I don't get it. People and their fantasies forever amaze me. (Since the last line of this articl alludes to it) A current example is the marriage of homosexuals presented as normal. It's not, it's the fantasy I talk about.

How about somebody write a book which actually displays wisdom! This bloke has his eyes fixed on the problems accurately enough, but then...but then!

And I just loved the gender bias, in theorising women as solving the problems of the world. They don't start wars ay...oh yes, and Margaret Thatcher? And of course our current American Queen of "tarts" , Hillary Clinton...actually, they'll be less likelihood of wars with Donal Trump, trust me! Uncle Donald, with the whole focus of life between his legs, how could that go wrong?

In order to keep it short, I go along with John Cleese....The world is stuffed, there is no hope for it!

I doubt very much that we are facing our "sternest test". "Well-educated people" are not always practical or free of irrational fears; in fact, it is many of these "well-educated" people who are spreading fear to gain control over us. "Eco-collapse", for instance, lies mainly in the fevered imaginations of junk scientists and professional activists, who can't come to terms with the forces of nature. There is no evidence of "resource scarcity": extremists just don't want resources exploited; and the "poisoned planet" is greatly exaggerated by fear-mongers.

Julian - of your parade of nightmares the one that is the easiest to debunk is food security, as you've got the wrong decade. Food prices did spike a few years back but the peak was in 2011 and prices have since slumped.
http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/

The Food and Agricultural Organisation is a UN body which keeps a food price index. Go down the page and look at the long term graph. In real terms, that is after adjustment for inflation, food prices are below where they were in the early 1980s.

So much for food security and climate affecting agricultural production. Maybe you want to wind back the doomsaying in that area.

Money isn't everything!

Just try living without it to understand just how wrong that stupid beyond belief, anal retentive statement really is! And given we retain the right to think for ourselves and freedom of speech, and own our individual political beliefs! So also the right to worship, think, hopefully, occasionally and believe as we chose! Even a flat, stone age world, with no left handed people?

If you have a problem with any of that, get down off the hobby horse of endless negativity personified, entirely unhelpful, critical catawaling. And present your evidence based solutions with as much integrity and power of logical persuasion as you can muster!

You can lead a camel with an already full bellyful of water to the oasis, but you can't make him take on an extra life saving five gallons, unless you brick him first!

The dates should be ripe about now and decadently delicious. Mind you, the almost obligatory dust storms are dust awful!
Alan B.

Ah yes Julian, females do many things, except rape their male partners. Sigh, weep. Whatever happened to equality? Sigh, weep.
Alan B.

An introduction to a remarkable book informed by profoundly felt all-inclusive Wisdom, and unbounded Compassion for all beings, both human and non-human, in the humanly created world-situation in the "21st century". Which (unfortunately) confirms the pessimistic scenarios described by Julian in his essay.
http://www.dabase.org/p2anthro.htm
Plus this essay from the same book:
http://www.sacredcamelgardens.com/literature/reality-humanity.php

And this essay on the nature of the power-and-control-seeking mind which has inevitably created this situation - the universal scapegoat drama.
http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/Aletheon/ontranscendingtheinsubordinatemind.html