Are we unconsciously labelling all new catastrophes as "normal"?

I just have the feeling that we tend to label deadly sinkholes, collapsing mountains, dieing bees, mudslides, massive rainfalls with floodings etc etc as "normal" just b/c we become indifferent by the massive quantities of disasters going on everywhere. I mean, if we look back at history there was never a period of that many simultaneous and never "heard-of-before" catastrophes arriving at the same time. Plus we have like boiling armed conflicts and potential global diseases coming at us with an intensity never seen before.

All of this happens while people´s faith in Gods have weakened to the point that it is almost extinguished. Actually the timing of all this is just like what is said in prophecies about people becoming worse and worse before the end, while natural and manmade disasters increase all the time. Some people might say this is just "normal" but if they look back at our 5 000 years of civilization there never was a time like this before. It is unique in terms of science, atheism, climate, divcorces, natural disasters etc.

Just wanted to remind everyone that these times are unique and in unique times there is bound to be unique events happening.

a reply to: Gaussq

You might want to go back and do some reading on history.
Plenty of plagues, famine, war, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, drought, dark ages, crusades, inquisitions, mongol hordes, illness destroying 80-90% of natives on a continent, it goes on and on worse than it is today.

We feel like it is so terrible now because we see it all, every day on TV.
Unplug for a while.

What if they had been able to televise the black death?
Or Stalins purges?
Or Krakatoa?
Or any of a thousand other disasters?

It's just another day in the world.

a reply to: badgerprints

I understand what you are saying but what you are talking about are events that unfolded over thousands of years. What I am talking about are parallell events happening over a few years, and it seems to get worse and worse. I just think that we are made indifferent and irrational by our technology. I mean whoever heard about 3 sinkholes per week during the 80s or 90s. Even in a small country they are soon reported like normal daily news, it´s just that we tend to think these events are "normal" b/c they now happen on a daily basis. Just my 5 cents.

a reply to: Gaussq

First of all go back and check your research because civilization is MUCH OLDER than 5,000 years ago. Second of all, I highly disagree with "People's faith in Gods have weakened to the point that it is almost extinguished." Yes we are slowly being conditioned to think this stuff is normal what else is new? And who do you think wrote those "prophecies" all those years ago?

It's sort of strange that all major Western monotheistic religions are religions based on debt, just like how the globe is run by a Western system of monetized debt....wait a second...nope, that would be TOO crazy to say, right? These bankers couldn't have POSSIBLY wrote the books thousands of years ago in order to carry out self-fulfilled prophecies and keep people in fear while they try to carry out there agenda.

originally posted by: Gaussq
a reply to: badgerprints

I understand what you are saying but what you are talking about are events that unfolded over thousands of years. What I am talking about are parallell events happening over a few years, and it seems to get worse and worse. I just think that we are made indifferent and irrational by our technology. I mean whoever heard about 3 sinkholes per week during the 80s or 90s. Even in a small country they are soon reported like normal daily news, it´s just that we tend to think these events are "normal" b/c they now happen on a daily basis. Just my 5 cents.

So, how many sinkholes happened back in 1492?
We don't have a clue.
We assume that this stuff never happened before.
We really don't know.

Ever see the Grand Canyon?
I wonder how many sinkholes occurred in that area during the formation of that giant hole.

People really do make a lot of these sinkholes but they are a natural phenomenon.
Down in Mexico they have underground streams and rivers that they swim in. To get to them they go down into caverns that started out as sinkholes. Those things are all over the place. Very popular too.
This world is going to keep on changing as slowly or quickly as it wants.
Don't read too much into it.

Imagine some of our ancestors staring at a wall of ice two miles high and saying, "Man, that glacier is getting really close. This never happened before. What's going on?"

a reply to: Gaussq

All are normal in the Earths history of millions of years and Earth changes...and all will continue. That IS normal.

My take is that what is considerred "normal" may be logical since everything in this universe seems to be logical and well orderred. But what I mean is that there must be intelligent beings behind all these events. Take the perspective of an extremely powerful divine being for a moment. If you were a God and saw that all people did whatever they wanted and didn´t care the least about any old rules stipulated by the Gods millenia ago, hence creating huge black karma. In that case, if you had free powers to make natural disasters happen and at the same time wanted to give hints to those people with some belief left, how would you do it? From that perspective things seem quite logical to me. "Natural" is a term which makes people irrational and stop thinking I feel. There is always a truth behind every event, it is just that it might be far beyond the level of our current science.

If we look at the greatest scientists like Einstein, Newton, Da Vinci etc they all had complete belief in the divine.

Just human nature taking its predator nature to heart, how are you going to convince 7+ billion people to be any different when every one of us have a different idea of how life should be ??

Just a thought.

