Foreign Correspondence

[otraque]

The shortest war cycle was 22 years.
Say started a war cycle in 2002/2003 we very likely have at least 20 years ahed of us.
But all war cycles now contain weaponry that can make the next war after one being fought with wooden clubs.
There used to be a world clock the measured Nuke danger,
Midnight was the horror moment.
It was at 11.59pm during Cuban missile crisis.
I was in NYC during that time.
On the day of highest crisis and TVs were and radios were playing what siren sounds meant---i forget them, but like 3 blaring of sirens with pause and then 3 more blarings meant missiles were heading towards NYC.
People behavior, strangely benignly fatalistic--that the NYC character.
My first wife and i went for a walk in a park.
We discussed do we make a run to the fall-out shelters in the area if the 'missiles are on their way' signal sounded.
We came to the conclusion, what's the point, we knew what BS those shelters were, and who would want to live in what followed.
But now there is another critical mass element, global economy has never been in history at such a status that in a war cycle the global economy could have a TOTAL MELTOWN .
Even Greenspan when ask "is it possible that there could be a complete collapse of the entire financial system thru out the world?" Replied "Yes, it is possible, economics is not an exact science, and i as a philosophic objectivist can not deny the possibility could happen, i think the likelihood small but yes it could happen."
A global financial collapse at this time in history of massive cities, major over population, extreme ultra poverty for over a billion( those that make less than one dollar a day) would send the world at minimum into chaos, prolonged and devastating, a new dark age looking far into the future.
And at worst, within this chaos and despair someone with 'button power' thinks the only solution is mass depopulation via the nuke.
The lets start all over ultimate doom concept taking hold in someone with 'button power' being in place.
This is not sci-fi, this be objective analysis of a definite scenario that could happen, i place it at 25%.
Thornton Wilder, the eternal ultimate romantic optimist about mankind wrote the play "by the skin of our death", that man has always prevailed if at times but by the "the skin of its' teeth".
This is really a complacent assumption.
The eminent historian Arnold Toynbee concluded his 10 volume 'The History of Civilization' by saying there is no hope for man's future.
He spent 10 volumes of awesome thought exercises and deep deep research to arrive at that conclusion.
The assumption that mankind will never crash down on itself into an abyss of chaos and potential annihilation is really a presumption, a ' taking for granted' we will proceed onward to some grand destiny, somehow, eventually; that when i put to feircely objective analysis i can see this has clearly never been proven.
In fact progress has increased significantly the chances mankind's destiny is to fail, horribly.
Tom Paine's "Age of Reason" is great little book but it has one fatal flaw, the assumption that man as a mass is capable of becoming a reason ruled mass has no foundation, it is quite possibly a phantasmal delusion.
I look at the future with as much brutal eyed objectivity as i can muster and i can as a result say the doomdayers actually have a very strong case.
That man is destined to reap what it has sown, and what it has sown be many more seeds of its own destruction than seeds that could avert this destruction.
Observing americans the past years has affirmed what a pathetic species is man when viewd as mass, rather than on an individual basis.
I challenge anyone to write how man will prevail and not have be but "feel good" BS.