WE CAN’T CREATE SUSTAINABLE PROSPERITY BY AN ACT OF WILL.
02/08/2021.
Dear Cop26 Delegate,
As you know the sheer importance of what is happing at the end of this inflationary period on Earth is going to define all of our futures.
Whether the forthcoming COP26 Summit results are brilliant or terrible if we are not found in harmony with the earth, is likely to make our age, a mythic one, to our distant or future descendants.
Our distant and future ancestors are what everyone on earth shares.
From this perspective.
No human goal today is more pressing than the search for sustainable prosperity.
But it must encompass all other purposes, including peace, justice, health, science, economic development, spiritual pursuits. Without them, all others will prove transient and illusory.
You will be attending a sobering up BY CLIMATE CHANGE SUMMIT that will hopefully show the scale of our problems and produce Actions that all in sundry can participate in.
You as a delegate must develop imagery that will bridge the incomprehensible gap between the forces of nature responsible for the very existence.
We are living today at a turning point for our species.
We can all be drowning in yelling about our differences, trying to control matters by fiat, or we can close our mouths and listen and try to follow some common sense.
This is a very special time that will never come again.
This summit is not the place, to blow your own trumpet, make worthless promises, but rather to agree on transparent actions on a global scale.
We all know that we need energy.
We all know that the production of energy must go green. Not in twenty years, not in ten years but right now.
So why not agree to the following.
Government non-repayable grants.
Enable every home to install solar panels and insulation.
As you know the sheer importance of what is happing at the end of this inflationary period on Earth is going to define all of our futures.
If we are not found in harmony with the EARTH whether the results of the forthcoming COP20 Summit are brilliant or terrible is likely to make our age a mythic one to our distant or future descendants.
Our distant and future ancestors are what everyone on earth shares.
From this perspective.
It is clear that no human goal today is more pressing than the search for sustainable prosperity. But it must encompass all other purposes, including peace, justice, health, science, economic development, spiritual pursuits, without them, all others will prove transient and illusory.
So you must develop imagery that will bridge the incomprehensible gap between the forces of nature responsible for the very existence and those of us alive today who are living at a turning point for our species.
You are going to attend a sobering up BY CLIMATE CHANGE SUMMIT that will hopefully will not just show the scale of our problems but produce Actions that all in sundry can participate in.
We can all be drowning in yelling about our differences, trying to control matters by fiat, or we can close our mouths and listen and try to follow some common sense.
This is a very special time that will never come again if we are to have any chance to solve them.
So this summit is not the place, to blow your own trumpet, make worthless promises, but rather to agree on transparent actions on a global scale.
We all know that we need energy. and it is the production of this energy that is the main problem.
We all know that the production of energy must go green. Not in twenty years, not in ten years but right now.
So why not agree to the following.
Government non-repayable grants. Enable every home to install solar panels and insulation.
We are at a pivotal moment in human history not because we still don’t really know where we come from, or if we are alone in the Universe, or do we really matter.
It is, of course, impossible to put into a sentence or a paragraph what is wrong with the world never mind the Universe.
But it’s possible to describe our world in a word. Beautiful and we humans occupy an extraordinary place in it.
The strange fact is that in this age of information when data is our currency of communication, most of us have no idea how to picture the world never mind the universe.
The last time the Western culture shared a coherent understanding of our world I would say, was away back in the middle ages, when Galileo discovered that we were not the center of the universe.
Now with climate change and the current Pandemic, it is as if we have just started to see the world in color, and that changes, not just what is far away, but what’s right here.
This discovery of the state of our plant challenges us to reframe everything and there is little point in learning a lot of science unless you can do something valuable in life with that knowledge.
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There is only one image of our world that shows us this.
The photo shows no countries on our planet, only landmass, oceans, and clouds.
Our endless preoccupation with nations and racial or ethical groups is completely misleading our intuitions.
This image shows our glorious plant in its true state without language in all its forms, cultural identification, religious beliefs, all are just tools, to shepherding ourselves successfully through the coming state of the world
This is going to require tremendous creativity, combined with more than a large dose of common sense, which unfortunately down the centuries and now is lacking in the collective management of our planet Earth.
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However, we live in a world where all information is freely available at the click of a mouse, so what has changed?
We’re seeing a lazy entitlement wash over the world where everyone feels as though they deserve what they want from their government the second they want it, without thought of repercussions or the rest of the population.
It seems like people don’t actually want democracy anymore, they want a dictator who agrees with them.
The sickest and most grotesque NEWS TOPPING THE CHART, dominating our attention and the news cycle, dividing and recruiting us into its ever more polarized camps, giving us a skewed view of how other people in the world really think, act, and live.
It seems like our new brave world is JUGED by a group of people that represents 0.01%, who take refuge in their own precious identity politics with us buying more and more into a worldview that is disconnected from cold data and hard facts?
The impact of the pandemic is showing despite loud warnings that continuing economic growth is incompatible with sustainability.
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So let’s take a look at the state of the world.
Even if we did stand on the moon it is a sad read and any solutions will not be found in religious beliefs or technology or in politics but in learning from history.
There have been over 250 major wars in the world since World War II, in which 23 million people have been killed., tens of millions made homeless, and countless millions injured and bereaved. Over 37 (or 42) million people have by killed by wars in the 20th century. Three times more people have been killed in wars in the last 90 years than in all the previous 500.
Over 35 major conflicts are going on in the world today.
There are approximately 30,000 nuclear warheads in the world today.
Current global military spending is approximately $800 billion per year; more than the total annual income of the poorest 45% of the global population.
Genocide and other mass murders killed more people in the 20th century than all wars combined.
33% of the world’s people live under authoritarian, non-democratic regimes. 35% of the world’s people live in countries in which basic political rights and civil liberties are denied.
1/3rd of the world’s labor force is unemployed or underemployed.
1 out of 6, children ages 5 to 17 worldwide are involved in child labor.
3 billion of the world’s people (one-half) live in ‘poverty.’
Women account for 70 percent of the world’s people who live in absolute poverty.
800 million people lack access to basic healthcare.
1.1 billion do not have safe drinking water. By 2025, at least 3.5 billion people, or nearly 2/3rd’s of the world’s population will face water scarcity.
870 million of the world’s adults are illiterate.
Over 100 million people live in slums.
The richest 1% of the world’s people earned as much income as the bottom 57%.
The wealth of the world’s 7.1 million millionaires ($27 trillion) equals the total combined annual income of the entire planet.
Poor countries (which contain 4/5th of the world’s people) pay the rich countries an estimated nine times more in debt repayments than they receive in aid.
Half of the forests that originally covered 46% of the Earth’s land surface are gone.
Between 10 and 20 percent of all species will be driven to extinction in the next 20 to 50 years.
60% of the world’s coral reefs, could be lost in the next 20-40 years.
More than 20 percent of the world’s known 10,000 freshwater fish species have become extinct.
Desertification and land degradation threaten nearly one-quarter of the land surface of the globe.
Global warming is expected to increase the Earth’s temperature by 3C (5.4F) in the next 100 years.
An estimated 40-80 million people will be forcibly evicted and displaced from their lands.
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The reality no matter how one looks at it, is that the old assumptions that provided the unifying ideas within our cultures are eroding because of our technological advancement, and although we are seeing what may prove to be the emergence of a new worldview consensus based on the Critical Theory it has not solidified its hold on society as yet.
With technology and Algorithms, our cultures have and are continuing to accept the idea that objective truth is inaccessible and that truth itself is, therefore, relative and personal, but how we conduct ourselves is just as important — even more important is how we do it sustainably and so far we have made a great job of it.
The world is now facing a collision of not just climate change but is colliding with finite resources in a much that the current economic growth could end or totally collapse in the not-so-distant future.
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But a free and functioning democracy demands a populace that can sustain discomfort, tolerate dissatisfaction, be charitable and forgiving of groups whose views stand in contrast to one’s own, and most importantly, that can remain unswayed in the face of some violent threat.
The words ” We Need” are only words. They should be replaced the words ” Action Now”
Why?
Because we also need to be clear in our own hearts and minds about the solution to the world’s problems. If we are to do anything we must break the alignment between theological advancement – climate change and pollution.
The world is at a crossroads as the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on the global economy have combined with increasing polarization and highly charged elections.
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So what will we do?
Probably have a conference.
But if you could change the world, what would you do?
We live our entire lives as aspiring presidents, aspiring movie producers, aspiring artists, aspiring authors, aspiring human rights activists, aspiring world-renowned scientists, and aspiring thought leaders while we sit in front of our TV screens, walk around glued to Smartphones, or Ipads that fed us pictures of climate change, wars, the covid pandemic, racism, political/economical collapse.
All Encouraging us on one hand, to think that the world is more violent than it really is while on the other hand promoting the glamorous life of people that believe that they are better off than we are;
What I fear is that we’re seeing now is a loss of that ability to handle discomfort and dissatisfaction.
What I would do is help people think for themselves.
While governments introduce more and more taxes to pay for inequality/economic growth charities competing to raise funds to save almost everything, from adopting everything from a child to a fish or animal to a plant, in the real world.
Taxes form a key ingredient in the social contract between citizens and the economy but How taxes are raised and spent can determine a government’s very legitimacy.
Health programs:Military: Social Security:Interest on the national debt: Education programs: Food and agricultural benefits: Pensions. Government machinery.
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Our new world now needs solidarity more than ever to make the world a better place.
Presently in a year when the world is fighting a pandemic, the Olympics in Japan will once again show us what we are capable of in sport to bring our true authentic selves to every situation. ( See: Post – The Olympics games show be permanently hosted in Greece.)
It represents a true coming together not separation, in a true spirit of humanity.
Without this coming together there will be no new world but a world run by algorithms that will not treat us as equal.
But how can you take on the problems of the world when there’s so much to do already?
In science, we have been staggered by revelation after revelation that things are not what we previously thought them to be, and beneath each layer of reality we have unpeeled lies another. It is not hard to piece together all this information to comprehensively picture what the end times will look like.
If so, what are we to do about it?
The only way to beat the attention economy is to opt out of it.
As the growth models of countries cannot be sustained Countries need to overcome political hurdles to invest in infrastructure and human capital.
How?
One way is to publish the information about political capture so that the public can hold politicians to account for reforms.
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.
Freedom can only exist when you are willing to tolerate views that oppose your own when you’re willing to give up some of your desires for the sake of a safe and healthy community when you’re willing to compromise and accept that sometimes things don’t go your way and that’s fine.
Finally, we must accept that world problems will always be with us.
The world has woken up to the need to curb emissions and invest in climate resilience. But we all need to move faster down this path, we now have less than 100 days to go until the UN climate summit, Cop26 arrives in Glasgow.
Five years on from the Paris Agreement, and with countless evidence that the climate crisis is worsening, the negotiations will focus on nationally determined contributions to stop the world from warming above 1.5 degrees. But as the countries confer with each other, it will be the people of the world who have the most to say: we need action, need more of it, and need it now.
They will not address nature and climate as one.
HOW CAN YOU GET INVOLVED?
We know that the production of energy is the biggest contributor to global warming.
If we want action not promises to reduce carbon emissions in twenty years in thirty years there is no reason that non-repayable grants could be made available to everyone to convert to green energy by installing solar panels.
So why not use the tools that are available to demand our governments to do so on
Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Emails to cop26@cabinetoffice.gov.uk.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
When it comes to the topic of artificial intelligence, it seems that everyone has an opinion, but are we asking the right questions.
We can avoid the development of AI, but we should all agree to guide AI development towards innovations that benefit all of humanity that government regulation should enforce to ensure the tech does not go rogue.
Future regulations will need to be flexible enough to accommodate different requirements, data types, and possible new uses of algorithms in the future.
In fact, considering some of the human political players in the world today, it’s probably not the AI revolution that we need to be worried about.
Just as there are dangers with anything powerful, we can’t help but imagine but prepare ourselves for life decided by algorithms. As Ai has now designed a quantum physics experiment beyond what any human has convived we should all perhaps start thinking about how to regulate its development.
Experts expressed similar concerns about quantum computers and lasers and nuclear weapons—applications for that technology can be both harmful and helpful.
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Is Ai now something that represented a fundamental risk to the existence of civilization?
When this happens, AI will become incredibly sophisticated, and this is where the worrying starts.
“Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.” “The one who becomes the leader in this sphere will be the ruler of the world.” Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking,.
“The first generation [of AI] is just going to do what you tell them; however, by the third generation, then they will have their own agenda,” Seth Shostak said in an interview with Futurism. In other words, humans will simply become immaterial to these hyper-intelligent machines.
These words are warning all and sundry about the potential dangers of using AI.
In 2010, Swiss neuroscientist Pascal Kaufmann founded Starmind, a company that plans to use self-learning algorithms to create a “superorganism” made of thousands of experts’ brains.
Not everyone believes the rise of AI will be detrimental to humans; some are convinced that technology has the potential to make our lives better.
However, it is beyond the argument that it is not going to make massive changes in our lives.
What is not agree on, however, is whether these will be good or bad changes.
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AI might be neutral but it is becoming pervasive in most, if not all, aspects of decision-making in the foreseeable future with the potential to transform the world.
On the surface, we are now at the beginning of this change but when AI becomes capable of complex decision-making that could one day translate into real-world tasks these decisions will be made by self-learning algorithms.
Predicting the future is a delicate game.
Decision-making processes based on algorithms and machine learning still have a long way to go but already Decision-Making is No Longer a Human Exclusive.
Without eliminating biases in these technologies which are also inherent in human decision-making, they won’t provide much more useful than the emotional responses that currently drive human decision-making.
We don’t yet know whether AI will usher in a golden age of human existence, or if it will all end in the destruction of everything humans cherish.
“People’s deepening dependence on machine-driven networks will erode their abilities to think for themselves.
Today, humans primarily use AI for insights, but AI’s skills could surpass human abilities at every step in the process. AI is already improving in predictive analytics, steadily making its way to the right, toward prescriptive outcomes recommending specific options.
AI is currently tasked with decision-assistance, not autonomous strategic decision-making.
Why?
Because neither humans nor AI is performing well in complex systems.
Because it is only retrospectively that one can establish cause and effect but our current mental frameworks may not be versatile enough to navigate and manage constant unpredictable change as AI evolves fast.
However, this raises the question of choice: do we proactively decide on our position in the value chain or see ourselves being imposed on a given spot.
If we do not fundamentally redesign our education and strategic frameworks to create more AAA leaders, we may see that choice made for us.
However, AI will certainly keep learning—even beyond complicated—as algorithms will no longer rely on only a range of right answers:
They do not have to reach general artificial intelligence nor become exceptional at handling complex systems, just better than us.
How algorithms are used by government, business and public bodies will ultimately determine the level of regulation required for this technology.
We can only rely on our predictions of what we already have, and yet it’s impossible to rule anything out. What is clear, though, is that thanks to AI, the world of the future could bear little resemblance to the one we inhabit today.
If you have a smartphone, you’re already using AI and it is fast becoming a major economic force.
There’s little question that AI has the potential to be revolutionary.
Automation could transform the way we work by replacing humans with machines and software.
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Artificial intelligence is not a thoroughly modern concept.
The concept is old, but we’ve only recently been able to produce the tech to back it up.
We are now embarked on something novel and uncertain, shaped by forces so vast and powerful as to be almost unfathomable. Yet fathom them we must.
A better understanding of our own brains would not only lead to AI sophisticated enough to rival human intelligence, but also to better brain-computer interfaces to enable a dialogue between the two.
Musk has founded a company called Neuralink intended to create a brain-computer interface. Linking the brain to a computer would, in theory, augment the brain’s processing power to keep pace with AI systems.
The pandemic-induced acceleration of technology will also prove a flagbearer for sustainable technologies and will be used against fighting climate change by reducing pollution levels and encouraging green AI research.
In the years ahead, it is necessary to develop an ethical AI ecosystem without human biases and this might alleviate the potential risks of AI in the future. If we do not find a way to regulate AI and the tech giants, we risk becoming slaves to their algorithms.
At the moment we have neither the law nor the language to comprehend the revolutions we are lived through – let alone those to come.
The very nature of the technology we have unleashed is only going to speed up.
AI is already more intelligent – that is, better at solving some problems – than humanity. It holds immense potential, especially in medicine, and peril, in particular, if computers learn so quickly that they pursue ends for themselves rather than for human masters the implication is dystopian and terrifying, namely, that it could master humans.
We have all been hacked by computers who threaten to know us better than ourselves.
Technology gave us dominion over nature, which saints and poets had hitherto attributed to God. But AI is a new kind of tool, which if we are not careful, will turn all of us into tools.
The age of algorithms enriched all our lives and made a few astonishingly rich.
It is now inviting us along a new road to serfdom. It almost appears like technology took over us, in sight of time and priorities, it is already crystal clear like Climate change that apocalypse always comes without warning.
As of now, let us be glad about the extent we came up with AI, the solution is on cards and lets us hope that human beings will take over technology just before the latter does so.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
A few days ago a friend of mine described a group of children 5/6 years answering the following questions.
Where do fish come from? Answer Asda ( Supermarket)
Where does meat come from? Answer (Mc Donald’s )
It made me think that on one hand, parents and teachers are obsessing about making children into the perfect worker drones but on the other hand, they complain that kids these days have no creativity or concept of the world they live in.
Why?
Because, if ever, the present-day education is totally detached from the values that are needed to sustain life.
But why should we put so much time, money, and effort into education?
The reasons are obvious even if Leonardo da Vinci, after all, received none.
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Education is not cheap.
In every country, billions are wasted on futile learning almost everywhere.
With the current state of our planet, this has to change.
But education only has value in the society in which it exists, and that society is becoming a lazy Google society day by day.
So – why do it?
Many insects such as ants, bees, and cockroaches achieve their goals through outstanding cooperation and common understanding.
Luckily, or perhaps unluckily this has so far proved impossible for human beings.
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If we accept that culture plays a critical role in education and that successful education must fit the needs of the times, then, there is little doubt that:
It is a waste of time and effort to try to emulate another country’s education system and, more important
Most of what we teach today is not fit for purpose because it is founded on needs that are centuries out of date.
Focussing on examination results produces great stress for little purpose in future life.
In its forms and methods, any education is an outgrowth of the needs of the society in which it exists.
Why are we examining students so stressfully on subjects that are less and less relevant when an app on a mobile phone is capable of calculations far more complex than any of us is likely to need.
The things young people need to learn change – and they are changing rapidly now.
The current curricula and methodologies with their outdated examination system no longer suffice, no longer reflecting the world we live in.
In 500 years, education today will surely be looked on in much the same way as we now regard medieval sanitation (appalling), regardless of country.
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But how and what needs to be changed?
To ensure that students learn to evaluate and respond to the social, economic, and political consequences of their work will require the development of an entirely new curriculum that gives the next generation of technologists, engineers, scientists, and mathematicians the formal foundations – including shared vocabulary and intellectual frameworks – for considering the macro effects of their actions on society.
Education must become the cornerstone of a more comprehensive long-term strategy to ensure that technology serves society in overwhelmingly positive ways.
Bringing about change in education by any form of government intervention is impossible and undesirable, also Those in the education industry are too close to it to bring about change.
Parents should be more involved with the non-academic aspects of their children’s schooling and employers should continue to demand more relevance of education systems around the world.
It seems that every country wants to emulate what they see of value in other country’s education systems.
What is needed is education in topics like “Ethics, Public Policy, and Technological Change” and “Computers, Ethics, and Public Policy.”
So where are we?
Over the centuries, parents have played a major role in their children’s education, so it is impossible to visualize a global education reformation.
All (a teacher) can do is plant some small seed of independent thought. However, if this seed depends increasingly on irrelevant or arcane knowledge, the time and resources spent acquiring high grades is a huge waste for both the individual and society.
In this unpredictable world where everything is a product for consumption informed decision making, creative problem solving, and perhaps above all, adaptability will be what is required.
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The rapid spread of COVID-19 has demonstrated the importance of building resilience to face various threats, from pandemic disease to extremist violence to climate insecurity, and even, yes, rapid technological change.
In a matter of weeks, coronavirus (COVID-19) has changed how students are educated around the world.
The coronavirus pandemic has changed how millions around the globe are educated.
New education solutions could bring much-needed innovation.
Given the digital divide, new shifts in education approaches could widen equality gaps.
The development of AI should be paired with an ongoing study of its impact on human society if we are to gain a deeper understanding of how technology affects humanity.
So. What could help to overcome the education divide?
Generally, education is always associated with the process of delivering skills, disseminating knowledge, and internalizing values.
Not much unfortunately as it is those who are better educated, and who should be sensitive to discrimination – who can benefit – often unknowingly -from the inequality they help to create are in charge.
What is true is if there is a deficit of educated people society as we know it stops its further progress.
Take for example;
It remains true that the development of a child in the west has nothing in common with developing into a member of society in ancient Greece, but Education is a combination of the Past and now how to Face the Future.
“We can’t cut down rainforests forever. And anything that we can’t do forever is by definition, unsustainable” – David Attenborough.
Education will never disappear. It will take up different forms.
Personalized learning.
More e-learning platforms. Etech in the classroom. Digital Literacy.
Social and Emotional skills as a priority, with accelerated learning and
teacher as a guide.
Not limited to a physical school.
Traveling classrooms. More affordable
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
If any country shows us the folly of war surely Afghanistan is that country.
MOST OF US HAVE NO IDEA WHERE IT IS NEVER MIND THAT IT HAS BEEN IN A STATE OF WAR SINCE ALEXANDER THE GREAT INVADED IT IN THE 4TH CENTURY.
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A landlocked country of 652,000 square kilometers (slightly bigger than France) that got its name from the Pashtuns its main tribal group. Surrounded by Pakistan- Iran- Turkmenia- Uzbekistan- Tajikistan -China, with a present-day population of around 32 million it was once dubbed the roundabout of the ancient world.
You could not be blamed for not noticing that with a deafening silence from its Nato allies, the US is leaving Afghanistan by the backdoor, ending its longest conducted war, without generated a drumbeat.
There has been no surrender, no peace treaty, no victory.
(It has been estimated that 1,405,111 to 2,084,468 lives have been lost since the start of Afghanistan conflicts)
Since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan, over 111,000 Afghans, including militants, civilians, and soldiers, have been killed. Deaths from indirect causes may account for an additional 360,000 Afghans. Approximately three out of four Afghans have been displaced internally, externally, or multiple times.
