In my 80

April 13, 2019.

“This is a scary time.”  Why in quotes? Because I think that the fear of impending catastrophic disaster has been with the human race since its beginnings. Surely during my own lifetime there has been reason, every year, somewhere on the planet, for someone to say “This is a scary time.”

The scariest moments for me?

— World War II

— The Korean War

— The Cuban Missile Crisis

— The assassination President Kennedy

— 1968 assassinations and revolutions

— The Vietnam War

— The “Cold” war between USA and USSR.

— Watergate

— 9/11

— and right now!

What is most scary for me at the moment? I tried, but I am unable to rank the frights beginning with the scariest. So I simply list my top ten fears.

  1. Earth’s climate change.
  2. The concentration of wealth across the planet. That is, the one percenters. And entrance into that concentration of wealth of the hoodlums of the planet who will have greater and greater power to change laws and procedures for their benefit.
  3. Control of artificial intelligence (AI) with its logarithmic accumulation of data.
  4. The end of democracy including what is left of it in the United States.
  5. Hegemony of the most powerful nations whereby they use not only persuasion and entertainment and money to influence less-well-off nations but also overt destructive power.
  6. Religious wars.
  7. The continued rise of nationalism.
  8. Uncontrolled population expansion.
  9. A difficult-to-combat virus or other kind of new illness.
  10. 10. Destruction of earth’s natural resources.

That is a heavy list. Yet at the same time I recognize I am like people throughout history: they and I had (have) something to fear. An excellent example that is seldom parsed in religious circles was the expectation (and fear) during Jesus’ life of a universal and horrific end of time. Jesus himself referred to it and seemingly believed it would happen.

I, in my 80s, live a kind of contradiction of sorts: it’s a scary time but I do not live in fear. Why not?  If those ten are as scary as I make them, why do I not tremble from morning until night?  Am I able to explicate this contradiction? I shall try in a future blog post.

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