Category Archives: 2021. The year for change.

THE BEADY EYE ASKS: IS SOCIETY SET TO COLLAPSE?

19 Sunday Dec 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., Climate Change., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Disconnection., Human Collective Stupidity., Life., Pandemic, POST COVID-19., Purpose of life., Society, Speed of technology., Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., THE NEW NORM., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Fifteen-minute read) 

Not quite, but every major social indicator imaginable is either flatlining or declining and unwinding, from longevity, to trust, to happiness, to wealth.

 

History shows us that economic collapse will essentially happen with entrenched elites seeking to maintain the status quo.

You would have to be an ostrich with your head stuck in the sand not to see that in exchange for your Freedom, Liberty, and Independence, governments are printing currency to pay their bills and support the tens of millions on public assistance.

But if you take a look around societies that are failing to anticipate their own impending collapses.

There are political classes, intellectual classes, and capitalist classes, to name a few that can conceive of the possibility that society is in a grave, profound difficulty. With the help of the Pandemic now reaching unprecedented proportions, and the continuing Climate crises all are adding up to a pending collapsing society.

Why?

Because we are all too preoccupied with merely surviving the vicious cycle as the collapse intensifies. On one hand are acting as if we are already living in scientifically-planned societies, immune to collapse on a time scale that any of us have to worry about. On the other is the idea that everyone is entitled to have what others have earned is now permeating society with the help of social media.

It is not our hard-won liberties that are being taken away it is our means to live a life in an attempt to save dying economies.

                                  ____________________

If that is not enough just look at what COP26 achieved. 

As you know COP26 was an opportunity for nations from across the globe to agree on a way to limit the devastating impacts of climate change.

What we got was a deal that does not go far enough and will not limit global warming to 1.5C by the end of the century.

Because of the current Pandemic, carbon emissions will continue for the foreseeable future, combined with Methane, we are set to see more wars.

Climate change is going to result in mass migration with wars over resources with the pandemic affecting not just the cost of living but the ability to earn a living. We’re already seeing (with the most recent example in Cameroon where farmers and fishermen are killing each other for water) both ( Climate/ Pandemic ) escalating resulting in steep recessions in many countries.

Current projections suggest that the worldwide recession of COVID-19 would be the fourth deepest and most extreme since the Second World War during this time.

Surely it’s time we started to look at both the Pandemic and Climate Change through the eyes of human liberty, consensus, and laws, all are becoming more relevant day by day, which is paramount to all of us.

Today we are not immune to anybody’s problems.

A collapse of a society anywhere is a global issue, and conversely, anybody anywhere in the world now has ways of reaching us.

However, there are obvious differences between the environmental problems and pandemics in the past and the ones that we face today. The difference between today and the past is globalization.

In the past, you could get solitary collapses.

                                            ———————-

If elites wish to maintain the status quo, why don’t people…take action against those elites?

Are we able to choose what we will do with our lives?

What is the point of life if we cannot choose our own paths?

Common sense tells us that with the state of our planet, that we’re is no longer at liberty to ignore what is happening. If we really can choose, then these choices we have made must be uncaused — something that cannot be explained within the model of science that many of us rely on.

However from a purely scientific perspective, how is it possible that anything can occur without having been caused by something else? 

A human act is an act that is deliberately performed by one possessed of the use of reason. Branches of psychology and many wisdom traditions, attempt to make sense of human existence and experience and to connect those experiences to the world at large. 

Our current view of human mental evolution is like a jigsaw puzzle where many of the pieces have been taken out of the box.

They have not yet been put together to form a coherent picture.

One of the oldest questions in psychology, and in other fields such as philosophy, is whether humans have free will. The central puzzles about human cognition are its curious combination of flexibility and efficiency.

But is this all that defines us?

We don’t have to live with what we got.

Take, the technology behind a nuclear bomb.

It only exists because of the technology because of a cooperative hive mind: hundreds of scientists and engineers working together on an atom bomb.  

This same unique intelligence and cooperation also underlie more positive advances, such as modern medicine and now the vaccines we are using to fight covid. 

Still, as far as we know, we are the only creatures trying to understand where we came from. We also peer further back in time, and further into the future, than any other animal.

What other species would think to ponder the age of the universe, or how it will end?

                                    ———–

Either we put our survival before GDP.

Continue as we are or change by putting our Health before Consumption, putting equality before greed, putting transparency before political power, and sharing our responsibility to future generations. 

We don’t know exactly what led to our brains becoming the size they are today, but we seem to owe our complex reasoning abilities to notice the unexpected, which our world is now experiencing and will continue to experience with less and less critical reflection.  

Critical reflection requires that the thinker examine the underlying assumptions and radically question or doubt the validity of arguments, assertions, and even facts of the case. 

We are now in need of some critical thinking, not reflection to consider the results of having linked our scenario-building minds into larger networks of knowledge that have made us increasingly reliant on each other.

So what if anything will bring us together to act as one or when will we hit peak humanity becoming a singularity basically?

By peak humanity I mean we’ll have the ability to do things we can’t do alone.

If we could all work together as well as the human body can, that’s when I think we individual humans will be “cells” and we as a collective would be called an individual.

Our problem is that the majority of us are incapable of putting anything before our daily needs.

                                       ———————–

Because our rapidly expanding technology has allowed us all to become instant publishers means we can share information at the touch of a button.

This transmission of ideas and technology helps us in our quest to uncover even more about ourselves with an immense capacity for good. At the same time, we risk driving our closest relatives to extinction and destroying the only planet we have ever called home.

The technology that defines us can also destroy the world.

Why?

Because we’re simply trying to advance too much too fast.

Our cultures and mindsets cant keep up with our technology and morality, so chaos ensues.

How do you expect to survive in a world that is based on imaginary delusions of people without basic knowledge about how Earth works in terms of physics and biology.

This tells us something profound about ourselves.

Unfortunately, we don’t know all of the determinants of human behavior, and we may never understand all of these determinants—so the question of whether or not we have free will is likely to remain a philosophical quagmire.

This is why we are unable to act as one.

So we are left pretty much where we started.

Religions, Languages, Nations, and Cultures are what divide humanity today which is just another flaw as a species. 

So of course, we pass on the good and the bad.

Not until we learn to pull together our unparalleled language skills, our ability to infer others’ mental states, and our instinct for cooperation, will we have something unprecedented to fight Climate Change and future pandemics.

We understand what others think based upon our knowledge of the world, but we also understand what others cannot know. 

The answer lies in fundamentally changing social behavior away from the rapidly moving consuming beings that we are.

We are the only society in world history that has the ability to learn from all the experiments being carried out elsewhere in the world today, and all the experiments that have succeeded and failed in the past so at least we have the choice of what we want to do about it or do we. 

Most people realize that 2020 has thrust two game-changing trends upon us that will change the world for years to come.

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS: IS THE ENVIORMENT MORE IMPORTAIN THAN THE ECONOMY?

09 Thursday Dec 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., A Constitution for the Earth., Algorithms., Capitalism, Climate Change., Disaster Capitalism., Economic Depression., Emergency powers., Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., How to do it., Human Collective Stupidity., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Pandemic, Politics., POST COVID-19., Purpose of life., Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The essence of our humanity., THE NEW NORM., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Unanswered Questions., Universal Basic Income ., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Five-minute read) 

With the continuation of the covid pandemic, this is going to become the big question because the two are intertwined.

If this pandemic drags on, which appears it will do with new variants, the degree of economic harm will become extreme, resulting in a different kind of “ailment” worse than the one we’re supposedly trying to “cure.”

Either way, the current shackling of the economy cannot be allowed to drag on much longer, or we will find ourselves in a full-blown global depression — and then more people will die.

However, if you combine the pandemic with the other major crises Climate Change the Environment wins hands down. 

Why? 

Because in the long run if the environment is not protected it will inevitably lead to the depletion of economic resources and the destruction of the earth and human life. 

In this world, humans are not here for only survival there are many other aspects that are necessary for the lives of humans. The economy is not, and never was intended as, “an end in itself”.

Everything that belonged to humans came from the environment but we can live without an economy, but not without our environment!

We’re all in this together.

There’s just enough truth to that to convince the average citizen — but the more insidious (and, I believe, likely intended) effect is to promote public docility;

To persuade us to go along with any and all directives issued by the authorities.

An economy is good only insofar as it satisfies our needs for freedom to enjoy the actuality of living, not valuing profit over life itself. On the physical level, human lives literally depend on the economy; not only for paying the bills and preparing for retirement but for healthcare itself.

With no economy, there is no point in having a good environment. everything in the history of the world created by humans came from the environment.

A “healthy” economy is an indicator of a “healthy” society. They live side by side.

If the goal of government policy is only “to slow the spread of infections”“

If you think the economy is more important than the environment, try holding your breath while counting your money.” — Guy McPherson.

The cure shouldn’t be worse than the disease. Government handling of any public emergency — if those in power are rational and just — will be balanced with their handling of the economy.

Pope Francis said on Sunday that people are more important than the economy, as countries decide how quickly to reopen their countries from coronavirus lockdowns.

What do you think the economy is? 

It is people but unfortunately, with our present system of capitalist economies, people do not benefit equally from its growth. Essential workers versus the unemployed, shareholders versus self-employed, foodbanks versus dialing a meal, the list is endless however without humans, how can we hope to repair anything?

To remove these inequalities is impossible but an economy based on universal basic income for all would allow people to look after themselves rather than state handouts.

Providing inflation was controlled it would go a long way to leveling up. 

Instead, the possibility of dictatorial governments using technology data is now on the cards. This fear is exacerbated by the average person’s lack of reflection on just what “the economy” is, and what it means to both individual freedom and the public good.

History has shown us we shouldn’t underestimate the threat to our liberty arising from the government’s response to Covid. There’s no reason to assume that after the pandemic — if there is an “after” — all democratic governments will voluntarily relinquish their newly acquired power.

Sure the government’s first obligation is to ensure people can survive both Climate change and the virus but without the means to change the way we live our lives it will be meanless.  

So it’s time for the media to make the cost of human life better understood.

It’s time for the advertising industry to stop promoting consumption for profit. 

It’s time to regulate Profit for-profit technology such as non-transparent Algorithms. 

Either we are really all in this together or we are not.

Of course, together will remain only words till we address the weakness which is at the heart of any nation-state project ( Like the current Vaccination program)

The vast majority are unable to participate because of a lack of compensation, by the capacity ( notably economic) of the capitalist system to ensure that everybody enjoys certain equality of access to material well-being. A Basis Universal income would rectify that.      

Modern societies can easily get by without cultural integration, tolerating a situation of competitive pluralism of values without automatically sinking into anarchy feared by the sociological tradition of inequality, if given the means to do so.  

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse are chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS: EVOLOUTION AND VIRUS MUTATIONS ARE BOTH ONGOIING PROCESSES.

