Category Archives: Truth

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WILL GENETICALLY ENGINEERED/ASSEMBLED PEOPLE BE ALLOWED INTO HEAVEN.

07 Tuesday Jul 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, Genetic engineering, Genetics., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Natural selection., POST COVID-19., Reality., Religion for a digital age., Religious Beliefs., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., THE NEW NORM., The Obvious., The state of the World., Truth, Unanswered Questions., VALUES, 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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(Fifteen-minute read) 

As if the world does not have enough problems regardless of the application, genetic engineering is a very controversial topic in our society.

According to most religious doctrines, life begins at conception, not anymore.

When digital technology took over the world, things we perceived as science fiction became reality. Today the same thing is happening with Genetic Engineering.

Life is made up of just four alphabets that give the instructions, and when we change the guide book we change the being carrying it. 

As we are seeing it does not matter what religious beliefs you have or otherwise, the current coronavirus is not fussy who it infects.

We are on the verge of being able to transform, manipulate, and create organisms for any number of productive purposes.

Human genetic engineering may soon be possible. It might well be in its infancy from changing the course of our lives. From medicine to agriculture, to construction and even computing, we are within reach of age when manipulating the genetic codes of various organisms, or engineering entirely new organisms, promises to alter the way we relate to the natural world.

Genetically engineered food is a divisive topic that is deeply embedded in the ongoing debate around climate change, sustainability, and food security.

There are many pros and cons regarding this topic and there are many powerful arguments for and against genetic engineering and gene therapy.

We already improve crops and animals. Why not humans?

Evolution is a change in the inherited characteristics of a population of organisms from one generation to the next.

This happens anyway and genetic enhancement is just speeding up this natural process.

We will have to make difficult decisions in the future on whether we want to play god in order to be able to fight deadly diseases and colonize another planet, grow enough food, replace exhausted resources. 

Of course, the big question is. 

Is it wrong to play god by effectively creating and changing life? 

Altering genes to improve strength, beauty or intelligence undermines the moral and legal idea that all humans are equal, creating further inequality in society – those who are genetically engineered and those who are not.

These individuals would have no say in this, but when they arrive at the pearly gates will they be allowed to enter. 

Genetical engineering is an extremely controversial issue without even considering the views of religions. The ethical question becomes even more daunting when we consider genetic engineering as it applies to animal life, particularly human life.

One could say that God has no say about any of this?

The Bible does not directly address the issue of genetic engineering, because genetic engineering was unknown at the time that the Bible was written, so there is a concern that a bold pursuit of advances in genetic engineering is motivated by defiance of God.

God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and overall the creatures that move along the ground.’

The gift of life is a product whether it comes from God or not and can be reproduced and modified to make a better product. So where are we with the artificial manipulation, modification, and recombination of DNA or other nucleic acid molecules in order to modify an organism or population of organisms.

It is my belief that genetic engineering has promised to better mankind, and it is our ethical obligation to research it but not exploit it.

Determine the genetic material of embryos in humans limiting the chances of children’s autonomy to determine their own destinies.

This means that the entire life of children is changed irrespective of their wish. This practice is immoral in nature because it is an unnatural way of molding the life of a human being to become what they themselves do not wish to be, resulting in social inequalities.

All raises a number of significant ethical issues. 

From genetically modified crops, using less water to speeding up the growth of plants to adapt to the global warming problem, to the overall life expectancy of animals and humans, to designer babies, to the development of new diseases, or to miscarriages, to resistance against antibiotics, to political decisions, to the uses of genetically modified bacteria for making biofuels, to the use of genetically modified seeds to increase yields and also make plants more resistant to pests, to the whole ecological system, to human behavior.

By treating the human embryo as mere ‘laboratory material’, the concept itself of human dignity is also subjected to alteration and discrimination. Dignity belongs equally to every single human being, irrespective of his parents’ desires, social condition, educational formation, or level of physical development. To create embryos with the intention of destroying them, even with the intention of helping the sick, is completely incompatible with human dignity.

Embryology is governed by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990.

Human embryos produced for research purposes cannot be implanted into any woman’s womb and must be discarded after 14 days.

In evaluating these concerns, we need to bear in mind that genetic engineering is still young. Some of the possibilities, such as creating new species of superhumans or subhumans, seem highly unlikely, at least for the foreseeable future.

However, there is a need to have morally correct legislation that guides the way science develops genetic engineering otherwise it will be a Pandora’s box of dangerous genetic modifications posing a threat to humanity with the rich in a society enjoying the fruits of genetic enhancements.  

chances and risks of genetic engineering

Ecological Engineering, the application of science to the optimum conversion of the resources of nature to the uses of humankind.

NATURE is being distilled—among many forms—into a network, where nodes represent species and links represent interactions between them.

Ecosystem engineering combined with genetic engineering not only impacts communities on ecological timescales but will profoundly shape the evolution of life on Earth. The complexity of an ecological community can be distilled into a network, where diverse interactions connect species in a web of dependencies.

The dynamical consequences of community structure is not yet a well-defined theory for the assembly of communities that incorporates multitype interactions.

The role of these ecosystem engineers has not been considered in ecological network models.

To unravel nature’s secrets we must simplify its abundant complexities and idiosyncrasies.

On the other hand, GENETIC engineering is entering a new phase as the available techniques become much more precise. Precise genetic editing opens up the opportunity for personalized medicine, with treatments tailored to our own unique DNA.

What is becoming possible and what will the implications be?

Just imagine a genetic engineering breakthrough that brings the dream of fixing everything from a deadly disease to environmental catastrophe into reach, simply by cutting and pasting bits of DNA. 

Primarily, as with any technology, once it becomes cheap and easy, it’s going to be used more and more – so we can expect an explosion of activity and innovation around genetic engineering in the coming years.

A lot of controversy surrounds “transgenic” genetically modified organisms, resulting in bureaucratic obstacles that mean GM crops are scarcely cultivated across much of the European Union, Africa, and Asia.

For example, if a gene from a pig was inserted into a banana, will people of the Muslim faith stop eating bananas and so on.

Did you know that over seventy percent of all processed foods on supermarket shelves contain at least one genetically engineered ingredient? If you are not eating 100% organic food, you are eating genetically modified foods. It is almost impossible to avoid eating GMO foods. Presently, over ninety percent of the soybeans, canola, sugar beets, and cottonseed oil are bioengineered. Seventy-two percent of the corn is genetically altered. And more and more food products are being altered every day.

