As a point of reference, I began to write on this theme in late 2019 and for reasons that will eventually be obvious, I stopped. However, I’ve never ceased to be interested in it and now feel some compulsion to revise and complete it. Granted, it’s a bit long, which may be challenging for some readers. In these days of 800-word articles and columns and even far shorter “sound bites,” we risk becoming inoculated to measured and deep dives into content, absent purchasing full books. I spend a good part of my unallocated time exploring a wide range of topics … sort of like free ranging 150 years ago in the Old West. No barbed wire to limit my exploration. As a result, when my interest is piqued, I can follow links through the increasingly vast reservoir of human knowledge and opinion, with my objective of just understanding what is true and important. This extended reflection is kind of like a poor substitute for an impressionist painting: Multitude of dots when viewed up close but a clear and vibrant picture when taken as a whole. I make no claim to a monopoly of wisdom and readers may well disagree with my premises. In fact, my intent is that what follows is recognized for objectivity where warranted and that the subsequent analyses are useful for generating healthy thought and dialogue.

Fundamentally, I have two related objectives. The first is to briefly summarize what I see as five different forces that are regularly viewed as threatening the survival of our civilizations and, potentially, our human species. The second objective will be to offer two distinct and conflicting “lenses” through which we, as individuals, view the ultimate impact of these perceived crises on our lives and futures. 

Finally, a quick cautionary note. The way this will be formatted on my website can easily lead one to jump to the conclusion first. I think this will distort the implications of the piece and so, if at all possible, I ask you to follow the line of thinking as the piece unfolds so that the concluding portion is understood in context. Thank you.

* * * * *

The first time I encountered what could be called a “threat to my existence” was as an eight-year-old in October 1962. Well, the “my” would really have been an “our” as I understood that this threat was far greater than a personal one. I was given to understand by my second-grade teacher, Mrs. Lowe, that my classmates and I needed to practice a new thing called “duck and cover” when, upon her command, we all needed to crawl under our desks, knees up and heads protected.

I was savvy enough at that young age to be aware of something called nuclear bombs and missiles, that our principal adversary, Russia, had hundreds or thousands of them (as did we Americans) and that it was within the realm of possibility that those Russian weapons could very well descend upon Palo Alto, California. In fact, I have a distinct memory of walking to Ohlones Elementary School, just several blocks from our home on Ely Street, gazing up at the sky and wondering what bombs would look like if they were to fall down upon us. Heady and emotional stuff for a young kid.

And it wasn’t just a thing for a child. The Jenkins family around the corner decided to excavate their front yard in our modest neighborhood in order to build and fortify a bunker or “bomb shelter” that would withstand nuclear war. When I checked with my friend, the daughter, twelve years ago at a high school reunion, I found out her parents were still alive, and they still had the bomb shelter ready. Of course, we see this play out everywhere today: Survivalists, preppers, massive shelters for the uber rich and so forth. What are the rest of us to do?

Some two decades later, I taught the history of that seminal event in October 1962 in great detail to my high school students. It was illuminating for many reasons.

So, from the early 1960s, through the 1980s, this phenomenon gripped the world as a concept called “Mutually Assured Destruction” or MAD and was broadly believed to be the single greatest threat to our species. As a result, it created a kind of undercurrent of terror in large swaths of our population (although mostly as deep background noise and not the kind of terror that gripped us in our daily lives).

In summary, I have spent the last sixty years dealing with a thing we can call “existential crises.”

After leaving childhood behind, I became highly trained in several academic disciplines, namely History, Theology/Philosophy and Educational Leadership. Along the way, I acquired a decent understanding of Economics, Political Science, Psychology, and some of the hard sciences. For some who know me, I’d be described as a thinker or ponderer, continually trying to access information and then package it in a way that provides context and meaning.

Which brings me to the point of this reflection.

While the term “existential crisis” was not around in my youth and maybe not even around into my early adulthood, today it is ubiquitous, meaning it seems to be everywhere all the time. We are asked to choose which thing or things we most fear, not just for ourselves but for our country or, even, species.

With the explosion of instant-access media from every corner, we are inundated with voices that seek to capture our attention and, to be blunt, our deepest emotional response. Fundamentally, fear sells.

So, from my perspective, here are some of the main focal points where people’s (I’m mostly drawing from the point of view of western civilization … highly educated and generally prosperous) attention is drawn. I give my short evaluation of these, especially as what I see as their real impact on our collective future.

Nuclear Weapons

We will start where I started, Nuclear Proliferation. In the 1960s it was well known that there were five countries in the world who possessed nuclear weapons and, to varying degrees, their amount and ability to deliver them. They were the U.S., the Soviet Union, China, Great Britain and France. The Cold War separated them into Communist and the West. Two “hot” wars had developed by then, Korea and Vietnam, as well as lesser conflicts around the world. These five nations comprised the permanent membership on the United Nation’s Security Council. At some point, surreptitiously, Israel acquired the technology to manufacture these weapons, probably stealing that know-how from the U.S. as did the Soviets in the 1940s. Ultimately, India and Pakistan joined the “nuclear club” as did North Korea. So, there are eight nations that publicly claim the possession of these “doomsday” weapons, one (Israel) which does not make that claim (but everyone knows they have them) and one (Iran) that everyone knows is trying to get them, although they generally dispute that claim.

The world is a very dangerous place, and many authors and movie producers have made a fortune writing novels and making movies about rogue weapons getting into the hands of bad people. So, whether international disputes could trigger a WWIII type of event that would culminate in nuclear exchange or rogue entities smuggle weapons into large cities, it is the stuff of nightmares. There is even a thing called The Doomsday Clock, run by scientists who let us know how close the minute and second hands are to midnight. Defcon 1: Launch.

Demographics and Population Disruptions

Interestingly, a second crisis filtered its way into our consciousness, beginning in the 1960s and it actually has sprouted a third which I will get to.

This next crisis was a result of rapid growth in worldwide population. This phenomenon was perceived by many at the time as ultimately upending civilization, then projected to occur by the 1980s. Those old enough to recall this may be familiar with Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, who wrote the bestseller, The Population Bomb. Hence, the title became synonymous with the concept, which was basically the massive explosion of worldwide population would decimate critical resources like food and energy, the consequence of which would be hundreds of millions or even billions of deaths, endless wars over scarce resources, and the ultimate end of civilization. He built his theory, substantially, around the conclusions of the British economist, Thomas Malthus, and his famous fruit fly experiment showing that rapid expansion of a species (fruit flies reproduce at lightning speed within a closed environment like earth) will overwhelm resources and create extinction-level results.

Ehrlich’s conclusions shocked the West and ended up causing tectonic shifts in some quarters. Heck, if the nukes don’t kill us, we will wipe ourselves out by producing too many babies while at the same time feeding our hunger for both basic needs and material wealth. I could go on and on about this, but readers will get the point, and this concept still sits with us, four decades after we were to have met our doom. From environmentalism to utopianism to religious cults to policies drastically limiting the number of allowed births (China), there is still a very strong belief in the West that increasing populations will doom the species absent massive changes to our reproduction and consumption habits. More on this later.

Climate

Tangentially, during the 1960s, a third crisis burst into our collective consciousness, and it was the climate. If nuclear weapons and living as flies in a laboratory box were not bad enough, some predicted we might soon descend into a new Ice Age. Some scientists were concluding that we would face significant cooling as the result of the ending of a centuries-old Warm Period and this cooling would destroy crops and cause widespread disease and death. Historians have long recognized warm epochs as really conducive to human flourishing, while cold epochs put the brakes on.

