Is Humanity Hurtling Toward Oblivion?

A former pentagon thinker believes so.

A few months before the tragedy of September 11, 2001, I read a remarkable book by Richard A. Swenson, M.D. He practiced medicine, taught medicine at the University of Wisconsin, and worked as a futurist thinker for the Pentagon. While driving down I-94 in Wisconsin in the late 1990s, he received an epiphany that inspired the writing of a book titled Hurtling Toward Oblivion—a short but dramatic argument suggesting to Dr. Swenson that “History might really be rounding the last lap for the homestretch.” He was so astounded by the revelation that came to him that he slammed on the brakes and stopped the car along the Interstate to quickly jot his idea down before it was lost in a “poof is cerebral vapor.” As a Christian, he acknowledged that God is in control of world events but by applying the same kind of thought processes he used to look forward on behalf of the Pentagon, he came to the conclusion that he does not see how life on Earth could last beyond 100 years from the 1999 publication date of Hurtling Toward Oblivion. Here are the basic facts of modern life that convinced Dr. Swenson that the days of humankind on Earth are numbered.

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Profusion: There is more of everything: people, cars, roads, airplanes, passengers, fights, televisions, programs, stations. There are more computers, books, magazines, information, businesses, services, products, restaurants, medications, telephones, smart phones, money. There are more activities and commitments, choices, decisions, and more change, stress, technology, complexity. Anything you can think of there has been more and more of everything, taking place faster and faster.

Irreversibility of Profusion:Profusion is irreversible mostly because new discoveries can’t be undiscovered. Swenson provided three reasons our current path to progress—leading to inevitably increasing profusion—is irreversible.

· The performance of our economy is completely dependent on progress continuing in its current direction.

· We are habituated to the lifestyle progress provides.

· Each new level of progress not only supersedes the former, but supplants it. It annihilates it.

Exponentiality of Profusion: Exponential growth is now leading to an absolute explosion of profusion. The power of exponential growth defies the imagination. To help us comprehend exponentiality, the author notes that if you fold a piece of paper in half 40 times, it will reach the thickness of from Earth to the moon! Exponentiality of the U.S. Federal debt is most directly related to the focus of this letter because the debasement of our fiat currency—the dollar—is deteriorating in line with the exponential growth of the U.S. Federal debt. The chart of Gross Federal debt shows $6 trillion, which was the amount on the books when Swenson wrote his book in 1999. It is now $34 trillion and still rising exponentially. It has come to the point where this direction is not sustainable. As J.P. Morgan said, “Only gold is money. Everything else is credit.”

Entropy, the Second Law of Thermodynamics:The fact is that within these 4 dimensions of time and space, everything breaks down and decays. Albert Einstein said, “The law of entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, is the premier law of all of science.” In the book, Swenson wrote: “In its own right and much the same way, we might say that the law of fallenness is a premier law in future studies. Without first understanding fallenness [the natural decay of everything including the morality of human beings], it is impossible to fully understand and explain what is happening in the world around us. It would be like trying to understand infectious disease without understanding microbes.”

An accurate prediction of the future requires fallenness to be factored in. Pessimism holds that the worst will always happen. Fallenness says some things are beautiful and good. The worst may not happen. Sometimes good things happen. There are two kinds of evil. There is natural evil like sickness and car accidents. Then there is moral evil, which is the intentional use of technology to destroy others. Did we just witness the former or later with the COVID pandemic?

A Profusion of Negatives: Everything is on an exponential scale, including both natural and moral evil. Given the fallenness of the universe, everything in it is less than perfect and has some flaws. So, profusion takes place for both positive and negative developments. With more people there will be more “good” people. But the number of “bad” people is also growing exponentially. Technology can be good or bad. Discovery of nuclear energy is a mixed bag. It can be used for the good of humankind as a low-cost clean energy source or it can be used to blow up the entire planet. We are now seeing how AI can lead to more efficient work output. But it can also be used by humans to deceive each other. You can think of good and bad results coming from the internet and greater human mobility. Even human longevity brings with it problems that were not present when the average age was shorter. In Chapter 6 of the book, there are several examples of many positive inventions but each of them, even among the most positive, has serious negative unintended consequences that follow. With each profusion of positives, we also have profusions of the negatives. Because of entropy, every positive ever invented, brought with it unintended negative consequences.

The Threshold of Lethality is the concluding principle explained by Dr. Swenson that leads him to conclude that it’s not likely humanity can survive on Earth beyond the 100 years from the date Hurtling Toward Oblivion went to press in 1999.

