Years of Living Dangerously … One Last Pitch for Human Viability

MY TURN-Next year it will be 400 years since the Roman Inquisition concluded that Galileo Galilei was wrong and that the earth and not the sun is the center of our solar- strike that- Ptolemic terra-centered system. And in a manner that one might argue was a precursor to the mafia, they made Galileo an offer he couldn't refuse- recant or be put to death for heresy. 

Since Galileo's mom had no dummies, Galileo, like modern-day media, choose survival in lieu of being an intellectual purist. His friend Giuseppe Goombah heard Gal say, "Hell, I know I'm right. Better to live so I can fight another day.” 

One has the feeling today that the only reason one cannot still get a good argument as to the earth's place in the solar system is because the intellectual successors of those who ran the Roman Inquisition are too busy denying global warming in the face of uncontroverted evidence. Rather, they continue asserting their egocentric view of humanity to the exclusion of all other life, which in itself is the problem. 

Alas, I think even Galileo would not back down on this one, since the evidence is more and more overwhelming that scientists have actually been conservative in their projections as to just how fast and irreversible the changes our unabated and even increased use of fossil fuel is causing. 

And I must confess that my own left wing views have put me in mortal danger of falling off of their flat world into oblivion. 

Not willing to take this militant ignorance lying down, producer-director James Cameron, Harrison Ford, Don Cheadle, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jerry Weintraub and other luminaries of our epoch continue to exhibit hubris and an unwillingness to accept our fate to be literally burned alive in a hell of our own making. 

To that end, they have produced a series of programs for Showtime entitled The Years of Living Dangerously that has well-known celebrities and scientists going around the world to see firsthand how global warming is rapidly making our miraculous and unique green orb unfit for human life. 

Whether this has any effect on truly non-spiritual religious and greedy corporate fanatics is doubtful, given the past performance of their species. However, I think Chris Hedges recently put what Cameron and Co. are doing something like this: Whether we are able to avoid humanity going over the edge into the abyss, given a choice between cynicism and living in a manner that accepts the futility of human struggle, if I have to go down, I choose to go down living my life consistent with moral values and the ideals of my youth. 

By clicking on the following link at: theyearsoflivingdangerously.com, you can see for yourself the first episode of the daunting reality and task we now all face. Since our "creation" G-d has continued to pose the same question to humanity- life or death- while the means of our self-destruction has only gotten greater and greater throughout human history. 

One has the feeling that HaShem- real or metaphor- might once and for all want humanity to choose whether they want to make heaven or hell out of this planet. 

 

(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He’s a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected]) 

-cw

  

CityWatch

Vol 12 Issue 31

Pub: Apr 15, 2014