Monthly Archives: July 2022

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. HAVE YOU EVER ASKED YOURSELF JUST WHAT IS IT THAT MAKES YOU HUMAN?

04 Monday Jul 2022

Posted by in Dehumanization., Human Exploration., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Uncategorized

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( Five-minute read)

This question tends to arise in the face of a moral dilemma or existential crisis but in this world of technology, social media, and advanced scientific discoveries, it’s important to keep asking this crucial question.

Are humans really biologically and socially different from the rest of the created world?

The physical similarities between humans and other mammals are quite plain. We are made of the same flesh and blood; we go through the same basic life stages but how is the value of a human determined?

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One of the key characteristics that make us human appears to be that we can think about alternative futures and make deliberate choices accordingly.

But we are living in an age that makes defining what makes humans human tricky, not because we are both unique and paradoxical but because technological advancements are changing our very existence.

While we are the most advanced species intellectually, technologically, and emotionally—extending human lifespans, creating artificial intelligence, traveling to outer space, showing great acts of heroism, altruism and compassion—we also have the capacity to engage in primitive, violent, cruel, and self-destructive behavior.

It is particularly challenging to name all of the distinctly human traits or reach an absolute definition of “what makes us human” for a species as complex as ours.

So we remain even in this age of modernity and intellectual freedom, no closer to any concrete answers.

It is our intellect that transcends us from simply existing.

What Makes Us Human?

Apart from the obvious intellectual capabilities that distinguish us as a species, humans have several unique physicals, social, biological, and emotional traits which are also changing. 

Not too long ago as a species we humans used storytelling for communicating and transmitting our ideas. Now we use smartphones and internet platforms without much consideration for what effect they are having on our minds. 

(The mind consists of the intangible realm of thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and consciousness.)

We assume that others have minds somewhat like ours—filled with beliefs and desires—but we can only infer those mental states. We cannot see, feel, or touch them. We largely rely on language to inform each other about what is on our minds.

Our memories are stored in the Cloud adding to the data collected by machine learning algorithms that shape them into products. 

(Memory allows human beings to make sense of their existence and to prepare for the future, increasing their chances of survival, not only individually but also as a species.)

“As far as we know, humans have the unique power of forethought to think consciously: The ability to imagine the future in many possible iterations and then to actually create the future we imagine. 

This awareness gives meaning to humanity and the awareness of our mortality. We are human because of our reason.

We are determined and capable of knowledge, and the ability to act on it, without depending on anyone else, even religion or some divine intervention but we are not self-sufficient. We need others.

because of this, we interact with the world based on our perception of it.

Regardless of one’s religious beliefs and thoughts about what happens after death, the truth is that, unlike other species who live blissfully unaware of their impending demise, most humans are conscious of the fact that someday they will die.

The story of what made us human is probably not going to focus on changes in our protein building blocks but rather on how evolution assembled these blocks in new ways by changing when and where in the body different genes turn on and off.

Species evolve to fit the particular environment that they are occupying at a given time, not to “advance” to a different evolutionary stage.

So us of us who are alive today with this realization yet to come are the guinea pigs of the future. In the meantime, we can only be human in society not driven by machine learning harvesting data but by the planet, we live on. 

It will be a big moment in what truly makes us human when we do so.

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. SHOULD SCOTLAND GO INDEPENDENT?

02 Saturday Jul 2022

Posted by in independent Scotland

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(Five-minute read)

You might say that with all that is going on in the world that this question should be put on the back burner.

However, the history of humans is littered with the lives of the youth’s struggle for self-determination so the process of taking a view on this has to be impeccable if not surreally decorous.

The days of Royalty, Knights, and Lords, being ruled as a subject by the Magna Carta, and lying politicians, have long gone thanks to the Smartphone.

Data is now the king. 

With baying popularism, and the coming mass migration, ( due to climate change )  a written constitution is inevitable, so why not write your own. 

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Nothing is inevitable, but any view of the future of the UK must comprehend the possibility of independence for Scotland within the next decade.

Scotland would be a foreign country;

Even as a friendly one, its cooperation would have to be sought to maintain the integrity of the defense of the British Isles.

Some sort of trade border would have to be negotiated, made more fraught by the possibility of an independent Scotland re-joining the EU- another protocol.

An agreement would need to be reached as to Scotland’s share of the United Kingdom’s existing national debt burden.

The government of an independent Scotland would have a critical decision to make on its currency, but in any circumstance, it would have to set up a central bank.

Systems of governance and cultural interdependency would have to be teased apart, on everything from the national debt and Revenue and Customs databases to the BBC and artifacts held in national museums.

It is very hard to say what independence would look like, other than to say that Scotland would no longer send politicians to sit in the UK parliament in Westminster and that the UK parliament would have no say on how Scotland was governed.

How the two countries would separate themselves would be an enormous question for decision-makers on both sides of the border.

Who or what would be the Head of State of an independent Scotland?

There is no doubt that the UK’s international reputation would take a hit. A country that had turned its back on its near abroad and then fallen apart would not walk tall in international counsel. 

For Northern Ireland, the UK shorn of Scotland would hardly make continued adherence to the union more attractive.

The secession of Scotland would probably accelerate the already evident trend of increasing support for the reunification of Ireland.

It would leave England, with a truculent Wales in tow, turning England into a rump state off the northwest European continent, surrounded by the EU. What sort of country would that be? 

Leaving the family of the UK would mean a load of tough decisions for Scotland with either higher taxes or lower spending. The issues would range from what people would have to do to travel between the two countries – would you need a passport, for example – but also how to divide up resources like the UK’s military or power plants.

The most difficult practical issue will be European Union membership.

Will Scotland somehow stay on in the Union, or be expected to negotiate as a brand new member?

What will Scotland have to pay to – and get from – the EU Budget?

Can Scotland join without committing to joining the eurozone?

Will (say) Spain stand against Scotland joining the Union for fear of encouraging its own separatist tendencies?

In practice, (and after lots of bad-tempered meetings), an independent Scotland will end up joining the EU and NATO, and other European/international organizations.

All of this is the price of self-determination.

At present, over 60% of Scottish exports go to England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Scottish Independence would lead to the removal of nuclear weapons from Scotland and probably also the G7 and the G20 and a permanent place on the United Nations Security Council.

An independent Scotland may find it difficult to deny the same rights to those in the Orkneys and the Shetland Islands should they wish for it.

Unionism has no new songs.

Brexit has been and will remain to loosen the social contract binding the Britains union. It is reveling the Union as the English, by the English, for the English. 

The Scottish question now occupies the place held by the Irish Question which still after seven hundred years of occupation has to be resolved. 

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