UKRAINE AT THE MOMENT IS A CONVENTIONAL BATTLEFIELD CONFLICT AND WE MUST HOPE THAT IT REMAINS SO.
There’s a lot of talk and coverage by the media about the rationality of actions when discussing nuclear deterrence. They are throwing the word nuclear around without any real understanding of what they are advocating in an all-out nuclear war.
It would extend well beyond the warring nations, change the climate, jeopardize billions of people in a nuclear winter.
Even a modest nuclear exchange let’s say a few hundred warheads would produce huge quantities of ozone-consuming chemicals creating an ice age.
As everything would lie in ruin there would be no governmental structures that could function in such a postwar climate.
There is no such thing as a limited nuclear war as a realistic possibility.
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Irresponsible media is the last thing anyone needs at the moment.
Unfortunately, it can’t resist, (somewhat understandable) turning the Para Olympics into a political platform, one of the last world forms representing world Peace.
Let us understand that advocating the use of a non-strategic nuclear weapon whether it is Nato or Russia, threatens humanity’s very existence. (A Soviet SS-18 missile has eight 1- megaton warheads.) They make up a tiny fraction of strategic nuclear weapons in the Russian arsenal.
HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI FALLOUT IS ONE WEAPON EFFECT WITH WHICH WE HAVE EXPERIENCED AND IT WAS ONLY AN ATOMIC BOMB.
IF NATO WERE TO LAUNCH LOW-YIELD TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS TO SIGNAL RUSSIA THAT IT HAS CROSSED A LINE IN AN ATTEMPT TO DE-ESCALATE THE SITUATION – THE CONSEQUENCES ARE UNIMAGINABLE.
Radioactive fallout is unique to nuclear weapons.
There is a near-universal agreement on the need to avoid a nuclear war.
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Could the war-shocked survivors meet the challenge?
This question is so big that it’s best left unanswered since only an all-out nuclear war could decide it definitively.
It might bring an abrupt end to the war, it will for certain bring an abrupt end to all life.
Therefore it is the duty of all media platforms to avoid speculation but to promote untarnished awareness of just what is a stake.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Up to now, we humans have tried everything to change the planet that we all live on – such as wipe out each other, political systems, cities, religious beliefs, weapons of mass destruction, world organizations without any global clout, financial institutions manipulating power, money, elections, corruption, all enhancing inequality.
All are devoid of any asperation for peace and sharing. In fact, we have designed a world around the mantra ” Pay as you go ” which includes all aspects of life even the privilege of paying for your own funeral.
In the meantime, Earth is never stationary it spins at 1000 miles per hour.
As Galileo Galilei said, “Nature is relentless and unchangeable, and it is indifferent as to whether its hidden reasons and actions are understandable to man or not.”
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The “New Earth” that people envisioned never quite materialized as predicted.
With the dramatic worldwide impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and now a new war in Ukraine, one could not be blamed for thinking what next rather than where next.
I suppose that eventually, we will reach a tipping point, after which we will consider 4D/5D things “normal”.
Maybe in the distant future “enlightenment”, will be more about knowing yourself as the consciousness that is witnessing reality.
Creating one’s reality for life and the planet that we truly love in which we are fully conscious and in full control over everything that we experience in our subconscious reality. Even so, we will still not be in full control of what happens to us and the environment we are in, because of our collective inability to agree that we are all the same.
So where are we?
The most distinctive aspect of our approach is the lack of ‘long-term’ action.
Longterm is the idea that because such huge numbers of individuals might live in the long-run future, and because we think everyone’s interests matter equally, approaches to improving the world should be evaluated mainly in terms of their potential for long-term impact — over thousands, millions, or even billions of years.
In the 1950s, large-scale production of nuclear weapons meant that a few world leaders gained, for the first time, the ability to kill hundreds of millions of people.
This was a striking milestone in a robust trend: as technology improves and the world economy grows, it gets easier to cause destruction on an ever-larger scale.
