Don’t answer the questions below, put some thought into their overall meaning.
AGAINST THE QUESTIONS THAT THE CORONA VIRUS IS AKSING OF ALL OF US THEY ARE ACADEMIC.
We, as humans, ponder about the life around us everything in life contradict itself to the point of confusing all of us?
What we call the modern world has brought its own unique set of problems: from the Coronavirus, huge food waste to climate change to an increasing wealth divide.
The western belief in ‘progress’, that each generation will be an improvement on its predecessor, for a long time has held true.
However, it seems this might no longer be the case as life at the moment isn’t about finding the answers, it’s about examining our atmosphere. From the nature of the universe (that’s if there is only one) to the purpose of dreams, there are lots of things we still don’t know – but we might do soon.
Leaving the usual unanswerable’s aside, like what is reality, what is life, do we have free will, is the universe deterministic, what is consciousness, will there ever be a theory of everything, what happens after you die, what comes after homo sapiens? the two most common questions at the moment on our lips – Are you alright? How are you?
Old solutions to solve to run an increasingly chaotic world requires governing elites to spend a lot of time spinning and inevitably tempts them into keeping lots and lots of secrets, to include telling the public exactly what they’re doing.
Even post-Snowden, is an increasingly secretive and intrusive national security state the “new normal”?
The timing is fortuitous because I’m pondering a number of big questions these days and I’ll be interested to see not what some of the nation’s best scholars think about them but you.
So for what they may be worth, here are my top 10 Why Questions, with plenty of blame to share on all.
There’s a pattern of contradiction in most of them that lead to a series of more ‘why’.
Once there is danger, there is hope; when there’s truth, there are lies.
Why am I asking these question?
Because we all have to, not someone to get serious about real the state of the planet we all live on.
Do we really value life so much if we make death come to others?
Why is there school when we don’t learn real-world skills?
Why do I have to get up every morning to go to work?
Should the wealth of Economies give us all a Basic Income?
Why do we demean everything not human if it’s what brought us life?
Taking the coronavirus and climate change are we better together or in isolation?
Will Europe ever get its act together?
If opposites attract, then why is there still war?
Why Bush is president of US?
What is the reality of immigration?
What is a world without Earth?
Go through life knowing that your world could mould into a piece of grey dust at any point; an experience that dust at your high to prepare for your fault, your decline because it will come to snap at you.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
I suppose it is fair to say that when it comes to biological factors that tear thought entire species, humans can’t take all the credit.
History has shown that a pandemic now and then can be a good thing, at least for the survivors.
THE CURRENT CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK IN PROGRESS HAS THE POTENTIAL TO ALTER HOW SOCIETIES FUNCTION. TAXING INFRASTRUCTURES WELL BEYOND THEIR TOLERANCES.
A disease that kills 80/90% of all people on earth could and will tip us to an unrecoverable social and technological crash.
But real disasters aren’t lone events born of simple, soluble problems, and they don’t end when the credits roll. Nor are they necessarily a question of scale.
The line that divides an incident from a disaster is defined by a society’s preparedness and capacity to deal with the aftermath.
For good or ill, the technology and unprecedented control over life and death we have will likely allow future disasters to unfold along lines unique in world history.
Do we who are in the know care?
Other than verbal diarrhoea it seems not so.
So here a few disasters to look forward too.
Genetic Manipulation Gone Wrong.
Our genetic ambitions will outpace our safeguards.
Put simply, we can now wipe out entire species with a single mistake. Bioethical standards tend to lag behind technology, and who can say what a less ethical party might attempt?
Coronal Mass Ejection or bursts of plasma and magnetic field from the sun’s corona.
They follow a cycle, like pandemics albeit a far more regular one (the conditions are ripe every 11 years or so) [source: NASA]. They also cause variable but potentially ruinous damage, and their destructive scales depend, in part, upon humans’ connectedness.
We’ve been lucky so far.
Such an event could last a few weeks. But a quick about-face would prove impossible if, as some people fear, the CME’s ground current cooks all the transformers. In that case, the risks of social breakdown and mass starvation become quite real.
Peak Phosphorus.
There’s a theoretical limit to how many people the planet can support? It’s mainly limited by available solar radiation, but there are other limits we would reach well before that one.
Our bodies need phosphorus to move energy around and to build cells and DNA. But our demand will likely outstrip our known supply within 30 to 40 years. Currently, a large amount of phosphorus is lost in human and animal waste. Much of what remains end’s up in the trash or washes away as farm runoff.