Considering every five minutes, there is a new life and every eight minutes a death and none of us last forever. 

We all live for a short time in the fourth dimension of time so is any of this relevant. 

Leaving apart the ethical issues, let us be optimistic for a while.

Genetic engineering hasn’t, and won’t, stop it raises ethical and moral questions to which there are, as of yet, no clear answers.

How we as a species solve these problems will tell us not only something about the global landscape of moral decision-making but will define precisely where the human race will end up over the next few generations.

It’s not an exaggeration to say genetic engineering could totally alter the way we live – and these changes won’t necessarily be positive.

While we humans are gaining the powers of the gods, we aren’t at all ready to use them. We aren’t prepared to handle these Promethean technologies responsibly.

While the advance of genetic technologies is inevitable, how it plays out is anything but.

A first inkling of where we are heading can be seen in the direct-to-consumer genetic testing industry.

When genetic Engineering reaches the mass, the change is going to be permanent.

The overlapping genomics and AI revolutions may seem like distant science fiction but are closer than you think. Because we are all one species. We will ultimately need to develop guidelines that can apply to all of us.

As a first step toward making this possible, we must urgently launch a global, species-wide education effort and inclusive dialogue on the future of human genetic engineering that can eventually inform global norms that will need to underpin international regulations. This process will not be easy, but the alternative of an unregulated genetic arms race would be far worse.

Scientists today have loftier ambitions than building a new app or social media companies.

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

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHEN IT COMES TO WORLD PROBLEMS WHY IS IT THAT WE HUMANS ARE UNABLE TO APPRECIATE THE GRAVITY THEY PRESENT.

03 Friday Jul 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., A Constitution for the Earth., Big Data., Capitalism, Climate Change., COVID-19, Digital age., Disconnection., Economic Depression., Environment, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., GDP., homelessness., How to do it., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Micro v Macro Economics., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Post - truth politics., POST COVID-19., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Technology., Telling the truth., The common good., The current state of our oceans., The essence of our humanity., The Future, THE FUTURE OF OUR OCEANS/SEAS, The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., Wealth., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Economic Depression., World Leaders, World Politics

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(Twenty-minute read)

As global citizens, the news is packed with statistics and updates on the challenges we face. Most of these challenges have existed from time memorial and are too large to be solved by one person at a time and if they affect huge numbers of people we are numb by their enormity.  

Photographs can be effective for a while. They capture our attention — they get us to see the reality, to glimpse the reality at a scale we can understand and connect to emotionally. But then there has to be somewhere to go with it.

“There is no constant value for human life.”

Granted that certain global issues cannot be solved by on-the-ground, grassroots-style projects like human rights, climate change, wars, etc. 

So is it a perception problem? 

No matter how hard we try we are unable to perceive the whole earth never mind the Universe as one.   

We witness this many times in history when the value of a single life diminishes against the backdrop of a larger tragedy and now we are once again witnessing it with COVID-19.

We all go to great lengths to protect a single individual or to rescue someone in distress, but then as the numbers increase, we don’t respond proportionally to that.

We don’t scale up, even when we’re capable. 

There’s a hard limit to human compassion. The human mind is not very good at thinking about and empathizing with, millions or billions of individuals. As the number of victims increases, our empathy, our willingness to help, reliably decreases.

We seem unable to prevent our past from impacting our present?

However, our current behaviors are not shaped by past events but by mass media in the form of social media which is creating self-limiting beliefs.

They appear so real to the extent that we cant hardly tell whether its a self-limiting belief or a real one, as a result, we are unable to see the world correctly, so we look on as millions die. 

Numbers simply can’t convey the costs, there’s an infuriating paradox at play.

We know that we must protect the Earth but are unwilling to pay the cost of doing so.

Our problem is to replace the false beliefs we acquired with the right one.

Which issues are the most urgent?

And can one person, really, truly, make that much of a contribution?

Here are some of the major issues all global citizens should be aware of if not there are living in coco land. 

FOOD.

One in nine people in the world goes hungry each day.  

It has been estimated that if women farmers could be given the same resources as men, millions of more people could be fed. 

How can it be 2020 and people are still going hungry?

Nutritious food is often more expensive. Visit your local supermarket and compare the price of a punnet of strawberries to a chocolate bar. 

Even though approximately 12.9% of the world is undernourished, about 30% of the adult population is overweight.

HEALTH.

In a world of more than 1 billion people living in extreme poverty (less than $1.25 per day) and 2.2 billion living on less than $2 per day (2011 data)

The reality is far more complex. Untold hundreds of millions of people lack access to essential health services, in fact over half of the world population do not have basic health care. We are a long way from the universal right to health.

Communicable diseases were responsible for 71%  of deaths, and low-income countries are the most severely affected. 

EDUCATION. 

It’s estimated that approximately 600 million children are not mastering basic mathematics and literacy while at school. 

HABITAT AND BIODIVERSITY LOSS. OCEAN CONSERVATION

The earth is full. Full of our waste, full of our demands.

The economy is now bigger than the earth, unimaginable, unattainable, and unsustainable. There is no infinite growth possible on a finite planet because nature sets the rules and individual issues mean nothing if they are not attached to nature.  

There are countless studies and evidence all around you indicating that the coming crises are inevitable.

If an economy grows at 2% per year, it will double in 35 years. 

Imagine twice as much human economic activity as we now have. Can our planet sustain this? Do we need to do this? Why would we want to? Why are we doing this?

Even though a lot of us know that it makes no sense to try to grow endlessly and outstrip the only planet we have. 

What if anything can be changed? 

We all know that the road to global decarbonization must involve renewable energy.

Although the Paris agreement’s goals are aligned with science, alarming inconsistencies remain between science-based targets and national commitments.

Its a no-brainer in the current emerging global political climate.

Rather than tackle mitigation measures economies are now due to Covid-19 returning to pumping more not less carbon into the atmosphere.

Climate stabilization must be placed on par with economic development, human rights democracy, and peace.       

From a money perspective, we can’t help it—we live in a grow-or-die system.?

Currently, we have a system that provides humans to have an innate cost/benefit assessment tool called the smartphone operating at all times. 

