and depending on the trend and spread and one's own "preference", the damage this fear does occurs in the respective parallel worlds in which people exist.
Greetings and bye.