Countryman: Power players and scary scenarios

Jan 22, 2017 Countryman, Features / Columnists

---

By Dennis Nichols

On Friday last, Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th US president. Seismic shudders may

soon be rippling across the world, from NATO whose obsolescence Trump declared, to South Pacific Island governments worried about his stance on the global warming threat which has seen several of the Solomon Islands already swallowed up by rising sea levels.
Our ripples here are less pronounced; the new year dawned with local politicians squabbling over Red House, its occupancy, and the preservation of Guyana’s presidential patrimony. Certain officials seem overly concerned about the outcome of an appeal on a presidential term-limit ruling. And our president and opposition leader are not seeing eye-to-eye in their ‘judgement’ as to the suitability of any of the latter’s group of six to be the new GECOM chairman.
In the United States, although there is now no dispute over the tenancy of the White House, there is some chagrin over Mr. Trump’s ability to lead a country split almost down the middle in its support for the new leader of the so-called free world. Some world leaders are no doubt looking on in bemusement; among them movers and shakers from North Korea. China, Israel, the Middle East – and Guyana?
What these players have in common is power. There are several kinds and levels of this ability to control and influence. One kind emanates from the mind and feeds the ego. A very different kind is the energy available through modern science and technology, much of which lies at the fingertips of these world-stage players. Another, many believe, manifests as divine intervention in human affairs.
As time rolls on, a significant number of people have grown increasingly apprehensive over a man-made holocaust; a nuclear war, or a tech-driven meltdown, each of which could end civilization as we know it.
Since the turn of the last century’s millennium scare, people have become increasingly paranoid over the eventuality of a biblical-type catastrophe, not excluding now the possibility of a Trump-triggered global disaster with his apparent disdain for environmental concerns and a finger poised over that nuclear button.
In 1999, a large part of Earth’s population anticipated disaster. It was a big scare with a small name – Y2K, and many prepped for a doomsday scenario. The fear was that because computers hadn’t been programmed to ‘understand’ the year 2000, since only the last two digits were used taking the ‘19’ for granted, then by default all the world’s computers would read ’00 as 1900, and crash. The resulting chaos would be apocalyptical, according to tech experts although some downplayed the possibility.
Then doomsday was rescheduled for December 21st 2012 when the Mayan Calendar’s 5125-year Great Cycle would end; ditto the world, or at least trigger a cosmic upheaval. When nothing of global significance happened we had to wait three more years for two American televangelists to issue dire warnings of a sure bible-prophesied cataclysm over the appearance of four so-called blood moons (total lunar eclipses) between April 2014 and September 2015. Again nothing happened, but some people are still waiting to exhale.
I wasn’t overly worried about these predictions simply because I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. How could a computer glitch cause such anticipated chaos? Then I couldn’t be convinced that the end-date of a calendar could have such ominous consequence. And understanding that total lunar eclipses, even four in a row, were normal events, I felt pretty sure there would be many more of them after September 21st 2012. I think we control our destinies much more than we realize.
Occasionally a power play is acted out in my head. I imagine first a battle of wills; a stare down between the holders of man-given/man-made power and alien/celestial might. It quickly escalates to Armageddon-like proportions – nuclear missiles, thunderbolts and all. There can be one outcome only. Man’s ego and power are swiftly crushed and humans look on helplessly as Earth destructs before they are swept into oblivion.
That’s a far-fetched scenario, so we should hope, but one wonders, with all the seemingly power-drunk leaders, bigots, racists, and Machiavellis amongst us in positions of social dominance if something not too dissimilar, even without divine intervention, could happen?
Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking seems to think so, although he gives it another couple of hundred to a thousand years during which time, he says, we should establish self-sustaining colonies in space.
He declared, “We face a number of threats to our survival, from nuclear war, catastrophic global warming, and genetically-engineered viruses. The number is likely to increase in the future, with the development of new technologies, and new ways that things can go wrong. Although the chance of a disaster to Planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time. We have spread out into space and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race…” Thanks for the optimism!
American author Tony Schwartz has a somewhat different perspective, and guess whom it is centred on? Yep, he’s the man who co-authored ‘The Art of the Deal’ that helped make Donald Trump a household name. This is what he said recently. “I put lipstick on a pig. I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is. I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes, there is an excellent possibility that it will lead to the end of civilization”
Much of my sincere rambling with respect to power may be dismissed as speculation and fearful imagination. Life will go on as Earth continues spinning on her wobbly, perennial axis for thousands or millions of years. Mankind may enter an age of moral and spiritual reawakening; medical science could wipe out disease and forestall death. Donald Trump may turn out to be America’s saviour president! And we Guyanese may finally validate our country’s national motto – things that make you go “Yeah, right!”
In the end, the various forms of apparent power could in fact be just one universal phenomenon – something like the Star Wars ‘force’ that envelops everyone and everything, which can be harnessed for good or evil, having both a light and a dark side – the duality that we see all around us. Scientists are finding out some amazing things about energy/power and the material universe which appear to show the latter as being subordinate to the former.
So when Guyanese politicians argue over a building, or the possibility of the opposition leader becoming a third-term president; or Americans cringe at the thought of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in a tête-à-tête; or the world watches Kim Jong Un and that 10,000 km-range missile, or a thousand such possibilities, they should remember both the fearfulness and the fragility of power assumed by us humans.
It needn’t spell doom – unless allowed to.

---

---