Cataclysmic and Calamitous Times

Lately, every time I set out to write about something deeper and principle-based, I get distracted by the crazy news. I’ll try to tie this into something eternal in the end.

The cataclysmic news this week includes—well, let’s start with a massive hurricane.

Hurricane Helene, image from here

 

Hurricane Helene

Hurricane Helene, which hit the Florida panhandle as a category 4 storm a week ago, caused widespread devastation across 10-12 states. Some areas had 30 inches of rain—much of it before the storm actually arrived, so mudslides were a common outcome. The death toll is still unknown; compared to catastrophes in some third-world countries, deaths are low, but there are still a lot of missing people, maybe thousands. This may be the most devastating storm since Katrina. (I believe Hurricane Harvey was as devasting, with more than 50 inches of rain, as the storm stalled over Houston for days, but it was milder once it moved on to other areas.)

A bridge out near Ashville, North Carolina,
photo from here.

Communications, roads, water, and electricity are out—some of this may be long-term. Pack mules are being used to bring in supplies, which I thought was fascinating. If we ever get stuck in a pre-industrial situation, there are pack mules. This was probably common a century and a half ago, but now I see it as a rare and inventive solution.

Pack mule teams to the rescue,
image found here.

Churches (here’s one story; here’s another) and individuals are working together to bring relief. Glenn Beck talks about the Hillbilly Airforce (similar to the Cajun Navy, citizen volunteers from Louisiana that helped us out in Houston with Hurricane Harvey), in this story:

·        "What Glenn saw while helping hurricane victims in Asheville SHOCKED him” October 4, 2024.

He was there helping organize airlifting people in need. Government tried to shut them down. The people, who had organized themselves and found people with helicopters to come and volunteer, told the government guys, since they weren’t there to help, to get out of the way: “Get off our land!”

Glenn saw one FEMA truck, behind a building. The US Rep. he was with went with him to talk to them. It was a communications truck. The workers were sitting around playing cards or something, doing nothing. Glenn said almost nothing, to avoid lighting into them. There are government resources at military bases as close as North Carolina. Meanwhile, Kamala continues fundraising and avoiding media appearances, while the so-called president “commands forces” from a beach in Delaware.

FEMA has instituted a priority system, based on DEI dogma. A poor white Appalachian child cannot be prioritized over a suburban black, because of, you know, privilege.

Chris Martenson of Peak Prosperity starts off a brief video with, “Welcome to the quickening.” Maybe that refers to how fast news is coming at us, or maybe it’s an end times reference. But he, as I am doing, will talk about several big news stories: the hurricane and lack of response, the port strike (which I mention below), and the unrest on the Israel/Lebanon border. This 10-minute segment is limited to the hurricane and response:

·      “Hurricane Helene and Government Inaction, Israel Invades, and Free Speech Under Attack” Chris Martenson, Peak Prosperity, October 2, 2024.       

In the absence of true reporting and government distrust, there are some conspiracy theories about attempts at weather control—that either went awry or went as planned, not sure. I have no idea what may be true. I mention it, but I’ll need more information to become a believer. But I know enough not to put it past this current government regime.

Anyone who still trusts government—and turns to government as their substitute for God—may need an experience like this to wake up. Some note that, besides helping one another, the only place to turn is to God, and that is happening.

There’s another named storm, Kirk, out in the Atlantic. A fearmongering press suggested it might take the same trajectory as Helene. But my weather app shows it much further east (Helene came up from the Gulf in the south) and heading eastward; it may be possible that it will hit the UK or France, but it’s definitely not going to hit the east coast of the US. Still, it is not a storm you’d want to meet out on the waters.

 

Iran Attack on Israel

On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, Israel’s new year and high holy days season—which starts on a new moon, and also happened to coincide with an annular eclipse—Iran attacked Israel with a barrage of 180 missiles. (Iran claims it was over 200.) Most of the missiles were intercepted. A few hit in central Israel. Mostly administrative buildings were damaged, and some homes received shrapnel damage.