Over the past half century, this theme has produced a number of iterations, and scientists, doing what scientists do, find new data and draw new conclusions. By the 1990s, the fear meter had jumped to become focused on global “warming,” not cooling. A warming earth, generally perceived to be the product of human production which, as we were told, would shoot gazillions of tons of C02 into the atmosphere, would create a greenhouse effect that will heat up the world, melt the ice caps, and cause cataclysmic results for human civilization. This concept has largely been replaced by a kind of arbitrary catch-all concern or fear over a thing now called “climate change.” In other words, man’s actions affect the climate in all sorts of ways: More and less rainfall, periods of high heat and cold spells, an increase in major weather events like hurricanes/cyclones and tornados, rising sea levels, population migrations and, of course, more wars.

These two crises, that of population and weather and their effect on many aspects of our lives, has captured the attention of huge swaths of mostly western countries and has had a dramatic impact on economic, political, social and philosophical decision-making.

So, now we have nuclear warfare, population and climate pegging our collective fear meters at a pretty high level.

Disease

Enter the year 2020. February to be exact. For Diane and me, it was immediately upon returning from our first transoceanic cruise. A highly dangerous virus had emerged somehow from a place called Wuhan, China and spread quickly to all parts of the globe. Nearly overnight, the lives of nearly every one of our many billions of people came almost or completely to a halt. We suffered through a couple of years of intense reordering of so many aspects of how we went about our daily routines, for a long time not knowing if this was temporary or far more permanent. Was this the end? Of course, the idea of microorganisms getting loose and decimating humanity has been around a long time. The Black Death of the Middle Ages wiped out a third of the population of Europe, all due to rats and fleas carrying a certain bad bacterium. The Spanish Flu immediately followed the end of WWI (which alone killed nearly twenty million soldiers and civilians and was deemed so terrible that war would henceforth be obsolete) and killed upwards of 100 million alone. Add on a thing like bioterrorism or biological warfare and we have plenty to frighten us. Invisible microorganisms shutting our bodies down in horrific fashion and there is little we can do about it. As a personal footnote, I became aware of and concerned about this phenomenon initially when as a ninth grader I read Michael Crichton’s Andromeda Strain, which blossomed into entire story frameworks in following years.

Now we currently are up to four “existential crises” as embraced by more people we can count. But we’re not quite through.

Artificial Intelligence

The evolution of the modern computer originated at the end of WWII, accelerating rapidly in the 1950s with the advent of commercial computers that replaced vacuum tubes with transistors. By the 1960s, we had mainframe computers and in the 1970s we birthed “microprocessors” that led to early personal computers. My hometown of Palo Alto, home to Standford University and nestled in the Santa Clara Valley south of San Francisco, became a hotbed of technological prowess. Guys named Hewlett and Packard and Jobs and Wozniak, etc, tinkered with these emerging technologies and that acted as a magnet for others, including tech geeks and investment capitalists, to pour billions into making these computers able to transform how we live our lives. Eventually, of course, sleepy little Santa Clara Valley became Silicon Valley as silicon became the fundamental building block of tiny chips and processors. As an aside, my first computer was a Commodore 64, costing $250 (without a monitor) in 1983 dollars, with no RAM and two floppy 5 ¼ inch discs, one of which would generate the 64k of memory and the other the program to use the 64k of memory. According to ChatGPT, when prompted to compare this with my current iPhone, containing 128gb of memory, I received the answer in under five seconds. Among other technical specs, my iPhone has 125 million times the memory of that Commodore 64 and is 200 million time faster.

Of course, this evolution, is well within the lifetime of many people. Again, I asked ChatGPT to tell me how many people who were born in or before 1980 (the launch point for mass production of personal computers) are still alive worldwide today. It took less than five seconds to compute (in detail) that figure as about 42% of the world’s population, or 3.5 billion people. That’s a lot of people born into and maturing in this new world who are yoked to personal computing and the vast array of large computing networks.

Which finally brings us to the fifth perceived existential crisis that absorbs our thinking and helps to regulate how we live our lives. And that is, of course, Artificial Intelligence. It’s definitely one of the crises de jour. While on the one hand, it promises to enhance our lives in countless new ways, it also carries the specter of disrupting economies and, should the doomsayers be believed (the jury is out), end our very species.

