The Horsemen of the Apocalypse Are Here
The Horsemen of the Apocalypse Are Here
“The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” are often referred to as Death, Famine, War and Conquest. They are viewed as harbingers of doom, of the Apocalypse. In fact, the Horsemen of the Apocalypse are already here, but there are more the first four. They are riding through the world, sewing chaos, disaster, and collapse. They are clearly visible, yet many people don’t recognize them for what they are. In fact, instead of resisting them, we often assist them and help create our doom and destruction.
The current and new Horsemen are Climate Change, Extinction, Pollution, Drought, Pestilence, Famine and of course War. But they are being led by Greed and Arrogance. They have disciples --- our political, business, and religious “leaders”. We respond with willful ignorance or corruption and cooperation.
What is the evidence they are here? The evidence is everywhere.
The planet is starting to burn up. The oceans are hotter than they have ever been. Corals are bleaching and dying. Hurricanes and tornadoes are more frequent and more severe. Every year sets a new high temperature record, everywhere on the planet. The permafrost is on fire. The glaciers are disappearing. The arctic ice cap will be gone in your lifetime. More heat means more energy and more energy means more destructive storms.
Extinction: The rate of extinction of species: insects, amphibians, birds, trees is higher than any epoch since the dinosaurs died off. You won’t see it on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, but you will see it everywhere else on the planet, if you look. You only see what you are prepared to see. It doesn’t happen in your backyard, yet.
Pollution: PFAS, TCE (trichloro-ethylene, also known as dry cleaning solvent), Pesticides, Plastics, Organophosphates (PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls) are everywhere. Nanoparticles of plastics are killing ocean plankton. Skipjack tuna in the open Pacific Ocean have significant levels of PCBs in their tissue. PFAS is being found in our water, everywhere. High body levels of fire retardants are being blamed for breast cancer, early onset of puberty and other endocrine diseases.
Drought: The ice caps and glaciers are melting, and major cities are running out of water. The Agribusiness industry is pumping so much ground water that water tables are dropping, and wells everywhere are running dry. Salt water is entering the aquifer in Iran (the country once known as Persia) and poisoning the crocus sativus crop – this is the crop that gives us saffron. Salt water is percolating into underground freshwater aquifers and ruining large areas of what was fertile agricultural land. The “fertile crescent”, as it was once called, is drying up and becoming infertile. Large areas of Africa are turning into desert. Food shipped from Ukraine, in the middle of a war, is essential for food security in Africa, because of drought.
Migration of people is often driven by disaster, beginning with the collapse of agriculture. We have hordes of people at the southern border of the USA, largely because of crop failure and drought and political instability; this will only get worse.
Pestilence: The giant sequoias are dying. Massive die-offs of penguins and seals have been recorded, just in the last year, from the current wave of avian influenza. This is happening even in Antarcetica. Syphilis in America is the highest it has been since 1950. Vaccine rates are falling. We eliminated smallpox. We are failing to eliminate polio; it’s coming back. We eliminated measles from the USA … it’s back and on the rise. We have a vaccine to prevent death from cervical cancer – it has been labeled a conspiracy. New diseases are appearing, e.g. the Zika virus. Malaria is back in the extreme southern USA, along with Dengue virus. Is Yellow Fever next?
Famine. There have been quiet famines in Africa, North Korea and in “undesirable” populations over the last 40 years, but now they are accelerating. Famines have been happening, but just not in the ‘first world’ countries, yet.
War and rumors of war. Ukraine. Gaza. Sri Lanka. North Korea. China and Taiwan. North Korea is supplying weapons to Russia, for its invasion of Ukraine.
This marauding band has two ringleaders – Greed and Arrogance.
It is Greed and Arrogance together, who encourage us to overfish the oceans. It is Arrogance who tells us that we can stop the chaos at the border, that the “bad people” won’t get over the wall. It is Greed and Arrogance together who justify invasion and genocide. It is Greed who entices business leaders to produce fossil fuels that destroy the planet and political leaders to ask for bribes from the business leaders, to remove the protections against destruction of our planet.
The Horsemen are all here. They ride through the countryside daily. The horsemen are the evidence of and the mechanism of the destruction of our civilization, indeed our very survival. But we don’t resist. Instead, we cooperate in our own demise. Why? Why do we not change our ways? Why do we not resist? Why do we not even see them?
Business leaders and political leaders offer assurances. They have been corrupted by Greed and Arrogance. PFAS, PCBs, TCE and other pollutants didn’t just happen. They were manufactured. Political leaders take bribes to protect business leaders, then offer a comfortable way of life to their followers. Our cheap gasoline, SUVs, huge data centers to support streaming and on line content, all come at a cost. We used to say, the cost would come later. But, it’s here now. As panic rises, authoritarian politicians deny the danger and tell us we must vote for them, to protect ourselves. Their disciples of destruction tell us none of these developing disasters are real, or they don’t matter, and we must follow them to save our way of life.
To lead us down the path of destruction, they have a Pied Piper of disinformation and willful ignorance. We have our modern ‘bread and circuses’ – “Just supersize it and don’t worry so much.’ We have our movies online, our processed foods, wrapped in polluting plastic containers that we take home in polluting plastic bags.
There is an old quote: “In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” But in reality, in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is not king. In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man will be hunted down and killed as a heretic.
The apocalypse is here, right now. It is happening in slow motion. The evidence is there, but it’s not on your favorite streaming platform. We only see what we are prepared to see, and only if we look.
It may not be easily visible on Wall Street or 5th Avenue, but Lloyd’s of London knows it’s real. Ask your insurance company why they keep raising your insurance rates or deny your request for renewal; it’s because of increasing losses. We have become accustomed to insurance being expensive or impossible to obtain, in coastal flood-prone areas. Now it’s happening in Iowa and throughout the Midwest.
The Horsemen are here. Prepare or die.