A total of 2,312 US military personnel have died and 20,066 have been wounded since 2001, with the number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan ranges from 35,000 to 40,000.
UK forces – around five hundred deaths.
Over 62,000 Afghan national security forces were killed and even more Taliban.
Before the US-backed by Britain launched its attack ( ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ on 27 October 2001) the Russians had left after thirteen years, costing them more than 14,000 Russian lives leaving 1.5 million Afghans dead, five million disabled, and five million refugees – Russia Vietnam.
On Russia’s departure, the Mujahidin (Islamic guerrillas who engage in jihad, fight on behalf of Islam/Allah, or the Islamic community were able to capture large parts of Afghanistancontinuing to fight against the Russian puppet, Najibullah), in 12 YEARS OF CIVIL WARS.
Enter the Taliban a small group of religious students.
In April 1992 they took Kabul and declared an Islamic state.
By the end of 1992, Kabul was devastated thanks to the actions of competing warlords.
An estimated 100,000 Pakistanis trained and fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan from 1994-2001. Saudi Arabia provided funds, goods, and diplomatic support. Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi who during the Soviet occupation had funded and trained Arab Mujahidin recruits, renewed his support, returning to Afghanistan in 1996.
By 2000 the Taliban controlled 90 percent of Afghan territory.
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The major difference between the Taliban and Al Qaeda is in their origins.
The Taliban only exercise their reign of terror in Pakistan and Afghanistan, while Al-Qaeda is a global terrorist network.
The sad part remains that both Taliban and Al Qaeda give a picture of Islam that is not a true one.
We are now looking at a new period of civil war in Afghanistan?
It is now on the verge of another Civil war or should I say returning to normal.
According to Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, professors of economics at Oxford University, the estimated total economic cost of the Afghanistan war is equivalent to 105% of a country’s GDP.
Applying this model to the $20.815 billion GDP of Afghanistan, the total economic costs of war lead to $60 million a day, $455.33 million a week, $1821.33 million a month, or a total of $21,856.07 million a year.
Civil wars are not unique to Afganistan. A four years civil war profoundly shaped the United States as we know it today.
The same is true for Russia.
The collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917 led to the Russian Civil War and the deaths of millions of people.
Indeed they seem to be a necessary means of reshaping most countries and have increased since the end of the Second World War. Many are relatively short-lived but some have lasted decades.
The causes for such conflicts are primarily economic and not grievance-based.
However, in the Afghanistan case, the Civil war was turned from civil into an extra-state war with the intervener USA on the side the government taking over the bulk of the fighting.
Conversely, wars can also be transformed into intra-state wars, for example when a state withdraws from an inter-state war. The war ceases to be an intra-state war and is transformed into a war of a different classification of prolonged conflict.
Indeed one could say that civil wars are not caused by ethnic, religious, or other socio-demographic factors. Instead, civil wars are the result of rational individualistic assessments of the costs and benefits of conflict as well as the likelihood of success.
Availability of finance: Military advantage: Cost of rebellion: Size of Population :Grievances: Time since the last conflict. Weak and corrupt governments: Supported by foreign diasporas: Disputes over local issues: One-sided state killings: The Geography of the country.
It is estimated that 20% of nations have experienced at least ten years of civil war.
So Where Are We Today?
Although the United States may have had the best of intentions going into Afghanistan, the overall results of U.S. involvement have been a disaster.t
Ideological wars are not won by military campaigns.
Most Pashtun are loath to join the Afghan military since they tend to be sympathetic to the Taliban, which is largely a Pashtun organization. As a result, the ethnic makeup of the Afghan military does not represent the ethnic makeup of Afghan society.
The present Afghan government will collapse.
The United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan will result in an internal struggle and even bloodshed.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
As you know ever since we as a species became self-aware/conscience this is one of the remaining profound unanswered questions. The Ultimate Question because as far as most of us know, we only have one life to live and the odds against our existence are now becoming quite literally, beyond comprehension.
Part of the problem is the concept of “life purpose” itself.
Philosophers, theologians, and countless others have attempted an answer since time began but no one yet knows exactly how life on Earth began (yet).
For all we’ve been able to actually discover, humans are nothing more than biological machines, outfitted with an onboard computer.
While everyone is entitled to have an opinion about why we are here and what to do with our lives, we currently facing a man-made disaster on the cards which if not addressed with the purpose of life as its driving force, we will in the next decade or so see that energy which is the source of life and disasters that are unfolding will also remove the purpose to all life.
Energy is required to create life but it has no concept of life. Energy is in fact a concept. Nobody actually knows what energy actually is. It’s a theory. An agnostic concept as defined or theorized by Einstein. He was an agnostic.
If there was just one, clear, unequivocal answer to the purpose of life there would be no need for religion, science, wars, racism, etc.
The different answers can’t all be right…or can they?
Despite what others say, procreation is the ultimate purpose of your biological existence. That’s what animals including humans battle for and die for – survival.
In a few billion years we expect the sun to expand sufficiently to consume the Earth.
If life survives and the is universe expanding forever, as we think it will, eventually even the atoms that could make up life will have evaporated into energy.
How then shall we live?
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Back to the present.
Over the next century, we will witness further seismic shifts in the way we live and interact with our surroundings because technology is now everywhere.
Ever since coming into the picture, technology has not been only contributing to our lives but changing the way we live.
A remarkable force in our lives and set to continue to affect it to a great extent.
With each passing year, artificial intelligence systems known as deep learning neural networks are increasingly being used in areas that could have a massive impact on the purpose of life.
For the last decade or so, technology has transformed the way we communicate especially after the inception of the internet.
We now live in a digital age, analyzed by Big data.
Invented by man himself, it is now changed the life of a man to an extreme extent increasing the speed of time. We have become over-reliant on technology so much so that we cannot even imagine living without it.
Technology is always evolving, but will it remain a by-product of fulfilling our life purpose, of learning and growing to change the world around us, to hope for the better.
What would become of our world if all technological advances were gone?
I think that our lives would be very different. Without it, human lives would have been disconnected but simpler – isolated, and unimaginative. But unfortunately, Cloud computing, artificial intelligence, Machine learning business intelligence tools, predictive analytics are all new methods to conduct, operate, or manage your life, with the purpose of life becoming academic.
As algorithms which very few people understand how do we know their judgments are or will be correct?
Maybe you can or cannot live without technology one way or the other we are becoming robotic humans who are bound by technology.
Why?
Because the systems are built to aid decision-making, specialize in weighing up complex datasets that humans simply don’t have the capacity to analyze.
How shall we live with these smart new robots that claim they’re a person who is not a human’?
It is natural to think that Robots that were human inventions will remain programmed to participate in life to set rules till they become self-aware. Their purpose will then be to coming forward to rule the world.
No doubt to say that there will come a time when only robots will control this world could be a reality in the not-so-distant future. Only by self-awareness will it then be possible to live a purposeful life and it will then need a purpose greater than itself to attain self-awareness itself rather than a program of living.
It is difficult to imagine our life without the use of technology. I think many of you would agree that we are relying upon our smartphones and tablets as our sole means of communication with the rest of the world.
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In the End. The human body and mind augmentation will accelerate becoming less and less limited by biology, philosophy, and religion.
Perhaps sometime in the future, with stem cell technology we will achieve biological immortality, ie our lineage doesn’t age, which will be a curse rather than a blessing.
The bitter truth is that while this transhumanism progresses we will be still fighting over resources, eating genetically modified foods till the purpose of life is either programmed or is developed by Artificial intelligence on its own accord.
It will then only be explored through science.
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How can there be a point to live when we will go extinct at one point in time anyway?
There is no single right answer, all life lives to evolve. We evolved to evolve to our biological changing surroundings.
So life is not an accident but a learning process from previous accidents or change.
Its purpose is sharing.
“What can I do with my time that is important?”
What struggle or sacrifice are you willing to tolerate?
So we’re back to the all-important question that we all should be asking ourselves:
What is the purpose of life?
” Ultimately, death is the only thing that gives us perspective on the value of our lives. Because it’s only by imagining your non-existence that you can get a sense of what is most important about your existence.”Mark Manson.
I say “To think greater than yourself, and paradoxically, to imagine a world without yourself, that is where one should hang his @.”Values that will determine your priorities and guide your actions.
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What is your legacy going to be? To have a purpose and to achieve it, we must go against the herd mentality. You’re not going to fix the world’s problems by yourself.
When you look at the world man has set out at tremendous speed–to go nowhere.
The aim of life has been forgotten.
No one knows where we are going, and the end-all has mostly been left behind.
Is this the price we are paying or the price we are going to pay to live at the pace of technology development?
We now have a constellation of huge man-made threats, that cannot be dealt with one at a time which is coming together to imperil our very existence.
Some say that we may be entering the end game of human history. That civilization, and maybe even our species, will not survive the compound dangers we are accruing for ourselves.
That with technology, we’re just opening an ever greater distance between where we’re running to and where we are going.
What is true is that these problems must now be solved in conjunction with all that life represents and that we are a long way off an agreed species-wide action to prevent a future that no one wants.
Almost certainly we have the technical ability to change but at what speed because we are still “in denial” about its sheer scale.
E. O. Wilson, warns “We are tearing down the biosphere” – the very thing that supports life on this Planet.
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How fast are we going?
Yes, the world is going faster. And yes, we in turn are also going faster. The older one gets the faster time seems to slip by.
When you’re five, a year represents 20% of your life. When you’re fifty, it’s a measly 2% of your life.
But the important question no one asks is this:
When does faster become too fast?
This question is still to be answered with today’s technology in as much as it is responsible for personal and societal dysfunction as any other single factor.
In Quantum Physics by leaving out time altogether, speed becomes irrelevant becoming an entanglement phenomenon of atoms, electrons, and protons – warp speed – teleportation – is not in the distant future.
With Social media/ the internet turning our species into zombies anything today that can’t keep up with Artificial Intelligence becomes the cultural equivalent of roadkill.
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The average person uses 100,000 tons of fresh water, 750 tons of soil, 720 tons of metals, 5 billion energy units, and emits 300 tonnes of greenhouse gas. No wonder resources are becoming scarce and landscapes worldwide being ruined to obtain them.
There used to be is a natural rhythm to the universe. When we are in sync with this rhythm, life unfolds seamlessly till along came Quantum Physics and the Hadron Collider collecting around 300 gigabytes of data a second.
We humans will be unable to keep up unless there is a balanced time that helps us to see forward to the next light trip to be taken. Then we will go forward by remembering the future in a balanced time that serves the past.
Only then can one get back on track by remembering the future in the light of the past.
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Where are we with speed at the moment?
Nature is always in resonance with life and we humans, are incredibly resilient and tenacious, but at some point, we get so exhausted and stressed out that we have no choice but to eventually surrender.
When we depend solely upon electronic devices to manage our information time is a runaway train without any certainty of course of direction. If we try to force it and rush toward a destination or goal, we actually move faster than the speed of biological life.
You would go around the earth seven times in a second at the speed of light ( which is 186,282 mph in a vacuum).
The sun’s energy speed to earth is 147 million to 152 million km depending on where it hits.
Every year the world spins faster.
So what is the fastest thing on earth?
Here are a few other competitors.
Data travels close to the speed of light. (about 186,282.397 miles per second).
Automation will be one of the most profound and disruptive forces in human history.