Welcome to the world of instant information my friend; where one can be updated on an hourly basis on the random disasters and crap that happen around the world. The only difference between these times and humanity's past is the instant availability of info.

a reply to: Gaussq

All the disasters happening now on TV, almost on a daily basis, we are more used to that in some way. The movies also play a part, you see a lot of death and destruction on screens nowadays. And compared to the old days many things that happen can be easily explained, so there's no shock in it.

Speaking from my own experience, watching 9/11 unfold and even more 3/11 in Japan as it happened on TV left me impressed for a long time. I guess witnessing it first hand is even more impressive.

In the same tone...

Why do we automatically label any actions by (or to) the earth as catastrophes?

Rather the opposite. We are labeling normal things as catastrophes.

And we think we have the data, but we don't. The reason property damage was so high for Katrina, for example, was not that there'd never been a storm like that. There had, and with some regularity. It's just that development was such that there was more to damage. 100 years ago people weren't so stupid as to build in vulnerable areas.

Around here people insist on building in flood plains. The river floods. They lose their homes. Duh! But to here them tell it it's all because of Global arming. But the fact is the damage wasn't caused by atmospheric carbon; it was caused by stupid people.

a reply to: moeron60

It's sort of strange that all major Western monotheistic religions are religions based on debt

Would you mind explaining that? I don't understand.

a reply to: schuyler

this a million times over

Because of global mass media coverage and the need to sensationalize everything for ratings we are constantly reporting every cloud, rock and drop of water this planet receives as news.


who are we to say what is normal and what is not?

our data go's back a mere spec of earths existence, and we are arrogant to presume what is normal and what is not on this planet that has changed countless times before and will most likely change countless times again

Q

Havent you heard the phrase s**t happens?

Catastrophes are normal..living in perfect harmony is NOT normal. When you think of the violent past this planet has been through the few 1000 years of stability is the anomaly.

a reply to: Gaussq

You know what else wasn't in great supply throughout history? Worldwide and speedy communication. Did it ever occur to you that MAYBE the reason it seems like more disasters and calamities are occurring these days is because the technology to communicate these disasters across the world didn't exist? Also, with more people on the planet than ever means calamities will effect proportionally more people. Use a little common sense and you'd see that your OP is just wild fears.

originally posted by: Gaussq
My take is that what is considerred "normal" may be logical since everything in this universe seems to be logical and well orderred. But what I mean is that there must be intelligent beings behind all these events. Take the perspective of an extremely powerful divine being for a moment. If you were a God and saw that all people did whatever they wanted and didn´t care the least about any old rules stipulated by the Gods millenia ago, hence creating huge black karma. In that case, if you had free powers to make natural disasters happen and at the same time wanted to give hints to those people with some belief left, how would you do it? From that perspective things seem quite logical to me. "Natural" is a term which makes people irrational and stop thinking I feel. There is always a truth behind every event, it is just that it might be far beyond the level of our current science.

God should prove to the world that he exists before he should use natural disasters to get people to act a certain way.

If we look at the greatest scientists like Einstein, Newton, Da Vinci etc they all had complete belief in the divine.

This is an appeal to authority fallacy. Just because a smart person believes a certain way doesn't necessarily make them correct. Pythagoras was the head of a crazy cult that believed that numbers shaped the universe. He is known for the Pythagoras Theorem (a^2 + b^2 = c^2), but we obviously know that his beliefs about the universe were wrong.

Also, it is believed that Einstein was in fact agnostic.

a reply to: schuyler

It also didn't help that the city of New Orleans was INSANELY corrupt and refused to repair the levies holding back the water despite calls for YEARS that they were faulty.

a reply to: signalfire

Surely.

Christianity, Judaism and Islam (Abrahamic faiths) are belief structures where the individual is born guilty. They must give up their existence to a higher power and do good during their life here on Earth in order to ascend to each religion's respective heaven or paradise. This is the act of paying off a debt that one receives when he/she is born, a divine debt, however. Since God is eternal and His word is undoubtedly the only word, and us humans are finite beings (not infinite) while God is infinite, then does that mean this debt that we must pay is infinite? Did God take human form as Jesus to die in order to pay off that eternal debt to God? Surely something as wise as God would know that this 'divine infinite debt' can never be repaid by any mortal man.

Now that does not seem bad at all, if there is such a thing as heaven I would expect I would have to earn that sort of paradise, right? Well that's all fine and dandy but then why am I automatically born guilty? Why do I inherit this divine debt when I have done nothing wrong but be born into this world?

Next time you come across a very Western religious person take close observation on how they truly believe that they must do whatever it takes to make God/Allah/Yahweh satisfied and that is the MAIN goal in life, to pay off that debt.

Religion = Debt. Money = Debt. Are you starting to see any dots connect yet?

Normalcy Bias FTL