Here are a few suggestions.

It is now vital that we consider the motivation and funding sources of those who are shaping our worldview. 

Money must be created without debt so it doesn’t force us to grow and consumer beyond our means.

New Money must no longer enter circulation as credit, that is, as debt.

It will simply be money spent into circulation by the government as a permanently circulating exchange medium to enable the country’s economy to function.

This money will be equity on the national balance sheet and be our commonwealth.

It will replace bank-created debt-money ending the privilege of commercial banks to create and issue what we use as money.

Then we have trillions in the form of pension investment funds that are nontransparently invested. If we demanded that these funds were moved from fossil fuel industries to green energy industries whose returns are going to be massive we would be reducing carbon emissions by millions of tonnes.

Next, we have the advertising industry.

All advertising that does not promote sustainability should be curtailed by law.  We must turn the direction of humanity towards thriving not consumption for profit.  

With the coming economic depression, we do have room for growth—the growth of community cohesion and commons conservation. We can grow our efforts to educate our children, care for our people, and care for the planet. We can grow into a more just, caring, sustainable society. 

Because we are careering into a world of a few haves and billions of have -not.

Access to information owned by Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple, to name a few, must become transparent and available to all as the interactions of all our individual worldviews shape the condition of humanity.

Lastly, we must address inequality.   

There are now 65.3 million people displaced from their homes worldwide.

Think about that number: 65.3 million. Can you even imagine it?

It’s now or never that we make a profit for profit’s sake contribute to a World Aid fund.

(see previous posts)

As Mahatma Gandhi put it, “Earth has enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.”

We can’t eat drink or shit data.

 

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

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WHAT ARE MODERN DAY VALUES AND THEIR ROLE IN OUR LIVES.

20 Saturday Jun 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., A Constitution for the Earth., Capitalism, Climate Change., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Digital age., Disconnection., Economic Depression., Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Future Education., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., POST COVID-19., Poverty, Reality., Reverse racism., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., VALUES, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Economic Depression., World Leaders, World Racism

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(Twenty-minute read) 

This is a vast subject which is not possible to address in an 800-word blog.

However, values role’s in our lives and their importance is not always fully understood.

Values are the things that are important to us, the foundation of our lives.

What I am interested in here is exploring the influence of technology and its advancement and how it now relates to the modification of cultural values.

Technology commonly exerts a strong influence on daily practices, changing the way values are carried out with each new development.

Will this in the end ‘kill’ our social cohesion and will groups of people be left out? Or will our social interaction become extensive and will our relationships get better? Are there any common values left? 

These are all questions that can’t be answered yet and can only be answered in the future. 

Technology is all around us.

It is so pervasive in our everyday life that it is impossible to get away from it.

It has become almost invisible so that most of us don’t know how to interact in the real world or with our environment, but it is how humans are using technology that is so devastating our common values. 

Before COVID-19 we were already isolating ourselves from physical contact with smartphones.

The virus has pushed us further apart with social distancing, online education, and social platforms replacing almost all forms of entertainment.   

Are we connected better nowadays with social media, or are we worse off?’

One of the aspects of culture and values is social interaction between people. How we behave to one another and in which way we do that. Social media has taken a big role in our social interaction. We no longer have to speak to a person to know what they are doing. We just look on twitter of Facebook. 

Social media and smartphones both are turning us into non-empathic couch potatoes and it is this passive use of technology that is the reason technology is ruining not just our values but humanity itself. 

With the arrival of COVID-19 ( His “epidemic”) technology isn’t allowing the young generation to truly embrace our humanity while creating a gap between generations. 

The real connection such as visual and emotional expressions aren’t shown anymore, because we are looking at a computerized display. This way messages could be understood differently than they should be, because they don’t get to know the real meaning behind the message.

If Facebook was a country, it would be the world’s 3rd largest country in terms of population. 

Now is the opportunity to realize this and that we must use technology as a tool, not reality.

Our overbearing dependence on technology can be detrimental to society.

It is not the be-all and end-all of everything. Everyone is entitled to their own values, attitudes, and beliefs.

For example. From the outside, the cultural values ​​of a group can often be difficult to understand. 

In India, 80% of the population practices the Hindu religion. For the believers of this religion, the figure of the cow is venerated and should not be sacrificed. In western culture, this is a strange cultural value, since cows are a source of food and not of worship. 

or

Some people may see great value in saving the world’s rainforests. However, a person who relies on the logging of a forest for their job may not place the same value on the forest as a person who wants to save it.

——————————————————————————————-

Before the coronavirus crisis exploded and confronted us with a life-and-death threat to every corner of our planet those who worked in what could be called taken for granted jobs we not valued neither in money terms or the essential services they provided to us all.

As a result, society discovered new heroes.

Times of crisis bring out the best in us. Superficial concerns fall away and we rediscover what really matters: Our values.

Now that the Pandemic in the western world is coming under control (we hope) and the murder of a colored man in the USA our worldwide values which have been honed by decades of biased history are coming under the spotlight, not just our personal views but societies as a whole.

BUT WHAT ARE THOSE VALUES AND HAVE DUG DOWN TO CORE VALUES AND WILL WE PUT THEM INTO ACTION?

It is easy to compile a list of personnel values and at the same time aspire to universal values of peace, human dignity, equal human rights, and freedom values.   

They are at the core of our being. They are our motivators, our drivers, the passion in our hearts, the reason we do the things we do and feel the way we feel. They help us to make better choices in life, develop healthy patterns of behavior, and form and maintain meaningful personal relationships.

They are the compass guiding everything we do – our choices and our actions.

So, if we want to change the world for the better, then we have to change
our own behaviors.

Living by your personal values sounds easy—at least in theory. Your values, after all, are simply the things that are important to you in life, so it should be natural to live by them.

Here are some more questions to get you started:

  1. What’s important to you in life?
  2. If you could have any career, without worrying about money or other practical constraints, what would you do?
  3. When you’re reading news stories, what sort of story or behavior tends to inspire you?
  4. What type of story or behavior makes you angry?
  5. What do you want to change about the world or about yourself?
  6. What are you most proud of? 
  7. When were you the happiest?

Think about our most important values and to act on them.

Living your values is about more than the big, long-term goals, however, it’s also about the small, day-to-day decisions. Putting them into action each and every day will have a powerful impact on our own wellbeing, the wellbeing of the groups and communities we belong to, and the wellbeing of the whole world.

The passive use of Technology is the reason technology is ruining our Humanity. 

Why is technology ruining humanity?

The only reason people do things is that life gives them the opportunity to do so. Which by extent, whether they know it or not, implies that people value their life.

Behind every use of technology is a person, as behind every murder, there is also a person.

We are about to pass through a long and very painful period of adjustment which is fraught with danger at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine.

As the noose of technological enslavement tightens on humanity will our values have any value?

They say that innovations in technology can save the world and is extending democracy. I say that it is concentrating even more power in the hands of a tiny elite.

Personal Values are formulated by a variety of influences, environmental influences including upbringing, religion, friends, family, peers, and, education not by algorithms, virtual reality.    

Until we get better at using technology as a tool I think we’re cooked, we’re going to continue to extinct species and we’re going to continue to dig the hole deeper of the whole eco-social crisis.

If you just hold your cell phone for 30 seconds and think backward through its production you have the entire techno-industrial culture wrapped up there.

You can’t have a smartphone an I pad or use Social media without everything that goes with it. You see mining, transportation, manufacturing, computers, high-speed communications, satellite communications, it’s all there, you see and it’s that techno-industrial culture that’s destroying the world.

The only way we’ll be able to responsibly harness the fruits that technology bears are with a renewed attitude of cooperation and care for the most vulnerable among us.

Technology has given us the tools to reshape how we live in the world; if it also changes the way we interact with our neighbors, it can be transformational.

Technology can inspire progressive social policies. When 62 billionaires have as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population, it’s clear that political principles are skewed toward the influential in business.

Overall, technology has the potential to reduce suffering, fight disease, and level the playing field for the poor if we use it as a tool, not as values.

Values are immensely powerful!

We know that human history is full of hideous, horrible acts, but it is important it explains why things are the way thy are. The problem is that is it not taught in schools without warts so no one gets a free pass.

History is the past it cannot be changed.   

But mature humans don’t live in the past and we need to start seeing each other as fellow humans. If we do so maybe we can start addressing the real cause of inequality in our societies which is our present economic systems. 

However, you don’t have to go into the future to see what is happing.  In the last forty years, we have wiped out 40% of our wildlife, acidified our oceans, pumped CO2 into the atmosphere, destroyed vast regions for livestock, ignored world natural disasters all for the sake of short term profits.  

If we don’t have a fucking healthy biodiversity-ecosystem there will be no need for profits or values.

With world economies, slowly reopening, I won’t hold my breath as it is easier to keep viewing thinks as black and white and profit for profit sake, not Clickbait.       

We all deserve to be treated as human beings of worth.

However because values are culture-bound, what’s good for one culture may be (and often is) deemed an abomination by another.

Herein lies the ultimate irresolvable dilemma.

Culture gives us prescriptions for appropriate conduct. When judging values, we should not speak in terms of right or wrong, black or white rather we should look at competing values in terms of better and worse.

Who’s to say what my values will be in 2030?

When I hear competing values shouted by a person from a different culture than mine, I hope to take a deep breath, realize that he/she is simply expressing a deep need they have, and then perhaps I can share my values and needs without fostering judgment, evaluations of their character, or moralistic analysis.

In the end, compassionate dialogue changes live, not right/wrong judgment, or taking the keen. 

All comments valued. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. IS IT NOT TIME WE READDRESSED OUR MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE WORLD WE ALL LIVE AND DIE ON.

11 Thursday Jun 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Racism, Telling the truth., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Truthfulness., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, World Racism

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(Four-minute read) 

Misunderstandings happen all the time.

Why?

Because many of our opinions aren’t based on reason but on emotion.

Who is right, instead of what’s the truth.

We try to convince people with arguments that appeal to our values, not theirs.

We’re more connected than ever, yet we seem to stray only further from mutual understanding because we only interact with the news and online friends that share our opinions.

The internet has made slipping into groupthink easier than ever.

Indeed, plenty of today’s miscommunication can be blamed on the receiver’s inability to focus. Instead of reacting to what people are actually saying, they engage in a sort of mental telepathy and respond to what they think they are really after, creating negativity bias. 

This bias is responsible for our tendency to only focus on and accept what concurs with our existing worldview.

A major cause of miscommunication is reflected on Facebook/Twitter and other platforms. Worthless digital echo chambers that provide a space to air our opinions and find instant reinforcement, feeding a trend of modern tribalism.

Now thanks to Covid-19 and the murder of George Floyd we are confronted with a rebalancing of not just the world Economy but history itself.

There is currently a cultural war raging across the Western World over the role of statues and place names.

This rebalancing is one in which people are actually talking about the same things, but differ on what these things mean. 

The removal of public statues of contentious individuals in my view does little to help.

Are we going to tear down monuments?  It would be better to take a chisel and hammer and recontextualize them or better install a flat-screen that can be activated with a smartphone that pays a video to explain the individual’s historic significance

with modern thinking to reflect where the prevailing values of to days society is in an explicit manner to prevent miscommunication.

( These flat-screens need not cost anything they could be sponsored.) 

Even if you don’t identify with your ideas anymore, others will.

It is not possible to bulldoze our way in the future to make way for a more ‘multi-cultural’ statue.

A logical fallacy is a flaw in reasoning.

However, each idea is a concept (or model) about how the world really works that can be used to understand and solve real problems and predict real outcomes.

So don’t expect to change their minds in a day. Allow time for ideas to settle in and for people to discover the logic in an argument. When those values are not shared a debate needs to be started. 

The legacy of slavery, imperialism, and race aren’t the only reasons for campaigning against a statue. No-one would suggest the retention of a statue of Hitler.

Everyone is part of various cultures and subcultures, all influencing the way we look at things and the paradigms we live in.

Humans create cultures to make sense of reality.

Our brains delete, misconstrue, and misinterpret according to filters–biases, triggers, assumptions, beliefs, habits, and mental models.

Each specialism functions as a lens through which we interpret the world–whether that’s economics, sociology, or feminism.

That makes it hard to talk about issues from the same perspective- mismatched expectations.

