It is hand drawn and printed on graph paper but the information it conveys is worth a book of words.
Our existence is a transition between a natural, self-creative period and an unnatural, self-destructive period. Our self-creative period began with the conception of life an eon ago. During it our predecessors, like all species, followed Nature’s order to “reach out to the limits of their capacities, to others, and to Nature’s God”, that seemed logical to call self-creative natural activity. The result was, by about 200K years ago our predecessors realized the mental capacity that enabled our ‘mother’ to ask “Why am I?”, the question of meaning that gave birth to humanity; and marked the transition point into our period of self-destruction. All other species continued their natural activity as long as our destructive activity allowed.
With their novel ability to question our ‘parents’ searched for the answer to the question of meaning, but it remained unknown. Instinctively fearing the unknown they made up an answer with which they tried to fill the void. Since “trying to fill the void” within is opposed to our self-creative “reaching out…”, tries are logically defined as unnatural, self-destructive activity. Thus the transition into our second period began with the first try to fill the void.
The rate at which the transition from natural to unnatural, and thus from self-creative to self-destructive activity occurred, creates the exponential curve in the graph. The timeline, the x axis at the bottom of the graph, begins at the left end with the birth of humanity. There is no end date but given the accumulating evidence of climate change, the guess is without action to stop the clock it can be any time now. The life activity that creates the curve blends complementary ratios of natural and unnatural activity, the %s of which create the y-axis.
Initially our line curves gently downward indicating a slowly, steadily increasing rate of transition from exclusive natural activity and self-creation to complementary unnatural activity and self-destruction. At about 10,000 years ago our line began curving downward more quickly as the rate of transition was accelerated by the development of agriculture and ‘civilization’. The curve shows a continuing gradual accelerating rate of transition until the industrial and economic revolutions about 250 years ago. Since then the curve has become closer to a vertical line near the end of 2025 indicating we are approaching entirely self-destructive activity at nearly terminal velocity, and complementarily decreasing to none the remnant of natural, self-creative activity we need to survive.
Until we hit bottom we can change our minds. If we do we can in an instant, discard the tries to fill the void we have accumulated over the past 200k years, restore Nature’s order and take our straightened line back to life at the top. We can’t recreate the life we have destroyed but we can quit destroying the life we have left.