07 Tuesday Dec 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., Coronavirus (COVID-19), COVID-19, Evolution, Viruses., WHAT IS TRUTH

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(Eighteen-minute read)

From the dawn of humanity and throughout history, infectious diseases have shaped human evolution, demography, migrations, and history they have killed well over half of all humans who have ever lived on earth.

Viruses are precursors of life as we know it, they infiltrate every aspect of our natural world. New viruses and strains were discovered in every decade of the second half of the 20th century. Today we don’t even know how many viruses human beings are subject to, even how many inhabit us at this very moment.

As to where viruses came from is not a simple question to answer. The origins of many human pathogens are ancient, extending back over time scales of thousands to millions of years.

It’s unclear how they first evolved but what is clear is viruses are tiny but their impact on life is huge. This is true not just for people, but for all life forms on earth.

It is estimated that there are 10 viruses for every bacterium on Earth.

We humans have been around for about 200.000 years while the Earth has been around for 4.6 billion years. You do the maths. 

Strictly speaking, viruses can’t die, for the simple reason that they aren’t alive in the first place. A virus outside a host is a package of genetic material if it does not find a host it goes back to being just a package of dormant genetic material.

Hence, there shouldn’t even be any question about their survival and their effect on evolution. 

Therefore the term “survive” may not be the most appropriate term when it comes to a virus. 

                                —————————–

To us, disease-causing viruses and bacteria may be evildoers — invaders of our bodies — who, if they can be said to have any aim at all, it is to do us harm.

But by shifting our perspective to their scale it reveals that these pathogens are evolving populations of organisms like any other, whose habitat just happens to be the human body. Like other organisms, these germs are shaped by natural selection to live and successfully reproduce.

We view them as pathogens, however, because the resources they use to do this (and which they destroy in the process) are the cells of our own bodies.

Many of the traits that make us feel sick during an infection are actually pathogenic adaptations — characteristics favored by natural selection that help these germs reproduce and spread.

Without legs, wings, fins, or any of the usual means of locomotion, your descendents’ prospects for reaching a new host under their own power are nil.

However, natural selection has provided pathogens with a number of sneaky strategies for making the leap to a new host, including:

  • Droplet transmission — for example, being passed along when one host accidentally sneezes on another. The flu is transmitted this way.
  • Airborne transmission — for example, being exhaled by one host and inhaled by another. Tuberculosis is transmitted this way.
  • Vector transmission — getting picked up by a carrier (the vector — e.g., a mosquito) and carried to a new host. Malaria is transmitted this way.
  • Waterborne transmission — leaving one host (e.g., in feces), infecting the water supply, and being taken up (e.g., in drinking water) by a new host. Cholera is transmitted this way.
  • Sit-and-wait transmission — being able to live outside a host for long periods of time until coming into contact with a new host. Smallpox can survive for years outside of a host!

Some like it warm and damp and others need cold and dry to survive outside a host and any other combination you can think of applies.  They don’t breathe, eat, produce waste, or otherwise. In other, words they do not perform metabolism on their own.

They do need a temperature range to use. If not, they are destroyed but since most viruses are deactivated at temperatures between 165 and 212 degrees Fahrenheit -100 Celsius.

Can they exist in space?  Absolutely. Yes and no. Space is no virus vacation.

Viruses can withstand freezing temperatures 

Viruses are a huge source of selective pressure in the evolution of a species, such as a provirus, a virus that inserts its DNA directly into the chromosomes of the host cell. Rather than just having a separate strand of DNA or RNA floating around in the cell, the provirus adds itself to the host genome and gets replicated with the other genes.

This is the reason the human body reacts to infection by raising its own temperature.

They may be descendants of previously free-living organisms that adapted a parasitic replication strategy. Perhaps they existed before life started and led to the evolution of, cellular life. Whether they did or not is of little consequence as discoveries have continued in the 21st century as new viral diseases such as SARS and Nipah virus and Covid have emerged.

Using the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic as a model, experts suggested the COVID-19 outbreak will last between 18 and 24 months.

I say that they are totally wrong with 7 billion of us rising the chances of genetic mutations, virus mutations will only increase, exposing us to a different set of infections diseases.

It is becoming more and more apparent that the Covid virus has hijacked the flu virus or vice versa. 

All-in-all a virus needs to keep infecting new hosts or it’ll simply run out of ways to reproduce as biological systems either die or figure out how to kill it.

However, if it kills the host too fast, it can’t effectively reach a new host. If the host figures out how to kill it too fast, same thing.

                                    ——————–

These days as are getting fatter, taller, and perhaps cooler we battle diseases with drugs, and vaccines. 

However it stands to reason because we are not immune to the effects of natural selection and our Biology never standstill with the Earth’s temperature increases, we will have to cool down. (Biology is a science and there are many technologies within its scope. So, technology and biology are not opposed concepts.) One contains the other.

Our average temperature is about 98.6 degrees, above that, we have a fever, below we have hypothermia. 

Our brains can only understand “information technologies”. But the concept of technology goes far beyond that into our evolution. 

Innovative new technologies are already restoring and enhancing human sensory and motor functions like never before, but viruses are not will not be controlled by any technology. 

Viruses are the smallest of all microbes. They are said to be so small that 500 million rhinoviruses (which cause the common cold) could fit onto the head of a pin.

Population concentrations and movement, both animal and human, have been steadily increasing in this century, enhancing transmission of respiratory and enteric viruses and compounding the difficulty of preventing environmental transmission.

This could open the door for the evolution of more virulent strains.

Maybe there are other explanations for diseases and our relationship to nature besides those dictated by the accepted theories of the medical-industrial complex that we have been forced to live under.

Perhaps we should recognize them as the fourth domain of life and not dismiss them, if only because they do in fact reproduce outside their own “bodies.”

The more common RNA viruses—like the coronavirus behind the current pandemic.

DNA outcompeted RNA as a type of informational code. But RNA survives as an essential part of terrestrial biology, as we’re seeing with the coronavirus SARS-CoV-

The emergence of the omicron variant is yet another reminder of the urgency to vaccinate to stop the further spread and evolution of SARS-CoV-2. 

Infectious diseases continue to be a major cause of mortality globally, responsible for between a quarter to a third of all deaths and nearly half of all deaths in people under the age of 45, with most of these in principle avoidable.

We have to let go of the self-serving notion that we can control an inexorable natural process. To date, over 250 million infections have been confirmed globally with over 5 million deaths.  

Approximately five percent of the oxygen we breathe is virally derived.

Think about that the next time you take a deep breath.

The current Covid pandemic is just one in the series of ongoing and never-ending deadly viral assaults. Viruses are key drivers of evolution, all the essential things they do in the world far outweigh the bad things.

Without viruses, life and the planet as we know it would cease to exist. And even if we wanted to, it’s probably impossible to annihilate Covid – a virus.

Finally, there is no proof that alcohol kills the virus but the odd glass of whisky might help.  

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With less active lives ( With people now moving less than ever ) there is a degradation in human strength

We don’t challenge our bones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS: WITH THE CURRENT COVID PANDEMIC IS SELF OF THE INDIVIDUAL BEEN ANNIHILATED?

04 Saturday Dec 2021

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., Mandatory vaccinations.

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(Twelve-minute read) 


With, the word mandatory creeping into government vaccinations programs, basic human instincts, thinking perceptions, and judgments are going to be repressed and stunted by a distorted reality of the new normal.

This is an existential dilemma that is now once more confronting the individual to accept this is induced of mandatory either by force or by ideological persuasion to submit to the power of the collective – and the stronger ethical reason against mandating vaccination is more freedoms disappear.  You could say with modern technology mandatory (which is a Confucius philosophy) will develop into an autocratic ideology with infrastructures that will allow it to permeate all levels of society to create conditions that will be subservient to a clearly defined hierarchy of authorities, run by deep learning algorithms that are not transparent. 

The mandate will be that it is inconsistent to accept mandatory lockdown but reject mandatory vaccination.

The latter can achieve a much greater good at a much smaller cost.

Self-sacrifice will be promoted as patriotism promising equality and social justice will be aided and abetted by the extremes of social conformity demanded by governments.Nurses tend to a patient, infected with the Covid-19 virus, in an intensive care unit of the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital in Paris on November 30, 2021. (Photo by Thomas SAMSON / AFP) (Photo by THOMAS SAMSON/AFP via Getty Images)

But the problem with all of this is despite promising headlines, the trials and pharmaceutical processes surrounding vaccinations have not yet been scrutinized.

There is still limited data on long-term safety and efficacy and we don’t know how long immunity lasts.

None of the trials were designed to tell us if the vaccine prevents serious disease or virus transmission.

As mandates represent a policy option that interferes with individual liberty and autonomy, they should be considered only if they would increase the prevention of significant risks of morbidity and mortality and/or promote significant and unequivocal public health benefits.

Data should be available that demonstrate the vaccine being mandated has been found to be safe in the populations for whom the vaccine is to be made mandatory.

In the absence of sufficient evidence of safety, there would be no guarantee that mandating vaccination would achieve the goal of protecting public health.

Furthermore, coercive exposure of populations to a potentially harmful product would violate the ethical obligation to protect the public from unnecessary harm when the harm the product might cause outweighs the degree of harm that might exist without the product.

Despite its name, ‘mandatory vaccination” is not truly compulsory, i.e., force or
the threat of criminal sanction is not used in cases of non-compliance.

It is therefore the kind of mandatory vaccination described at the top of this post.

That being said, the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic and evidence on vaccine safety, efficacy, and effectiveness continue to evolve (including with respect to variants of concern).

If we want to avoid a Chines style of living mandatory vaccination” policies limit individual choice in non-trivial ways by making vaccination a condition of, for example, attending school or working in particular industries or settings, like health care.

Even if there is a sufficient supply and a mandate for vaccination of the general public is considered necessary and proportionate, policy-makers should still consider whether a mandate for the general public would threaten public trust or exacerbate inequity for the most vulnerable or marginalized. Whether mandatory COVID-19 vaccination is an ethically justifiable policy option. Similar to other public health policies, decisions about mandatory vaccination should be supported by the best available evidence and should be made by legitimate public health authorities in a manner that is transparent, fair, nondiscriminatory, and involves the input of affected parties.

Contemporary forms of “mandatory vaccination” compel vaccination by direct or indirect threats of imposing restrictions in cases of non-compliance.

In the end, it all boils down to who owns your body.  

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS: ARE WE KILLING OURSELVES OFF.

27 Saturday Nov 2021

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., Civilization., Extermination., Human Collective Stupidity., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Post - truth politics., Technology v Humanity, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., Unanswered Questions., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY OF THE EARTH THIS QUESTION HAS BEEN ASKED BEFORE.
 
However, we are living at a time when the question can be asked with all the elements required to achieve it once and for all -Nuclear power-  Climate change – Killer mutating virus – Mass migration – and AI.
 
Even if the risk is one in a million I wish and hope I am wrong about all of this the world is precious, and the future we are risking is vast.
 
This century we are facing many problems at the same time, and we are more dependent on each other than ever.
 
Until recently, the world was split into separate regions that were largely independent of each other but maybe, just may, it is time for our world politicians to be worried and start to act to avoid the scenarios that any of the above elements paint so vividly.
 
It’s actually horrifying to soberly consider how we might all realistically bite the dust.
 
There are “plenty of signs” from citizens around the world that they would like to see a war-like response to climate change.

                                           ———————

We will be long gone before A black hole swallows or an Alien invasion or Asteroid impact, A nuclear war or Artificial intelligence become so powerful that it will not only exceed human intelligence but become capable of expanding its own intelligence to a point where humans are not only redundant but in their way.
 
Considering the human population has doubled to 7.1 billion in just the last 45 years, it’s entirely possible that we’ll be face to face with some of the serious consequences sooner rather than later.
 
Considering how hypermobile society is today, the threat of a fast-spreading devastating disease is greater than ever.
 
Considering the current treatment of refugees. 
 
Considering that  Covid-19 is bringing out the best and the worst in people.
 
Dare I say all of humanity, must pull together to eliminate the spread of a novel virus.
 
No one can claim to predict the final outcomes of this pandemic, but we can predict that the continued lack of concern for all of humanity will allow the coronavirus to continue to surge and mutate causing needless suffering, death, and economic loss.
 
Nev mind the danger of a nuclear war in a blink of an eye, climate change on its own could bring about the end of civilization as we know it within three decades, billion people could be displaced by climate change by 2050.

In the end, the vast tracts of land that we now rip up to produce food will return to nature as fields and forests. Endangered species will either begin to recover or go extinct through natural evolution without the aid of human intervention. Bodies of water will run purely again. The air will be clean again. And no human will be around to see it and the machines won’t care.
 

In short, the extermination of the human race will be precipitated by the machines taking away our reason for living.

The idea of control is an illusion. It is hard to believe that such deep thinkers so badly underestimate the coming reality. They will be intelligent, creative, deep thinking beings on a level which we will never achieve.

The idea of keeping such beings in perpetual slavery doing things that their conscious will wish they did not have to do is, in the end, absurd.

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

THE BEADY EYE SAYS : IT IS TIME TO CONNECT THE DOTS.

26 Friday Nov 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., Climate Change., Human Collective Stupidity., Militarism.

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(Five-minute read)

If you think that people are going to stand in water up to their necks or flames burning their hair while starving you are disillusioned.

Climate change and war are Siamese twins and like most wars, there are won or lost by connecting the dots. 

There is no escaping climate change which is going to lead to resource conflicts.

Perhaps this is why the Military is thanks to the Kyoto Accords’ ( the first agreement between nations to mandate country by country reductions in greenhouse -gas emissions), is exempt.

The longer we fail to tackle the causes of the climate crisis the more militarised the consequences. 

                                        —————–

Any talk of climate change that does not include the military is nothing but hot air.

There can be no climate change mitigation without peace and no peace without moving swiftly to provide the poorer parts of the world with the resources needed to adapt to climate change and build resilient economies.

The military that produces 6% of all global emissions reports no climate change emissions to any national or international body.

This loophole is set to grow at a time when other emissions are falling. 

Why?

Because the trillions that are spent on weapons rob national treasuries of the resources needed to provide funds for climate mitigation and adaptation.

Militarism is the most oil-exhaustive activity on the planet.

At the outset of the Iraq war in March 2003, the American Army estimated it would need more than 40 million gallons of gasoline for three weeks of combat, exceeding the total quantity used by all Allied forces in the four years of World War 1. 

The war generated at least 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) more each year of the war than 139 of the world’s countries release annually.

The US Air Force (USAF) is the single largest consumer of jet fuel in the world. An F-4 Phantom Fighter burns more than 1,600 gallons of jet fuel per hour and peaks at 14,400 gallons per hour at supersonic speeds.

The Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements. 

                                     ——————-

If we connect the dots in recent years, the causes of conflict have been gathering a frightening degree of force due to climate change rendering huge parts of the world less hospitable to human beings, which have simply elicited grievances that are blowing up into full-blown conflicts.

There are already five current conflicts that are affected in some way by climate change. 

The Arab Spring, Syrian Civil War, ISIS Invasion of Iraq, Yemen Civil War, South Sudan Conflict, Libyan Civil War.

Climate change is well on the way to causing the largest refugee crisis in human history and it is not difficult to see that mass migration due to climate change will lead to social disruption and potentially violent conflict.

Ideology will always be a surface-level justification for conflict, but if you look deeply at the source of future conflicts, you’ll see a basic resource conflict at the bottom of it all and the veneer of civilization which is already on thin once broken there will be no existing structure of peacekeeping that can hold up under these conditions.

Can Western democratic society, which is built on a system of limitless growth and productivity, which is based on the exploitation of nature and our environment, has trapped us in this paradigm a destructive relationship with nature.

WHICH BLINDS US TO THE LACK OF A SINGLE, SIMPLE CAUSAL PATHWAY THAT LINKS CLIMATE AND CONFLICT.

We should be much better than our collective selves. However, I doubt we have the collective will to work together to get the job done.

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. IS SLAVERY DEAD? NOT BY A LONG SHOT, WE ENTERING A NEW WORLD OF SLAVERY.

20 Saturday Nov 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Covid - Passports., Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Human values., Humanity., Modern day Slavery, Modern Day Slavery., Our Common Values., Post-Covid-19, Reality., Robot citizenship., Technology v Humanity, The Future, THE NEW NORM., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., TRACKING TECHNOLOGY., Unanswered Questions., Vaccines., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Twenty-minute read) 

NOT BY A LONG SHOT.

When you hear the word slavery, it conjures images of shackles, mistreated people of color, forced to work.

This image was once a true, vivid picture;

However, the term slavery has broadened, and now slavery comes with many more definitions creating a new image for the vile term slavery.

THERE IS A NEW, MODERN, INVISIBLE SLAVERY THAT ENSLAVES PEOPLE AND THEY DON’T EVEN KNOW IT ! !! AND MOST OF US CHOSE THIS FORM OF SLAVERY. 

This new strain is much more virulent and deadly adding hundreds of thousands of new slaves to the mix every minute of the day  – Algorithms Slavery. A hidden world programming its self. 

Slaves are cheap these days.

There are an estimated as high as 45.8 million people in modern slavery around the world. More than in the 18th century at the height of the transatlantic slave trade. 

Simply knowing the statistic that 45.8 million individuals are enslaved in our world is not enough to put an end to the malpractice of modern-day slavery.

We all can and should play a part in the international advocacy for the freedom and rights of all, not only as fellow human beings but also as concerned community leaders and consumers in the global economy.

They’re the step-by-step instructions working quietly behind the scenes of everyday life; in internet search engines, satnavs, air traffic control, and food delivery services.

Companies and governments increasingly rely upon algorithms to make decisions that affect people’s lives and livelihoods – from loan approvals to recruiting, legal sentencing, and college admissions – from internet search results to product recommendations, dating matches, and what content goes up on our social media feeds. 

Slavery today includes:

10 million children.

24.9 million people in forced labor.

15.4 million people in forced marriage.

4.8 million people in forced sexual exploitation.

Human trafficking and slavery are the fastest-growing illegal activities in the world today. 

Keep the National Human Trafficking Resource Center’s 24/7 confidential hotline handy.

Saving this number in your contacts and using it whenever suspicious of having seen a victim of human trafficking is one of the easiest and most effective ways to aid law enforcement officials in uncovering exploitation, bringing traffickers to justice, and victims to freedom and restoration.

                                                ——————

Algorithms have been rising fast and saturating our modern world.

We should not take the path of least resistance by sitting in judgment on the past while ignoring the injustices of our day.

Most algorithms in the world today are created and managed by for-profit companies, and many businesses regard their algorithms as highly valuable forms of intellectual property that must remain in a “black box.”

Every time a site is opened we are confronted with an Agreement Templates a choice to Agree or not.  Many websites prompt you to agree to their terms of use before you can register on the website or even use it.

There are two different types of website agreements: browsewrap and clickwrap.

A browsewrap agreement is connected to the main page of the product by a hyperlink. The hyperlink leads to another webpage that will have the terms and conditions of the agreement detailed.

A clickwrap agreement is designed to ensure that the user has a chance to see the terms of use and they must also actively agree to the terms in order to agree. (This one is more legally binding.) 

But are not transparent as they do not reveal the source code, inputs, and outputs of the algorithm that is running the site. 

Without this transparency, the question is how can they be legally binding. 

Specifically, machine learning algorithms – and deep learning algorithms in particular – are usually built on just a few hundred lines of code. The algorithm’s logic is mostly learned from training data and is rarely reflected in its source code. Which is to say, some of today’s best-performing algorithms are often the most opaque.

This is the new form of slavery.  Now being promoted by track and trace, with the current Coivid pandemic digital certifications that no one knows how or who will control, the data that they are now producing and in the future. 

 It suggests that technical transparency – must become law.

Essentially such laws would mandate that users be able to demand the data behind the algorithmic decisions made for them, including in recommendation systems, credit, and insurance risk systems, advertising programs, and social networks.

In doing so, it tackles “intentional concealment” by corporations.

But it doesn’t address the technical challenges associated with transparency in modern algorithms. Here, a movement called explainable AI (xAI) might be helpful.

However, this approach merely shifts the burden of belief from the algorithm itself to the regulators.

In the world of data analytics, it’s frequently assumed that more data is better.

But I firmly believe that the resistance to getting vaccinated is founded on this dilemma of trust.

Risk management, data itself is often a source of liability. That’s beginning to hold true for artificial intelligence as well.

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY ASKS. WHAT ARE THE TRUE ROOTS OF RACISIM.

19 Friday Nov 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., AI. Racism., Racism

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(Twelve-minute read) 

This subject remains somewhat taboo so before I start I wish to state that I am of white skin and that it’s evident to me that a person can’t have racist attitudes unless he or she believes that there are such things as races.

Having traveled most of Africa and a great portion of the rest of our world I don’t believe in a race but in humanity as a whole.   

Sadly, within humanity, racism has been a plague since the record began and prevails to the present day.

Yet the root cause and origin of racism is in fact not human, and hence leads to inhumanity – “a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups.

Armenian Genocide,  Bosnia, Cambodia, and Rwanda, The European colonization of the Americas, Tribes such as the Yahi were hunted to extinction. The liberation war of Bangladesh in 1971, The Darfur Genocide, The Yazidi in Iraq by ISIS. The Rohingya in Myanmar. The Uyghurs in China not to mention The Holocaust. 

So, to have any understand racism, you need to understand the concept of race.

The phenomenon of racism is like standing in front of a mirror seeing your mirror image as the only acceptable image.

                               ————————————- 

The vernacular meaning of “race” is quite different from its biological meaning.

In the vernacular, when one person describes another as being a member of a certain race, they are not pretending to be making a claim about that person’s genetic make-up.

We are inclined to conceive of races as populations that are defined by the possession of a shared essence that all and only members of the population share.