The push for biofuel options will only deepen the crisis. Everything has its limit — even the bounty of the earth.
The Thermohaline Circulation Shuts Down.
The melting poles.
As the resultant freshwater spreads across the North Atlantic Ocean, it shuts down a looping global current vital to global climate called the thermohaline circulation (THC).
But push past that point, and forcing factors, or environmental processes that affect climate, take over. This could create feedbacks that will alter climates for decades or centuries to come.
Whether such a shutdown will occur because of climate change remains unclear, but the bulk of data says the THC will more likely experience a slowdown. In the unlikely worst case, however, the effects of a mini-ice age combined with other climate change stresses could be nothing short of seismic.
The Cascadia Superquake.
An earthquake of magnitude 8.0 or greater.
In 2011 the 9.0-magnitude Tohoku quake and resultant tsunami killed 18,000 people, triggered the Fukushima meltdown and caused more than $200 billion in damages. All this happened in a region prepared for quakes, just not ones of such scale.
A Killer Asteroid.
Take Apophis, an apartment-building-size asteroid due to kiss our atmosphere in 2029 and possibly smack right into us on its 2036 return trip. If it does it will pack the wallop of a 300-megaton atom bomb, to say nothing of the ensuing fires, disruption of solar energy and famine.
Global Economic Collapse.
Economists still struggle to unravel collapses that already occurred.
This one might already be happing as we watch the out brake of CORONAVIRUS in China spread it seems likely that problems will only worsen under global climate change scenarios or energy-asset depletion.
All we can really say, as we watch China prop up its ailing stock market and the European Union struggle to define a set of economic policies suited to the diverse needs of its member states, is that indicators look more than a little dodgy..
The Singularity.
This is my favourite the steely grip of self-improving superintelligence born of human hubris. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.
On one hand, it’s hard to imagine we’d be so foolish as to create a Frankenstein’s monster without a fail-safe. But do you know what’s not hard to imagine? That some garage hackers or industrialists, driven by rivalry, revenue or (Asimov help us) fetish, will sit nose-to-breadboard until they’ve created artificial intelligence or some weird imitation of it
Even ignoring the risk that superintelligent machines will rise, self-improve and decide a femtosecond later to eliminate humans, we’ll still face one of the most transformative moments in social and psychological history. Because however, it shakes out, it’ll be something we’re not prepared for, and that alone will make it a disaster.
World War III.
The reasons are deeply enmeshed: Food and water insecurity, climate change, financial crises, infectious diseases and profound social instability.
Add rising nationalism, weaponising technology, Donal Dump, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, South Sudan, the international order that has been thrown into turmoil. Multilateralism and its constraints are under siege, challenged by more transactional, zero-sum politics.
A paralysed United Nations who’s collective accountability, including the International Criminal Court, are ignored and disparaged.
Dubious territorial claims by major powers like China and Russia, Japanese militarization and a pinch of terrorist pseudo-states, and a fearsome picture begins to emerge.
President Donald Trump’s contempt for traditional allies and Europe’s struggles with Brexit and nativism, leaders across the world are probing and prodding to see how far they can go.
Socially or ecologically, there is growing concern among experts that change today occurs at a rate that far outstrips our ability to cope with it.
The international order as we know it is unravelling, with no clear sense of what will come in its wake. The danger may well lie less in the ultimate destination than in the process of getting there.
Moreover, in a world characterized by ever-growing connectedness, it’s unlikely that some types of disasters — economic, political, ecological and epidemiological — will remain geographically confined.
The same globalization and mass communication that transform the world may just as easily doom it if we’re not careful, and perhaps even if we are.
Anyone will ensure that nobody will remember the Internet.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Here is a man that operates on a wing, whim and Twitter.
A man that can’t resist an opportunity to declare his own success with a malign indifferent to reality.
Mathematically incompatible with a 35% popularity country wise and 80% Republican wise. His approval rate is 53% in Russia.
Even before his Facebook election back on January 20, 2017, he had already made a mockery of good governance norms. Any media institution that accurately reports information he doesn’t like he denigrates.
Worldwise fake news outlets and not so rigorous real ones celebrate his victory.
He’s been called an idiot, labelled unchristian, and has even been compared to Hitler and Mussolini. In fact, it’s difficult to find a single world leader who has come out in favour of President Trump.
His international policies on everything from the Muslim ban to the Wall to the Paris Climate Agreement have made him one of the most unpopular presidents in the history of the United States.