There were no deaths. A few people were treated with shrapnel wounds, mostly minor. Whatever else you might say, that outcome seems miraculous. As in biblically miraculous. There’s the prophecy of the two prophets raised up to Israel in the last days, who, according to Revelation 11:4-5:

“they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days [1260 days, or 3 ½ years] clothed in sackcloth….and if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed.”

I don’t yet see the two witnesses. But it sure looks like someone is protecting Israel, so, if it’s them, we’re probably somewhere within those 1260 days.

Basic info is in this BBC News piece:

·       “What we know about Iran's missile attack on Israel” David Gritten, Matt Murphy, and Patrick Jackson, BBC News, October 3, 2024. 

 

Earthquake in Tonga

There was a 6.8 earthquake in Tonga on October 2. I’ve seen very little news concerning it. (There is a story here.) I’m remembering the 6.8 earthquake that hit San Francisco in 1989, just two months after we moved away from there. The Bay Bridge collapsed. Roads and rails were torn up, and there was widespread devastation. That’s a very big quake.

image from here

Fortunately, this quake in the island nation of Tonga was about 6 miles deep and did not cause a tsunami. The nearby islands felt the shock but did not suffer a great deal of damage.

But if you want to worry some more about earthquakes, there’s this story:

·       “Record spike in earthquakes around Washington's 'high threat' volcano” Ellyn Lapointe, Daily Mail, October 4, 2024. 

 

Vice Presidential Debate

There was a vice-presidential debate Tuesday night, October 1. “Catastrophe” is a word you might use, depending on which side you were on. J. D. Vance comported himself well, looked presidential and in control—dispelling the media lies about him being “weird” or unreasonable and angry. Tim Walz, Governor of Minnesota, looked like a wild-eyed and/or befuddled Elmer Fudd. Take just about any screenshot the entire debate. 

J.D. Vance and Tim Walz, VP debate,
random screenshot taken from a clip shown by Dan Bongino 

He badly fumbled such questions as why he claimed to be in Tiananmen Square during the riots when he was not there until months later—adding that to the list of stolen valor-type lies. He said something to the effect that his people know and understand him, and he’s sometimes a knucklehead. That’s really doesn’t explain why you would invent a story to give yourself credit for some particular experience that you didn’t have. The whole rest of the world has not gone, “Tiananmen Square, now was I there at that time when the government mowed down civilians in the street? I can’t quite remember.” Tim Walz is unique. In a bad way.

Another fumble—and this was a misspeak he didn’t seem to be aware of—was trying to explain his change from supporting the 2^nd Amendment to wanting gun control. He intended, I think, to refer to a conversation he had with parents of Sandy Hook victims, but he said he changed after talking to the shooters. Oops.

He was in the unenviable position of trying to explain why Kamala Harris would suddenly do everything right once elected—and be an agent of change—when she’s had the power to effect those changes for three and a half years so far. So, for him, and that side of the ballot, you could call the night memorably catastrophic.

 

Port Workers Strike

The hurricane aftermath, with roads wiped out and bridges collapsed, is going to cause some shipping problems. Quartz and lithium mines, necessary for making computer chips, are inaccessible for the foreseeable future. And people are going to prioritize getting food, water, and fuel. So the timing could hardly be better for a longshoreman strike all along the east coast, and even including the Port of Houston here. As I was writing, word came that they had settled for a sizable pay increase, or maybe have paused the strike until January.

Ports under threat of closure,
image found on Facebook.

Even with only a few days of buildup in the ports, the ripple effect could still take weeks to work back toward normal. The big concern for the overall economy was, if it lasted for as long as a couple of weeks, we could be feeling the effects on through Christmas, with even early orders not making it in time. This would have had a substantial impact on businesses, many of which plan on making a large percentage of their annual sales during the Christmas holiday season.

 

Avoiding Prophesied Calamities

A prophetic scripture came to mind: Doctrine & Covenants 88:87-91: 

87 For not many days hence and the earth shall tremble and reel to and fro as a drunken man; and the sun shall hide his face, and shall refuse to give light; and the moon shall be bathed in blood; and the stars shall become exceedingly angry, and shall cast themselves down as a fig that falleth from off a fig tree.