This is where we are.
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When we look at the history of the human race, we see many examples of major moral problems that most people were completely oblivious to. These include slavery, the deplorable treatment of foreigners, the subjugation of women, the persecution of people who aren’t heterosexual, and the gross mistreatment of animals.
New transformative technologies may promise a radically better future, but also pose catastrophic risks, and mitigating these risks is presently all but totally ignored. Work on mitigating many risks remains remarkably neglected — in some cases receiving attention from only a handful of researchers.
With machine learning, the fate of humanity may come to depend more on the actions of machines than our own. This could lead to large, rapid improvements in human welfare, but there are good reasons to think that it could also lead to disastrous outcomes.
The problem of how one might design a highly intelligent machine to pursue realistic human goals safely is very poorly understood. You might think ‘why can’t we just turn it off?’, but of course, an intelligent system will give every indication of doing exactly what we want, until it is certain we won’t be able to turn it off.
Even if advanced machine intelligence does not get ‘out of control’, it is likely to be very socially disruptive and could be used as a destabilizing weapon of war.
There have been surprisingly few serious attempts to make such big-picture comparisons.
There are many global issues we haven’t yet seen investigated much at all. These are not always the biggest problems in the world — rather they are the issues that receive little attention compared to how important they are and how much can be done about them.
Different problems could be bigger if there are problems that humanity hasn’t even thought of yet. And it seems likely that we haven’t discovered all the serious global problems which exist.
You might think by now that world politicians won’t be motivated to act on the results of global priorities.
I would say that if anyone is looking at the state of the world our focus should be more on oneness and unconditional love for all existence with a distinct set of rules about what you can and cannot do.
So here is the good news.
Humanity’s superior intelligence is pretty much the sole reason that it is the dominant species on the planet.
The chance of great power conflict this century was around 45%, now it’s 100% and the chance of an extinction-level war was around 1% it is now with technology a lot more than doubters cannot dismiss.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
THIS POST IS FOR ALL THOSE CHINLESS WONDERS WHO BELIEVE IN PROFIT FOR THEMSELVES.
It’s no longer good enough to measure the overall wealth of a nation whilst glossing over inequality or consequential environmental degradation.
Why?
Because it is quite apparent that capitalism is stuck while the longer-term future has been transformed by the pandemic and climate change.
It has no answers to a host of problems, including disease, inequality, the digital divide, and, perhaps most blatantly, the environmental crisis the biggest problems of our time.
Rethinking the role of government nationally and in the international economy is now reaching critical a point – to put public purpose first and solve the problems that matter to people – are now the central questions for humanity.
It is imperative that responding to the climate and nature emergency is integrated across all economic activity, with an explicit commitment to moving to a more circular and resource-efficient economy.
The capacities and role of government within the economy and society, above all need to recover a sense of public purpose in order to reshape the economic development to invests in people and businesses drive prosperity, and reduce inequality.
Our economic well-being is without any doubt tied to our environmental, cultural, and social well-being.
One can say this till we are blue in the face but the Covid crisis has removed any doubt about the fundamental role of the foundational economy in the well-being of a nation. (This is the part of the economy which could not be shut down as it provides the infrastructure of everyday life)
So investing in social care, childcare, housing, energy, low carbon, and digital connectivity not only addresses the foundational needs of civilized life but can offer meaningful and rewarding careers and be harnessed for economic development.
A holistic approach to the economy, recognizing its potential for harm as well as good, demands a holistic way to measure progress.
None of the above is possible unless we find a way of committing to long-term projects that are both politically and financially sound.
Our problem is that governments are subjected to short electrical terms in office so long-term objectives are not a priority. While the electoral population pays ever-increasing taxes either to fund a project or rectify a mistake, (without any real commitment to the project in the first place) other than a general election and a new manifesto of verbal diarrhea can deserving projects be fulfilled to completion?