There is no need here to list his accomplishments but there is one thing that is becoming clear with the largest arms deal in history, 110 billion$ of arms to Saudi Arabia linked to the majority of deaths in US terrorist attacks he is intentionally or unintentionally setting up the Middle East for a war.
By recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital he endorsed Israel, not the Palestinians. Since his election colonization by Israel has surged with an invigorated enthusiasm. (Remember that Jerusalem contains sites sacred to the three major monotheistic faiths Judaism- Islam- Christianity.)
He mocked North Korean leader Kim Jon-un during a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2017 and followed that up by saying he would “totally destroy” North Korea.
Donald Trump is abandoning America’s role as enlightened hegemon, eliminating America’s secret weapon, its soft power.
He is now impeached for allegations that his country colluded with Ukraine in order to rig the US election. He, of course, denies all claims.
If Trump is impeached, is that necessarily the best outcome for our country?
Impeachment over his communications with Ukraine hasn’t affected him more than as a minor annoyance. Because he is both shortsighted and for sale. His old stomping ground of business has many burnt bridges. He loves being the centre of public attention.
Let’s be clear:
Donald Trump is an idiot. I’ve tried to find different, perhaps more parliamentary adjectives to describe him, but none was clear enough. He is an idiot.
If there’s one true form of American entertainment, it’s political figures saying dumb things in person and on the Internet.
The man that gave us the Apprentice, the Miss Universe pageant, and the phrase “Donald Trump hair” is said to have a pathological temper. Pathological, there’s no cure for that.
He tore up the nuclear arms limitation treaty with Iran which was negotiated with Great Britain, Russia, China, Great Britain, France, Germany, the USA and Iran.
In terms of importance, there are other, more important issues we should focus on.
The point here is that getting into the Donal Trump mud will not work even if he loses in 2020 and does so in a campaign and a culture that has mainstreamed his brand of bullying and boorish behaviour, he wins a sort of victory one that is likely to last beyond another four years.
How long will Republicans continue to enable this fool?
Why is Donald Trump so determined to start a war with Iran by investing in a policy of fear?
That’s the way Mussolini arrived and the way Hitler arrived.
You’d never know what he will believe tomorrow.
America needs to build a big enough wall to keep himself from escaping as he has just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinder box with a gift to all terrorists in the Middle East region even if Soleimani was responsible for unthinkable violence.
What is clear in the wake of the killing of Oasem Soleimani he doesn’t really get what made America great in the first place.
Make no mistake, Donald Trump is weakening America.
Trump is now directing his ‘wisdom’ on the Middle East a man that just says and does whatever comes into his head, usually bypassing his brain.
If Iran decides to confront the US, Iraq will be the scene for that battle. Sod the consequences. Death by a thousand cuts.
God forbid that Donald Trump is assassinated.
Because doing that would only make him more noteworthy in history.
If you think that killing Trump will stop the government from being crazy, racist, self-serving lunatics driven by corruption, greed, and profit?
Guess again.
Look at his social media prowess where he has called himself the “the Ernest Hemingway of 140 characters”. ( He frequently uses Twitter and other socialmedia platforms to make comments about other politicians, celebrities and daily news.) and you will see a novel political relationship between Trump and his followers.
He effortlessly dominated the conversation online which translated into mainstream media coverage.
This despite the fact that nobody with any actual smarts believes an IQ score to be indicative of actual real-world intelligence.
In truth, it is worth mentioning that there are signs the media is fighting back.
One study found that of Trump’s millions of Facebook followers, only 42% were from America.
But, again, he doesn’t care he paints himself as an everyman (an everyman with who lives in a $100m penthouse with a rudimentary understanding of the elements of the internet.
It remains to be seen whether a man so hateful, so farcical, a man whose permanent expression is that of someone whose drunk friends superglued his eyebrows into a frown while he was sleeping.
As there is going to be plenty of online support for Muslims, and defence of Islam, in the wake of Trump’s actions. It’s not enough for politicians worldwide to be able to adeptly read an Autocue. They’d better be able to take a decent selfie and understand a meme, too.
2020 will be a whirling dervish of chaos of a year as he now represents an enormous danger to the whole of the world.
Let’s hope he goes bankrupt for the seventh time.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
![Trump delivers remarks following the US Military killing against Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad, Iraq [Tom Brenner/Reuters]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2020/1/3/f15d3dde8995433f939b66444fe3a844_18.jpg)