88 And after your testimony cometh wrath and indignation upon the people.

89 For after your testimony cometh the testimony of earthquakes, that shall cause groanings in the midst of her, and men shall fall upon the ground and shall not be able to stand.

90 And also cometh the testimony of the voice of thunderings, and the voice of lightnings, and the voice of tempests, and the voice of the waves of the sea heaving themselves beyond their bounds.

91 And all things shall be in commotion; and surely, men’s hearts shall fail them; for fear shall come upon all people.

 Brigham Young put it this way: 

When the testimony of the Elders ceases to be given, and the Lord says to them, “Come home; I will now preach my own sermons to the nations of the earth,” all you now know can scarcely be called a preface to the sermon that will be preached with fire and sword, tempests, earthquakes, hail, rain, thunders and lightnings, and fearful destruction. What matters the destruction of a few railway cars? You will hear of magnificent cities, now idolized by the people, sinking in the earth, entombing the inhabitants. The sea will heave itself beyond its bounds, engulfing mighty cities. Famine will spread over the nations and nation will rise up against nation, kingdom against kingdom and states against states, in our own country and in foreign lands; and they will destroy each other, caring not for the blood and lives of their neighbors, of their families, or for their own lives (Discourses of Brigham Young, 111–12).

Dan Bongino has a T-shirt he sells that says, “Is it bad enough yet?” Some people read about apocalyptic times and think it is all going to be much worse than what we have seen, as if to say, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” And, granted, the book of Revelation, among others, looks pretty scary in places. But for people in North Carolina and Tennessee right now, without roads, electricity, food supply, or communications, seeing entire cities wiped out by flood and mud, unable to reach loved ones to find out if one another has survived—for these people this is probably bad enough.

In Houston in 2017, with biblical downpours of rain, watching boats go up and down the water-filled streets to rescue people, we thought that was probably bad enough.

People in war-torn countries probably think what they’re facing is bad enough. People caught in human trafficking (more human slavery now than at any time when it was considered legal and acceptable, which included most of human history) probably think this is bad enough.

I thought things were bad enough in the 1990s, but then I was surprised by the 2000s. I was certain things were bad enough in the 2010s. Then 2020 came, when we began playing apocalypse bingo as we read the news.

A meme I saw in May 2020; I don't know the original source.

While it’s true we are often blessed in our personal lives, going on with things—as they did in the days of Noah, right up until it began to rain—that doesn’t mean the prophesied pouring out of desolations isn’t happening somewhere else in the world. And, because of our communications, we’re likely to hear about these things, wherever they happen.

Another prophecy warning outcome caught my attention this week. This is the next-to-last paragraph of The Family: A Proclamation to the World:

We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, who abuse spouse or offspring, or who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.

There is a way to forfend the foretold calamities; it is to strengthen personal families, and to strengthen the concept of Family within our communities. We should “promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society” (final paragraph of the Family Proclamation).

This is not to say that all those negatively affected by the hurricane and other catastrophes in the news have failed to support their families and Family in general. Some of the outpouring of desolations will rain down upon the just and the unjust. But, as God “preaches His own sermons to the nations of the earth,” He is saying, “Turn to Me.” If government has been your god, you can see what a puny, powerless god it is in such times. If you’ve been depending on your own strength and control, that doesn’t stand up well to the power of nature and Nature’s God.

A starting place is to honor family, to keep commitments to those we are closest to in love. And we support that for others as well. This may lead to the essential place: honoring God, through His Son Jesus Christ.

I recommend a couple of video conversations from this week, toward this end:

·       “General Relief Society President - Family Proclamation, 'Family Is The Doctrine Of Christ'” September 29, 2024  Greg Matson, CWIC Media, September 29, 2024. He repeats the point from of former general Relief Society President: to be anti-family is to be anti-Christ.

