WE SHOULD BE ALL FAMILIAR WITH THE ABOVE QUOTATION.
It is a “Native American saying”.
“Canada, the most affluent of countries, operates on a depletion economy which leaves destruction in its wake. Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.”
When one stands back from one’s self the above sums up the present state of our world.
Present needs and present gains was the rule of action—which seems to be a sort of transmitted quality which we in our now enlightened time have not wholly outgrown, for even now a few men can be found who seem willing to destroy the last tree, the last fish and the last game bird and animal, and leave nothing for posterity, if thereby some money can be made.
We are unable to change as we have turned everything into commodities to make material profit or power.
WHY?
Because most are suffocating in a sea of debt, unable to extricate themselves from the shackles of an abhorrent situation inherently created by the consumptionism and consumerism that grips much of the world’s population.
We are, in effect, products of our own society, now being exploited by AI for profit.
What is needed is a World Conference of every nation to enshrine in law the protection of Clean Air, Freshwater, the protection of the environment and ecosystems that we all rely on for life on the planet.
The richer we are and the more we consume, the more self-centered and careless of the lives of others we appear to become.
Our erroneous belief that we are more concerned about manmade climate change than the people of other nations informs the sentiment, often voiced by the press and politicians, that there’s no point in acting if the rest of the world won’t play its part.
Only when the crisis causes or exacerbates an acute disaster – such as the floods – is there a flicker of anxiety, but that quickly dies away.
Sustaining interest in this great but slow-burning crisis of climate change is a challenge no one seems to have mastered.
For years we’ve been told that people cannot afford to care about the natural world until they become rich; that only economic growth can save the biosphere, that civilisation marches towards enlightenment about our impacts on the living planet.
The results suggest the opposite.
The more we consume, the less we feel. And maybe that doesn’t just apply to guilt.
Perhaps that’s the point of our otherwise-pointless hyperconsumption: it smothers feeling. It might also be the effect of the constant bombardment of advertising and marketing. They seek to replace our attachments to people and place with attachments to objects: attachments which the next round of advertising then breaks in the hope of attaching us to a different set of objects.
Even if you somehow put aside the direct, physical impacts of rising consumption, it’s hard to understand how anyone could imagine that economic growth is a formula for protecting the planet.
So what we seem to see here is the turning of a vicious circle.
The more harm we do, the less concerned about it we become. And the more hyperconsumerism destroys relationships, communities and the physical fabric of the Earth, the more we try to fill the void in our lives by buying more stuff.
This is an almost inevitable result of a society that has become restructured around shopping, fashion, celebrity and an obsession with money.
How we break the circle and wake people out of this dream world is the question that all those who love the living planet should address.
There is only one easy answers.
We must make Greed in all its forms of profit for profit sake pay. ( See previous Posts – A world Aid commission )
Agreement’s like the Paris Climate Change promises are not worth the paper there are written on without the necessary finance to create a change of mind.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
We have been on earth 300,000 years or maybe even longer.
WHAT HAS BEEN ACHIEVED IN THAT TIME- OTHER THAN INVENTING NEW WAY OF KILLING EACH OTHER.
I suppose the answer is we still exist.
Anyway, there is now compelling evidence THAT WE ARE ON THE THRESHOLD OF OUR GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT TO DATE.
Humanity’s impact on the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and wildlife are pushing the world into a new geological epoch.
Humans have introduced entirely novel changes, geologically speaking, such as the roughly 300m metric tonnes of plastic produced annually.
Wildlife, meanwhile, is being pushed into an ever smaller area of the Earth, with just 25% of ice-free land considered wild now compared to 50% three centuries ago.
As a result, rates of extinction of species are far above long-term averages.
We [the public] are well aware of the climate discussions that are going on.
But there is more than one aspect of the changes happening to the entire planet.
The Earth is now on course for a sixth mass extinction which would see 75% of species extinct in the next few centuries if current trends continue.
Increased the concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere by about 120 parts per million since the industrial revolution because of fossil fuel-burning, leaving concentrations today at around 400ppm and rising
Nuclear weapon tests in the 1950s and 60s left traces of an isotope common in nature, 14C, and a naturally rare isotope, 293Pu, through the Earth’s mid-latitudes.
We have put so much plastic in our waterways and oceans that microplastic particles are now virtually ubiquitous, and plastics will likely leave identifiable fossil records for future generations to discover.
We have doubled the nitrogen and phosphorous in our soils in the past century with our fertiliser use. According to some research, we’ve had the largest impact on the nitrogen cycle in 2.5bn years.