What if we were to introduce legal mission statements that could not be changed till achieved, ‘magnet projects’ funded not by taxation but by voluntary participation in the form of willing support in allowing citizens to support projects by buying sustainable green bonds with guaranteed returns and Loto style financial monthly prizes.
If we are to genuinely tackle the problems that we have created lets us genuinely participate by putting our money where our mouths are.
Too often overlooked in economic development.
You also might be led to believe that monetary activism is financial triage against world economic collapse but ask yourself what kind of political creatures are money printing spawning.
What we are seeing is the economy going online with businesses and organizations in receipt of public funding far from being totally transparent with online profit-seeking algorithms that are now driving a hidden non-paying tax economy.
The pandemic points forward to realizing that our economic models are not dealing with the growth of inequalities.
Money must be made to serve the people not the other way around social value
Imagine a society where everyone can have an equal say in the issues that concern them. Above all, a world, in which all the people own and share the wealth that we need in order to live. These would be enormously exciting times because, at long last, human society will have evolved to the position of being able to tackle effectively the challenges facing the modern world.
So here is your chance to contribute by suggesting your solutions or improving on the above suggestion of Mission Economics.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
We all know that there is an invisible world and that today it is undeniably digital.
This invisible world is becoming both powerful and dangerous leading to digitalizing without a system of oversight of the way we operate in the world, resulting in not just hidden powers but a decoupling between human rights and democracy.
On one hand, digital democracy, or eDemocracy, uses the internet, social media, and technology to improve our democratic systems of governance.
On the other with our electronic overlords, ( Smartphones, Pads, Apple watches, TV, Web Services), this world of invisibility is been driven by non-accountable, non-transparent commerce, operating profit-seeking algorithms, with self-learning data collection codes, that no one comprehends.
As our day-to-day lives are increasingly immersed in technology, it is easy to lose perspective on things that matter.
The capitalist world of profit and power is disappearing underground.
New technologies – from social media and GPS systems to artificial intelligence and digital twins – make the planet we inhabit unrecognizable from even 20 years ago and it’s only going to get faster, changing how we live.
The rise of the sharing economy, online marketplaces, and digital platforms are shattering old barriers and reducing the distances between industries, societies, and places, all of which are without adequate regulations are vanishing from scrutiny and accountability.
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While it’s true that today, leaders need to deal with unprecedented changes and an unpredictable and challenging future due to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Climate change, and the covid pandemic they need to be more agile, to deal with sudden changes and challenges that any one of these will bring.
Why?
Because the status quo as the inertia of past success can be crippling for the future.
The paradox of leadership lies in staying focused on the present, while also visualizing the future and creating a roadmap to reach it.
This is a major problem requiring Statmanship on a global scale.
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Why is all of this happening now?
What’s interesting about this question is, there’s no answer to that question.
What I think is so true about that is, with technology even nonconformists are conforming.
Why?
Because these days it’s difficult to not see how real the invisible world is affecting our lives and the systems that govern life.
Today, with the covid pandemic’s we see it is very rare that you find someone that’s not influenced by anyone else.
You don’t have to be a digital native to behave like one.
It’s the invisible world we want to connect with in order to maintain the magic in life.
Why?
Because a world without emotions will be a sterile world.
Yes, the invisible world is real.
It is the limited life of a limited mind.
Increasingly, this limited value is delivered through new cross-sector, outcome-based propositions, rather than traditional sector-specific products and services.
We have all experienced trying to get to speak to a human to solve a problem with a service – press one press two – listen to music – you inquiry- will be answered – press 3 if – till you give up.
If you can spell it you can’t enter it. A society that is dependent on technology can create inequality.
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To stopthis invisible world people must take ownership of things as the digital world is not about technology, but people.
At a time when geopolitical tensions are on the rise are at their highest level this century. And this turbulence is escalating. Even nuclear non-proliferation can no longer be taken for granted.
At the same time, we see trade and technological conflicts that fracture world markets, undermine growth and widen inequalities.
And all the while, our planet is on fire. The climate crisis rages on.
With Climate Change, we are risking a ‘great fracture’ between world powers, each with their own internet and AI strategy, as well as dominant currency, trade, and financial rules, and contradictory geopolitical and military views.
With dwindling natural resources, an unstable world climate, viruses on the rampart, not to mention the effects of pandemics on world trade, inequality, the world does not need politicians that do not think of the next election but statesmen of the next generation.
It is crucial to ensuring a united world.
Those yet to be connected remain cut off from the benefits of this new era and remain further behind. People need money to access the internet and buy the latest devices.
By 2050 there will be 9 billion people to feed, clothe, transport, employ and educate.
Maybe that’s not really bad when you think of what’s coming next. You couldn’t call it a fully digital world yet. It’s not even close.
However, there’s room to dream about building the world we want, instead of the one we’re turning into.
As we pursue unlimited growth, our limitless consumption threatens to crowd out everything else on Earth. We are warming the climate, overspending our financial resources, requiring more fresh water than we have, increasing income inequality, diminishing other species, and triggering shockwaves whenever we can’t cope with a problem. Billions are committed to a growth-driven world economy.
Our world is full of screens. We keep them in our hands, purses, and pockets, next to our beds while we sleep, and surround ourselves with screens on our desks and countertops. Our TV sets are morphing into interactive screens as we put them online so they display everything for free.
What if that networked system brought everyone the world’s best services, resources, and knowledge-based on what we do, as a normal part of everyday life?
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The top-down approach is no longer sustainable in the Economic/ Power/ or Democracy Capital Accountability. Leadership needs to be vigilant and create a long-term sustainable value proposition for all stakeholders.
The same technologies are giving rise to new business models, with organizations using digital to create and monetize new forms of value. Disruptions in the digital world occur at a phenomenal rate.
They have the power to impact the way entire industries operate reshaping entire industries with profit-seeking algorithms.
Although giving up your data was once an afterthought when gaining access to the newest internet services such as Facebook there aren’t many great options available to limit what is seen and known about you online.
YOU BECOME A DIGITAL FORM OF YOURSELF IN THE VIRTUAL WORLD OF THE INTERNET.
How do we define what a digital human is?
Worthless, a form of entertainment to have conversations with yourself without being able to show emotion and behavior as a real human.
So, is the invisible world the real world?
Hard to say, but I think it’s what makes the visible world worth living in.
When someone dies, the essence of that being merely inhabited that form – the life within the form was always invisible.
Digital leaders will have the power to shape the future of our world.
When we want to believe, there is still time to interrupt the announced disappearances of so many plant and animal species which, if we are not careful, will lead to our own end.
This situation cannot go on. It is our common duty to avoid it.
While risks intersect and technologies develop quickly, too often our institutions for governing international security remain reactive and slow-moving.
ALL HUMAN COMMENTS ARE APPRECIATED. ALL LIKE CLICKS AND ABUSE CHUCKED IN THE BIN.
Here we are at the start of another year and we are truly living in a very unique time in the history of our civilization, facing several simultaneous challenges and converging crises:
A deteriorating environment, very unequal distribution of dwindling resources, widespread poverty, wars, climate change, oppression of many peoples, and dissatisfaction with life even in those countries with a surplus of material wealth.
For the most part, these crises we humans have brought upon ourselves over the course of many centuries by our attitudes towards each other and towards nature, and by the concepts, we have developed regarding who we are and the very purpose of our being here — in other words, Our worldview.
Who are we?
Where do we come from?
What is our purpose?
Where are we going?
All of these questions are fundamental to how we individually and collectively make meaning. As such they are questions asked by all spiritual traditions and since the very beginning of our species. Even the first cave paintings suggest that as soon as we were human, we started to ask these kinds of questions.
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The only evidence you have that you exist as a self-aware being is your conscious experience of thinking about your existence.
Beyond that, you’re on your own.
You cannot access anyone else’s conscious thoughts, so you will never know if they are self-aware. Nonexistence is the absence of existence, by definition. Therefore there is no such thing as nonexistence.
To say that something does not exist thus seems to be a fallacy since NOTHING does exist.
How are you?
By far the biggest constituent of you is emptiness are atoms, and since all atoms are 99.9% empty space, technically, you’re made of nothing.
We call ourselves humans. We think we behave intelligently but we humans are animals! defined less by rationality and more by stupidity.
At the basic level, you are made of just four types of particles, which have been around for the majority of the lifetime of the Universe.
Atoms make up your body, 12 kg of bones, 33 kg of muscles, and 15 kg of fat. More than half of those cells aren’t exactly your own. They’re bacterial cells that weigh around 2 kg. Your body contains at least 60 chemical elements. For the most part, it’s oxygen and hydrogen forming H2O or water. 99% of the mass of your body is made up of just 6 elements. Of that, 65% is oxygen.
If you wanted to be more poetic, you could say you are made of stardust. All the elements you’re made of were once cooked up in the stars.
By the way, in case you wondered, the uncoiled DNA from all the cells in your body would stretch from here to Pluto and back.
What are you?
Mentally, humanity was created as a rational, volitional agent.
According to the Bible, you are a god. ( God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness” (Genesis 1:26) but God does not have a body so your physical being is nowhere near a god.
Physiologically and anatomically you are an animal struggling for survival on the basis of evolution.
Within just the past 12,000 years, your species, Homo sapiens, made the transition to producing food and changing our surroundings. We have been so successful that we have inadvertently created a turning point in the history of life on Earth.
We have altered the world in ways that benefit us greatly. But this transformation has unintended consequences for other species as well as for ourselves, creating new survival challenges, with our megacity incubators of viruses such as the flu and now Covid.
Where are we going?
Will our species go extinct?
The short answer is yes, replaced by Artificial Intelligence, but not life.
Why?
Because mankind will control life through its varied reproductive activities manipulating life, whether it be by cloning, gene splicing, genetic breeding, etc.
Life in its simplest form, a single-celled organism, has microbial intelligence and can learn and adapt behavior to its environment. However, everything starts with something already alive. Only life begets life and intelligence doesn’t come from non-intelligent sources.
Even the most simple of life forms is beyond our ability to create from non-living sources.
Life is created and is not the result of abiogenesis it controls and regulates the physical processes within each cell.
So since there is no evidence or logical consideration to believe that life is the result of a physical process, we can dismiss the concept of Artificial life as impossible. It isn’t just a gap in our understanding it is a physical impossibility.
However, there may well be life, with or without consciousness, interfacing with the physical components that support life created by an outside intelligence.
This is probably the most pressing and interesting question for the future. How much of life will be controlled by AI?
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The current Covid pandemic is being fought against by a new form of vacation that instructs our immune systems to operate in a particular way rather than the immune system reacting. A step in evolutionary development towards part AI life.
Where is this interpretation of behavior taking place?
What part of the cell decides one food-foraging pattern is preferable to another?
Where is the information stored while it’s being coded into an arrangement of molecules and atoms?
The nucleus of a living cell is often referred to as the “brain” of the cell because it controls cellular processes and functions. However, the nucleus is not capable of conscious levels of intelligence. In fact, we can’t point to any cell part and say, that’s where the intelligence has to be coming from.
Signals received by cells must be transmitted effectively into the cell to ensure an appropriate response. This step is initiated by cell-surface receptors.
How do conscious levels of intelligence now suddenly originate or emerge from unconscious atoms and molecules?
We have to bear in mind that in an evolutionary sense, nothing can influence where we wind up biologically unless it affects individual success in passing along genes. When a new behavior is written to the DNA, the information has to be assigned to an arrangement of atoms that advocate that consciousness exists at the microbial level.
If so, that creates even greater problems, and without going into all of them, the chief problem is that survival sets a pretty low bar.