·        Stu Does America, September 26, 2024. Stu Burgiere talks with Ryan T. Anderson about the post Dobbs world of abortion. Anderson, with the benefit of much research on top of seeking moral ways of living, points out that people in general favor abortion in just three circumstances: when the life of the mother is at stake, as a result of rape or incest—and when it’s their personal situation (their own or their child’s). It’s that last one that is the problem. We need a people moral enough to prevent such circumstances whenever possible, and to face them when they show up even after all you could do.     

So, the way to avoid prophesied calamities is simple, if not easy: Turn to Christ, and share Him—by example and word—with your immediate family. And then share Him with your extended family, friends, and community. People who do that will get through these times. People who don’t have no such promise.

 

Common Sense or Calamity

“Studies either confirm common sense or they’re wrong.”—Dennis Prager[i]

Common sense tells us things that eventually social science can confirm, if done correctly.[ii] If you start with correct principles, and follow the correct procedures, then you get the right answers. Same with logic, which is mathematical. If you start with the right premise, and don’t get off track with faulty reasoning, then you get the right answer. But if you don’t start with a true premise, your answers will be faulty. Or if you take a wrong turn along the way.

That’s why it makes sense to look at what has been tried and tested over many years, by many people, in many places, in many cultures. If they come to see the wisdom in the same things, they might be right. Learning from the past, we can identify the principles that lead to civilization.

It’s kind of pointless to say, “Now that we’re more evolved, or progressive, we can ignore the experience of the sum total of human history, and try something new and untried, because we’re so advanced.” That is probably what every decadent society thought: “We don’t need to cling to those old ideas of morality; we want to do things our own way.” And then they sink from civilization into savagery, and misery. Every time.

Detroit after decay

Economist Thomas Sowell wrote a piece earlier this month, comparing life for blacks in America before and after the Civil Rights movement, and then the War on Poverty in the 1960s.

You would be hard-pressed to find as many ghetto riots prior to the 1960s as we have seen just in the past year, much less in the 50 years since a wave of such riots swept across the country in 1965.

We are told that such riots are a result of black poverty and white racism. But in fact—for those who still have some respect for facts—black poverty was far worse, and white racism was far worse, prior to 1960. But violent crime within black ghettos was far less.

Murder rates among black males were going down—repeat, DOWN—during the much lamented 1950s, while it went up after the much celebrated 1960s, reaching levels more than double what they had been before. Most black children were raised in two-parent families prior to the 1960s. But today the great majority of black children are raised in one-parent families.

Sowell gets to talk openly about race by virtue of his color. It’s helpful to get truth from someone who has lived a life worth knowing. But he doesn’t leave it as a racial problem; you do the same things in any culture, and you get the same results. He suggests reading Life at the Bottom, by Theodore Dalrymple, talking about British white slums caused by the welfare state.

Sowell concludes,

You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization—including work, behavioral standards, personal responsibility and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain—without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large.

He’s an economist, so the requirements of civilization he’s focusing on particularly affect economic prosperity, such as a strong work ethic. But more than that, you don’t get prosperity without the necessary behavioral standards and personal responsibility. And what are those? The principles were laid out in basic form about 3400 years ago, in the Ten Commandments. Every civilization has had something very close to that: you don’t lie, you don’t steal, you don’t have sex outside of marriage, you don’t take innocent life, you honor family, and you recognize God as the giver of life and inalienable rights. If you throw out any of the essential ingredients, you don’t get to have civilization.

image found here

In 1995 the leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent out A Proclamation to the World, titled “The Family.”[iii] It’s a short document, and at the time we thought it seemed puzzling, because the points made in it were what we’d believed all along. They were common sense.

But very shortly afterward, ever line in it began to be attacked. Things like:

·        Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.

·        We declare that God’s commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force.

·        We further declare that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife.

·        Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan.

·        Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity.

For someone with common sense, those aren’t weird or outmoded or ridiculous in any way. They’re just the common sense way to happiness.

If you take a look at some older movies, or maybe some Shakespeare, you’ll find that the assumption that sex must only take place within marriage is a given. It was so widely accepted that even villains would expect they needed marriage before they could prey upon the damsel.  It has always been known that not everyone would abide by this societal requirement, but rebels knew they couldn’t expect society to condone their rebellions. Society must reverence marriage and family as sacred, or civilization ceases to be.

