Word: cataclysmic
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...bedroom can create more sound than a symphony orchestra." Not any more. The Electric Symphony was loud enough to make Grand Funk Railroad sound like the Toonerville Trolley. When it played Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, the piece might better have been called Murals at a Cataclysm...
...Pollution per unit of output could perhaps be cut by three-fourths. But that would do nothing to check the exponential growth of population, and the world would soon run out of arable land, leading to mass starvation. Population growth could be halted; but that would only postpone the cataclysm unless industrial growth were stopped too. If it persisted, output would soon quadruple, canceling the benefits of the 75% reduction in pollution; thereafter pollution would rise dramatically, causing hecatombs by poisoning. There is only one way out, says the report: economic as well as population growth must be stopped cold...
Even the authors of the Club of Rome report confess that there is only one conceivable reason for stopping growth: that is the only way to prevent certain global cataclysm. But is it really...
...economy of words (her description of 11th century Christendom: "Purified to small purpose at great cost"). Part of it, too, is the tantalizing, gradually unfolded history of marooned St. Cyprian: the early, apocalyptic piety, the later license, the hallucinogenic crops, the bloody rage. And finally the second cataclysm: the shock of realization and rebirth when Father Albrecht arrives with the news that the outside world exists after...
Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen...