British elections are decided using what is known as the First Past the Post (abbreviated FPTP, 1stP, 1PTP or FPP) voting system.
Along with no written constitution, it is the primary cause of all Britain’s dysfunction.
You would think that a General Election is how the British public decide who they want to represent them in Parliament and ultimately run the country.
Wrong.
First past the post is a voting system designed to keep the electorate/country under the control of a two-party dictatorship while giving the delusion of democracy.
The candidate with the most votes in each constituency wins and becomes the MP for that seat. All other votes aredisregarded.
As there is only one candidate from each party, voters who support that party but don’t like their candidate have to either vote for a party they don’t support or a candidate they don’t like. This means the number of MPs a party has in parliament rarely matches their popularity with the public.
Westminster’s voting system creates two sorts of areas. ‘Safe seats’, with such a low chance of changing hands that there is no point in campaigning, and ‘swing seats’, that could change hands.
Parties design their manifestos to appeal to voters in swing seats, and spend the majority of their funds campaigning in them. But, policies designed to appeal to voters in these seats may not help voters in the rest of the country.
Voters who live in safe seats can feel ignored by politicians. The more candidates with a chance of getting elected the fewer votes the winner needs.
Under Westminster’s First Past the Post system it is common for constituencies to elect MPs that more than half the voters didn’t want.
As the number of MPs a party gets doesn’t match their level of support with the public, it can be hard for the public to hold the government to account.
To combat this, voters try to second-guess the results.
If a voter thinks their favourite candidate can’t win, they may vote for one with the best chance of stopping a candidate they dislike from winning.
Democracy is the political system where the government represents the will of the people. There never has been a perfect democracy, there are only degrees of approximation, and democracy goes far beyond discussion of the voting system. Nevertheless, the voting system is an important element in shaping a democracy, and First Past the Post (FPTP) is woefully inadequate in expressing the will of the people because the vote never gets beyond the constituency boundary.
Worse still, a Government can be elected on the basis of 33% of votes cast, but considering turnout, this falls to 22% of those entitled to vote.
22%! One in five!! Yet idiot conservatives of right and left still defend FPTP.
Words fail to describe such a form of democracy.
What’s immediately needed to resolve the impasse on Brexit is a second referendum, since Brexit is a single issue and referendums are a ballot on a single issue.
First past the post (FPTP) is the first step to full radical reform in the UK.
It is time to change the system.
Most countries around the world use proportional voting systems – a party winning half the vote would win half the seats in parliament.
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There’s a lot of hype floating around one specific technology that has the potential to change everything:
Google’s recent mythical achievement does not signal the arrival of quantum computing.
Quantum Computing is still far enough away that attempting to predict when it will occur and what useful tasks it will eventually be used for is a recipe for embarrassment because history teaches us that unforeseen applications will blossom as access to new tools becomes available.
In this very detached and disintegrating world, intelligence systems are learning from the environment they are exposed to and make decisions on biases they are developing.
Once you get the wrong side of an algorithm your life immediately becomes more difficult. Your perceived failures are fed into the algorithm, and your situation degrades even further.
This is why it’s imperative that we begin to take the problem of AI BIAS seriously and take steps to mitigate their effects by making our systems more transparent, explainable, and auditable.
We must shift from automation to augmentation.
They are counting on it to change the world by solving problems that are intractable for today’s classical computers.
At the moment its all in the cloud so any assessment or update of what we know about Quantum Computers is pie in the sky.
However, there are a few thoughts.
They conjure up everything from futuristic cities to talking fridges. Undoubtedly the reality is much less sci-fi.
They are supposed to offer an opportunity to manipulate information in a fundamentally different way. To tackle ever-larger questions that can help us gain a profoundly deeper understanding of the world around us.
While traditional computers operate with bits, quantum computers operate with qubits that allow superposition. Qubits enable this because instead of being constrained to one of two possible values (1 or 0), a qubit can exist as a mixture of both.
A unique quantum physics behaviour that binds the destiny of a quantity of different particles so that what happens to one will affect the others.
“Entanglement.”
This means that a Quantum Computer can manipulate all its qubits simultaneously—in other words, instead of doing a set of calculations one after another, a quantum computer could do them all at the same time.