We have left a permanent marker in sediment and glacial ice with airborne particulates such as black carbon from fossil fuel-burning.
We will reach the hard reality whereby the planet we call home cannot keep us.
Even if like in the past we are able to get ourselves of this quite uncomfortable position with the developing technology we are going to see our civilization strained.
We are already using Earths resources that cannot and will not be replenished.
Granted we have come a long way from our biggins but with the human population set to continue to grow exponentially, there is no sense whether your black, white, rich, poor, Trump or Putin, Muslim or Christian, in the EU or out not cooperating together to share what we all need.
IF WE CANNOT ADDRESS THE OBVIOUS WITHOUT TURNING THEM INTO COMMODITIES TO BE SOLD ON THE STOCK EXCHANGE FOR PROFIT WE CAN REST ASSURED WHEN YOU ARE DEPARTED AND GONE THAT YOU WILL BE THE LUCKY ONE.
All the rhetoric without funds without the distribution of wealth and technology will achieve nothing.
THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY TO ACHIEVE ANYTHING – TAP INTO GREED.
(See: Previous posts re A World Aid commission)
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
We are all realizing that climate change needs to be addressed.
Technology, governments, and world organisations will contribute but if we the citizens of the earth only pay lip attention like our politicians that are more concerned about the latest twitter we have a recipe for disaster.
Changing our habits one by one will take a lifetime.
So # What if.com has a suggestion that could be adopted by the Europen Union or for that matter any country.
We all know that energy is essential to us all and that we have the green technology to wean us off fossil fuels.
The problem is it the replacement.
Pounds of CO2 emitted per million British thermal units (Btu) of energy for various fuels:
Coal (anthracite)
228.6
Coal (bituminous)
205.7
Coal (lignite)
215.4
Coal (subbituminous)
214.3
Diesel fuel and heating oil
161.3
Gasoline (without ethanol)
157.2
Propane
139.0
Natural gas
117.0
THERE ARE THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF SMALL TOWNS AND VILLAGE ALL OVER EUROPE.
#WHATIF.COM SUGGESTION.
WITH SOME CREATIVE INITIATIVES FROM OURSELVES, OUR GOVERNMENTS AND WITH HELP FROM THE EU THESE VILLAGES AND TOWNS COULD BECOME SELF-SUFFICIENT IN ENEGERY.
Nuclear energy, wind turbines, are not wanted for obvious reasons. Of all the long-term solution to reduce carbon emissions solar energy is the prefered option.
So until we crack fusion there is endless energy to be had from the sun.
There is no reason for half a dozen major energy companies that have come to dominate the market to offer repayable grants to every community to establish utility-scale energy co-ops to run small solar farms.
These co-ops can be funded in several ways.
By: The issuing of EU environmental green bonds.
By: A solar levy that could be progressively applied to bigger electricity bills.
BY: Customers who can either purchase a share of a solar garden and own that portion of the overall array or they can lease energy from the solar system and, in a sense, replace their monthly utility payments with monthly community solar payments that are typically at a lower price.
By: National grids paying for the excess energy generated with these payments guaranteed for 20 years.
WHEN ONE LOOKS AT SOLAR ENERGY WE SEE INDIVIDUAL HOUSES WITH SOLAR PANELS AND MORE THAN LIKELY ARE ASKING THE QUESTION WHY SHOULD WE BE PAYING FOR AFFLUENT RICH PEOPLE INDULGING IN GREEN CRAP?
OF COURSE, BIG ENERGY COMPANIES DONE WANT TO LOSE THEIR REVENUE BASE. However, increasing the amount of electricity storage has huge value to the National Grid because it helps balance variable supply and erratic demand.
Also, batteries will help the grid adjust to the big new challenge posed by the need to charge electric vehicles. ( Given these services, shouldn’t solar batteries be subsidised?)
Furthermore, it would make all of us and countries self-sufficient in green energy, weaning us off government support.
Solar farms at the utility scale would typically be at least 1 megawatt (MW), which is a power plant capable of supplying some 200 households. The needed kilowatt hours of energy can be established from the existing energy bills and work backwards to get a number of panels needed for the array.
A smaller solar farm only requires a few acres of land with a panel cleaned – and a powered robot.
Solar will get there and private money will eventually fill the gap, but it may not get there nearly as fast as needed without some creative thinking.
Just imagine what this would do not to just the reduction of carbon emissions, but to new employment opportunities, the cost of manufacturing, the sale of electric vehicles, the quality of the air we breathe to mention a few of the benefits.
