COVID 19:  THE ESSENCE OF THE SUPERCIVILIZATION

By John Moser

Posted on April 1, 2020

Editorial

The “war” that we face with the coronavirus is real and it is here. It is not going away anytime soon. That is our reality. As I wrote in my book (The Supercivilization:  Survival in the Era of Human Versus Human) in 2015, we are a Supercivilization and it is no more apparent than today. If we deny our reality, we will succumb to the various threats, including the coronavirus, which will work with other threats to perpetrate synergistic catastrophe. We must adopt the notion that a Supercivilization exists today, so we can stay strong and effectively limit those major threats.

We face several threats and the most obvious is coronavirus in the year 2020. However it is not the only threat. There are others:  climate change, demagoguery, resource declines, inequality, and thermonuclear war. All of these factors catalyze the pandemic of the coronavirus and, alternatively, their foreboding threat can also be used to motivate us. Continue reading

WE NEED A WALL (AROUND TRUMP)

By John Moser

Posted on January 28, 2019

Editorial

As of this writing, President Trump just ended the Government shutdown over “The Wall.”  It quickly became clear to Mr. Trump that Democrats would never allow the building of a wall. Why? Let’s first look at the origins of the concept.  The idea, according to Stuart Anderson of Forbes magazine, came originally from Roger Stone (now under indictment) and Sam Nunberg as a means of keeping the United States focused on illegal immigration. Trump became smitten with the concept as he eventually called it a “big beautiful wall.”  And he often corrected reporters by correcting them, “It’s not a fence, it’s a wall. You just misreported it.”   No scientific evidence went into the concept; no real thought; no studies of significance. It was merely a campaign slogan that eventually became Trump’s reality. Trump said it so many times, he convinced himself of the concept and it became his personal battle with humanity. Continue reading

HISTORIANS: WHAT WERE WE THINKING?

By John Moser

Posted on August 22, 2020

Editorial

When historians look back and study humanity in the early twenty-first century they will be asking a series of questions. One could be about Covid-19: why did the United States ambivalently allow so many people to die of Covid-19? We did not stop Covid-19 in spite of all the following: 1) we quickly learned how it spreads and its basic pathophysiology; 2) we had recently dealt with warning signs of a coming pandemic by identifying SARS and MERS, two similar coronaviruses, merely a decade before; 3) we were aware of a coming pandemic a full two months before it arrived on our shores and we did virtually nothing during this period; 4) even now we have not fully embraced the simplest of measures such as national mandatory mask wearing initiatives and universal coordinated lockdowns. Hundreds of thousands have died already and perhaps millions of Americans could die, yet to use President Trump’s words, “It is what it is.

Another question could be about climate change and why in the year 2020 we have done little to slow its progress. Our atmospheric carbon dioxide is now 414 ppm, is the highest in over 800,000 years, and the highest in all human history. Our carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise as does our atmospheric temperature. We are now 1°C above the 1951-1980 average. We elected a President who still ignores its existence and has purposely limited our exploration for solutions. Continue reading

CALIFORNIA FIRES RAGE BUT AMERICANS DON’T

By John Moser

Posted on August 10, 2018

Editorial

August 6, 2018 seemed like a typical day. I woke up and found soot on my car in Napa, California and the sun did not shine; the sun was an orange hue which seemed a mix of smoke and overcast. I drove to Sacramento where I work and got out of my car. The soot was still raining down on my car like snowflakes. Inland, where there was no overcast in the summertime, I noticed more white cover. Odd?  After realizing Sacramento doesn’t have overcast in the summertime, I concluded these were smoke clouds, not water clouds. There was no place to go to get out of the soot. No one seems to care. Casual acceptance is the operative phrase. California is changing rapidly. And for the worse. I went to Lake Tahoe in late July, one of my favorite places on this Earth and dipped my toe into the water in Incline Village, Nevada. I couldn’t believe it. The water was incredibly warmer. I could suddenly swim without any difficulty, unlike the times as a child when I was chilled to the point of shivering and being forced to take my time to adjust to the outrageously cold water.

Continue reading

IS TRUMPISM HERE TO STAY?

By John Moser

Posted on March 26, 2019

Editorial

If anyone hasn’t noticed, Republicans continue to support the most dangerous president this country has ever seen. And this weekend’s letter by William Barr, appointed by President Trump as Attorney General, essentially absolving Mr. Trump of any crimes of Russian collusion and obstruction of justice, is no exception to his ongoing support. This horrific nightmare of historic proportions continues as the President will most assuredly attempt to punish people who question his power. It seems astonishing, at first glance, that anyone who is so ignorant, impetuous, narcissistic, dishonest, flawed, and racist could continue to command the support of so many Americans. He does and it is not an insignificant number, either. In the most recent Gallup polls, Republicans still support this madman with 90% of the vote, even though his job approval rating has been around 39% for the general population.

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MR TRUMP AND THE PARADOX OF INDIVIDUAL POWER

By John Moser

Posted on December 14, 2018

Editorial

Among the most disturbing things that has ever happened to this country has not just been the behavior of Donald Trump while in office:  it is the permissive nature of all of us who have allowed this man to ingratiate himself as a self-proclaimed messiah.  I have pointed out the dangers of the rise of a demagogue in my book The Supercivilization:  Survival in the Era of Human Versus Human.  I argued in 2015 that we need to be extremely careful in choosing and even managing our leaders through meticulously stable institutions that do not allow rogue behavior.  Today we are subject to manipulations for two very important reasons:  first, the propaganda we are exposed to has never been more subject to manipulative behavior from single sources and second, the conduit for this propaganda has never been so lightning-quick to affect every single living human being nearly instantaneously.  I call this the paradox of individual power.

The paradox of individual power means that even  though each of us has never been a smaller, so seemingly trivial share of humanity (1/7.7 billionth), each individual has never had so much power to influence the entirety of humanity than today.   Our interconnectedness is so great today that we have never been so susceptible to the propaganda of those in power.  Why now?  Because, in the past, if we didn’t like someone or the ideas of someone who ruled over us, we could leave and go to other geographical, spiritual, or cultural areas in which that person’s propaganda was nonexistent or irrelevant.  Today, that is impossible, and so we are extraordinarily susceptible to the manipulation of our minds from rogue leaders, or demagogues. We have no place to go as the Internet has created a social glue, or a gigantic homogeneous culture (I call The Supercivilization)  that binds us together and profoundly favors those interests in power. Continue reading