Ever since our ancestors uttered their first grunts, miscommunication has been a part of our daily lives, we’re inclined to see our ideas as an extension of ourselves.

Misunderstanding is the cause of 90% of all conflicts.

Legalese” is another culprit.

It’s the formal and technical language that often makes government documents sound overly complex, forcing people into hiring lawyers for their legal issues.

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

Bye, the way the Tsar of Russia footing more than a quarter of the bill to build Nelson column and Hitler would have nicked it. 

Just in case you are wondering what is inside the Washington Monument?

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S . WHAT ARE WE GOING TO KISS GOODBYE BECAUSE OF COVID- 19.

15 Wednesday Apr 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Disconnection., Honesty., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., Post-Covid-19, Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., VALUES, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Organisations., World Politics

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(Twenty-minute read)

Apart from the tragic loss of loved ones what if this epidemic is a turning point, and after it, the world is never the same?

Will the world come out of this crisis better than it was before?Ball, Earth, Glass, Globe, World

It all depends on what we do and how we behave right now.

Even in the height of the darkest of times, people are already imagining what the future world would look like.

It is, in Metzl’s words, “a convergence of the worlds of science and biology and the world of geopolitics.” And as the coronavirus crisis continues to play out, its geopolitical implications are going to become much greater.”

The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born.

Post-WWII planners envisioned a world that shared sovereignty and curbed nationalism. But we’re now in a period of dramatic re-nationalization of the world, with the populist, extremist, or authoritarian leaders in power from Brazil to the US to China, and many countries in between.

The one thing that sticks out like a sore thumb is that we don’t have effective structures in place to address global crises—and not just coronavirus. Think of climate change, protecting the oceans, preparing for a future of automation and AI; no country can independently take on or solve these massive challenges.

Crucially, we’re more connected to each other than we’ve ever been. It used to take thousands of years for knowledge to transfer; now it can fly across the world over the internet in minutes.

The tools we’re bringing to this fight are greater than anything our ancestors could have possibly imagined.

Unforuntitly this is bottom-up energy and connectivity, as we witness the abysmal failure of our top-down institutions.

We don’t know the way out or how long it’s going to last. In the meantime, a lot of unexpected things will happen.

There will be an economic slowdown or recession, and there will be issues with our healthcare systems—and these are just the predictable things.

We may see fragile states collapsing and even the EU disintegrating.

We’re going to come out of this into a different world.

We don’t know exactly what that world will look like, but we can imagine some of it. Take the trends that were already in motion and hit the fast-forward button. Virtualization of events, activities, and interactions. Automation of processes and services. Political and economic decentralization.

In hindsight, it’s easy to picture a far better response and outcome to the COVID-19 outbreak. What if, three months ago, there’d been a global surveillance system in place, and at the first signs of the outbreak, an international emergency team led by the World Health Organization had immediately gone to Wuhan?“

We need to be articulating our long-term vision now so that we can evaluate everything against that standard.

There’s not a total lack of a positive long-term vision now: the UN sustainable development goals, for example, call for gender equality, no poverty, no hunger, decent work, climate action, and justice (among other goals) around the world.

The problem is that we don’t have institutions meaningful enough or strong enough to affect the realization of these principles; there’s a mismatch between the global nature of the problems we’re facing and the structure of national politics.

We couldn’t have done this in the industrial age or even the nuclear age. There’s never been this kind of motivation combined with this capacity around the world.

This time will be different; to succeed, the new global plan will need to have a meaningful drive from the bottom up. We need to recognize a new locus of power. And it’s us. Nobody is going to solve this for us. This is our moment to really come together.

We have to turn the United Nations from being a gossip, veto voting, begging shop to an Institution fully funded. ( See the previous post on a World Aid commission of 0.05%. So it can establish around the world Aid Silo fully equipped.)

What better way to help the damaged world economies and to prepare for the next pandemic and climate change.

There is no need for further Climate change deliberations.

If we don’t want to be haunted by COVID-19 saying one thing and doing another is over

 

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

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S : Where will we be in six months, a year, ten years from now?

31 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Climate Change., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Democracy., Digital age., Disconnection., Environment, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Lock Down., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Political Trust, Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Poverty, Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The Future, The Internet., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Truthfulness., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, Wealth., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Economy., World Organisations., World Politics

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( An essential twenty-minute read) 



It all depends on how governments and society respond to coronavirus and its economic aftermath.

As we know COVID-19 is highlighting serious deficiencies in our existing system. 

Hopefully, we will use this crisis to rebuild, produce something better and more humane. But we may slide into something worse.

My focuses on this post are on the fundamentals of the modern economy: global supply chains, wages, and productivity.

I argue that we will need a very different kind of economics if we are to build socially just and ecologically sound futures.

In the face of COVID-19, this has never been more obvious.

——————————————————————————————–

The COVID-19 pandemic is simply the amplification of the dynamic that drives other social and ecological crises: The prioritisation of one type of value over others. 

From an economic perspective, there are four possible futures:

Descent into barbarism, robust state capitalism, radical state socialism, and a transformation into a big society built on mutual aid.

Coronavirus, like climate change, is partly a problem of our economic structure. Although both appear to be “environmental” or “natural” problems, they are socially driven.

Yes, climate change is caused by certain gases absorbing heat. But that’s a very shallow explanation. To really understand climate change, we need to understand the social reasons that keep us emitting greenhouse gases.

Likewise with COVID-19. Yes, the direct cause is the virus. But managing its effects requires us to understand human behaviour and its wider economic context.

Tackling both COVID-19 and climate change is much easier if you reduce nonessential economic activity.

The epidemiology of COVID-19 is rapidly evolving. But the core logic is similarly simple. People mix together and spread infections.

We can see from Wuhan that social distancing and lockdown measures like this are effective.

Political economy is useful in helping us understand why they weren’t introduced earlier in European countries and the US.

We are now facing a serious recession and we are living with an economic system that will threaten collapse at the next sign of pandemic.

The economics of collapse is fairly straightforward.

Businesses exist to make a profit.

If they can’t produce, they can’t sell things. This means they won’t make profits, which means they are less able to employ you.

Businesses can and do (over short time periods) hold on to workers that they don’t need immediately: They want to be able to meet demand when the economy picks back up again. But, if things start to look really bad, then they won’t. So, more people lose their jobs or fear to lose their jobs. So they buy less. And the whole cycle starts again, and we spiral into an economic depression.