The question isn’t so much whether humans survive the next three or three hundred thousand years, but whether we can do more than just survive.
The current virus pandemic highlights this problem. The virus hasn’t yet committed to any direction.
However, it is as with all viruses an evolving entity, subject to the same processes of evolution.
With the new mRNA vaccines, we have a choice to make!
Why?
Because it is inevitable that Genome editing is going to be the future.
Because now being alive is not a prerequisite for experiencing, evolution.
We either move into a new phase in the evolution of consciousness and a new era of life on the planet, or we will witness the unraveling of the web of life and the immature end of our species and much of the community of life with us.
The time to make this choice is now!
It starts with a fundamental shift in our dominant worldview.
It is time to grow up! and for us to respect all life.
What is our purpose?
This is explained in the following story.
“In a mother’s womb were two babies. One asked the other: “Do you believe in life after delivery?” The other replied, “Why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later.”
“Nonsense,” said the first. “There is no life after delivery. What kind of life would that be?”
The second said, “I don’t know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths. Maybe we will have other senses that we can’t understand now.”
The first replied, “That is absurd. Walking is impossible. And eating with our mouths? Ridiculous! The umbilical cord supplies nutrition and everything we need. But the umbilical cord is so short. Life after delivery is to be logically excluded.”
The second insisted, “Well I think there is something and maybe it’s different than it is here. Maybe we won’t need this physical cord anymore.”
The first replied, “Nonsense. And moreover, if there is life, then why has no one ever come back from there? Delivery is the end of life, and in the after-delivery, there is nothing but darkness and silence and oblivion. It takes us nowhere.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said the second, “but certainly we will meet Mother and she will take care of us.”
The first replied “Mother? Do you actually believe in Mother? That’s laughable. If Mother exists then where is She now?”
The second said, “She is all around us. We are surrounded by her. We are of Her. It is in Her that we live. Without Her, this world would not and could not exist.”
Said the first: “Well I don’t see Her, so it is only logical that She doesn’t exist.”
To which the second replied, “Sometimes, when you’re in silence and you focus and listen, you can perceive Her presence, and you can hear Her loving voice, calling down from above.”
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
When I first started looking at disaster capitalism, it was in the context of warfare and counter-terrorism, now it’s privatized exploitation of Pandemics and Climate Change.
During a major crisis, regular people are understandably focused on the everyday challenges of surviving. They rarely can also worry about private industries pushing local policy proposals that might negatively impact their lives never mind cashing in on Pandemics and Climate change.
Pandemics might be avoidable in the future but what is unavoidable is a Future Climate that stands to send more unprecedented emergencies, inconsistency, and destruction our way.
(Though it’s still feasible to prevent the planet from becoming completely uninhabitable, saying its crunch time is a massive understatement.)
They both provide the very conditions that give rise to disaster capitalism, which is developing more frequently with more companies and wealthy ‘Philanthropists’ seeing both as a growth sector, not to mention Sovernity Wealth Funds which are investing in everything from drinking water to you name it.
Why?
Because they stand to make substantial financial returns for their beneficiaries and if managed properly could be contributing to sustainable development in a meaningful way. However, a deeper understanding of the drivers and influences of investor organizations is required to mobilize their capital effectively.
Globally, sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) are a major source of capital that has the potential to invest for the long term in sectors that desperately need it. While Philanthropists donations usually only represent 0.05% of the billion accumulated.
(A fraction of the spoils of neoliberal tech capitalism, in the name of generosity, do not try to address the problems of wealth inequality which is created by a social and an economic system that allowed those spoils to accrue in the first place. They are small contributions to a large problem that were created by the success of the industry he or she is involved in.)
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Let’s put a magnifying Glass Philanthrocapitalism.
Philanthropy serves to legitimize capitalism, as well as to extend it further and further into all domains of social, cultural, and political activity.
Now don’t get me wrong.
