One of those aspects they use in their propaganda is that it must happen to us or our extended self to qualify as a "catastrophe," or on the other hand, that it must happen to an enemy for it not to be considered to be a catastrophe.
Let's begin to dissect their demented propaganda infested minds by first taking a look at the meaning of the word:
ca·tas·tro·phe [kuh-tas-truh-fee] noun
1. a sudden and widespread disaster: the catastrophe of war.
2. any misfortune, mishap, or failure; fiasco: The play was so poor our whole evening was a catastrophe.
3. a final event or conclusion, usually an unfortunate one; a disastrous end: the great catastrophe of the Old South at Appomattox.
4. (in a drama) the point at which the circumstances overcome the central motive, introducing the close or conclusion ...
5.Geology. a sudden, violent disturbance, especially of a part of the surface of the earth; cataclysm.
(Dictionary, "catastrophe", emphasis added). We can readily conclude that the definition of the word "catastrophe" qualifies to describe some events ongoing now (Air Pollution Kills 7 Million Annually).
The word "catastrophe" also describes many oft-repeated human events of history:
A new study sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.
Noting that warnings of 'collapse' are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that "the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history." Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to "precipitous collapse - often lasting centuries - have been quite common."
The research project is based on a new cross-disciplinary 'Human And Nature DYnamical' (HANDY) model, led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharri of the US National Science Foundation-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, in association with a team of natural and social scientists. The study based on the HANDY model has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal, Ecological Economics.
It finds that according to the historical record even advanced, complex civilisations are susceptible to collapse, raising questions about the sustainability of modern civilisation:
"The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent."
By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy.
(Exploded Planet Hypothesis - 2). The way the word "catastrophe" has been used in literature and even in common conversation also illustrates that in our world we have already had climate change catastrophes, and will continue to do so.
That is because the definition of the word "catastrophe" does not require being the worst of anything to qualify as a "catastrophe":
"Jimmy Fallon and I play regularly at the Bayonne Golf Club in Jersey. He's eighteen holes of fun. Any time we play he has moments of brilliance, but also moments of utter catastrophe." - Mario Batali
"Certainly I'm still mining my experiences as a journalist. I think it's no coincidence that all three of my novels basically are about how people act in a time of catastrophe. Do they go to their best self or their worst self?" - Geraldine Brooks
"There was a time when the community that was on the Net was homogenous and civilized. Now it's not. We're in the middle of chaos. It may calm down. But the alternative is that there's a total meltdown of the system and that it becomes unusable. That would be a catastrophe." - Robert Cailliau
(Brainy Quotes). Nevertheless, on a somewhat more serious side of the meaning of the word, the "the great catastrophe of the Old South at Appomattox" is remembered in the minds of some as a catastrophe because it happened "to us or our extended self", but that same event is celebrated by others because it "happened to an enemy" (see definition #3).
Those definitions of "catastrophe" do not work in a global context, because it happens to "us" and to "them", so the denialist mind perverts the meaning of the word to hide the global aspects even where the word "catastrophe" might aptly apply.
A global catastrophe under the definition of the word certainly would be "any misfortune, mishap, or failure" that affects the global population or our entire civilization (see definition #2).
A rogue global climate caused by global pollution can fit the bill.
Today and now is a new epoch, the sixth mass extinction epoch, and it applies to all members of the human family around the globe (On The Memorial Daze - 2).
Catastrophe has not been a rare event in the past, and the sixth mass extinction catastrophe now taking place isn't a loner either, in terms of "that meaning" of the word "catastrophe."
Let's animate The Tenets of Ecocosmology to show that individualism seems to be a casualty of the current hypothesis as it applies generally to the physical cosmos.
By that I mean that the tenets generally apply to the survival of groups, species, civilizations, and/or inhabitants of planets near central stars rather than specifically applying to individuals.
Using the Exploded Planet Hypothesis (EPH) as a background, let's walk through a scenario where living entities must abandon a planet in order to survive.
To focus the inquiry even more, let's also hypothesize that governments on that planet don't believe that the approaching catastrophe is a reality, however, many individuals sprinkled throughout the civilization do know it is coming.
This concept is not far from the current reality on the planet Earth, at least in the near term, and is a certainty in the long term.
Especially when we consider the true nature of the Sun, the solar system, and the currently accepted "knowledge" of civilization at this time.
We know that society in general is not capable of taking the Tenets of Ecocosmology seriously enough to change its fundamental behaviors (cf. "When": The Most Unstable Adverb?).
But, there are individuals within various meme complexes or groups who do sense, by their analysis of reality, the approaching dangers touched upon by the Tenets of Ecocosmology:
A new study sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.
Noting that warnings of 'collapse' are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that "the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history." Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to "precipitous collapse - often lasting centuries - have been quite common."
The research project is based on a new cross-disciplinary 'Human And Nature DYnamical' (HANDY) model, led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharri of the US National Science Foundation-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, in association with a team of natural and social scientists. The study based on the HANDY model has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal, Ecological Economics.
It finds that according to the historical record even advanced, complex civilisations are susceptible to collapse, raising questions about the sustainability of modern civilisation:
"The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent."
By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy.
(NASA Supported Study, emphasis added). What can individuals do once they investigate, read, observe, and come to that conclusion --when the culture around them is fundamentally animated by the bias or societal belief that "warnings of 'collapse' are ... fringe or controversial"?
Many of us implode when we realize that the cultural Amygdala (Hypothesis: The Cultural Amygdala) of most of our cultures has paralyzed most of the types of cognition in our society that comprehend our direction, at least at this time, and at least in terms of a unified effort such as a "let's go to the moon in ten years mega-effort" reminiscent of the JFK years.
And, let's also consider the "preppers" and "survivalists":
"Survivalism is a movement of individuals or groups (called survivalists or preppers) who are actively preparing for emergencies, including possible disruptions in social or political order, on scales from local to international. Survivalists often acquire emergency medical and self-defense training, stockpile food and water, prepare to become self-sufficient, and build structures (e.g., a survival retreat or an underground shelter) that may help them survive a catastrophe."
(Survivalism, Wikipedia). Basically these two reactions (suicide, preparing for small-group survival) seem like both overreactions and under-reactions.
Which shows that these reactions are induced or substantially influenced by cultural Amygdala impulses, rather than resulting from being informed by a comprehensive solution (but I have to say that those who see the survival of the most informed, who would upon their own survival begin a new, more informed civilization, are enlightened --at least in their initial approach).
Where did the fears, denials, and paralysis, which form the structure of our civilization's cognitive dissonance, come from?
The EPH raises the specter and/or hypothesis that some of the life forms of the planet that exploded survived (by leaving, or in the case of microbes, by being transferred to Earth by meteors or comets) to now influence our planet after migrating "here" (e.g. Maybe Human Civilization Is From Mars & Venus?).
Yes, "here," where we have had five abiotic mass-extinction events (currently in the biotic sixth) that have destroyed most life then existing on Earth time and again [abiotically; but see (Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch, 2, 3, 4) for the ongoing anthropogenic, biotic extinction dynamics].
All of which influence the evolution on this planet.
The cosmic argument ("its not just an Earthly dynamic") from astronomer types, such as a review of the evidence of an exploded planet in our solar system, is documented with specificity:...
Meteors and comets cannot date back to the origins of the solar system because they consist of evolved matter. There are three kinds of meteors just like asteroids. Comets consist of water ice and often they come with rocks in their core. - Water cannot form in the void of space. Water can only form on the surface of a planet with an atmosphere. Therefore, comets provide the most convincing argument in favor of a planet, which exploded within the solar system.
...
When keeping the aforesaid in mind the various moons of the Solar System are no more an enigma; neither from their origin nor from their composition. The moons were parts of the former planet, differing among themselves according to which parts of the former planet constitute their matter. As for the moons of the planet Jupiter:
Ganymede is a former ocean, which took its islands and part of a continent along into space. Through the forces of gravity this moon has formed as a gigantic ball of water ice and rocks, which on account of their higher density and weight have settled predominately near the center of gravity. But there is enough solid matter present to partly reach this moons surface. Therefore, Ganymede looks like a child's marble with surface features in different colors of water ice and rock.
Similar to Ganymede Callisto is a former ocean but it contains only a small amount of rocks or no rocks at all and much sand. The masses of sand of the former ocean were thoroughly mixed with its waters by the force of the explosion blowing them out into space. Before all the sand could be pulled to the center of the newly formed moon by gravity its outer layers consisting still of a mixture of sand and water were frozen solid in the absolute zero temperature of space. Consequently, Callisto's surface consists of a mixture of sand and water ice.
If there were rocks they were pulled to the center of this moon by gravity. In between surface and the center there is probably a layer of almost pure water ice, which did not freeze fast enough to keep the sand or the rocks it was mixed with from being attracted by the center of gravity. Because of the peculiar composition of its matter this moon lacks the typical characteristics of the Earth moon. At the time of the formation of the outer crust meteors simply went through the thin crust and disappeared in the watery interior. Later meteors, which where already scarce, produced craters but these craters were filled in by the water ice plus sand mixture, which produced the wave like structures on Callisto's surface typical for sand dunes or waves. - Sand cannot form in space because it takes water action and an atmosphere to produce sand.
In contrast to the before mentioned moons Io consists of matter from deep inside the former planet. Accordingly, Io's matter shows the characteristics of matter as existing in planet's cores. This and the influences of gravity and radiation from Jupiter and the moon Europa are responsible for the extensive volcanic activity on the moon Io. While volcanoes on the Earth can produce huge amounts of water vapor clouds this is not the case on the moon Io, since its matter came from a planet's core and does not contain water vapor. Therefore, Io's volcanic system is kept going mainly by sulfurous gases and molten igneous rock. These are responsible for Io's typical colors whereas the volcanic activity accounts for the characteristic surface structures whose craters did not originate from meteor impacts but from volcanic activity.
The moon Europa originated from magma masses of the former planet. Under the influence of gravity these liquid magna masses contracted to a sphere and then formed a solid crust. This process set free huge amount of water vapor, which precipitated in frozen form on Europa's surface once it was formed producing its typical smooth appearance. The long cracks appeared in Europa's surface when its crust had already solidified while magma in its interior was still contracting as it was cooling down. This contraction caused the irregular long cracks and faults in Europa's otherwise smooth surface. Contrary to some other moons of Jupiter's planetary system Europa does not show craters. - When most of the meteors struck Europa's surface still was liquid and the traces of meteoric impacts simply disappeared. Meteor craters left from later hits are covered by precipitation of water vapor crystals.
(World Mysteries 8, scroll down to the third article "Exploded Planet", by Rich Anders; NOTE: that author's religious notions are his own).
Remember that there can be many reasons for a planetary explosion, so in the first post of this series I arbitrarily selected the reason for the explosion to have been a defective Dyson Grid installation.
In closing this post, for now I will add two things for your perusal:
1) Ecocosmology only presents the road map ("I Am The Highway"), not the vehicle with which to "travel that highway" using that map (The Tenets of Ecocosmology --- see especially the comments);
Future posts in this series will look at various ideologies and dogmas that focus on the issue of individual survival, by asserting that individuals are not axiomatically forsaken when their groups are consumed by unawareness of impending doom.