There is not a village or town that would turn own such an opportunity.
Do you take pride in being a member of the most intelligent, crafty and resilient species dating back 300,000 or maybe even longer on the planet that crawled out of the water to destroy the earth?
Yes!
EVEN IF HUMANS CURBED DESTRUCTIVE ACTIONS WITHIN THE NEXT FIFTY YEARS, IT WOULD TAKE BETWEEN FIVE TO SEVEN MILLION YEARS FOR MAMMAL BIODIVERSITY TO RECOVER.
We have managed to erase a staggering 2.5 billion years of evolutionary development by driving more than 300 mammal species into extinction by the 16th century. Since then the pace of destruction has speeded up and it is projected that if we don’t do something about it we will lose another 1.8 billion years within the next five decades.
There are plenty of other things going on in the world that make me weep for humanity, Greedy, short-sighted parasitic consumers of the planet.
But when we actually look there is a lot of good in this world can we be proud of?
(Pride has perplexed philosophers and theologians for centuries, and it is an especially paradoxical emotion in most culture.)
THE LIST IS VAST FROM FIRE, THE WHEEL, NUCLEAR POWER TO WALKING ON THE MOON not to mention our Artistic and Scientific Achievements.
However, we are unable to shake off tribalism even though we have mapped the complete genome, of the human, which could have us on the cusp of creating genetic discrimination through eugenics.
CRISPR has the distinct ability to alter the course of human evolution—to improve society for the greater good or, in the wrong hands, to diminish the human experience.
On the other hand, disaster looms as humans exceed the earth’s natural carrying capacity. The conditions that sustain humanity are not natural and never have been. Since prehistory, human populations have used technologies and engineered ecosystems to sustain populations well beyond the capabilities of unaltered “natural” ecosystems.
Nature doesn’t need people. People need nature.
Nature will go on, no matter what. It will evolve.
The question is, will it be with us or without us?
Our current technological world is reducing awareness and diminishing our ability to find meaning in the life around us. We need to spend more time unplugged and find ways to let nature balance our lives. The natural world’s benefits to our condition and health will be irrelevant if we continue to destroy the nature around us. That destruction is assured without a human reconnection to nature.
In a world where technologies will soon think, act, and behave
like humans, what can humans learn from machines?
If we build personalized digital coaching solution, a «Habit Installing» Platform, that facilitates the generation of new habits who knows what will be possible with the technologies of the future?
However, we still have a long way to go to understand there are aspects of how our planet evolves that are totally out of our control.
Artificial Intelligence is more than reality. The so-called “Technological Singularity” ― the moment when machines will be equal to and then surpass human brainpower ― is getting closer.
In the meantime, we continue to destroy, hurt, and belittle people for reasons that are mind-boggling.
On the other hand, we also have people with amazing abilities and intelligence using their gifts to better our world rather than try to make a quick buck.
Perhaps Ai greatest achievement will be to get rid of religion.
If there was no religion, then yes, I would be proud.
The terrible crimes which humans have committed on each other, have been driven and are being driven by God is on our side.
Do we have a lot we still need to work on? Yes, definitely. But we can stop giving ourselves such a hard time because every day, we’re trying to become better than we were yesterday.
We are beginning to clear up all the waste we carelessly have thrown away and finds its way into the ocean.
Deforestation is decreasing on a global scale.
Sexual discrimination is been removed.
However, Social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are saturated with posts of political opinions and are matched with comments that express not only disagreement but too often, words of hatred. Many who cannot understand others’ political beliefs rarely even respect them.
It doesn’t matter if you’re an American, a Canadian, or a Papua New Guinean. You don’t even have to be particularly fond of the ocean or have a soft spot for elephants to know that murdering a tiger for ts penis so men can have an imaginary bigger mental sexual drive is personified madness.
Cutting shark fins off to make soup is a matter of taste.
We must align our vision and strategy with our culture, thereby impacting people’s mindset and behaviours.
This is simply about all of us coming together to do what needs to be done.
Because if we don’t, nature will continue to evolve. Without us.
With our thoughts and words, with our ideas and values, with our beliefs and emotions, we with the help of social media must design, and implement a greenfield world that shapes the future of change management through digitalization.
We’re about to send people to another planet! We might not be so bad after all.
Nearly 1/2 of the world’s population — more than 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day. More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty — less than $1.25 a day. 1 billion children worldwide are living in poverty. According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty.
