Chaos Comes Naturally For Me

We’re probably the most fortunate generation that ever lived in this chaotic universe but depending on how you look at it, the news still isn’t good. There is some evidence an increase in chaos will proceed on at least two fronts.

VENICE, ITALY It is a wet and stormy evening as the train pulls into Lucerne and then past Stans Sud. Despite the weather, the world is running according to my timetables, as precise as the arc of the moon on a clear night over the Swiss Alps.

But before I crawl into my bunk, I find myself reading an article in an old issue of the EOS, the newsletter of the American Geophysical Union. What I read keeps me awake half the night...

The article “Arctic System and Trajectory to New Seasonally Ice-Free State,” is co-authored by 21 scientists from about the same number of universities and research institutes. The Arctic Sea has been melting for almost 30 years, thinning and shrinking to such a degree that “a summer ice-free Arctic Ocean within a century is a real possibility.” The consequences to populations could be staggering from this event alone. Much later, I recall a quote from a book by Stuart Kaufman… “Deep in the chaotic regime, slight changes in structure almost always cause vast changes in behavior.” Kaufman’s new science of complexity addresses the forces of order that lie at the edge of chaos and goes beyond Darwinian Theory.

Now I begin to brood about other unpleasant things. Of the pebble-thrown-into-a-pond-effect, but infinitely more complex. Of our coming struggles against impending climate change and our accumulated man-made disasters in the pursuit of energy.

Are world events slowly coalescing without clear patterns and what we think we know is so far from the truth that we are in for a shock? Flash-back to 2002. US scientists report that an iceberg more than nine times larger than Singapore has broken off Antarctica. Glaciologists are staggered by the speed at which Antarctica is breaking apart. Before that , in the political realm, an insignificant US president, who has not yet morphed into ‘War President’, is elected in 2000. Soon after the 9/11 event, neocon pent-up aggression validates itself in the form of the pre-emptive Bush Doctrine. The international media magnifies the pre-emptive strikes to Iraq as a media show event with its embedded journalists. This reality-show seen by the world is disturbing the Nature’s order unlike ever before and is known as the Butterfly Effect. Which means it awakens latent terrorists and new opportunities for a New World Order. Then come Nature’s own pre-emptive strikes. The Tsunami in Southeast Asia. Earthquakes in India. The great hurricane Katrina which creates itself from the lower latitudes and creeps northward to uncover social injustice and racism in America.

All this, of course, is only a brief example of my version of world chaos. I am now beginning to feel like a Cassandra. But the weather has cleared outside and I drink tea from my thermos and enjoy the solitude of the night for a moment as the train rolls on.

So it appears there is a swiftly developing complexity hiding the risk of imminent chaos. It is also possible that part of the complexity sometimes hiding chaos is ‘Electronic Chaos’, the high-tech overload that permeates and lulls us into a sense of security. But as we approach the chaotic edge more elements continue to reveal themselves.

In France, not so far in the past there were are riots of disaffected youths roaming and burning their way through the city streets. These pockets of Eurabia had been forming for the last 30 years, due largely in part to the 1975 Strasbourg Accords. Even now, if we tune our ears and eyes closer to the earth, we soon discover the missing and the dying from the animal and plant kingdom.

In some cases, the line between nature and man-made gets fuzzy as in the case of the former Avian flu threat (but still on the back burner and vanished from the public news). Scientists keep reporting it is not if, but when the pandemic will occur. So could an avian flu pandemic in the chaotic scheme of things be the most immediate threat that could render all other threats moot? Scientists predict if the bird flu pandemic started today and ran for, let’s say, 24 months, a pandemic of this sort would change the world overnight. About 2 million would die in America alone. This attack on one front is also complicated by men’s greed for profit at others’ expense. I’m speaking of the one company in the world who today refuses to lend out their patent so more could be saved should such an event occur. Roche.

Vaccines would not be available for the majority of the populations on the planet for months and chances of most of us getting any would be slim. Browsing the Internet to see availability and costs of Tamiflu for a family of four, I note that we’re going to pay Roche around $800 for a forty capsule cure which they cannot guarantee works.

On the second front, mankind seems to be working tirelessly to end it all even quicker. The coming climate changes may already make survival tough in the future. Nevertheless, somewhere people have decided to have the option of modifying weather with a new generation of sophisticated electromagnetic weapons called "environmental modification techniques” (ENMOD), which is also under the High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) program.

Dr. Nicholas Begich, co-author of the book Angels Don’t Play This HAARP, describes HAARP as "a super-powerful radio wave beaming technology that lifts areas of the ionosphere by focusing a beam on them and then heating them. Electromagnetic waves then bounce back onto earth and penetrate everything - living and dead." According to the US Air Force in their AF 2025 Final Report, “In the United States, weather-modification will likely become a part of national security policy with both domestic and international applications…”. How reassuring to know that environmental warfare and US foreign policy will become the Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction.

Maybe by thinking so much about chaos I have contributed to its reality. Because on arrival at the Venice train station, when I’m feeling pretty good knowing that this is only my version of the present and future, something proves me wrong. Glued on the doors that lead out to the canal where the vaporettos are waiting, are faded and outdated colored posters warning visitors of Avian flu symptoms. You must report them immediately to the authorities if you think you have them.