I’ve mention Vico and Unwin before. Giambatista Vico came first. Back in 1725 he concluded that marriage between a man and a woman is essential for civilization—it is the “seed plot” of society.[iv] Religious people, statesmen, and pretty much any educated thinking person in Vico’s day recognized that sex outside of marriage was an evil against society. Vico just explained the reasoning (the social science).

Two centuries later, in 1935, along came anthropologist and “progressive” thinker (i.e., progressive movement that Woodrow Wilson foisted on us) Joseph D. Unwin, who set out to prove that the institution of marriage was unnecessary, maybe even harmful. He did an exhaustive study of some 86 cultures, all the world cultures throughout history that he could obtain sufficient data for.[v] He was forced by the evidence to conclude that only marriage with fidelity, what he called absolute monogamy, would lead to the cultural prosperity of a society—civilization. Anything else, such as “domestic partnerships” or living together unmarried, or any other type of promiscuity, would degrade society. He reported:

The evidence was such as to demand a complete revision of my personal philosophy; for the relationship between the factors seemed to be so close, that, if we know what sexual regulations a society has adopted, we can prophesy accurately the pattern of its cultural behavior... (p.5).

Now it is an extraordinary fact that in the past sexual opportunity has only been reduced to a minimum by the fortuitous adoption of an institution I call absolute monogamy. This type of marriage has been adopted by different societies, in different places, and at different times. Thousands of years and thousands of miles separate the events; and there is no apparent connection between them. In human records, there is no case of an absolutely monogamous society failing to display great [cultural] energy. I do not know of a case on which great energy has been displayed by a society that has not been absolutely monogamous…(pp.31-32).

So a society’s sexual behavior can be predictive:

If, during or just after a period of [cultural] expansion, a society modifies its sexual regulations, and a new generation is born into a less rigorous [monogamous] tradition, its energy decreases... If it comes into contact with a more vigorous society, it is deprived of its sovereignty, and possibly conquered in its turn (p.21).

It seems to follow that we can make a society behave in any manner we like if we are permitted to give it such sexual regulations as will produce the behavior we desire. The results should begin to emerge in the third generation ( p.45).

The Family Proclamation ends with a more religious sounding but nearly identical warning:

We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, who abuse spouse or offspring, or who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.

Some people have to learn by experience; I understand that. But let them experiment in their own limited lives and circles. There’s no need for them to bring on dire consequences to entire civilizations just because they want to try out ways of living that have proved misery-inducing throughout all of human history.

I choose common sense rather than the proven path to calamity.

---

[i] Donna Carol Voss quotes (without quotation marks, so possibly a paraphrase) Dennis Prager at the beginning of her piece, “Could it Be? Stay-at-Home Moms Are Bad for Children?”

[ii] For example, “Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-One Conclusions from the Social Sciences,” 2002, Institute for American Values, available at www.americanvalues.org, and the updated version “Why Marriage Matters, Third Edition, Thirty Conclusions from theSocial Sciences.” See also Linda J. Waite’s tabulations from the 1987-1988 waves of the National Survey of Families and Households available in Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher, 2000. The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier, and Better-Off Financially (New York:  Doubleday): 155-156.

[iii] The proclamation was read by President Gordon B. Hinckley as part of his message at the General Relief Society (women’s auxiliary) Meeting held September 23, 1995, in Salt Lake City. In its entirety at https://www.lds.org/topics/family-proclamation?lang=eng&cid=PA0414-02

[iv] Vico, Giambattista, The New Science, 3rd Edition, trans. by Max Harold Fisch and Thomas Goddard Bergin, paragraphs 10-11:  “The first of these [human institutions] was marriage…For marriage, as all statesmen agree, is the seed-plot of the family, as the family is the seed-plot of the commonwealth…”

[v] Unwin, also Joseph Daniel, Ph.D., “Sexual Regulations and Cultural Behavior," an address given to the Medical Section of the British Psychological Society.