Half of the world’s prison population of about nine million is held in the US, China or Russia. Prison rates in the US are the world’s highest, at 724 people per 100,000. In Russia, the rate is 581. At 145 per 100,000, the imprisonment rate of England and Wales is at about the midpoint worldwide.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
You don’t need me to tell you that we are living through an era of tremendous transition and disruption and whether or not we are comfortable with AI may already be moot:
HOWEVER, THE THREE BIGGEST PROBLEMS FACING THE WORLD CLIMATE CHANGE, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN THE FORM OF PROFIT SEEKING ALGORITHMS, AND NUCLEAR WAR REMAIN VIRTUALLY IGNORED DUE TO OUR STUPIDITY.
NONE OF THESE PROBLEMS CAN BE SOLVED BY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE OR ON A NATION BY NATION APPROACH.
THEY ARE GLOBAL AND NEED GLOBAL COOPERATION TO BE SOLVED.
IT MAY BE HARD TO BUY INTO THESE PROBLEMS AFTER HAVING GROWING UP IN THE ERA OF INDUSTRY BUT UNFORTUNATELY GOVERNMENTS, WORLD INSTITUTIONS, AND BUSINESS AND US WILL FIND OURSELVES AT THE HELM OF THE PAST IF WE PERSIST WITH THE BELIEF THAT ECONOMIES, CONSUMPTION, AND PROFIT IS THE HOLY GRAIL OF OUR EXISTENCE.
Unfortunately, human stupidity is perhaps the most powerful force humanity has at its disposal to combat the direction we are going to- Extinction.
WHEN IT COMES TO IDENTIFYING ITS EFFECTS THERE IS NO PROBLEM FINDING EXAMPLES IN THE PAST.
WE ARE NOW TRANSFERRING STUPITY INTO THE FUTURE IN THE FORM OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE THAT NO ONE UNDERSTANDS OR WILL BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND.
Remembering that there are no defenses against stupidity. The more pertinent question now is whether we can and ought to build trust in systems that can make decisions beyond human oversight that may have irreversible consequences.
In the internet era, technology is changing at an alarming rate. We, humans, are becoming increasingly reliant on the World Wide Web. This is leading to a decrease in the retention capacity of the human brain and an overall downfall in the intelligence quotient of Homo sapiens.
The only way a society can avoid being crushed by the burden of its idiots is if the non-stupid work even harder to offset the losses of their stupid brethren.
If we take a critical look at the three global problems starting with the current global position on climate change:
Reduce carbon emissions on a national promises bases – stupid.
The bottom line is, take action to cool your planet or the planet will take action and cool your life – forever.
The development of AI:
Turn a blind eye by continuing to feed human existence data into algorithms for profit and power thus concentrating both into the hands of a few Clouds- stupid.
Nuclear Power:
Elect Facebook and Twitter leaders, while Social media feeds us personal recommendations and false News- stupid.
IS IT TIME TO GET OUR HEAD OUT OF THE SAND AND DEMAND SOME GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE TO TACKLE THE GLOBAL PROBLEMS.
RATHER THAN TRADE WARS, PROMISES, NATIONAL ASPIRATIONS, PROFIT FOR PROFIT SAKE, WARS, INEQUALITY, WE COULD LOOK AFTER EACH OTHER AND THE EARTH WE ALL LIVE ON BY ENSURING THE AI SERVES US ALL EQUALLY NOT THE FEW.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
BUT VERY FEW OF US KNOW WHAT IT IS WHERE IT IS OR WHAT WE ARE DOING ON IT OR TO IT.
IT IS 6.378KM IN RADIUS, 6.6 SEXTILLION TONS IN WEIGHT, WITH A SURFACE AREA OF 197 MILLION SQ MILES MADE UP OF 71% WATER, 29% LAND OF WHICH 5% IS LIVABLE ON.
IT IS 4.54 billion years old, plus or minus 1%.
We humans speaking 7, O97 LANGUAGES of which 23 accounts for half the world’s population has been on it for a mere 0.004% of the Earth’s history.
IT HAS 15,000 BIRTHS PER HOUR. 360,000 PER DAY, 132 MILLION PER YEAR WITH 56 MILLION DEATH PER YEAR.
IT HAS 10.7 percent LIVING IN EXTREME POVERTY WITH 68.5 MILLION DISPLACE PEOPLE, OF WHICH 25.4 million are refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18 with 1% OF RICH PEOPLE owning half the world’s wealth.