It is probably a reasonable assumption that many more good inventions and good people exist than pathological inventions and bad people. But there is a flaw in simply assuming that, because the number of good events and good people outweigh the number of bad, humanity can continue to progress on planet Earth. Swenson offers the following axiom for the reader’s consideration: “If the negatives are sufficiently dangerous, they cannot be offset by the positives, no matter how beneficial the positives are.”Swenson provided a host of examples to make his point. Here are just two that were offered in Hurtling Toward Oblivion:

Scenario: Great Mailbox: “You go to the mailbox and find ten letters addressed with your name. The first announces that you just inherited one million dollars. A second informs you that your book proposal was accepted by the publisher. A third letter sends the delightful news that your oldest child was just accepted into a top university with full scholarship. Each letter in turn brings good news: Your godchild became engaged, your lost pet was found, your new BMW finally arrived at the dealership. There was just one problem. Your last letter—from the Public Health Department—contains the results of your HIF test: positive, from an inadvertent needle stick. Comment: The positive letter to negative letter ratio was 9:1. Does that mean you are better off?”

Scenario: “Ralph the Bank President enjoys a seven-figure salary, a swimming pool, clean coronary arteries, a stable marriage, good kids, a post-graduate degree, and a daily limousine. But one night a thief comes into his house and kills him. No matter how much benefit Ralph had piled up, the detriment still won. Death has a way of trumping progress.”

Threshold of Lethality Applies to Large Systems Too

Those illustrations and others noted in the book all involved small-scale experiences that are mini-illustrations of the principles laid out above. But a “threshold of lethality” also applies to much larger systems: nations, economies, political parties, entire biological species. Billion-dollar companies go bankrupt overnight. Ethnic populations suffer genocide. Large segments of oceans become sterile. Species extinction happens regularly. And it can and one day will most certainly happen to the entire world system. Dr. Swenson noted several possible examples: nuclear war, biological or chemical weapons (so-called weapons of mass destruction), disease, and environmental catastrophes.

To illustrate how humanity might be eliminated, the first thing that comes to mind is perhaps an atomic war, and we appear to be getting very close with NATO insisting on accepting Ukraine into the fold even though Russia has repeatedly said it will use nuclear weapons if NATO proceeds. Or when we recall the so-called “COVID pandemic,” might a global disease of some kind annihilate humanity? However, what evolves could also be more gradual. Given his background as a physician, Swenson raises the question: “Does the world system have cancer?” He writes: “When the first cancer cells develop, they make absolutely no difference to the functioning of the trillions of other cells within the body. Each of these other cells continue to carry on their work in a healthy manner while ignoring the presence of the few malignant cells. This is the pre-morbid, subclinical stage.

“But cancer cells grow—and their growth is exponential. Soon these abnormal cells reach a mass whereby symptoms begin to manifest themselves. Not death but dysfunction. This is the symptomatic stage.

“Still, the cancer cells do not stop there. They continue to grow and divide. And once they reach the lethal stage, the entire body succumbs. Perhaps the cardiovascular or renal, gastrointestinal, and nervous systems all are still functioning normally. But if the lungs are consumed with malignancy, the entire body has a problem—we cannot live without oxygen.

“To apply this illustration of cancer and the body to the situation of fallenness and the world, it is my estimation that the world system has already passed the pre-morbid state ad is now in the symptomatic state. Even though not all of the world systems are at risk, such is not necessary. Lethality only has to choke off life from one essential system for the entire corpus to die.”

In Chapter 9 of the book, Swenson discusses various examples of what the triggering mechanism might be to set off global destruction by war, weapons of mass destruction, biological weapons, chemical weapons, and eco-catastrophes. Swenson says that one triggering issue that is most likely to play a role in whatever mechanism ends it all is economics. He writes: “Electronic money is flying around the globe like mad, and the resultant levels of volatility are custom-made for crisis.” Then he notes that “Global economic integration leads to tight-coupling (a condition of extreme interdependence where linkages are inseparably connected). And tight coupling leads to falling dominoes. As seizures pass through the world, markets freeze up at the speed of light. Even experts have lost the ability to predict—and it is unnerving. This year’s economic miracle turns into next year’s economic debacle—and nobody knows exactly why. The truly frightening part is how often these changes are not even considered in the realm of plausibility. As Jeffrey Garten, then dean of the Yale School of Management, said, “What happens in one part of the world eventually will affect everything butit might not be as we expect because the links are almost beyond human comprehension.”

Nine years after Hurtling Toward Oblivion was published, the Financial Crisis of 2008 nearly collapsed the global economy and the picture painted about the global financial markets in the book was quite accurate. With coordinated global efforts central bankers managed to get the system under control but at great cost to law and order with an explosion of inequity of financial outcomes as the top 1% continued to gain nearly all the new wealth created—or, I would add, “stolen,” because fiat money makes it possible for governments to allocate wealth with debt financed expenditures that result in people well connected to government becoming part of our current elite ruling class. Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) were not mentioned in the book because their development has been a recent event. But the Biden Administration is moving very rapidly to try to have CBDCs replacing currency so that it can control how we think, believe, vote, and what we can say and do, just as the Chinese Communist Party already does. We are without a doubt entering a kind of fascist/socialist dystopia that will without a doubt lead to mass poverty for the masses.

But Take Heart!

Toward the end of the book, on page 105, Swenson summarizes how he is dealing with the potential for an end of the age. He wrote: “Some look only at the graph of rapidly accumulating benefit, and they naturally want to celebrate the spectacular bounty of progress. Others look only at the graph of rapidly accumulating negative, and they naturally want to hide in the nearest cave. But I believe both miss the point.

“These days are not about fear—they are about privilege. These days will not be dominated ultimately by the chaos of worldly forces but by the sovereignty of God. As Jesus explained, ‘I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.’

“It’s time to start living as if we believed it.”

Nobody knows what the future holds. Swenson used the same intellectual abilities he has to write this book that he used as a physician and as a futurist working for the Pentagon. As a Christian he was quick to acknowledge that the end of the age is in the hands of God our Creator. And so, empowered by the Holy Spirit, we Christians need to live the lives that reflect the life of Jesus with the knowledge that He loves us and will provide life eternal in a form we can’t understand but is likely very much like that of the risen Christ described by more than 100 witnesses who saw him in a new kind of physical appearance after His resurrection. Yes, I know to many of you the Easter story is a fairy-tale. I won’t argue with you about its veracity because it is foolishness to those who do not believe. However, when darkness prevails in your life, as it will with 100% certainty, you may want to at least consider the evidence for the risen Christ as provided in the Bible, with explanations from some human sources like Lee Strobel, author of The Case for Christ. Or if you think there is no existence outside of time and space, you may want to explore the science-based explanation for the risen Christ at www.Reasons.Org; that organization, headed by astrophysicist Hugh Ross, discusses scientific reality that tends to confirm rather than refute the God of the Bible.

So What?

Meanwhile, turning to the here and now as it relates to this newsletter, check out the names in the illustration on your right. Listed there are the companies that Quinton Hennigh identified as potential acquisition targets by major mining companies in the February 24 Crescat Gets Active video presentation. While the market is currently oblivious to the junior exploration sector, the names of the companies displayed in the illustration below, with the exception of Hercules Silver Corporation, are all covered in J Taylor’s Gold, Energy & Tech Stocks because of the exploration success they have had in building solid gold and silver deposits and because they are shaping up as “must have” deposits by large gold miners.

Quinton spelled out the following criteria that gold producers need to acquire gold deposits. They are: (1) at least 10% of current production; (2) improvement of company operating profits; and (3) a mine life of at least 10 years. The two companies with heavy yellow circles around them are Snowline and New Found Gold because both should be able to produce over 500,000 ounces of gold per year at an AISC of <$1,200. One analyst is suggesting Snowline’s Valley Project can produce between 500,000 and 600,000 ounces of gold per year with an AISC of ~ $400 for 20 years! So, Quinton considers Snowline as an absolute must for Newmont or Barrick. He considers New Found Gold the next most likely to qualify for a Newmont or Barrick. He has lighter circles around i-80 Gold and Nevada King in part because Newmont and Barrick both already have a large presence in Nevada. The other stories without circles around them have projects that are emerging but not necessarily large enough to meet the needs of the two biggest gold miners, Newmont and Barrick, to add > 500,000 ounces of annual production.

Other smaller producers may end up picking up some of the other junior exploration stories like Altamira, Lion One, Goliath, Hercules, and others not on Quinton’s slide shown above. But in fact, most of those exploration companies have very significant ongoing exploration upside. Then there are gold producers with smaller levels of production that won’t need the same higher levels of production. If the 10% rule of production applies, companies with smaller levels of annual production, like Agnico Eagle (3.4 million oz.), Kinross (2.3 million oz.), Anglo Ashanti (2.7 million ounces), Goldfields (2.2 million ounces), and B2Gold which is a major shareholder of Snowline (~ 1 million ounces), might take a run at some of the other targets Crescat owns and those followed in this letter.

With basic industries like manufacturing and mining being so depressed for so long, it’s hard now to fathom a day when the sun shines again on those sectors. But what triggered Quinton’s discussion about mergers and acquisitions of companies in this newsletter and in Crescat Capital’s portfolio was the recent news that Newmont is building a $2 billion cash resource and that Elliott Management is raising a $1 billion nest egg to acquire tier one gold deposits. While there are many reasons for concern about the loss of liberty and freedom in America not to mention the even more dire outlook as laid out by Dr. Swenson, we have no choice but to persevere taking one day at a time and at the same time placing our trust in our Creator from whence everything we have has been derived. There is not much more that we can or need to do.

Best Wishes,

Jay Taylor

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