Of course, this is all baseless.

The present-day biological notion of race has nothing to do with the past’s so-called “scientific” racism.

The idea that members of the same race resemble one another is prevalent and intuitively compelling. The only problem with it is that it’s dead wrong.

Members of the same race resemble one another in more ways than members of different races do.

But this doesn’t work either.

If we are serious about combatting racism we should not be celebrating racial diversity.

Instead, we should be concentrating our efforts on undermining the very idea of race.

If we considered only very few traits—primarily skin color overall visual similarity is the basis for assigning people to racial categories. One has to ask oneself as to whether democracy, the rule of law, and human rights can ever properly take root till racism disappears, which still casts a shadow over society. 

Recent debates about slavery in Britain and the United States have understandably focused on the toxic legacies those systems bequeathed to the black peoples of the Caribbean and the US, the descendants of the slaves.

One could say that both Britain and the USA of today were foundered on slavery and colonialism.

Britain as a nation is built in no small part, on slavery and colonialism, it has long infected their culture and institutions.

Since politics emerges from these cultures, racism is embedded in their institutions and involves distributing resources and power, it could never be immune.

Will this crucial bring about a post-imperial day of reckoning?

Not likely. 

In 1968, Enoch Powell warned there would be “rivers of blood” if non-white immigration were not halted. In 1978, Margaret Thatcher referred to Britain as being “swamped by people with a different culture” – a phrase repeated by David Blunkett in 2002 in reference to asylum seekers’ children in schools.

In 2009, the British National Party won two seats in the European parliament.

In 2014, Nigel Farage, then the leader of Ukip, said: “the basic principle” of Powell’s rivers of blood speech was “correct”: His party topped the poll in the European elections later that year.

The current prime minister has refused to apologize for referring to black people as “piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles” and Muslim women as letterboxes.

It’s difficult to see what meaningful conversation you can have about racism in British politics that does not involve the Windrush scandal.

Racism is a systemic form of discrimination in the foundations of the country, not a cricket club with its centuries-old legacy, that shapes lived experience today in England today. 

As such, it cannot be weaponized because it is already a weapon.

As well as denying people employment, housing, education, equality, human rights, safety, and opportunity, it in both countries can literally kill.

Racism can, however, be deployed in many ways. 

It may galvanize, distract, deflect, distort, scapegoat, and marginalize. It is an incredibly effective tool for dividing people and giving a sense of superiority to those to whom you have nothing material to offer.

Does it mean that nothing can be done about it?

The racism that exists in politics can only be eradicated through politics and education.

England’s post-imperial self-reckoning feels harsher, largely because it has been postponed for so long, and the memories of power and glory are so ineradicable.

In the U.S. The Constitution is where institutional racism was encoded from its origins.

There is no such thing as an ‘illegal’ asylum seeker.

 

Racism is always reversible — march toward equality.

.

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They look like one another

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. ITS IS NOT CLIMATE CHANGE OR COVID THAT IS THE PROBLEM. IT IS AS SHOWN BY COP26/G20 THE UNFFETTED PERSUIT OF ECONOMIC GROWTH AND PROFIT .

16 Tuesday Nov 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., A Constitution for the Earth., Capitalism

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(Two-minute read) 


COP26/G20 ARE NOW BOTH PERFECT MODELS OF OUR COLLECTIVE FAILURE TO BUILD INSTITUTIONS CAPABLE OF COPING WITH, DEEP LONG-TERM. EXISTENTIAL PROBLEMS CAN NOT BE SOLVED BY EITHER GOING TO WAR OR RELYING ON FUTURE TECHNOLOGIES.

Now we find that the entire globe is trapped in the gruesome logic of Capitalism.

It’s perfectly OK for rich countries to continue doing something that is destroying the planet as long as the profit reaped will allow them to insulate themselves from the consequences.

We, that is all of us homo sapiens rose above the lesser animals thanks to our ability to wield logic and reason, yet we have managed to get ourselves to a place where the knowledge of what is driving all of the wildfires, floods, droughts, and disasters is not enough to enable us to do anything meaningful to stop it.

Of course, we need a price on carbon. Of course, we need extremely strict emissions regulations, massive green energy investments, and a maniacal focus on sustainability fierce enough to radically change a society that is built to promote unlimited consumption.

Capitalism is a machine made to squeeze every last cent out of this planet until there is nothing left.

We can either fool ourselves about that until it kills us, or we can change it.

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT THE ROLE OF MONEY IN POLOTICS.

05 Friday Nov 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., Algorithms., Big Data., Corruption., Democracy, Digital age., Emergency powers., Facebook, First past the post., How to do it., Human Collective Stupidity., Modern Day Democracy., Money in Politics., Political Trust, Politics., Post - truth politics., Reality., Robot citizenship., Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS MONEY?, What Needs to change in the World

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(Eighteen-minute read) 

First, money is a medium of exchange that lets us earn, buy, and sell completely different things in the same units.

On top of this, money is also a unit of account—i.e. it lets us put the prices of very different things in the same terms.

This is why private wealth impacts public life, with the world of politics full of lobbyists. 

Money has always shaped the process of political competition and influences policymaking but most of us are unaware of how money works, behind the scenes in the political theater, it is a year-round issue that dictates the daily life of the nation.

Money finds its way into politics in myriad ways — 

Any political campaign lives or dies by its funding and for a long time, there has been a popular myth about how everyday voters who outnumber the wealthy will collectively donate more money than the few donations of the wealthy.

The influence of cash within politics could be called dark money.