In a normal crisis, the prescription for solving this is simple.

The government spends, and it spends until people start consuming and working again.

This pressure has led some world leaders to call for an easing of lockdown measures.

But normal interventions won’t work here because we don’t want the economy to recover (at least, not immediately). The whole point of the lockdown is to stop people going to work, where they spread the disease.

If we want to be more resilient to pandemics in the future (and to avoid the worst of climate change) we need a system capable of scaling back production in a way that doesn’t mean loss of livelihood.

At its core, the economy is the way we take our resources and turn them into the things we need to live.

Looked at this way, we can start to see more opportunities for living differently that allow us to produce less stuff without increasing misery.

So how do you reduce the amount of stuff you make while keeping people in work?

You have to reduce people’s dependence on a wage to be able to live.

Currently, the primary aim of the global economy is to facilitate exchanges of money. The dominant idea of the current system we live in is that exchange value is the same thing as use-value.

This is why markets are seen as the best way to run society. They allow you to adapt, and are flexible enough to match up productive capacity with use-value.

What COVID-19 is throwing into sharp relief is just how false our beliefs about markets are. 

There are lots of contributing factors to this. But let’s take two.

First, it is quite hard to make money from many of the most essential societal services-key workers low-paid employee. This is in part because a major driver of profits is labour productivity growth: doing more with fewer people – automation.

Second, jobs in many critical services aren’t those that tend to be highest valued in society. Many of the best-paid jobs only exist to facilitate exchanges; to make money.

People are compelled to work pointless jobs (they serve no wider purpose to society: ie. consultants, huge advertising industry and a massive financial sector) because, in a society where exchange value is the guiding principle of the economy, the basic goods of life are mainly available through markets.

This means you have to buy them, and to buy them you need an income, which comes from a job.

Meanwhile, we have a crisis in health and social care, where people are often forced out of useful jobs they enjoy because these jobs don’t pay them enough to live.

While state-capitalist society continues to pursue exchange value as the guiding light of the economy. It also enacts a massive Keynesian stimulus by extending credit and making direct payments to businesses.

The expectation here is that this is will be for a short period.

Could this be a successful scenario?

Possibly, but only if COVID-19 proves controllable over a short period.

Limited state intervention will become increasingly hard to maintain if death tolls rise.

Increased illness and death will provoke unrest and deepen economic impacts, forcing the state to take more and more radical actions to try to maintain market functioning.

Barbarism is the future if we continue to rely on exchange value as our guiding principle and yet refuse to extend support to those who get locked out of markets by illness or unemployment. It describes a situation that we have not yet seen.

Could this happen?

The concern is that either it could happen by mistake during the pandemic, or by intention after the pandemic peaks.

Potentially just as consequential is the possibility of massive austerity after the pandemic has peaked and governments seek to return to “normal”.

This would be disastrous. The subsequent failure of the economy and society would trigger political and stable unrest, leading to a failed state and the collapse of both state and community welfare systems.

Then there is the possibility that we could see with a cultural shift that places a different kind of value at the heart of the economy.

The state steps in to protect the parts of the economy that are essential to life: so that the basic provisions of life are no longer at the whim of the market. The state nationalises hospitals and makes housing freely available. Finally, it provides all citizens with a means of accessing various goods – both basics and any consumer goods we are able to produce with a reduced workforce.

Citizens no longer rely on employers as intermediaries between them and the basic materials of life.

Payments are made to everyone directly and are not related to the exchange value they create.

Instead, payments are the same to all (on the basis that we deserve to be able to live, simply because we are alive), or they are based on the usefulness of the work.

A Basic Universal Income.

Supermarket workers, delivery drivers, warehouse stackers, nurses, teachers, and doctors are the new CEOs.

If deep recessions happen and there is a disruption in supply chains such that demand cannot be rescued by the kind of standard Keynesian policies we are seeing now (printing money, making loans easier to get and so on), the state may take overproduction.

There are risks to this approach – we must be careful to avoid authoritarianism. But done well, this may be our best hope against an extreme COVID-19 outbreak.

Mutual aid is the second future in which we adopt the protection of life as the guiding principle of our economy. But, in this scenario, the state does not take a defining role. Rather, individuals and small groups begin to organise support and care within their communities.

The most ambitious form of this future sees new democratic structures arise. Groupings of communities that are able to mobilise substantial resources with relative speed. People coming together to plan regional responses to stop disease spread and (if they have the skills) to treat patients.

This kind of scenario could emerge from any of the others.

What hopefully is clear is that all these scenarios leave some grounds for fear, but also some for hope.

The upside of this is the possibility that we build a more humane system that leaves us more resilient in the face of future pandemics and other impending crises like climate change. 

A key task for us all is demanding that emerging social forms come from an ethic that values care, life, and democracy.

The central political task in this time of crisis is living and (virtually) organising around those values.

Not low-paid workers or National Minimum Wage or National Living Wage because their work is so vital.

Successive governments had failed to reduce inequality between rich and poor despite two decades of interventions.

We must now with an uncertain future focus more on the journey, rather than the ultimate destination.

But be no doubt that we are at a crossroad where the low pay culture that has trapped people in poorly jobs is coming to an end. 

Capitalism Inequality can not be allowed to continue. 

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

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: ARE WE NOW REAPING THE REWARDS OF PROFIT FOR-PROFIT SAKE?

30 Monday Mar 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., Universal Basic Income ., VALUES, Wealth., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Economy.

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(Five-minute read) 

First, let me state the obvious.

The Covid-19 doesn’t just call our bluff it is questing the way we allow our society to be run. 

It is bringing into sharp relief what some of us have always known to be true. Our current way of living must end.

Capitalism and the culture of hierarchy that props it up is now extremely screwed up. 

The story of Capitalism up to now has been selling your labour so you don’t end up on the streets.

We should not behave to exist this way.

We come into this world kicking and screaming for our own needs while our birth’s, and our eventual departure’s, have all been turned into a product by capitalism to generate profit. We leave silent.

We live in a world where nearly everything has some kind of cost and the increased workforce automation is suggesting that things will keep getting worse.

What is considered valuable by man or the people of this world are of little or no value when one is confronted by a virus (which unfortunately some of us are witnessing this very minute) that does not discriminate any grounds.  