The first time I became aware of this phenomenon was while watching (again as a ninth grader, I believe) Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, A 2001 Space Odyssey. For those raised on Star Wars and its iterations, this movie was mind boggling, both visually and in its storyline. The relevant piece here is when the HAL 9000 (standing for Heuristically programmed Algorithmic computer and the machine/brain behind running this long flight from Earth to Jupiter), had decided it would be more efficient to take control of the spaceship and kill off most of the crew, leaving a lone survivor with whom it/he engaged in a fight to the death.

The Terminator followed fifteen years later and showed how AI evolved into Skynet whereby computers would decide to treat humanity as a kind of virus that needed elimination. The rest is history.

There is this philosophical and scientific concept called The Singularity. Most people know it in relation to the impact of artificial intelligence on humanity. When I put it to AI to briefly define, it came up with this:

“A hypothetical future point when artificial intelligence (AI) surpasses human intelligence in a way that causes irreversible and unpredictable changes to civilization. It’s often discussed in the context of technological growth accelerating beyond human control or comprehension.”

Or, as some suggest, if the byproducts of AI are basically intertwined with our biology (microchips of some sort with physical bodies), then will we evolve into something more or different than what we understand the concept of humanity to be? Will we become transspecies? Part machine, part flesh and blood?

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Summary to this Point

There are, of course, other issues that fall into this general category but may have fewer numbers of people invested in them. Certainly, the various environment-related concerns like pollution, how we cultivate and process food stuffs and our resulting biases regarding the kinds of food we ingest, migration and immigration, and the role of government in the lives of individuals through various philosophies: totalitarianism (fascism/socialism/communism/i.e., massive state control) vs libertarianism (minimal state control) vs. democratic-republicanism (the underpinning of much of “western” political thinking), guns, abortion, speech rights, issues regarding sex and gender and so forth. 

If you, the reader, has made it this far, I have tried to share what I see as five of the main issues that we in the educated population (at least) have embraced as anxieties and fears regarding our collective futures. These are threats, whether real or perceived or a combination of the two, that act as either in the forefront of our daily consciousness or as a kind of background hum, ebbing and flowing into or out of our awareness.

Of course, I have my take on the relevancy of each as a threat that would warrant some kind of crisis. In fact, I can kind of prioritize them in terms of what I perceive as a rank in probability. But that’s just a head game. The real impact of one or more of these having some measurable effect upon our thoughts and emotions is difficult to ascertain. But at least in the U.S. it is indisputable that rates of anxiety and depression (especially among youth) are skyrocketing.

* * * * *

Before I bring this to a conclusion that may surprise some but not others who know me well, I’ll briefly comment on what I’ve just covered.

Ironically, the study of demographics which means thinking about population in terms of movement and composition (age, sex, ethnicity, race, raw numbers and so forth) has created an entirely new paradigm and set of conclusions that many find disorienting given the thinking that prevailed in many quarters for so long.

And that is that, in the west at least and in highly populous countries like China and Russia, we are facing what is being called a population “cliff,” the complete opposite of the “bomb” we were taught fifty years ago. And, this is not just a feature of extremely large countries. All of Europe and the rest of industrialized societies are facing this dilemma.

Women are having considerably fewer babies and nations are facing aging populations where people are living longer with fewer workers to support them. (The benchmark for population equilibrium is women need to have 2.1 babies as an average across the society.) Not only are we not facing accelerating population growth, but we aren’t even facing zero population growth (ZPG). Instead, we are facing massive challenges due to negative population growth (NPG).

Yes, the world’s population is still growing but it is leveling off and we will reach a tipping point, which should arrive much sooner in the northern hemisphere and in developed (wealthy) societies, while southern hemisphere populations will continue to increase in population. This will have all sorts of dramatic impacts, and I read studies virtually every week as some will suggest that demographics is the greatest threat to upend civilization in the remainder of this century.