IT IS THE 5TH LARGEST PLANET IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM WITH ABOUT 10 BILLION WITH TONS OF CONCRETE POURED ON IT EVERY YEAR.
3% OF THE WORLD IS COVERED IN URBAN AREAS WITH 33 BILLION METERS OF ROADS.
After water concrete is the single most widely used material in the world – and it has a carbon footprint to match.
As you read this, there are more than 40 conflicts unfolding in countries around the world. Yet these are just the most visible look beyond them and there are plenty more.
Total world military expenditure rose to $1739 billion in 2017.
We can blame terrorism and the fear it inspires despite the statistically unimportant number of casualties it inflicts, or the contemporary media and the breathless cycle of “breaking news”, but the truth remains that the wars that seem to inspire the fanatics or have produced so many headlines in recent years prompt deep anxiety.
And with climate change and profit-seeking algorithms things are only going to get worse.
Surely the needs of humanity should always come first. While there are people on Earth who need help, they should be helped, rather than seeing money spent on sending robots onto other planets. Humanity is the number one priority; keeping the human race alive is a necessity.
But we cannot live without the other species we share the earth with. Okay, guess quickly: how many species do you think we share the earth with.
A trillion.
While that may (or may not) be true, the next sentence is spuriously precise: “Every hour three species disappear. Every day up to 150 species are lost.”
Even putting aside the apparent mathematical error in that claim (on the face of it, if three species are disappearing every hour, 72 would be lost every day) there is an obvious problem in generating any such number. No-one knows how many species exist. And if we don’t know a species exists, we won’t miss it when it’s gone.
BP claimed the earth has enough oil left for about 53 more years at current production levels
So far Nasa has spent trillions on trying to get off it.
Science may well give us good things.
We all know Velcro came from NASA.
But why bother spending all this money exploring space and finding out there was water on Mars at some point in the last few thousand years (we have water in Earth) when these same great minds could be applied to finding better ways to power humanity’s insatiable desire for energy, to feeding the starving millions around the globe, and generally making life down here better before looking up into the heavens.
It seems the authoritative powers have their heads way, way up in the clouds.
Earth first:
14 billion pounds (6B Kg.) of garbage are dumped into the ocean every year. Most of it is plastic. Americans make up 5% of the world’s population, and yet, produce 30% of the world’s waste and use 25% of the world’s resources.
More than 95 percent of the world’s population is breathing polluted, unsafe air.
THIS IS THE EARTH YOU NOW LIVE ON SURROUNDED BY JUNK.
NOT THE EARTH ON YOUR SMARTPHONE NOR THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENT EARTH.
IF YOU WANT TO GROW UP ON THIS BEAUTIFUL PLANET LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
We all know that the world we live in is constantly in a state of transformation.
The wealth created from business for its most part in the history of humanity has always been blamed for being the enemy of nature, for destroying native cultures, for taking from the poor and giving to the rich, for poisoning the earth with effluent from its factories.
YET BUSINESS, PRODUCES FOOD, CURE DISEASE, CONTROL POPULATION, EMPLOY PEOPLE AND UP TO NOW GENERALLY ENRICHED OUR LIVES.
While we live our lives with what is left of our free-thinking brains SOCIAL MEDIA is undermining what we call Democracy and its Institutions.
We are now all subject to what I call perpetual mental MEDIA TORTURE, driven by algorithms which are owned by platforms that are all about making money without any regulation driving instability and unsustainable.
Social media is fueling anger, fear, and false news, resulting in the rise of right-wing political parties, led by political leaders of less and less talent.
We are rapidly coming to a threshold where we all have to reach a level of civilization in which we think about our selves and our existence on earth.
Once wealth is concentrated in the hand of few it undermines democracy by obvious means making democracy much less functional.
It is true to say attitudes to a lot of things have changed, HOWEVER, WE ARE STILL A LONG WAY OFF reaching a level of culture in which we can ask ourselves some really simple questions?
Like: Are we killing democracy? The answer is yes.
Like: How do we start a grass root movement to really tackle Climate change.
Like: How to Tax Carbon Emissions?
Like: How do we stop artificial intelligence widening the inequality gap.
Like: How do we reset the global pay gap.
Like: How do we reset human rights on an equal footing with the rights of shareholders.
Like: How do we transform the EU project from grey bureaucracy into a bright arena.
One of the most obvious results of the Artificial Intelligence revolution is the ongoing concentration of wealth into the hands of the few and as a result, we are now seeing profit without a soul.