Money, wealth, riches, gold, property, power and so on are either transitory, fading or can be destroyed in the blink of an eye and are of no value in the long term.

In the past few years, the money markets have fallen in a heap with the global financial crisis and the value of money becoming very shaky. The same can be said of shares, property and other investments. And this is nothing new for the economic cycle goes through boom and bust every seven to ten years making fortunes at one time and destroying them at other times.

However, men believe that wealth gives you the power to be able to rise above the problems and issues of the world.

How wrong he is.

The coronavirus is not the only virus we have to confront we also have to confront capitalism and the world that sustains it.

Climate Change was not enough to make the world pause.

The challenge man faces is that we think only of the here and now.

We now have a moment to consider what a rapid response to the climate emergency would look like – how we build a society that completely transforms our social order towards something that is in equilibrium with the biosphere and gives to each according to their needs.  

But will more sustainable capitalism emerge from Covid-19 highly unlikely as the protection of private interest over public interest remains the same?  

What the coronavirus has and is showing is that our cheapskate governments can provide far more in social programmes than they have. 

While none of us can predict the future let’s hope that this time the penny drops. 

The risks of Covid – 19 are now but the risks of climate change with the clock ticking needs us to wake up before the alarm goes off. 

It’s not science, not protest, that will save the planet. Science alerted us to global warming but understand the nature of the world is crucial to dealing with it. 

Everything has a function and our function is to fit into our world and not divorce ourselves from nature.

With the age of technology and its Algorithms working themselves into everything relentless, enabling profits to disappear far from the trickle-down effect the coronavirus is revealing heroes and villains across the world.

The markets might be paralysed with numerous industries entering a state of suspended animation the environment is getting a recovery period.

Covid -19  is showing us that on the horizon, capitalism in its current form threatens value. It is built on the premise of instant gratification.

Many businesses today are aware of this failing in mankind and play to it to great effect encouraging us to insure ourselves against the cost of living and dying but we are now trading for time and for eternity.

The corona-virus is certainly a much greater reward than the fleeting pleasures of this life.

The new WFH world that emerges from this will be intriguing – Universal Basic Income.

All human comments appreciated

. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY SAY’S: TO ANCHOR OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CORONA VIRUS THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IS AND WILL BE VITAL.

27 Friday Mar 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Communication., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Democracy, DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Disconnection., Fake News., Freedom of the Press., Honesty., Human values., International solidarity., Life., Lock Down., Modern Day Communication., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Political Trust, Post - truth politics., Reality., Robot citizenship., Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Internet., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Truthfulness., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, What Needs to change in the World, World Leaders, World Politics

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(Four-minute read) 


At the moment rightly so we are all preoccupied with the consequences of our own individual lives and all indicator point to world disaster on a scale not seen by most of us. 

However, if and when we return to a semblance of normal the freedom of the press will be in jeopardy when the blame game starts, which is inevitable. 

Why will it be?

Because the present pandemic marks the emergence of a new model of watchdog function, one that is neither purely networked nor purely traditional but is rather a mutualistic interaction between the two.

What globalization, technological integration and the general flattening of the world have done is to super empower individuals to such a degree that they can actually challenge any hierarchy—from a global bank to a nation-state—as individuals.

The fear that the decentralized network, with its capacity to empower individuals to challenge their governments or global banks, is not a democracy, but could lead to anarchy.

But the alternative is to give the government a veto over what its citizens are allowed to know.

There should be relentless exposure of politician or businessman, every evil practice, whether in politics, business, or social life if we are to change the world for a better future.

False news forces us to ask how comfortable we are with the actual shape of democratization created by the Internet. It circumvents the social and organizational
frameworks of traditional media, which played a large role in framing the
balance between freedom and responsibility of the press.

Many of the problems can be laid at the feet of the Internet—fragmentation of the audience and polarization of viewpoints.

We cannot afford as a polity to create classes of privileged speakers and
press agencies, and underclasses of networked information producers whose products we take into the public sphere when convenient, but whom we treat as susceptible to suppression when their publications become less palatable.

Doing so would severely undermine the quality of our public discourse.

The risk is that the government will support its preferred media models and that the
incumbent mass media players will, in turn, vilify and denigrate the newer
models in ways that make them more vulnerable to attack and shore up the
the privileged position of those incumbents in their role as a more reliable ally watchdog.

Clarifying that the freedom of the press extends to “every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion” and that liberty of the press is the right of the lonely pamphleteer and individual bloggers. 

Social distancing must not be allowed to turn into ruling distancing.

 Long live WikiLeaks. 

An uncomfortable fact is that a free press in a democracy can be messy at the best of times with governments around the world underestimated the coronavirus the political exploitation of the outbreak is now a reality. 

Capturing the treatment of television is less comprehensive as it is a visual medium.

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS: THE CORONA VIRUS IS SHINING A LIGHT ON WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD AND IT IS SPREADING FAST.

21 Saturday Mar 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Denial of Death., Disconnection., Environment, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Post - truth politics., Reality., Refugees., Survival., Sustaniability, 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., VALUES, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, World Organisations., World Politics

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(Ten-minute read) 


AS IF WE DID NOT KNOW it is posing that fundamental profound question once more.

Are we going to care of the Earth so it can care for us?  

It is impossible to say which way the disease will go however there is no doubt that it is creating the biggest restriction of civil liberties “in peacetime”. 

We know that we all tracked by Google.  Behind all the restrictions governments will adopt powers that they will loath to relinquish when the crises are over. 

There is every like hood that the pandemic will strengthen the state and reinforce nationalism.  What won’t change is the inequality and greed, rather it will create a less open, less prosperous and less free world. 

Of course, it did not have to be like this but it will be the straw that brakes the camel’s back of globalization and it will probably result in uncontrolled Co2 emissions.

In the short term, with decoupling and rivalry coming to the forefront driven by a cascading sense of vulnerability there will be a race to return to full production.

However the Pandemic is proof of our interdependence but we are not or are we heading for a poorer, meaner, and smaller world.

If the Pandemic shocks us into recognizing our real interests in cooperating multilaterally on the big global issues facing us all it will have served a useful purpose. 

