Meanwhile methane—a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon in the short term—has started hemorrhaging into the atmosphere from thawing arctic permafrost, and no one really knows what to do about it. This, like the albedo effect of polar ice loss and numerous other self-reinforcing warming effects that have been unlocking in recent years, can potentially cause the Earth to continue warming all on its own regardless of future human behavior.

That's all on top of the western empire ramping up world-threatening aggressions against both nuclear-armed Russia and nuclear-armed China simultaneously, a multi-front cold war the likes of which we've never seen before and which is only just barely getting started. And if we don't wipe ourselves out by climate collapse or nuclear war, we could still easily do it fairly soon with weaponized AI. 

So our species is facing existential threats on myriad fronts which could easily lead to horrifying extinction-level events which we could easily see unfold in our own lifetimes.

And it's just so very strange how we don't talk about that more.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Article with links and sources: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/its-really-weird-how-little-we-talk

It's Really Weird How Little We Talk About Humanity's Imminent Doom

A top mission of mine is to collect non-mainstream, relatively obscure, high quality, climactic, resplendent & hauntingly beautiful music: as powerful and soul-stirring as possible. It needs to have that voluptuous catharsis of emotion and feeling. Many people have been moved by my collection, including a classical purist, therefore I know that this playlist contains something worthwhile. 
Criteria: timeless, nearly universal appeal, soaring strings that could split one's heart open, at least one live instrument, preferably be instrumental (no vocals), be of impeccable production, and, of course, be staggeringly lush and beautiful.

I have been collecting from every nook and cranny for quite a long while. (A recent study has revealed that some brains process music in a bit of a deeper way, where each note, chord, or tempo change carries extra special meaning. Music is a language of its own dimension...)

If you think I'd love a track, please send it to me!

The top fifteen most beautiful (in my highly subjective opinion; 
they are beautiful Because they are powerful, in a hauntingly beautiful way that is capable of rousing a state of inner emergency) musical masterpieces I have, so far, ever heard (updated 12/2024), available via the link below:

1.  Aria (Paul Schwartz): Horizon
2. Vanessa-Mae: The Blessed Spirits
3. Sarah Brightman: Deliver Me 
4. Dead Can Dance: The Host of Seraphim
5. Hovhaness: Prayer of Saint Gregory, Op. 62b
6. Mari Samuelsen: White Flowers Take Their Bath
7. Vanessa-Mae: Widescreen
8. Orlando Soundtrack (1994): Pavanne
9. Conni Ellisor: Dream Trilogy
10. Vangelis: Roxane's Veil
11. Aria (Paul Schwartz): Furioso
12. Depeche Mode: One Caress
13.
14.
15.

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(My strange journey to Electronica: 
Mortal Kombat led me to the music aligned with my soul, because Mortal Kombat, at 15,  gave me a sort of rebirth. The Immortals put out a Mortal Kombat CD to go with the video game (hot tracks: "Scorpion", "Kano", "Hypnotic House"), and the 1995 film soundtrack to Mortal Kombat the Movie, was some of my first introduction to electronica. I intuited a way forward to something untamed, powerful like a gale, and driven inside of me, yearning to be known. I had listened to "club dance" music before, but this was different: powerful, transformative, underground, deep, primal, sexy, kaleidoscopic, badass, intense, cryptic, evocative of higher spheres of thought, unifying, and it revived like mother's milk. It was a language I could effortlessly understand. This was my path; listening, I peered into the slumbering, swirling rising power within the collective - a delicious underground rebellion - and within myself (and it must be known that EDM was created by and for marginalized communities.) I felt I was being invited to participate in something enormous (it is through this music alone that I can feel that a massive collective awakening is approaching in our lifetimes. I hear it.) The film soundtrack introduced me to Orbital's "Halcyon and On and On", and the rest is history, because my life had begun. Since this also happened to so many other people, I have to conclude that the universe is... holographic. 
[The music may definitely be off-putting to those that cannot stomach its repetitive, even robotic elements. Those of us that can, find in EDM trance-inducing states of consciousness, reminiscent of that of indigenous spiritual beliefs and practices.] )

Readings of all Caitlin Johnstone's articles, usually by her co-writer Tim Foley.