Tachyons are hypothetical particle which is believed to be faster than the speed of light. Recent studies and calculations have found that, unlike ordinary particles, tachyons gain speed while their energy decreases and vice-versa. The slowest speed achieved by tachyons is the speed of light.
Pilobolus fungus – which lives on horse-dump.
The spores of these fungi can reach from 0 to 20 mph in 2 millionth of a second. The acceleration it experiences is a staggering 1 million times the gravity.
Thus, it is the fastest living thing on planet earth.
If we calculate the speed over very short distances, and if we assume the living being to start from rest, nothing in the whole wide world can even come close to this fungi.
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Yes, you can google what is the fastest thing on earth you will get a list with no mention that we are traveling at 66.660 mph around the sun while spinning at 1037 mph, depending on where you are standing, while the whole solar system orbits the milky way’s galactic center at about 447,000 mph.
We don’t feel it because we are all hurling around at the same speed.
Now, the question stands what other things present in our surroundings are qualified as fastest.
Is it: Usain Bolt – 100 meters in 9.58sec- 23.15 mph – Rockets – 17600 mph – Fighter Jets – 3500 km/h up to 7300 km/h – Juno Spacecraft – 165 0000 mph – Concorde – 1,354 mph- Helios 2 – 356,040 km/h – Neowise Comet – 17,500 mph – The Kreutz sungrazers comets – speed unknown – Corona Virus 40mph for a sneeze –Electricity – 670,616,629 mph.
It all begs the question do we really know where we are going?
Now get your head around this if you can.
According to the latest studies, the universe is expanding at 45.5mph for every 3.26 million light-years – that is, every 3.26 million light-years further away we look we find the universe is expanding at 45.5 mph faster. At this rate distances between cosmic objects are likely to double in another 9.8 billion years.
Back on earth.
Humanity’s chemical emissions are four times greater even than our carbon dioxide emissions.
Every day, every child on our planet is poisoned by man-made toxins. The whole of humanity and indeed, all life on Earth, is mired in a toxic swamp of 250 billion tonnes of annual chemical emissions from human activity.
It is essential that money, politics, and the human narrative are reinvented. Otherwise, technology will sabotage the very actions essential to our continuance leaving no time for human values or input.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Now before I start trying to answer this question I wish to make it crystal clear that I am no doctor, scientist, or professor of Epidemiology.
Over my life, I have visited countries that have to require one to be vaccinated for everything from Yellow fever to you name it.
The one thing that is stopping some people from getting vaccinated is not understanding how mRNA technology works and its long term effects ( Yet to be seen)
So I am going to try to explain in layman terms the difference between an mRNA vaccine and a traditional vaccine.
There are three sorts of vaccines.
Live, attenuated vaccines are the closest to a natural infection. They contain a weakened version of a living virus or bacteria
Subunit vaccines contain only parts of a virus or bacteria instead of a whole pathogen.
Inactivated vaccines contain an inactivated or dead version of a virus or pathogen.
Most vaccines up to now work by presenting your body with a weakened or dead version of a virus or some of the proteins found on the surface of the virus.
By showing the virus or parts of the virus to your immune system, the vaccine teaches your body to recognize the pathogen and turns on the production of antibodies, which are proteins that attach to the virus and allow killer immune cells to gobble it up.
In other words, traditional vaccines teach the immune system to make memory cells.
So if you are exposed to a virus at a future date, the immune system has the ability to rev up the production of antibodies rapidly and fight off the pathogen again.
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The coronavirus pandemic infected millions of people in a matter of months and vaccines usually take years, and sometimes even decades, to develop, test, and approved for public use.
For example:
Smallpox – several centuries.
Plague – to date no vaccine.
Typhoid – around thirty years.
Yellow Fever – around thirty years.
Influenza – around thirty years – ineffective today because of seasonal changes.
Measles/ Mumps – around eleven years.
Anthrax – around 58 years
Polo- around sixty years.
Chicken Pox – around thirty year
Shingles – around forty years.
Hepatitis B – around twenty-four years.
mRNA vaccines have existed for more than 10 years and have been used with the Ebola and Zika viruses. What is new is in terms of how widely it’s being used on the market.
When the COVID-19 epidemic arrived, never before in modern history, has the entire world and all of the governments in the world banded together to get a vaccine to market so quickly.
Researchers worldwide sprang into action to identify and insert the correct genetic code into the mRNA platform.
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This of course raised questions.
How a vaccine can get put together in such a short time?
Were corners cut?
Is the trial period too short?
Will there be side effects in years to come?
These are questions that can not fully answer. Time will tell.
In layman’s terms, the technologies already existed, and with vast amounts of money made available to produce a vaccine, it happened in months not years.
The result was mRNA vaccines which use what is called RNAi research that is widely used by researchers to silence genes in order to learn something about their function.
The result is siRNAs that can be designed to match any gene, can be manufactured cheaply, and can be readily administered to cells.
In other words, a cellular mechanism that uses the gene’s own DNA sequence of the gene to turn it off.
However, RNAi is much more than a research tool that encompasses an array of ancient and sophisticated cellular mechanisms that regulate a variety of biological functions.
The advantage of RNAi is the ability to design precisely targeted medicines for almost any gene, regardless of the function of the gene.
So each different vaccine aims to use a slightly different approach to prepare your immune system to recognize and fight SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
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Think of your DNA as the “instruction manuals” in genes that tell a living thing—what to do.
The mRNA helps cells to read those instructions. It is synthetic there is no COVID virus in this vaccine.
You can not get COVID-19 from the vaccine as mRNA vaccines never enter the nucleus of the cell, where our DNA is stored. Rather than presenting your body with the dead virus or parts of the virus, mRNA vaccines show your body the blueprint needed to make a viral protein.
The difference with mRNA vaccines is that it gives a recipe to our immune system.