Okay, putting the theory aside, let’s focus on the real-world applications these quantum computers will have on the world.
Optimization slicing through a mountain of variables without breaking a sweat.
Enabling better Weather and climate modelling. Better Personalized medicine. Better Space data analyzation. Better raw computing power for machine-learning software to teach artificial intelligence more like humans. Encryption will become useless. Real-time language translation will be possible.
Open-air gesture control, with the keyboard and mouse—slowly replaced by the gesture interface.
Amazon Google, virtual assistants will understand the context behind the questions you ask; they will recognize the indirect signals given off by your tone of voice; they will even engage in long-form conversations with you.
Devices you wear or even insert inside your body to help you interact digitally with the world around you. These devices will play a supporting role in how we engage with the digital space; we’ll use them for specific purposes in specific contexts with brain implants.
Integrating all of the technologies mentioned above represents the start of an entirely new mass-market medium virtual reality and augmented reality.
The goal of AR ( augmented reality) is to act as a digital filter on top of your perception of the real world.
Everyone’s idea of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality is fixated towards science fiction however AR will eventually do away with most of the traditional computer interfaces consumers have grown up with thus far. AR, when it comes in Quantum form, it will too control machines:
Controlling household functions (lighting, curtains, temperature), as well as a range of other devices and vehicles.
Thought itself:
Amputees are now already testing robotic limbs controlled directly by the mind, instead of through sensors attached to the wearer’s stump.
An international team of scientists were able to mimic telepathy by having one person from India think the word “hello,” and through BCI, that word was converted from brain waves to binary code, then emailed to France, where that binary code was converted back into brainwaves, to be perceived by the receiving person. Brain-to-brain communication, people
Useful quantum computers still not insight.
Needless to say, the future is not too far away.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: PERPETUAL GROWTH IS COMING TO AN END.
( Seven-minute read)
Economics is not an unbiased academic discipline, it’s an ideology. Furthermore, economics is based on the false premise that perpetual growth is achievable.
Can economic growth be sustainably achieved?
Finite resources make perpetual growth theoretically impossible. No amount of technological breakthrough or creative accounting can counter that physical fact.
Is economic growth desirable?
The short answer appears to be no.
Exponential growth will eventually take you to impossible places.
Unfortunately, we live in a world of capitalists that thrive on the great Myth of Perpetual Growth, endless growth, ad infinitum, forever, till the end of time.
It seems as though we are damned if we grow and damned if we don’t.
We’ve now with Algorithms for profit sake got to a position where there’s nothing to keep us in check – so we have to do it ourselves.
It’s a waiting game now – to see if we can learn to behave differently to bacteria in a petri dish before it’s too late and we kill our host.
It’s not worth the risk.
Ecology and economics have to be intertwined, or we’re in serious trouble.
It’s time we all get our head out of the smartphone and become smart.
We can have debates about what we’re going to do about this and that, but if you can’t see the reason in the core of what I am saying, we’ll be having two very different conversations.
There is little point in arguing any longer whether Neoliberalism is to blame for damaging ecology beyond its ability to support us. It has lead to the inevitable collision between an insatiable economic model and a finite planet whose resources are stretched to the hilt.
The perception of the need for perpetual economic growth is a fraud and this assumption creates massive risk when reaching the limits of our natural systems.
With a world population nearly at 7 billion people, the implication for economic growth seems obvious as we cannot assume that the status quo will hold in a changing climatic environment. Reaching the earth’s resource limit is inevitable if it is not already occurring.
However changing our society’s behaviours cannot be achieved through some overseeing organization.
Perpetual growth has been ingrained through exposure to intensive branding and marketing by the very corporations who provide jobs and economic growth, and round and round we go…… Enacting such dramatic change through a highly centralized governing structure that dictates appropriate resource use, population levels, and actively redistributes wealth is a hard sell even in dire times.
As a result, we cannot continue consuming more and more water, spewing out more and more carbon dioxide and burning more and more coal.
In the past 22 years, half of all of the oil ever burned has been burned.
At present, the global population is increasing by 83 million people annually and we are already consuming natural resources as if we have “1.5 Earths.”
If every person used as many resources as the average North American, more than four Earths would be required to sustain the total rate of consumption. Other words if everyone lived like the average American, the Earth could sustain only 1.7 billion people — a quarter of today’s population.