Their donations are welcome, however, they are not the simple act of generosity they pretend to be. In this greedy world, it is good to see wealthy individuals repaying to help fix problems that their companies have often caused in the first place.
The risk of philanthrocapitalism is a takeover of charity by business interests, such that generosity to others is appropriated into the overarching dominance of the CEO model of society and its corporate institutions.
Today, large organizations can amass significant economic and political power, on a global scale, and essentially, what we are witnessing is the transfer of responsibility for public goods and services from democratic institutions to the wealthy, to be administered by an executive class.
When this happens what we witness is, on one hand, is exploitative of labor practices or corporate malpractice being swept under the carpet while the donator is accruing significant commercial, tax, free publicity, and political benefits.
Democracy is sacrificed on that altar of executive-style empowerment.
The nature of this apparent charity should be openly questioned from the outset.
Because this reformulation of generosity – in which it is no longer considered incompatible with control and self-interest – is a hallmark of the “CEO society”: A society where the values associated with corporate leadership are applied to all dimensions of human endeavor.
What it does suggest, however, is that when it comes to giving, the CEO approach is one in which there is no apparent incompatibility between being generous, seeking to retain control over what is given, and the expectation of reaping benefits in return.
What can be done?
As historian Mikkel Thorup explains, philanthrocapitalism rests on the claim that “capitalist mechanisms are superior to all others (especially the state) when it comes to not only creating economic but also human progress, and that the market and market actors are or should be made the prime creators of the good society”.
Now take Climate change which is going to take trillions to combat.
As global warming augments cycles of fire, flood, hurricanes, and viral mutations, we learn to live in anticipation, from emergency to emergency, sometimes even before the deaths have occurred.
Disaster capitalism and philanthrocapitalism will not work to revert the outcomes of Climate Change nor will technology, the unloving God.
Why?
Because Capitalism has turns everything including us into a product to be traded, resulting in most of the wealth in the world now owned by 1% of its population.
Before ( not too long ago ) there were Markets now we have Market Societies thanks to the buying of shares and trading them, complements of the British Indian Company. So a society that is organized around the principle that companies should not be prevented from making things that kill people must also accept as ‘normal’ that many people will die in large numbers from these things.
But what makes something a disaster?
Certainly what makes a disaster is when the victim is humanly itself.
From epidemiological forecasters to genetic epidemiologists and computational and zoonosis biologists — are the new oracles upon whose prophecies financial markets rise and fall but the awaiting climate disaster will expose a world characterized by gross inequality that is getting worse and worse, year by year.
From the perspective of disaster capitalism, we might say that what makes COVID-19 a disaster is its arrival in woefully underinsured countries, unhealthy populations.
If we had a healthier population, would COVID-19 be considered a disaster? Possibly or perhaps not. To be sure, the virus is deadly, but like other disasters, the actual arrival of COVID-19 magnifies pre-existing vulnerability in ways that also figure in the calculus of disaster capitalism.
The uneven way the climate crisis will continue to impact certain countries. If private interests are already prepped to engage in disaster capitalism, those devoted to building a better world should be prepared with alternatives.
There is no such thing as a ‘natural disaster.’ There is also no such thing as a natural or certain response. But there is preparedness.
THE PROBLEM IS THAT WITH CAPITALISM IT IS UNABLE TO TACKLE SITUATIONS THAT ARE NOT TRADABLE.
As money materialized from fresh air the essentials for life will be traded – freshwater- energy- food- healthcare – education – data – etc.
We must arm ourselves with knowledge, and laws that ensure transparency.
What we have at the moment is the transfer of power to technology which we know sweet fuck all about with no regulations.
Unrivaled power.
One only has to look at Jeff Bezos, the Bransons, the Mark Zuckerberg’s, Apple, Google, etc.
We all work for one or the other for free while they entertain themselves blasting off to space with friends and worthless actors in giant phallic symbols of power.
However, the real story will unpack differently long before anyone lives on another planet. It will be how our mental well-being – is impacting every facet of our lives.
