Middle Ages

From my limited vantage point it appears that we are receding into the Middle Ages. Possibly, even, the Dark Ages.

Technically we are progressing with ever more and greater inventions and developments but socially we are not just being stunted we are regressing.

The first, and most obvious sign, is that we are no longer talking to one other face to face. In cafes and buses we see people gazing at their mobile ‘phones engrossed in whatever it is that they are surveying rather than speaking to the person next to them. 

It happens in cars and in the home. Attention is focussed on the ‘phone, little on the eating and almost none, if any, on the other persons at the table.

I was appalled to see that people are paying to have waiters and waitresses be rude to them in a particular eating establishment. Is this a fashion or is it some sort of knee jerk reaction that it is better for someone to be verbally abusive to you than to be ignored by your friends and family?

On a broader front, we have gangs of ersatz Muslims using force to the point of death in making people see their point of view. Their point of view is, inevitably, that only their form of Islam is acceptable. That ‘their form of Islam’ is not Islamic at all seems to be irrelevant to them.

These people are socially barbaric, illiterate for the most part and easily led by those who have some sort of crazed power lust.

These people also exist in the Christian World. These are extremists with a view of the World about them that does not belong in the modern World.

Part of this is that the religion of politics and greed has overwhelmed scientific sense.

Just as in the Middle Ages, people of science are being hung out to dry because the things they tell us clash with the things that we want to believe – that we are told to believe.

A prime example of this is climate change. The scientists, all of them, tell us that the World is warming up. That carbon dioxide emission is far too high. We are cooking.

Then the die-hards tell us that it cannot be, that the winter is far colder than ever it was. We are freezing! How does this gel with the idea of global warming?

If you care to read the scientific journals and publications they will explain this freezing as part of the features of global warming. This will happen - it is yet another indicator of what they are saying is true. It is valid.

All the energy that we use on Earth comes from the sun – with the notable exception of nuclear fuel. Everything else comes from the sun. Plants feed animals and we eat plants and animals. Wind and wave machines produce electricity from winds and waves that are produced by sunlight.

The coal and oil that we burn is sunlight that was laid down below the earth millions of years ago.

We are now releasing the carbon from all those millennia into our modern atmosphere – a place where it does not belong.

Then there are those who blandly stand up and tell us that it is all hoo-haa, it is all nonsense.

I have, just, been reading about a new condominium development on the shores of Miami. The prices for the condoms… sorry, condominium apartments, are in the millions of US dollars. Penthouses are in the double figures of millions of US dollars.

I have written an e-mail to the developers stating an interest in purchasing a penthouse apartment but would like to know what the height of the foyer is above mean sea level; do they have a contingency plan for services, i.e., waste, water, power, transportation, should the lower floors be submerged and, finally, do the much-vaunted International quality restaurants on the Ground Floor have seafood on their menus?

Of course, the argument is that Global Warming is just a theory. Well, gravity is just a theory. Perhaps we could go and watch one of the proponents of ‘No Climate Warning – It’s A Hoax’ leap from the top of a condominium in Miami and test the validity of a ‘theory’.

Welcome to the 21^stCentury. A new century where science is relegated to the background – unless it is making new cell phones.