27 billion people will inhabit the planet by the end of the century and hidden in every calorie of food eaten are 10 calories of fossil fuels.
Technology can lead to greater efficiencies, it requires energy — it does not create it.
Water is obviously a key component of human life. It is also vital to energy, industry, agriculture and livestock.
With all of this in mind, it’s time to abandon the perpetual growth economic model and move instead to a model that stresses conservation, efficiency, recycling and renewability. Clearly, the world is on an unsustainable path and, by definition, anything that is unsustainable won’t last.
Above all else, we must redefine the quality of life as something other than just having “more.” The goal should be to simply have enough. Our quality of life should not be measured by “stuff,” but instead by the things that make life rich; our relationships, our hobbies, our work and our passions.
GDP merely measures what people are willing to pay for, which is not necessarily connected to the use of energy, or any other physical resource.
The world will be confronting shortages of hydrocarbons, metals, water and fertilizer, which will dramatically affect global agriculture. The latter is critical.
So why are we unable to change direction.
Because of the threat, transnational organizations have over the nation-state.
Because no one is willing to bear the costs.
Because of the amount of power capital has over labour.
As it stands, nearly half the world’s population — more than 3 billion people — lives on roughly $2 per day.
The solution is to get profit for profit sake to pay:
By introducing a World Aid commission of 0.05% on all High-frequency trading, on all sovereign wealth funds acquisitions on all foreign exchange transaction over $50,000, on all gambling and lottos wins creating a perpetual world aid fund.
By issuing United Nation Green Deal non-trading Bond.
By the introduction of a World Day of non-consumerism Advertising.
By building non atomised Societies that are attached geographical – belonging not defined by competition.
By eating together one a week.
The question is how do we communicate this obvious message, in the face of corporate control of the media, and increasingly academia, science and the political system?
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
With technology and new technique in artificial intelligence redefining how life can be created opening a research window into the early moments of a human life perhaps the above question is not so farcical, despite some thorny ethical constraints like artificial embryos.
In a breakthrough that redefines how life can be created, embryologists working at the University of Cambridge in the UK have grown realistic-looking mouse embryos using only stem cells. No egg. No sperm. Just cells plucked from another embryo.
What if they turn out to be indistinguishable from real embryos?
Then there are advances in genomic biotechnology presenting the possibility of bringing back long-extinct species.
To get from the genome work in the lab to herds of Woolly Mammoths would definitely bring the survival of the fittest into question.
Generative adversarial network, or GAN, takes two neural networks—the simplified mathematical models of the human brain that underpin most modern machine learning—and pits them against each other in a digital cat-and-mouse game. It is endeavouring to give machines imagination.
DNA has linked 206 variants to intelligence. One day, babies will get DNA report cards at birth.
Herbert Spencer coined the term “Survival of the Fittest” in 1864.
Darwin intended “fittest” to mean the members of the species best suited for the immediate environment, the basis of the idea of natural selection.
Darwin’s distinctive idea was to emphasize natural selection as the main mechanism of evolution: if certain heritable traits increase or decrease the chances of survival and reproduction in the struggle for life, then those traits that favour survival and reproduction will increase in frequency over generations, and thus organisms will become more adapted to their environments, and over a long period of time the differences between varieties of a species can become so great that the varieties become new species.
On the one hand, he tells the reader to disregard his metaphorical personification of Nature as implying “conscious choice” or “intelligent power,” because nature should be understood as “only the aggregate action and product of many natural laws.”
On the other hand, he refuses to give up his personification of Nature, apparently because he senses that this engages the mind of the reader through the poetic imagery of Nature as a person.
The survival of the fittest that determines everything is stuck in our lexicon. With the phrase today commonly used in contexts that are incompatible with the original meaning as intended.
When it comes to technology “Survival of the fittest” is inaccurate for two important reasons.
First, survival is merely a normal prerequisite to reproduction.
Second, fitness has specialized meaning in biology different from how the word is used in popular culture. In population genetics, fitness refers to differential reproduction. “Fitness” does not refer to whether an individual is “physically fit” – bigger, faster or stronger – or “better” in any subjective sense.