THESE MEGA MONOPOLIES LIKE GOOGLE ALONG WITH FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS (that do nothing for the economy of a country other than probably harm it have created the very that are overthrowing Capitalism.
ALL POWER ENDS UP AS FINANCE.
THIS POWER SHOULD BE TAXED TO THE HILT TO TACKLE CO2 EMISSION, along with any other form of business commodities that generate profit for profit sake. ( See previous posts)
INSTEAD:
WHILE WE WATCH OUR WORLD FRY OUR POLITICIANS ARE BECOMING LESS AND LESS TALENTED, INCAPABLE OF INSPIRING ANY LONG TERM ASPIRATIONS.
WHAT WE ARE WITNESSING IS I AM ALRIGHT JACK POPULOUS POLICIES.
TRADE WARS, BREXIT, SABER RATTLING.
It is however within our power to change things.
ELECTIONS MIGHT NOT CHANGE ECONOMICS BUT THEY CAN CHANGE THE ATTITUDE OF THOSE ELECTED.
RATHER THAN major de-funding of free education, we need to go back to mass public free education like Finland, Germany.
IF WE DON’T HAVE EDUCATION BEYOND THE NEEDS OF THE MARKETPLACE WE CAN KISS OUR SWEET ASSES TILL WE ARE BLUE IN THE FACE.
Surely we are not all so dumb that we think its OK to carry on regardless.
Maybe we are so dumb that it will require an AI robot to tell us so.
Hail to the algorithm.
WHAT HAPPENS BEYOND THIS POINT WE HAVE NO IDEA. BY THEN IT WILL BE TOO LATE.
ITS TIME TO STOP THE DISHARMONY ON EARTH.
SOMETHING MUST BE DONE ABOUT IT.
DEMOCRACY COMES IN DIFFERENT COLORS AND SOCIAL MEDIA APPEALS TO BASIC EMOTIONS OF ANXIETY AND TRIBAL SOLIDARITY THAT MAKES IT ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO CREATE A TRUE PUBLIC SPACE A SENSE OF COMMON INTEREST.
ALL HUMAN COMMENTS APPRECIATED. ALL LIKE CLICKS CHUCKED IN THE BIN.
Modern day technology with its Artificial Intelligence does not point in any single direction. However, the gap between words and deeds is growing.
In times such as ours where there is a slow disengagement of truth, we need to be reminded that our central calling, our main task on the planet, is survival, which with the ever-growing use of AI gives rise to a host of new ethical problems and dilemmas.
With most of us chocking on non-truths, new technologies, and AI, the earth and our living conditions on the planet are worsening faster than ever.
Both AI and technology are begging for attention in order to be harnessed to our common values rather than profit for profit sake.
This is a debate that is only just beginning.
Since time memorial man does not seem to be able to ” help ” his selfishness, the desire to stand out.
They say that we are stuck with our character, we can’t evolve beyond it or without it.
So let’s not ask what is wrong with modern-day society, but ask where it is leading us?
It seems to me that we are living in a period where the overproduction of truth and non-truth cannot be consumed.
We are tranquilized with trivial.
We can’t control our own actions and there is no control over the actions of others.
So are we going to end up living with an inner sense of chaos that robot will not have?
At the moment we are split in two we have the awareness of our splendid uniqueness, but yet we end up feeding worms.
However, if the fear of death is removed by Technology we will lose the ability of our self- preservation.
( Anxiety is something we all share, now more than ever – normality is a neurosis.)
Then it will become impossible for us to have the ability to organize our own perceptions and our relationships to the world.
If we remove the idea of death, we remove what it means to live.
So is technology and AI going to create a greater social- historical truth, by omitting religious and spiritual ideas for our lives?
To do so it must replace what in our conscious life is called fear.
Our present-day fears are fashioned out of the ways in which we perceive the world. So we continue to design societies of symbolic action systems with structures of statuses ( Likes, Hits, Followers, Tweets, Posts, ) and roles, customs, and rules for behavior designed to service vehicles for earthly heroism. It doesn’t seem to matter whether the cultural hero-system if frankly, magical, religious, primitive or secular, scientific, technological driven or not.
The question is how conscious are we of what we are doing to earn our feeling of heroism?
Is there a need to create a larger theoretical structure to society?
Or is it too late as there is no harmony that unites different positions so that the sterile and ignorant polemics can be abated.
The crises of modern society are precise that the youth no longer feel heroic in the plan for action that their culture has set up.
We have been unable to this day to give an overall sense of heroism to any present-day capitalist industrial society mainly because of inequality.