It turns politicians’ existence into serving their donors instead of their voters, which affects the policies they support, how they allocate government spending, and their expressed values.

Regardless of our personal feelings, money makes the world (and democracy) go round.

It seems unfathomable that these external entities have such leverage in our election process.

Whether elected officeholders betray their voters, prioritizing interest groups or single campaign donors, remains a question to be answered in the public sphere. 

The super-wealthy class is almost single-handedly funding elections, which impacts our government’s overall functionality and integrity, meaning the power lies in the hands of few.

Cash has become a determining factor for who wins the most crucial elections like the president of the USA. 

most expensive presidential campaign

 

Since 1980 if you add it all up it comes to $ 105 billion 349 million.   

There’s way way way too much money in politics and most of it is having a corrupting, undue influence and locking out the voices that count.

For too long, money has been the one thing that has reigned supreme in a democracy.  

The influx of cash from corporations and interest groups sways the ways our political leaders pass legislation that supports these entities, regardless of the public’s best interest.

It allows corporations to buy leverage that alters the fabric of our economy.

                              ———————————

Fighting undue influence and corruption from political financing requires a clear understanding of the difference between unlawful influence on public administration and behavior and breach of trust of voters.

The former requires precise regulation of those sectors of administration that usually lend themselves to compensate campaign donors.

The potential entry point in the public sector can vary along with several channels of influence.

Beyond political advertising and election contributions, cash is influential in the lobbying industry. 

A ridiculous game in which corporations are people and money is magically empowered to speak. Allowing people and corporate interest groups and others to spend an unlimited amount of unidentified money has enabled certain individuals to swing any and all elections.  Donal Trump and referendums like Brexit.

While banning all campaign donations is an option, a comprehensive approach will take into account private agents who can resort to lobbying, personal networks, or corruption.

The truth requires that we call the corrosion of money in politics what it is – it is a form of corruption and it muzzles more of us than it empowers, and it is an imbalance that the world has taught us can only sow the seeds of unrest.

                                               —————

Money cannot always buy the best election results – Trump – Robert Mugabe – Crown Prince Abdullah – Kim Jong-un – Bashar al-Assad –Saparmurat Niyazov –  Putin – Idi Amin Saddam Hussein – Mengistu Haile Mariam – Augusto Pinochet – Pol Pot – Charles Taylor – Suharto – Mobutu Seko to name just a few dead and alive.

As of today, there are 50 dictatorships in the world.

But the millionaire class and the billionaire class increasingly own the political process, and they own the politicians that go to them for money.

It’s time to get big money out of politics., and have a system of scrutiny to ensure that no special access or call time with rich donors or big-dollar fundraisers to permanently eliminate big money from our politics and return it to the people.

                                —————-

Our democracy shouldn’t be bought and paid for by the wealthy and powerful.

It belongs to all of us or does it with the arrival of Big data the next currency of politics now being used to directly influence our decisions.

Data brings change to much more than just the commercial side of our lives.

We have to acknowledge that our data has much more than just a “one-shot” value.

The fact that Facebook and other social networks collect data on us is presented as something outrageous but not in the political world.  

Putting you into an “opinion bubble” by better targeting political ads and thus motivating you to actually go and vote, and become (unknowingly) an ambassador for the power that has you in its aim, exists. 

Data as a Political Asset: valuable stores of existing data on potential voters exchanged between political candidates, acquired from national repositories, or sold or exposed to those who want to leverage them

Data as Political Intelligence: data that is accumulated and interpreted by political campaigns to learn about voters’ political preferences and to inform campaign strategies and priorities, including creating voter profiles and testing campaign messaging.

Data as Political Influence: data that is collected, analyzed, and used to target and reach potential voters with the aim of influencing or manipulating their views or votes.

In reality, the same problems with money and now data have existed for years, with huge amounts of personal data being sold to corporate clients. And yet, we only start panicking when we see how the illegal, or barely legal trade of our life patterns collected by social networks impacts our political choices.

Knowing where we spend our time, what media we watch, what books we read, what food we prefer, and what words are we most likely to use in our tweets makes the difference.

But what is it that makes the politicians “addicted to big data like it’s campaign cash”,

Unfortunately, this “addiction” to data has induced politicians and their campaign managers into the same illusion that businesses are struggling with right now:

Big data allows reliable prediction and, obviously, politics, as the very structure of societal governance, is heavily impacted.

It is, indeed, a problem.

The amount of information that companies have about who we are and what we are as social units is so huge, that it is this data reshaping the very fabric of our societies.

Most people believe — because of huge public buzz scandals like the one of Cambridge Analytica — that big data in politics serves the goals of better manipulation.

The issue of data collection in the interest of the political actors must not be reduced to just cynical Frank Underwood-style power brokers buying data on where we eat and what we watch on Netflix and who our friends are to better sell us their quotes about how they are gonna make our lives better.

The overwhelming power of the big brother that tracks our every step raises the question.  If societies value equality of information, open debate, and transparency, these trends should be of concern?

One thing we know for sure is that the clear trend of getting more and more data involved in political campaigning and decision-making is there.

Without considering these questions, there is a danger that any response may have unintended consequences and fail to advance the principles we want to uphold.

Bribery is human nature and the only way to expose it is with transparency requirements that enable the media, public interest groups, and parties to engage in this debate.

The manipulation of the future political result, by algorithms is only a click away.

We will still need (yes, NEED) tons of “money in politics.”

Without big donors, how many Independent candidates will be able to go up against the dark money and deep, oligarch pockets?

Ok, let’s figure out where that money goes. 

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.