It refers to a difference in reproductive rate from one generation to the next.
But in evolutionary terms, survival is only half the picture; you must also reproduce to be “fit” in the Darwinian sense.
The influence of the environment on life expectancy in the future will be far greater political, not a biological issue. It will be the survival of those best able to adapt to change.
Resources, especially those necessary for survival, will become more valued.
Artificial intelligence may gain, along with a sense of imagination, a more independent ability to make sense of what it sees in the world but is the technology ready?
If the AI revolution is going to spread Darwin natural selection it will have to be updated, then the real AI revolution can begin. Darwin always brought in information and made a whole new picture out of it.
Is Darwin still relevant today? Yes. You’d be hard-pressed to find a biology class that isn’t based on evolutionary biology. Yet the explanatory power of the evolutionary theory is not bound to biology.
Why? Because the theory of evolution is still evolving.
As the late Russian Orthodox Christian Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”
Darwin not only made us aware of how nature works, but also of our place within nature. ( Unfortunately for him the discovery of DNA and that Quantum Mathematics governs all biology had not been discovered)
Evolution now needs to be critically evaluated in the classroom, rather than dogmatically indoctrinated.
Artificial intelligence is and will take both to a whole new level and transform them into something relevant to our time and our discoveries.
Thus, we say that all the individuals of a species comprise a gene pool from which selection (either artificial or natural) can select. The important point is that we cannot select for genes that are not in the gene pool of the species. Only clones have the same genes and are essentially identical—including the same sex.
In the future, the evolutionist must look to mutations, their most ludicrous mechanism of all.
A new DARPA research program is developing brain-computer interfaces that could control “swarms of drones, operating at the speed of thought.” What if it succeeds?
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
If we are not vigilant we might by accident and neglect combined with the erosion of civil liberties and with the increasing disenchantment of politicians easily sleepwalk into a form of a totalitarian society.
You could say at present that the world has more pressing problems but I consider this as a very dangerous trend and, sadly, unlike climate change perhaps unstoppable.
Why?
Because corporations belong to no land, no country, no people and have no loyalty to anything apart from profit – their profits and the profits today are on an unimaginable scale.
Because individual liberty which our ancestors fought for generations to establish are now been blowing away in the wind with Artifical Intelligence turning our politics into a form of Digital Dictatorship.
Control of society above personality.
The modern sense of entertainment, for example, has led to the shallowness
of life that permeates all aspects of life, separates us from the seriousness of
existence, and fills this existence with false content.
What we are seeing is a widening of inequality, a rise in racism and ant semitic traits all of which are essential to a totalitarian society. Individualism itself is diminishing and in the end, people will embrace the totalitarian state’s ideology.
This fourth industrial revolution as it is called is presently without any AI laws other than the EU guidelines on the trustworthiness of AI – what data to use or not use to train other Algorithms.
The last industrial revolution taught us a lot about basic human rights and social values to wake us up, to help us prepare for the future however what we are seeing with smartphones is a form of doublethinking that leads to banality or to implicit acceptance of the standard of psychological normality, the lost of limits.
You are going to work with a digital colleague that has no set rules, no personal judgment.
The threat of climate change with the rise of stateless refugees is forcing millions around the world to realistically confront a future in which their lives, at a minimum, look radically worse than they are today.
At the same time, emerging algorithms are giving a small technocratic elite the power to radically alter our species to a point when it will no longer resemble itself.
They both will call into question the basic ideas of who are and how we think about ourselves.
There are technologies now already emerging that are asking this question with the very fundamental assumptions about what it means to be human.
Why is this?
Because by limiting the choices and activities that have given us our basic sense of identity we can’t express our own opinions because they fear individual power.
There is nothing we can really do to change the course of our civilization except to patiently and persistently saying the truth about false worldviews, both on climate change and materialistic algorithms for profit both of which are and will have dramatic consequences.
Take Climate change and Fossil fuel:
It seems that fossil fuel owners and technology only goals are to protect their business models at all cost.
Climate change will shrink the size of the world that is livable on. while allowing unregulated technologies to rule it.
Algorithms Data Apps are tools by means of which, once installed, they start making decisions on your behalf. They will enable governments to assert their ideological and intellectual authority over party members and employees of party-run institutions, including schools and media.