As profit for profit sake dons the cloak of AI it is disguising the way society sets up its hero system with virtual reality and false promises.
Indeed it will not be far into the future when Robots will invent reasons for anxiety even where there is none to allow humans to exist.
The fear of death is a biological and evolutionary problem. It is an expression of the instinct of self-preservation, which functions as a constant drive to maintain life and to master the dangers that threaten life.
If AI removes the fear of death what will our mental functions be- will it be just living in the moment.
All historical religious address themselves to how to bear the end of life.
If we remove death, our biology and evolution must transfer into Trans-humans.
Will we really be able to call such hypothetical trans-humans “human” at all?
We must be more realistic about our situation in nature.
(Just look at Donal Trump who has more trouble with his lies than others.)
If we don’t do so we are we all going to end up as children living in others dependence – or on Artificial Intelligence.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
In a world where nearly 20 people are forcibly displaced every minute by violence, war and persecution ARE WE KIDDING OURSELVES TO THINK THAT TECHNOLOGY WILL SOLVE THE WORLD PROBLEMS.
One in every 113 people on the planet is now a refugee AND THAT IS WITHOUT CLIMATE CHANGE THAT IS GOING TO BE THE BIGGEST MOTIVE TO BECOME ONE.
At the moment ( According to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR) it might be true to say that out of the 65.6 million 40.3 million – are people displaced within their own country.
Here are below are four UNHCR videos that should be shown on World TV, across Social Media, in every school to every man woman and child.
We got it all wrong when it comes to helping Refugees.
They are not invisible people.
Camps are the wrong way to help today’s refugees.
We cannot turn our backs on the ten million people who have been forced to flee their homes. Every decent society knows this and knows that it’s our moral duty to come up with a workable way of helping the refugees.
So here’s the crucial question: what, beyond safety itself, are the critical elements of normality for any refugee?
The entire international refugee support system has presumed that the answer is food and shelter.
But is this really the right response in 2017?
The system was designed to cope with the displaced of post-war central Europe, many of them Germans who had fled the Russians, or Jews freed from the concentration camps.
Refugees nowadays do not have the luxury of a short-term solution. The problems they are fleeing are likely to last for a very long time. Imagine yourself in their position, displaced with your family. Would you really resign yourself to years in a refugee camp, living off food tokens, housed in a converted container?
UNHCR, and its penumbra of similar organisations, are designed for care.
Like all welfare programmes, theirs treats people as passive recipients. Inadvertently, it infantilises.
That so many refugees forgo this care, preferring the struggle of earning a living beneath the official radar of regulations that prohibit it, is testimony to the heroism of the human spirit. We shouldn’t, even with the best intentions, crush that spirit. We should do what we can to make autonomy less grim.
The key confusion has been to conflate refugees with migrants.
Refugees, by definition, are people who didn’t choose to be migrants: they wanted to live at home but their home became unsafe. Migrants are people who seek a better life. Migrants go to honeypots — dream locations can readily be ranked by their desirability.
Refugees do not go to dream locations; they are seeking proximate havens. All of the top ten destinations for refugees are themselves countries of emigration. All are poor countries in disorderly neighborhoods.
So this is the real answer for refugees, not tents and food but autonomy and community. It’s what you would want in their position.
In asking the development agencies to scale-up and integrate the new mechanisms for generating jobs for refugees with those for speeding post-conflict recovery, it would at last become possible to meet our true international duty of rescue. In the process we should free ourselves from the lazy trap of fitting the present into the past.
But try telling that to the current wave of some 65.6 million people around the world that have been forced from home from today’s wars and conflict zones. 65.3 million people on the run – most are now crammed into often squalid and unsafe camps as they wait in increasing desperation for a home, somewhere.
65.6 million is according to the UNHCR the latest figures (which should be taken with a dose of salt as many nations are not equipped with refugee registers or effective data collection procedures. It excluded people who were displaced by natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes, which separately uprooted at least 19 million people in 2015.
To put this number into perspective, one in about every 113 people in the world is currently a refugee. This means that of the 7 billion people on earth, over 65 million of them are living as refugees –– forced to leave their homes. The numbers are so breathtaking that they take a while to settle into the mind. This is the largest number ever recorded – and a testament to massive failures of both the international community and the United States in dealing with this crisis.
(There are also 10 million stateless people who have been denied a nationality and access to basic rights such as education, healthcare, employment and freedom of movement.)
