All We Knew Was Wrong!

In the 1950s, our knowledge of how the world works was so advanced: my father knew he had the best diet imaginable when he ate eggs and bacon for breakfast and steak well-marbled for dinner. He died of his second stroke at age 60. My mother bottle-fed me: formula was so scientifically advanced. Nursing was primitive.

In the 1950's, we knew we lived in a new era in which there were unlimited sources of cheap energy. Oil gushed out of the ground (not the bottom of the sea); soft coal was so cheap it was better for heating your house than wood; nuclear power would soon give us unlimited energy so cheap we'd hardly have to pay for it.

We knew in the 1950's that swamps were just a waste of land and should be drained, so we could use them: nature was messy. That included the Everglades, and the channels of the Mississippi: we drained, channeled and controlled them, because we knew how to improve on nature.

Government authorities told uranium miners, citizens living downwind from nuclear testing, and nuclear weapon workers that the low doses of radiation they received were harmless, maybe even beneficial. Everybody trusted the government.

We knew that forest fires were always bad, so all over the nation we suppressed them (building up tinder for worse fires later).

We knew that predators like wolves could subvert our scientific agriculture, so we hunted them down. We were just beginning to learn to use antibiotics on meat animals. We applied DDT to the crops we ate and the front lawns where children played. We held all pests at bay.

Lead was added to gasoline, so that our bigger and better cars wouldn't knock; no one thought about all the lead spewing from them.

We built 1,000's of nuclear weapons because the USSR was trying to catch up. We did wonder about a world that could be destroyed instantaneously, but we just did "duck and cover" drills in school.

We didn't need chemical weapons, so we sent them to the bottom of the sea: we knew they'd do no harm there.

We lobotomized people for emotional problems. We were so, so advanced. We knew so much.

And now we know that if we take the right "precautions," we can still drill for oil, even at the bottom of the sea! At least, that's what Congress and the Pres and BP keep telling us.

Often, conventional wisdom is not wise. It only prevails because it is conventional, but everything we thought we knew was wrong!

Now, conventional wisdom could kill--most of us. Let's see: if climate change makes large parts of Earth inhospitable to agriculture through drought and extreme weather, and we poison the seas, what's left?

We won't have to worry about an "American Empire," or even "America."