Their messages becoming inescapable.
The beauty of digital media technology — disquieting for those who care about privacy and freedom from intrusion — is that our smart apps know a great deal about our actual behaviour.
Technology now interacts with you and takes the measure of you. It can determine just how “smart” you are when it comes to your devotion and your grasp of the ideological essentials.
This is where we seem to be headed for compelling materialist reasons, not ethical reasons.
Habitual smartphone user was spending a great deal of time glued to the screen, as a result, the potential of the smartphone to be used as a tool through which authoritarian regimes can shape and reinforce dominance over the population is no longer a fantasy – China.
It is reinventing the process of ideological dominance for the digital era.
In China, censorship, is now largely automated, reaching “unprecedented levels of accuracy, aided by machine learning and voice and image recognition. It has an estimated 200 million surveillance cameras, with plans for 626 million surveillance cameras by 2020.
China is building a digital dictatorship to exert control over its 1.4 billion citizens. For some, “social credit” will bring privileges — for others, punishment.
If successful, it will be the world’s first digital dictatorship.
The flawless totalitarian state, powered by digital technology, where the individual has nowhere to flee from the all-seeing eye of the Communist state. who has done what (and for how long)
They can leverage digital media products to reshape the whole process of ideological control in ways that are far more personal, and far more effective, than anything we have witnessed in the reform era.
We, on the other hand, need to find out once again how to make decisions not just as individuals but as a society. We need new economics theories of not top-down but bottom-up. Its isn’t capital that creates economic growth its people. It isn’t competition that creates prosperity its cooperation. The economics that is not inclusive will not allow modern society to thrive.
Its painfully obvious that the fundamental assumptions of neoliberal economics are wrong.
The market now with profit-seeking algorithms can never distribute wealth because there is no equilibrium.
So is there any way of combating the technological growing algorithm market.
Inclusion will be the only brake.
We must allow people to get involved while improving all stakeholders in the market. The laws of economics are a choice.
So give people the choice to invest in the future by the creation of Nation backed non-trading Green deal bonds. ( See previous posts) This is about creating a platform for real and measurable engagement.
Algorithms all ready control 99.9% of stock exchanges.
Taking self-responsibility and living life the fullest will not only enrich our own lives but as well the lives of others.
Then the question arises:
No government in what used to be called “the free world” seems prepared to take the steps that can stop this inexorable decline.
Totalitarianism is a political concept of a mode of government that prohibits opposition parties, restricts individual opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high degree of control over public and private life.
Big data: The length of time that it took them to use unfettered free speech to subvert and undermine all of our core institutions. Thus we arrive at the present situation where the brief a historical version of freedom of speech has reverted back towards what the state deems controversial today might be very different to what it deems controversial tomorrow.
Take Brexit for example. Nostalgia is that it’s become a political weapon. Politicians are creating nostalgia for an England that never existed and selling it, really, as something we could return to.
Do we want to be told what to think and do? Or are we ready to come up with our own solutions for the consequences we’ve caused?
The idea of the totalitarian state can never be a true and effective form of government rule. Increasing state interference, a crumbing electoral system, the loss of a free press and loss of freedom of speech are grave threats to our democratic system.
The potential consequences that come from using AI, such as giving up privacy are only the ice cubes in the bucket.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Is it time we started to demand that if you use my personal data it’ill cost you because I am worth it.
We all make a trade-off between security and convenience, but there is a crucial difference between security in the old-fashioned physical domain, and security today.
Security is done digitally with algorithms exploiting and analysing your very mood.
In this digital lifestyle, it is nearly impossible to take part in the web world without leaving a trail behind.
Personal privacy is dead.
We have no clear sight into this world, and we have few sound intuitions into what is safe and what is flimsy – let alone what is ethical and what is creepy.
We are left operating on blind, ignorant, misplaced trust; meanwhile, all around us, without our even noticing, choices are being made.
With the increasing ownership of mobiles, marketing companies now have unlimited access to our personal data. Every site one opens has an agreement form to be ticked with terms and conditions that are all but unreadable on small screens.
It’s not a choice between privacy or innovation, it is the erosion of legally ensured fundamental privacy rights interfacing with apps.