One example I just came across is South Korea, which has advanced rapidly in technology and material wealth, and now has a birthrate of .72. (Just 1/3 of what is needed to maintain the society’s stability.) Unless something dramatic happens (and they have been trying through all sorts of subsidies and incentives), South Korea is projected to lose 85% of its population by the end of this century. Seoul, which is now home to 10 million people, may have 10 thousand by 2100. The U.S. currently has a birthrate of 1.6. Germany’s is 1.35. You can see where this is going. Without more young people than old people, the foundation of civilization decays rapidly.

In a related way, I have long declined to buy into the perceived threat that the impact of human industry will threaten our species in any substantial way. The earth has constantly lived through cycles when humans have walked on its surface, and these can last hundreds or even thousands of years. Our ability to adapt to “climate change” is remarkable, as is evidenced historically. In my opinion, there is no reason to believe that, in the span of many decades, we cannot do so again. There is no evidence I can find that temperatures, if they are indeed rising (incrementally) and resulting in different weather patterns or a rise in sea levels constitutes an existential threat to our species.

I consulted ChatGPT on this and received a reply that says the most recent decade of sea level increases off the coast of Los Angeles, on average, is 1mm/year, which equates to 10mm a decade or a little over 10cm or 4 inches a century. I consulted another exhaustive study that says that global sea levels rose eight inches between 1901 and 2018. However, that was an average with the eastern Pacific (West Coast) at that lower rate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published their projections for low/high end levels for 2100 as increases of about 18 inches/2-3 feet. The U.S National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts low/high levels of increases for 2100 as 1 foot/6 feet with the median being three feet. No studies have shown any marked variation in the frequency of hurricanes hitting North America nor an increase in strength over the last 100 years.

The fact is that CO2 is a vital food and not poisonous, and warm is much better than not-warm for human flourishing. I have researched these related issues for many years and have resourced tons of data, trying to separate fact from hyperbole.

My belief is that fearmongering has resulted in a kind of hysteria that humans are the enemy (some claim we are a virus) and the inanimate earth is the idol that must be protected at all costs. I am a lover of the whole creation and believe we must put in many safeguards to protect it, but we need to put a stop to the extremism that threatens to disrupt entire societies and keep pre-industrial societies in the lower hemisphere in permanent poverty.

So, in my accounting and analysis, with which anyone is free to disagree, the climate issue is relatively insubstantial. Demographics, Nuclear proliferation (including a massive civilian disruption as the result of a possible Electromagnetic Pulse or EMP), a terrorist or nation-sponsored attack on our infrastructure, the arrival of a biologic that has no effective cure or way to mitigate its impact on our bodies and is easily transmittable, and, of course, artificial intelligence are all worth paying attention to if not being consumed by. Hopefully, someone is minding the store while the rest of us go about our lives, as rewarding or challenging they may be.

* * * * *

An Alternative Perspective

All of this leads to my conclusion, which may be a surprise to some and not to others. And it has to do with the “nature” of existence. This may be heady for some, but I think it’s an absolutely critical point that can help us create context by which we can approach these threats and evaluate how we embrace them. 

I’ll restate that. To me, all of the above concerns, in terms of how we manage them, can be understood via two different lenses. And the lens we choose can help determine the level of fear or anxiety we allow to take hold within us. Neither of these two are Pollyanna (all will turn out well) or avoidance (ostrich head in the sand). I submit that, as humans, we are subject to a full range of emotions that are difficult to control as we face information that has the potential to threaten our way of life or very existence.

And so, I come to the original impetus for addressing this topic back in 2019 that I’m finally tackling. 

First off, I see zero evidence, given history and every other discipline, that humans will somehow evolve our societies so that there is no real conflict and only peace and prosperity (part of the mythology in the original Star Trek framework). We are therefore saddled with the seeds of disruption that are born from the facts of nature and our human predilections. And, given these assumptions, I turn to the two (and only two) competing “world views” (a term that is often referenced by the German word weltanschauung, which means “world perception”) that we use to frame how we organize our approach to life and its inherent meaning.

