Earth, Heavens and Humanity

Economic super cycles tend to follow climate cycles. Stability and plenty is associated with stable warm weather, while wars, revolutions and upheavals happen during period with cold and unstable weather.

The transition from plenty to want is often sudden and chaotic because of the way we fail to prepare. A lot of wasteful practices build up during the good times. Politicians and bureaucrats take advantage of the situation. They invent all sorts of programs. They limit people's liberties, and make people dependent on handouts, thereby securing control of the population. However, these schemes always collapse in the face of real hardships.

All it takes for things to go from tolerable to disastrous is a couple of bad harvests. Suddenly, there's an awareness of the liberties lost during the good times, and an awakening to the fact that the state cannot work magic. There's revolt and revolution. There's war.

This is not a new insight. Historians tend to agree on this. Even religious texts make this connection. Times of upheaval coincide with times when the climate turns against us. However, religious texts take this one step further than what the typical historian would. The Bible lays a connection between the earth, the heavens and humanity. When it comes to signs of imminent catastrophe we are told to observe all three.

An interesting aspect of this is that it's becoming increasingly evident that the climate is connected to solar cycles as well as geological events. Volcanic eruptions can cause bad harvests, sometimes on a global scale. Low solar activity coincides with cold and unstable weather. There is in other words a connection between the economy and the state of our sun and our planet.

What used to be seen as religious superstition turns out to be correct. However, the Bible draws the parallel even further, and it remains to be seen if this too is correct. It claims that humanity often go mad before the signs are clear for everyone to see. The first signs of trouble are in our fellow men. A moral decline precedes natural disasters.

I find this interesting in that I sensed the approach of some imminent storm back in 2016, and it was the moral failings of people around me that I found particularly alarming. This moral decline has since accelerated, especially over the last two years, and now, all of a sudden, we're seeing volcanos pop all over the place, and the climate has turned decidedly cooler in certain parts of the world, including Portugal where I live.

Things have not deteriorated to the point where there's widespread famine, and we're not seeing mountains of fire being tossed into the sea. But, the signs are there, and if the Bible is right, we're getting close to some spectacular fireworks.

Violent volcanic eruption

By Oliver Spalt, CC BY 2.0, Link