Nuggets of personal information that seem trivial, individually, can now be aggregated, indexed and processed.
When this happens, simple pieces of computer code can produce insights and intrusions that creep us out or even do us harm. But most of us haven’t noticed yet.
Since there’s no real remedy, giving away our most sensitive and valuable data, for free, to global giants, with completely uncertain future costs, is a decision of dramatic consequence.
iCloud and Google+ have your intimate photos; Transport companies know where your travelcard has been; Yahoo holds every email you’ve ever written and we trust these people to respect our privacy.
You only have to be sloppy once, for your privacy to be compromised.
With your Facebook profile linked, I could research your interests before approaching you.
Put in someone’s username from Twitter, or Flickr and Creepy will churn through every photo hosting service it knows, trying to find every picture they’ve ever posted.
Cameras – especially phone cameras – often store the location where the picture was taken in the picture data. Creepy grabs all this geolocation data and puts pins on a map for you.
Then comes an even bigger new horizon.
We are entering an age of wireless information. The information you didn’t know you were leaking.
Maybe the first time you used a new app.
Every device with Wi-Fi has a unique “MAC address”, which is broadcast constantly as long as wireless networking is switched on.
Many shops and shopping centres, for example, now use multiple Wi-Fi sensors, monitoring the strength of connections, to triangulate your position, and track how you walk around the shop. By matching the signal to the security video, they get to know what you look like. If you give an email address in order to use the free in-store Wi-Fi, they have that too.
Once aggregated, these individual fragments of information can be processed and combined, and the resulting data can give away more about our character than our intuitions are able to spot.
When I realised that I’m traced over much wider spaces from one part of town to another I asked myself what is the point in giving you information away when you could franchise it out and get something back in return.
Public debate on the topic remains severely stunted.
Through the current trends in the globalization of technology is in the knowledge society, we have to start asking where is the world moving to?
The concepts and applications of biocomputing, medical informatics, anthropocentric computing, high-performance computing, technological diffusion, predictive analysis tools, genetic algorithms, and cultural informatics all in new or little known fields of information technology.
Many organisations create, store, or purchase information that links individuals’ identities to other data. Those who can access and analyse this personal data profiles can take deep insights into an individual’s life.
A law-abiding citizen might say “I have nothing to conceal.” This is a misconception.
In any debate, negotiation or competitive situation, it is an advantage to know about the other party’s position in order to achieve one’s own desired outcome.
Data brokers – buy and combine data from various sources (online and offline) to deliver information on exactly defined target groups to their customers.
“Click-world” merchants know a lot more about their clients’ private and financial habits than the individual knows about the merchant company or its competitors.
You, therefore, could not be blamed for asking -given the increasing bargaining position of merchants, is the consumer still getting a good deal?
It would be interesting to know how good a deal consumers get when they exchange their data for free-of-charge online services.
Data has become an economic good for which the “producer” is usually not remunerated.
Data privacy is a matter of choice and individuals should have the right to decide if a company can collect information on them.
Is there a solution:
Of course if you Google it what you will get will be all sorts of advice such as, avoid cookies, use the VPN or disabling the location tracking in your devices and use Browsers that don’t track your activities.
It’s tempting to just play ostrich and put our heads under the sand however data collection is affecting and will affect your life.
This is why we must preserve the right of individuals to know what kind of information is being collected and what is being done with that information.
You could say that the most valuable thing on your computer or network is the data you create. After all, that data is the reason for having the computer and network in the first place.
The first thing to understand is that there is very little that can “prove” that any company (whether an individual, government entity, corporation, etc.) is engaged in safe or adequate data handling processes.
Therefore :
We must retain the right to define our own privacy boundaries and then advocate for those boundaries before invasions in our daily lives become out of control and irreversible.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
The most recent UN Climate Change summit in New York saw a succession of national leaders standing on the podium saying they understood the gravity of the situation but then failing to announce concrete plans.
China made no new promises. The United States said nothing at all, with Germany promoting a new plan worth $60 billion over 10 years to speed a transition to clean power the European Union did not signal its intention to cut emissions faster.
In fact, a host of countries made only incremental promises. Most of the major economies fell “woefully short” of expectations.
Their lack of ambition stands in sharp contrast with the growing demand for action around the world.