We all know that it is not enough to think of one nation’s power over another when it comes to climate change. The key is learning the importance that we have all to act together and Covid -19 is going to show that we are failing to adjust our strategy on many fronts to this new world. 

Either way, this crisis will reshuffle the international power structure in the way we can only begin to imagine. 

If we don’t support each other the result will be instability and widespread conflict within and across nations. 

We know that there is a dramatic new stage in global capitalism on the horizon with supply chains be brought closer to home.  We are going to see failed states with billions of economic refugees on the move. 

We are going to see the USA no longer as an international leader. 

To date, international collaboration has been woefully insufficient. 

What is needed it targeted assistance that provides hope that men and woman can prevail in response to this extraordinary challenge.  

If it gets Airborne the white full personal-protection suits that presently strike fear into the hearts of us all will be worthless.

AS IF EARTH DOES NOT HAVE ENOUGH PROBLEMS THE NEXT NASA PROJECT TO MARS IS SCHEDULED TO LAUNCH IN JULY. 

NASA’s 2020 Mars rover. 

The rover will collect and cache promising samples for eventual return to Earth.

The first pristine pieces of Mars won’t be coming down to Earth for at least another decade, but the time to start preparing society for the epic arrival is now. 

This is an extremely grave point.

On the one hand, we can argue that Martian organisms cannot cause any serious problems to terrestrial organisms, because there has been no biological contact for 4.5 billion years between Martian and terrestrial organisms. On the other hand, we can argue equally well that terrestrial organisms have evolved no defences against potential Martian pathogens, precisely because there has been no such contact for 4.5 billion years. The chance of such an infection may be very small, but the hazards, if it occurs, are certainly very high.

Martian rock that has already arrived on earth contained structures resembled the fossilized remains of bacteria-like lifeforms.

What if such samples turned out to be dangerous, and contagiously so?

Are there some Mars-oriented lessons to be learned from COVID-19. 

Here on earth, it is gruelling and potentially lethal work to identify a virus never mind virus from other planets. 

It is estimated that there are 1.6 million unknown viruses in birds and mammals. Of these, it is thought between 600,000 and 800,000 are zoonotic, meaning they have the potential to jump from animals to people. 

Virulence, contacts and the length of time for which people are infectious are the three factors that determine what is called ‘the basic reproductive rate’ – how far and fast the epidemic will spread. 

There may be a staggering 3,200 different types of coronavirus harboured in bats alone.


As with historical infectious disease epidemics, the coronavirus that’s spreading currently is another example of why it’s so important to understand the consequences of interacting with environments humans rarely contact and then distributing widely whatever [they] picked up.

If one looks at the outbreak in Africa, of Ebola and the HIV/Aids pandemic – which to date has killed 35 million and infected 70 million – started about a century ago in Cameroon when a chimpanzee virus was transmitted to a human who almost certainly killed, butchered or consumed it.

Markets were closed during both outbreak, but they are now once more doing a roaring trade selling tropical game including monkeys, chimpanzees, cane rats, bats and snakes. Bushmeat is entrenched in local culture and is often a vital form of subsistence, hence why the authorities are unwilling or unable to announce an outright ban.

Last, with or without artificial intelligence we continue at our collective peril to make imbalance’s in the ecosystem.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: THIS CORONA VIRUS IS ASKING ALL OF US WHAT TYPE OF WORLD DO WE WANT?

19 Thursday Mar 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Disasters., Disconnection., Evolution, Honesty., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., Poverty, Reality., Refugees., Religious Beliefs., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The current state of our oceans., The essence of our humanity., The Future, THE FUTURE OF OUR OCEANS/SEAS, The Obvious., The Refugees, The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Truthfulness., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, War., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, World Organisations., World Politics

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(Seven-minute read) 

I know that humans are the only type of species that are suitable to manage the earth but it does not make them the right species!

Apparently not.

Did we ever think that we would be living in a world where it is life-threatening to go our side and I am not talking about terrorists or any other Hollywood science fiction movie scenario?

There’s a lot of bad news out there but this is not a death sentence. 

 It’s time to save the world. ” We can use it as we wish”

No one owns the earth. No one has the right to do whatever they want.

We’re not the only thing that lives here, nor are we more important in any way.

We cannot use the world as we please as our actions are endangering not just us but other species. 

Our Earth was meant to be lived on in union with its Ecosystems and we cannot allow that to be broken.

The Coronavirus ( Covid  19 ) is illuminating what is wrong with our world. 

So our most crucial life questions are: 

What Kind of World Do We Want to Leave to Our Children?

Whatever your interest — whether it’s the environment, health care, poverty, or education — there are simple steps each of us can take to make life better not just for someone in our own community. 

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” now needs an Earth Declaration. 

Here are the top six of my non-legal binding the goals.  

Use Global Warming to Solve Global Warming.

Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts to protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, and halt biodiversity loss.

Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development.

Sustainable Development Goals which will take years for a critical mass of governments to actually rally behind. 

The allocation of resources to fight climate change and other environmental issues over the next decade can be achieved by making a profit for profit sake pay. ( See the previous post on a 0.05% World Aid Commission. How it could be implemented so the costs are spread fairly) 

End poverty in all its forms everywhere.

Global poverty. Reduce inequality within and among countries. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

Expand access to clean drinking water, green energy.

Artificial Intelligence and Automation. 

The 2020s sounds like such a radical futuristic decade however to strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development requires a coherent and plausible conception of social justice. A basic income, a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement.

Stop the sale of arms. 

The estimate of the total value of the global arms trade in 2017 was at least $95 billion.* However, the true figure is likely to be higher. On any given day at any given moment in your life, there are at least 15 wars and armed conflicts actively going on all around the world — even if you’re only hearing about a few of them on the news.

There are an estimated 11-12 million refugees in the world today with between 12-24 million Internally Displaced Persons.

Electoral Reform with Citizens’ Assemblies. 

These aren’t just focus groups or consultations though but for the members to engage in serious, informed reflection on important policy matters with people they may never normally meet.

As Hubert Reeves ( Canadian-French Astrophysicist) say’s, ” Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and Destroys a Visible Nature. Unaware that this Nature he’s destroying is this God he’s worshipping “

Feel free to have idea sex between your ideas and mine so we can come up with even better ideas. It’s a way of saying: “We agree that these are the world’s top priorities right now.”