It Wasn't Yet Time for Apocalypse

Newly declassified documents made public in the UK last week included a secret 1983 speech written for the Queen, to be broadcast in the event of imminent nuclear war. Full text of the speech is available at this link.

It's strange, but I've searched my memory on the 1980s and can find no recollection of being afraid of nuclear war during that decade. I recall experiencing some feelings of that nature in 1962 - must have been around the time of the Cuban missile crisis in the USA - and that was also the time of my first marriage. I've often thought, since, that it'd have done me a favour if the crisis had become even more intense and stopped the wedding!

Back to the 1980s then. No..... still nothing surfaces along those panicky lines. I was promoted at work in the early 80s, took a wonderful 3-week vacation in Hawaii 1984, had to undergo a major operation mid-decade.....so perhaps my mind was on other, more personal matters.

That speech written for the Queen now reads like something from a dystopian novel. I wonder if there's a comparable speech for the US President stashed away in the archives here? I wonder if there's one prepared for the current and future Presidents in the event of....well, you name it. There's a cornucopia of possibilities now, well beyond nuclear war, and some dangers now even come from within!

In the right direction....

Reading around various websites and forums recently, I got the feeling that people, in some perverse way, seem to be at best concentrating on negativity, and at worst almost willing on catastrophe and World War 3. Heading towards yet more war, especially of the World War variety is not the direction in which the world is supposed to be moving. Later I read an article by Stephen Gyllenhaal: Peace On Earth, the last paragraph struck a chord, then led me back to something else. The last para:

I'll take it all and keep right on moving -- one little ant doing his little bit among six billion other ants, because one day, you son's of bitches who talk peace and deliver war, who talk health and deliver illness, who talk good and do bad -- some day, mother f--ckers there will be peace on this planet -- real peace -- because time, real time, is on the side of evolution.

That thought of evolution catapulted me back to this 2007 article which I have mentioned before on this blog, but do not apoligise for re-airing: "A History of Violence" by Steven Pinker is interesting and a little uplifiting, though not without its own warning. As a prelude it states:

"In the decade of Darfur and Iraq, and shortly after the century of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, the claim that violence has been diminishing may seem somewhere between hallucinatory and obscene. Yet recent studies that seek to quantify the historical ebb and flow of violence point to exactly that conclusion."

Steven Pinker goes on to present his theory that, in spite of current world events, in his opinion man has become less violent over the millennia, centuries and decades. The article is well worth reading in full. He finishes with this paragraph:

"But the phenomenon does force us to rethink our understanding of violence. Man's inhumanity to man has long been a subject for moralization. With the knowledge that something has driven it dramatically down, we can also treat it as a matter of cause and effect. Instead of asking, "Why is there war?" we might ask, "Why is there peace?" From the likelihood that states will commit genocide to the way that people treat cats, we must have been doing something right. And it would be nice to know what, exactly, it is."

I want to shout out "Astrological Ages, sir?"

Age of Taurus, Age of Aries - two previous Ages when, in spite of progress in many other areas, violence and inhumanity to man flourished. The Bull and The Ram - neither signifies peace and fellowship, and the history of those Ages broadly matches the symbolism. It wasn't until The Age of Pisces dawned, that there was any sign of a very, very slow movement away from violence - but SO very slow that unless someone like Steven Pinker outlines the stages, and spells it all out, it's impossible to see. If we could have a magical video of the history of man on Earth, fast-forwarded at lightning speed, then it might become clear that we are indeed heading in the right direction, strange as it seems.

Astrologers cannot agree whether we are still in the Age of Pisces or on the cusp of the Age of Aquarius, or have entered it already. Whichever way one prefers to think, neither Pisces nor Aquarius symbolises violence. We must still be working through the dregs of what was left of the Age of Aries, I guess. Perhaps we are nowhere near as far along the astrological age trail as some suspect. But we are moving in a good direction.

Steven Pinker adds

"It is not a license for complacency: We enjoy the peace we find today because people in past generations were appalled by the violence in their time and worked to end it, and so we should work to end the appalling violence in our time. Nor is it necessarily grounds for optimism about the immediate future, since the world has never before had national leaders who combine pre-modern sensibilities with modern weapons."

We do have to accept that we live in risky times, of course. To continually focus on that fact, as so many tend to do these days, is not going to make things any less risky. All it does is to spread doom and gloom and take the joy from the life we have.

WHAT IF.........

What if a nuclear conflagration were to take place on Earth, resulting in the complete annihilation of the human race? The planet would be left devastated for many thousands of years. What if, eventually, after a minor hit from a small asteroid which carried spores from outer space, a form of life began to take root, mingling with whatever remained among the formerly radioactive rubble? Several more millennia would pass with lifeforms becoming more sophisticated and intelligent, though in no way similar in form to the human race. Would the sensibilities of these beings still be governed by the same planets, Sun and Moon, seasons and cycles as we are, we the human race ? Would the same astrological imprints still endow similar benefits and drawbacks. Would there still be that tiny seed of hatred embedded, that same seed which we all carry within us? Are we, as a race, warts and all, simply as we are because of our particular physical place in the universe? And would any other developed race spawned on this planet have the same problems because of the planetary setup?

The price we pay for the beauty of the Earth and its benefits is that its human inhabitants carry a mix of characteristics capable, at worst, of destroying themselves. If, as astrologers believe, these characteristics are governed (in part) by the physical situation of our planet Earth, and how it relates to celestial bodies surrounding it, then nothing will ever change fundamentally - only superficially. Wars and hatred will always be a part of life on Earth, the features of its inhabitants, uniforms and figureheads may change, but the core drive of hatred (and greed) will remain, always.

If this is so, then the only way for a better world would be to find another planet capable of supporting life, with a different planetary setup surrounding it. There's a snag though. What if the human race did de-camp from Earth - a different setup would not necessarily be a better one, and and it could take thousands of years to discover the new astrological workings. Humans born there might have less, or even none, of our good traits and more of our bad ones. In any case, that scenario is not likely to happen.

We have to carry on "playing with the hand fate dealt us". It's a gamble, and gamblers do very occasionally win, even with the odds against them.