As those who have read some of my over 250 blog posts since 2016 will recognize, I’m of a camp that says there are two large and general perspectives on how we got here and what that has to do with how and why we lead our lives. They are diametrically opposed and, to me, the most important set of facts we will ever encounter. Everything we believe and do is dependent upon one or the other. Everything. In a sense, we are left to choose which of two doors to walk through to form a foundation to understand the broad issue of existential crisis.

Door A. Materialism/Naturism/Scientism

This worldview posits that all of creation happened by chance and that there is no “intelligent” force behind it. This view basically says we are composites of elements defined by physics (first), chemistry (second) and biology (third). We are simply the sum of these parts. The known universe happened by chance (now increasingly in disrepute) and life on earth happened by chance (lightening striking a primoradial soup of prebiotic chemicals, zapping the soup into producing DNA/RNA and the first microorganisms which, in several billion years has resulted in me writing these thoughts down on a personal computer). In this context, there is no absolute meaning or truth outside of what is produced by individual humans or societies. With no absolutes (this can get heady), morality becomes confusing with some atheists (Anti-Theists or adherents to no supernatural creative and intelligent being) saying that morality is an evolutionary or human construct. Which of course means it changes with conditions. In this view (and I have written widely on it), we are born, we forage for sustenance, procreate and die, soon forgotten and irrelevant in the whole scheme of things. We just cease to exist, other than as fertilizer and other sources of fuel for what remains. It’s single loudest voice in the last half century may be the astronomer and media personality, Carl Sagan, who famously stated in the opening to his 1980s TV show, “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” In other words, nature (the direct result of only physics, chemistry and biology) is it. There is no external or beyond nature reality. Stardust to stardust. End of report. No afterlife, no source of morality or meaning beyond what we can carve out during our very short habitation on this planet or wherever we fly off to. This has created a discipline called Scientism, in that all solutions to life’s issues can be boiled down to what the hard and soft sciences (the ones I’ve mentioned plus psychology, sociology, political science, economics and so forth) can teach us.

Door B. Beyond Nature

Door B, on the other hand, was the prevailing world view for probably 99% of the world’s population up until maybe four centuries ago. And it still accounts for the overwhelming number of beliefs about ultimate meaning today. And that is, there is a reality beyond the natural world, the eternal cosmos of the Sagan variety. There is a super-natural reality, a distinctly different reality than the one we tend to perceive as modern people. (Pre-modern … meaning almost everyone up until recently, would be aghast at this as nearly everyone believed in some sort of alternative reality.)

With the rise of Scientism which accelerated in the 19^th century and throughout the 20^th, these beliefs were increasingly viewed as forms of mythology and wishful thinking, the stuff of people who did not have the tools science provided to interpret the surrounding world. Religions developed, in accordance with this view, as a need to fulfill a gap in knowledge, now referred to as God in the Gaps. We humans, therefore, attribute natural phenomenon to a superior force or Being because we just don’t know better. Interestingly, this perspective that has dominated much of academia and, therefore, the thinking of huge swaths of society, is on the decline. It just hasn’t held its own for a variety of reasons, including the data from science itself. (I’d be more than happy to point anyone to a vast array of scientific studies to support this.)

So, Door B is the portal from which we get a worldview that we are not alone in a natural world but somehow related to a reality beyond nature. The division within this large chunk of human thinking is between those who believe in an impersonal “force” and those who believe in a personal being. Loosely speaking, Hinduism and Buddhism (which came from Hinduism) are fundamentally reflective of the former. In fact, they have heavily influenced an offshoot in the West we can loosely call Spiritualism, all of which portray a force that invades our regular reality and to what we can relate. (Taoism falls into this camp as well.) Spiritualism often refers to the “Universe” but, while it has rules so to speak, it is not personal or conscious as we would understand those concepts.

The three dominant world belief systems that actually are framed around a powerful being who created all things and who is available to us, personally, are Judaism and its offshoot Christianity, and Islam. While there are myriad sects or divisions within these big three, they all share the common belief that there is a God who is in control, began the whole thing, knows who each of us is and is available to us for eternity in an “afterlife” once nature runs its course for us in this life.