Indeed the summit highlighted that the United Nations (which is our best effort to humans to come together for the good of all) is for all intensive purposes a gossip shop with no powers.
This is not the fault of the organisation because the only way for human rights to persist is for everyone to collectively agree to accept that things don’t have to go their way 100% of the time.
Climate Change, however, represents a unique problem in as much that for the first time in human history, the human race is confronted with a problem that is not about human rights but our very existence as a species.
It is the defining issue of our time and now is the defining moment to do something about it.
Fortunately or unfortunately observations of the future are not available at this time.
But we do however have scientific models with the best data available predicting the need for humans to act like one if we want future generations of our species to prevail.
Rowland said, ” What’s the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if in the end were willing to do is to stand around and wait for them to come true.”
Thanks to technology we are now constantly aware of every fault and flaw of our humanity, combined with an inundation of doomsayers and narcissistic nihilists commanding our attention space
It is what is causingthis constant feelingof a chaotic and insecure world that doesn’t actually exist.
It’s this feeling of insecurity and chaos that is igniting the platforms of divisive strong-men like Trump, Erdogan, and Putin.
It’sthis feeling that has consumed the consciousness of millions of people and caused them to look at their country through the lens of popularism a fun-house of the mirror: exaggerating all that is wrong and minimizing all that is right.
We judge groups of people by their weakest and most deprived members. And to protect ourselves from the overreaching judgments of others, we consolidate into our own clans and tribes, we take refuge in our own precious identity politics and we buy more and more into a worldview that is disconnected from cold data and hard facts.
Because of this, we demonize each other.
The plain truth lies in our past historical model of our development to the present day which confirms that because of greed we are incapable of acting in the common good of all.
This is not just a world of shortages, but also of over-consumption. A great paradox is that 1,300 million tons of food is wasted every year, while almost 2000 million people suffer from hunger or malnutrition.
We all know that we need Fresh Air/Fresh Water/ Clean Energy/ and Food.
In order to keep ourselves tethered to reality as it is, not to reality how it feels the sooner we come to term that Climate Change has all the components to affect each and every one of them the better.
One only has to look to see that we are failing to match reality, rather than peaking, the level of emissions being released into the atmosphere are at an all-time high, triggering global weather hazards from heat waves to intense hurricanes and raging wildfires.
You might not think that humans were and are capable of changing the basic physics and chemistry of this entire, huge planet but you can’t make this shit up we are all related: us, plants, animals, soil.
Extinction Rebellion a do-it-together movement has its core reasons for protests correct :
That government and other institutions must tell the truth and declare a Climate and Ecological Emergency must act now to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2025 and must create and be led by the decisions of Citizens’ Assemblies on climate and ecological justice.
Their protests worldwide are causing a flood of negativity because Capitalism is not ready to burn down the very structures on which the most successful civilizations in human history have been built.
They are promoting internet generated platform where apocalyptic beliefs are celebrated and spread, and moderation and reason is something that becomes too arduous and boring to stand.
There is no doubt that with our ever-increasing population, our human needs for various resources to sustain, maintain and increase our living standards have put a great strain on our planet and it’s ability to provide.
But the world isn’t worse. It’s just that we’re more aware of all of the bad things than ever before. By every objective measurement, it’s arguably the sanest and safest it’s been in recorded history.
What is new is smartphone the internet, and most importantly, social media. This is what’s new. This is what’s different. How we’re getting information, what information is reaching us, and most importantly, what information and views we are most rewarded for sharing.
Perhaps if Extinction Rebellion were to shift their focus to the attention economy, (outrageous news and information spread faster and further than any other form of information, dominating our daily attention) where people are rewarded for extremism they might have a greater effect.
There is only one way to tackle climate change and that is by making Profit for profit sake provide the financial assistance that is required to do so. ( see the previous post on – A world aid commission)
By applying a World Aid commission of 0.05% on all activities that generate profit for profit sake we would create a perpetual fund of billions that could seriously address the underlying reasons for climate change.
We could also through this fund give people the opportunity to get involved by issuing World Aid non-trading Bonds.
All everyone needed to do to succeed in life is work very hard, it is what we’ve all been sold and it is true but no it is not if you just take a few steps back and look at the bigger picture and the smallest of details.