Your body uses this blueprint to make the SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins without including any part of the virus itself.
However, unlike less virulent or killed vaccines, the person is not infected with a virus, not even one that’s been weakened or killed.
mRNA is a small fragile fragment of genetic information that’s rapidly broken down within the bloodstream and within cells.
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Finally, the world will need several different vaccines to fight the Covid-19 pandemic as the virus mutates.
Of course in the short term, there are billions to be made by not sharing. But in the long term, it is taxpayers’ money that has helped the development of the vaccine.
At the moment we have a handful of drugmakers dominating the global coronavirus vaccine race.
To fight a global pandemic these companies must be made to share or waiver any patents, along with sharing the manufacturing process worldwide.
The Data from all Vaccines must be shared.
While world governments must remove any trade barriers blocking the production of the vaccine.
So far 75% of the world’s Covid -19 vaccines have been distributed in just 10 countries.
It is a glaring fact that we are not going to end this pandemic anywhere until we do it everywhere.
It is also a glaring fact while the virus spreads Covid mutants will evolve to trick our immune systems.
It is also a glaring fact that unless Inequality is tackled on a world basis we humans will struggle with any future pandemics that are coming with climate change.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
“Who are you?” What are you? Where do you come from? Are you contagious or not?
Freedom in modern society has come to become a loaded term.
The current covid pandemic is showing us that we are living in an infinitely
connected world and most of us are using biometric technologies every day.
However, the whole concept of authority when it comes to freedom seems to
be in conflict with the principles of self-determination.
As a result, Biometric technology is now going beyond human ability and will be used for many more physical and behavioral characteristics to identify them.
The implementation of digital IDs/Passport systems carries far-reaching implications for individuals with access to services and livelihoods so the question of what is meant by freedom is now in the hands of Artificial Intelligence.
Mostly we don’t notice these limitations because we’ve been programmed to not even think about being released from them.
It turns out that our freedom to make even the simplest of choices may not just be more limited than we think—it may not exist at all.
You could say so what! we are already tracked.
I have no prejudice to those that are, but no pass should assume everyone is because society takes that as one meaning only.
The part of our minds we identify as “us”—is now powerfully influenced by technology.
It really is an indignity to have to carry a document that explains the difficulties one might have. Proving one’s identity is one thing knowing where you are in another sort of measurement without the same level of reliability.
The difficult truth is that “we” aren’t free even from our unconscious selves.
The argument is that Biometrics is the most suitable means of identifying and authenticating individuals in a reliable and fast way through unique biological characteristics. But the question is.
Should people be informed about the use of these technologies as a biometric template is a representation of an individual’s unique traits?
As biometric characteristics are immutable, when a biometric template is stolen, that characteristic is compromised for good.
Biometric templates cannot be updated or renewed.
Biometric identification is a computer-controlled analysis that identifies an individual by measuring some biological traits scanned by sensors and matching them with the data stored in a database.
So should we have the power to apply for the Canceling of Biometric ID that allows us to revoke a compromised biometric template as if it was a stolen password?
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Biometric identification schemes and “immunity passports” are already being rolled out.
Programs for tracking tracing and surveilling the entire population are already being beta-tested and the digital payment infrastructure; the system of financial exclusion that will allow governments to turn off our access to the economy at will is being put into place.
This is not about the world that we are living in but about the one that we are being thrust into.
Biometrics perceives human beings as subjects of biometric data collection, which offends human dignity. Not only dehumanizes the person, but also infringes bodily integrity, leading to human indignity.
Biometrics severely infringes privacy.
It is way more complicated than tracking your online activity or placing cookies on your phone or computer. Business organizations have already been collecting biometric data of their users and the fate of this data remains uncertain.
Biometrics is a technology-based identification and authentication approach, which may require several other systems to work together to stay operational. Despite all technological advancements, downtimes and system failures are still a reality.
If you have made it this far, it is incumbent on you to help inoculate those around you against the corrupt ideology of morphological identifiersbefore our ability to speak out against this agenda is taken away for good.
Morphological identifiers are another thing altogether and time is not on our side.
Why?
Because not everyone in the target population can be fit for biometric identification, which will lead to discrimination and exclusion.
Morphological identifiers will be used to find out subconscious emotional structures behind everyday human experience and behavior.
95% of all purchase decisions are made subconsciously deep down in customers’ minds.
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Both forms of ID will result in discrimination on a global scale.
What would you do if being in a continuously authenticated state is a necessity?
The day is not far when your car and even the refrigerator will be able to identify you as you hold the handle to open the door.
To quote Jonathan Haidt’s metaphor from his book The Happiness.
Hypothesis—needn’t only be made to do “our” bidding against its will, but that we can also train it to want what we want. Perhaps then the greatest potential for freedom lies in creating as much unity between our conscious and unconscious selves as possible.
So, you may be asking yourself at this point, “well if I can’t choose for myself how to live my life, how am I free?”
In answering remember that freedom and opportunity are not the same.
We cannot properly assess the quality of our freedom until we have established whether and to what extent the choices we make are based on adequate understanding.
Freedom is something we say we want, but what sort of freedom would be worth wanting?
Take freedom of movement for instance.
With a growing disregard for individual and collective abilities to properly understand those choices and their broader context by allowing the introduction of Biometric identification schemes we are in fact allowing the erosion of whats is left of Freedom.
Liberty means being free to make your own choices about your own life, that what you do with your body and your property ought to be up to you. Other people must not forcibly interfere with your liberty, and you must not forcibly interfere with theirs.
Across the years of wars around the world, no single issue unites people more than freedom and no other issue is more important but it remains hard to see just what freedom a human being is supposed to possess.
No matter. There is one certainty and that is a world without freedom is too cruel to live in. Of course, freedoms aren’t absolute.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