Obviously, all who know me at all, know that I spent decades trying to search for ultimate meaning while, along the way, engaging in beliefs and practices that included Hinduism and Buddhism. In my autobiography, written in 2022, I charted this course, and I have finally and conclusively settled on the firm belief that (against all odds in my mind) the fundamental Christian narrative is 100% true. I did not arrive at this conclusion easily and it turned out to be the product of probably four decades of struggle. It is the only belief system that rationally fits all the facts, which are supported in my experience.

I respect that others do not think like I do and that’s fine. I’ve had those conversations over countless years and still have them, normally in a very respectful dialogue. I’ve also written somewhere over 1,200 pages in 260+ blog posts and my extended autobiography outlining my rationales.

At which point, anyone who gets this far has the right to ask, “so what?”

What do Doors A and B have to do with a theme of Existential Crisis?

Here is where it gets interesting. The nature of existence itself is in question. What does it actually mean and how does that conclusion affect how we manage the many forces that cause us fear and anxiety? Yes, this now enters the realm of philosophy which, in a sense, is the practice of finding meaning and purpose from the realm of everyday life. While this is not where the minds of many people naturally go, every one of us adheres to one or more philosophical precepts. No one is excluded. You don’t have to be a philosopher to recognize that ideas form the basis for how we organize ourselves while alive.

So, how will Door A people differ from Door B people when it comes to dealing with the five major perceived threats to humanity as I briefly presented above? I find this to be not just an academic exercise but one that has deep practical impact on us today.

Door A People vs. Door B People on the Practical Impacts of Various Perceived Existential Crises

I don’t intend to get too down in the weeds here and I appreciate the patience of any reader who manages to get this far. Instead, I’ll just seek to simplify how the two camps differ from one another in how they consciously or subconsciously face these issues.

Door A people believe that this life is all there is … that their existence on this earth is brief and then it’s over. A large contingent of this group has actually established an alternative “religion,” meaning a system of beliefs with rules based upon ultimate meaning. These rules fuel behavior and affect all sorts of features of life and civilization. One of the most pronounced “religions” that Door A people have developed is to worship nature. This is far different from loving nature or appreciating nature. Since nature is the only thing there is, Door A people seek to protect nature at all costs. And, in this way of thinking, man serves nature. Nature is the guide, the touchpoint with reality. Many have even created a god, called Gaia, a feminine earth mother, with whom we are all connected. Door A people must battle against forces that are deemed to subjugate this god or godlike reality, and we need to put rules in place to temper any activity that acts against the interests of nature. The movie, Avatar, was designed to advocate for this philosophy.

Interestingly, like in all religions, there tend to be truths here that even Door B people should appreciate. And I am describing just a highly vocal piece of Door A reality. Remember the Carl Sagan presumption. If nature is all there is and there is no permanent or absolute meaning outside of nature, then our job is to live carefully and ensure that we do not damage nature’s vitality before we are reconstituted as fertilizer after we die.

If this is the case, then the crises above now have ultimate meaning. If humanity may be doomed by the impact of one or more of these crises, then the only thing that remains for us is to be absorbed back into the stuff of stars, the great galactic soup of particles and energy. There will be no “us” anymore. If the natural anxieties related to death are included, then this way of thinking will only increase our levels of fear and, to some, be crippling.

If, on the other hand, the Door B people are correct, there are other ways to look at these challenges. Principally, there is (in this worldview) a reality beyond nature and these issues are not a threat to that reality. If we are part of both this reality and a wholly different reality, then that understanding mitigates our fear to a point.

In some of the Eastern religions, the goal of our lives is to “merge” with this other reality … or to rise to another plane or dimension that is outside of what we could define by purely natural physical forces. When people who describe themselves as “spiritual,” not “religious,” refer to the Universe, they are describing an impersonal force of sorts, while also describing a kind of consciousness which is an eastern philosophy, not connected to monotheism. The “religion” of Star Wars, with resurrected persons living in a different place yet interacting with good and bad forces is a partial example.