Most of us are lucky to live in a world where wars are far less frequent than they were in the past, the trade-off does not make for good celebratory achievement, however.
I’m exhausted from all the stories of shootings and attacks and bombs and the constant stream of awful stuff that is happening out there. I, too, feel desensitized and dejected from the seemingly constant carnage raging across the planet.
Most of us wouldn’t be happy with living our lives on water rations, for the poor and developing world that is already the case.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE ASK’S; IS THE NEW GREEN DEAL PRIMARILY A PETTY-BOURGEOIS ATTEMPT TO RESCUE CAPITALISM BY THE METHODS OF SOCIAL REFORMISTS UNDER THE CLOAK OF CLIMATE CHANGE?
These days in the higher ethylene of the political world it seems you must be an accomplished liar and not a far-seeing planner to be successful.
With the advent of social media people’s day-to-day exposure to political discussion and disagreement has increased dramatically.
However what is worrying is that technology in the form of social media, the smartphone is continuing to create a contemporary problem that large sections of the public want ‘democracy’ but without the ‘politics.
As a result, were are seeing fake news driving populist politics that has no longterm objectives.
There is nothing new about fake news it has been prevalent down the ages but the days when a lot of us believe that many of the major world events that are shaping our destinies occur because somebody or somebodies have planned them that way are all but disappeared.
However, with the media making very little effort to explain political decisions, rather than just jumping on any perceived gaffe or conflict ‘democracy’ remains an incredibly positive notion.
With the public no longer thinking about the world within the silos of government departments governments need to engage people in solutions rather than top-down ‘vote for us and we’ll provide the answers.
Younger people don’t just copy their parents’ tribal loyalties. Voting is more like shopping, with preferences changing on a quim of twitter on social media.
Unfortunately, our present-day political system has not yet caught up, it offers limited choice. What happens in between elections is for all attentive purposes driven by the smartphone that are monitored by unregulated algorithms owned by you know who.
What is been ignored is that this digital space in all its diversity represents a huge opportunity with the power to engage people in new ways. Online participation in local decision-making is one possibility. This would involve citizens outside election time-.
So we need to understand all the ways people behave and respond in the digital space and set clear and realistic goals for what they hope to accomplish.
However, people are now becoming slow and slower to engage with the internet due to the lack of security/ privacy/and a source of truth.
Why?
Because Capitalism is spending billion on digital marketing each year, and for good reason. Digital media has enormous power to reach and influence people. Over 2 billion people—about one-third of the global population—now access the Internet.
We all know if we are to avoid extinction due to climate change which poses real risks to our collective future we need a green energy transformation.
The problem is that behind a veneer of objectivity, Capitalism as always sees an opportunity to make a profit – Carbon Credits for instance, with more and more consumerism products being promoted as good for the environment
With all the political goodwill the transfer to low carbon emission can only be achieved by offering citizens a means to get involved other than protesting.
How can this be done?
We must allow people to exercise democratic control over their money, finance, working conditions and environment ie De-politicising decision-making by limiting capitalism’s worst failing- profit for profit sake.
To have authentic democracy!
Citizens must be afforded the opportunity to get involved not just politically, but financially by creating Green Energy European Bonds that cannot be traded.
These bonds will allow citizens to regain control over unaccountable ‘technocrats’, complicit politicians and shadowy institutions.
They can be sold like lotto tickets. Forging a common agenda.
Emancipating citizens from all levels of government from bureaucratic and corporate power. Allowing direct investment into shared, green prosperity.
Politics has never been popular and never will be:
The more disengaged, the less likely that political parties will deliver.
We’re able to measure things in a way that we’ve never been able to measure them before. So why not measure the wealth of a nation by the financial investment support it gets from its citizen’s. Rather than encompassing every possible thing that can go under the rubric of “green.
I suppose my goal here is to propose something vague enough that no one will object to it.
Have you wondered how you got to where you are today?
Greed.
Is technology taking control of our lives or our destiny?
Yes. We’ve ditched reality.
The very data on which we measure the economy is disconnected from
the reality, with political leaders using high soaring” words “which often
imbibe emptiness.
Communication and leadership are key elements in elections these days
but you can’t sell a bad product, can you?
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
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