I say the US, because it is the worst offender. It led the invasion of Iraq in 2003 without a legitimate casus belli. It set in motion the events that produced the Arab Spring resulting in immense forcible displacement in the region.
Just compare this 65 million with one of the greatest humanitarian crises in history — when a shattered Europe at the end of the Second World War had to resettle a staggering 16 million displaced persons.
A horrifying number certainly, but only a third as many as we have now.
The fact that the average amount of time people worldwide are living in displacement is now a staggering 17 years suggest that something is going terribly wrong in how we’re dealing with this issue.
In this climate, it is not surprising that there is animosity towards refugees by so many people. There has been a perceptible rise in racist and xenophobic acts in many nations, sometimes fueled by politicians and the media. The political reality suggests most countries will remain reluctant to house all but a very small minority of those displaced by violence.
We now live in a world where nearly 20 people are forcibly displaced every minute and we have seen anything yet. Wait tilluninhabitable regions due to climate change then we will have millions turning into billions.
Combined this with the violence in the Middle East and North Africa, with nine civil wars now going on in Islamic countries between Pakistan and Nigeria and half of the 23 million population of Syria been forced from their homes, plus 2.6 million Iraqis displaced by Islamic State – Isis – and 1.5 million people displaced in South Sudan.
Religious, ethnic and separatist conflicts are tearing countries apart.
Nationalism and socialism no longer provide the ideological glue to hold together secular states or to motivate people to fight.
Wars are currently being waged in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, south-east Turkey,Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and north-east Nigeria and none of them show any sign of ending.
Europeans were jolted by pictures of the little drowned body of Alyan Kurdi lying on a beach in Turkey and half-starved Syrians crammed into Hungarian trains.
What is to be done to stop these horrors? Perhaps the first question is how we can prevent them from getting worse, keeping in mind that five out of the nine wars have begun since 2011.
Let me begin by attempting to demonstrate why the refugee question must be addressed:
The waves of refugees now are just the leading edge of a global catastrophe, just watch as global warming takes its toll in the coming years.
The core problem remains the amount of violence we have in too many areas of the world. Until we figure out how to isolate wars and cut off their oxygen — as was done eventually in the Balkans in the 1990s — we will only delude ourselves in thinking our era grows less violent.
There is a danger that by attributing mass flight to too many diverse causes, including climate change, political leaders responsible for these disasters get off the hook and are free of public pressure to act effectively to bring them to an end.
Not an easy delusion to maintain as 48 million people call out to us from refugee camps that now seem as much prisons as safe havens.
It is better first to be informed and draw an opinion, rather than only to be opinionated. Half of refugees worldwide are children.
But why has this topic been so often ignored, or if mentioned, referred to as a “taboo”?
The fact is that world media in all its forms is dissenting us all to the point that refugees from war-torn countries are considered collateral damage, making good news footage.
World leaders can no longer watch passively as so many lives are needlessly lost.
We must be smart about finding solutions to help refugees.
We must find humane and dignified means to ensure refugees don’t risk their lives and those of their families by resorting to ruthless traffickers.
We must open designated channels of entry and offer tagged shelter under repatriation once its is safe to do so.
We must stop the world media spreading a climate of xenophobia.”
We must stop the growing resistance from nations to providing asylum for refugees.
We must stop spreading (due to political rhetoric) painting refugees as terrorists or beggars. “Refugees… don’t bring danger” but “flee from dangerous places.
The world governments will resist doing anything until such time as it is profitable to do so. This will be too late.
One of the more comforting claims in recent years is that the world is a less violent place than the blood-soaked centuries gone by. Bull shit.
The modicum of UNHCR support before abandonment, puts a spotlight of Shame on our world!
I have this awful feeling of deja vu. One begging UN resolution after another.
However there are the beginnings of an awakening about all this. In October the World Bank approved its first refugee loan — for job generation for Syrian refugees in Jordan.
Perhaps if the top five Tech Conglomerations were to charge a cent on all like clicks, on all shared photos, on all sales, all up loads, on all searches, on all tweets, on all e mails, on all Skype calls, they could save the world from melt down. This combined with a 0.05% world aid commission,( See previous posts) would create a perpetual fund of trillions to address inequality that leads to all our troubles.
In just a single minute on the web 216,000 photos are shared on Instagram, a total of £54,000 ($83,000) sales take place on Amazon, there are 1.8 million likes on Facebook and three days worth of video is uploaded to YouTube.
All suggestions and comments appreciated. All like click chucked in the bin till they are chargeable.