The God of Jews and Christians is quite different from the God of Islam, while both can trace their origins, as People of the Book, back to the first book of the Bible, Genesis. 

Regardless, the three monotheistic faiths that account for around 53% of the world’s population (Hindus and Buddhists account for another 21%) believe in a personal Being who is all powerful, all knowing and exists outside of time and space. As a consequence, over one half of all people believe in life after death, so (we) are in a kind of transitory place, only a miniscule fraction of a promised eternity. There will be no ceasing to exist or a similar cessation of material-self as it blends into background energy.

I have tried to provide at least a somewhat objective analysis of what these worldviews entail and how those views can affect the ways we manage our real fears and anxieties.

But obviously, since I adhere to one and not the other (having been a firm believer in some of the others), I’m biased.

If I’m wrong, then I’m wrong and I will just end up like Sagan and the atheists, enjoying (or not) my brief time on this planet. If I’m right, then it opens up an entirely different way to manage fears and anxieties.

The Christian Perspective

Either Jesus is God incarnate, or he is not. There is no middle ground. Either the first-hand accounts of his teachings are accurate or they’re not. For many reasons, I trust in a historical rendering of his life as accurate. If I’m right, then I am told to not fret or be anxious about the things in this life. Which is very hard as it’s instinctual to fret and be anxious. He gives many examples of how these anxieties are unwarranted in light of ultimate reality. While it’s in our nature to fear and even be consumed by things we view as threatening, we are assured of eventual relief. In the Book of Romans in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul says, 

“We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” He says in a few passages later, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? And then, “For I (Paul) am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present or future, nor any powers, neither height or depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.”

This will make sense to Christians and will probably seem foreign and maybe even wishful or fanciful thinking for those who see the Christian narrative as akin to myth.

As I have seemingly always been immersed in events, whether regional, national or worldwide, I tend to get caught up trying to understand them and figuring out their impact on not just me but vast populations and the future of humanity. Diane has asked me this many times when I get so caught up (here is a paraphrase), “why are you so invested in things out of your control? What can you do about these things?” She is perfectly right and so I try to determine my “sphere of influence” which is actually quite small.

Jesus is explicit in his teaching that I can actually be content, even in the face of hostility and evil. Yes, I may be called to put my life on the line to right a wrong or protect my family, but I should do that with a posture that is not overly troubled. For the troubles of today will vanish like a morning mist when I pass over. That happens to be a comforting thought.

* * * * *

Conclusion

I had two overriding objectives when I sat down to pound out all these words. They have not changed since 2019. Only now have I finally felt the call to put my thoughts to paper. I understand the level of labor it will take any readers to wade through the entire piece, and I apologize, knowing that perhaps few will complete the full account. My two objectives were to recognize that there are major issues that face us these days and that at least a handful of them have risen to the point of perceived crises that threaten the existence of our civilizations and, even, our species. I have only sought to chronicle these from my vantage point and have tried to refrain from analyzing them too deeply, with a few exceptions.

The underlying point I have sought to make is that it’s not just examining the impact to our heads and emotions about these issues but it’s also about how we translate them into the reality that governs our lives. And I am convinced that the two central worldviews provide different lenses for us to determine the ultimate effect of these crises on us, as individuals.

My purpose (or mission) in life is clear and its worth stating here in this conclusion. It is blunt, without a doubt. I am here to follow Jesus, seek to become more like him in all respects and to partner with him to help heal and redeem a broken world. Even one person at a time. I can do that by seeking to meet and engage people, not primarily to “convert” them but to show them that I care and to be ready to listen and respond with grace and love. I fall far short of this objective, but I know that is not held against me. I carry brokenness within me and have received more bounty from above that I can possibly relate. My autobiography covers this in depth.

I hope that humanity flourishes and that none of the crises I’ve outlined above rise to the level that our civilization or species is destroyed. I pray for that. Yet I know, should worse come to worse, that I will soon be Home, which is where I was always meant to reside and about which I was only made powerfully aware just twenty years ago. 

Blessings,

Brad

August 2025