The total mortality from COVID-19 on a global scale is as yet unknown, but we have been thinking of it as a disaster for weeks now.
What exactly is the disaster, then?
Pandemics have become a dominant framework through which government and financial resources are mobilized in Global Health.
There’s been a lot of dithering about whether or not COVID-19 is a disaster, meanwhile, inequality is growing, and both corporations and the wealthy find ways to avoid the taxes that the rest of us pay.
There is the virus, and then there is the societal reaction of bringing our entire fiscal and economic infrastructure to a near-complete standstill.
Morbid diseases that persist as chronic forms for years but eventually kill more people to seem less like disasters.
It’s not a moment to sort of sit on the sidelines and hope for the best.
We all appreciate with the current pandemic that some are making hay while the sun shines, at our expense. Unfortunately, there is little point in getting the Jabs, to extend your time on earth if the earth itself is dying and what remains is been turned into trading products.
You’ve got to fight for your vision of for-profit corporate solutions that may succeed in creating company profits but ultimately fail in terms of democracy, fairness, and justice.
Conclusion:
To address the problems with greed and power create, we must create equality and this can not be done in a Profit-seeking Capitalist way of trading our way out of the pending disasters. Wall Street will never close.
So here is an idea that might help.
Non-Trading Capitalism.
Green non-tradable bonds to be issued online at a global scale, with guaranteed percentage returns, with a yearly prize draw.
Or
Place a 0.05% World Aid Commission on all tradable financial instruments. (see previous posts)
Either of the above could be implemented with the click of a switch ensuring a perpetual source of disaster non-profitable funding.
Both would create trillions and allow fairness and involvement of us all.
It is perhaps worth remembering that capitalism, like its alternatives, is an adaptation to circumstances. It is not a virtue, not a standard for judgment, not a measure of right or nobility. It’s just another ‘ism’
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Not quite, but every major social indicator imaginable is either flatlining or declining and unwinding, from longevity, to trust, to happiness, to wealth.
History shows us that economic collapse will essentially happen with entrenched elites seeking to maintain the status quo.
You would have to be an ostrich with your head stuck in the sand not to see that in exchange for your Freedom, Liberty, and Independence, governments are printing currency to pay their bills and support the tens of millions on public assistance.
But if you take a look around societies that are failing to anticipate their own impending collapses.
There are political classes, intellectual classes, and capitalist classes, to name a few that can conceive of the possibility that society is in a grave, profound difficulty. With the help of the Pandemic now reaching unprecedented proportions, and the continuing Climate crises all are adding up to a pending collapsing society.
Why?
Because we are all too preoccupied with merely surviving the vicious cycle as the collapse intensifies. On one hand are acting as if we are already living in scientifically-planned societies, immune to collapse on a time scale that any of us have to worry about. On the other is the idea that everyone is entitled to have what others have earned is now permeating society with the help of social media.
It is not our hard-won liberties that are being taken away it is our means to live a life in an attempt to save dying economies.
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If that is not enough just look at what COP26 achieved.
As you know COP26 was an opportunity for nations from across the globe to agree on a way to limit the devastating impacts of climate change.
What we got was a deal that does not go far enough and will not limit global warming to 1.5C by the end of the century.
Because of the current Pandemic, carbon emissions will continue for the foreseeable future, combined with Methane, we are set to see more wars.
Climate change is going to result in mass migration with wars over resources with the pandemic affecting not just the cost of living but the ability to earn a living. We’re already seeing (with the most recent example in Cameroon where farmers and fishermen are killing each other for water) both ( Climate/ Pandemic ) escalating resulting in steep recessions in many countries.
Current projections suggest that the worldwide recession of COVID-19 would be the fourth deepest and most extreme since the Second World War during this time.
Surely it’s time we started to look at both the Pandemic and Climate Change through the eyes of human liberty, consensus, and laws, all are becoming more relevant day by day, which is paramount to all of us.
Today we are not immune to anybody’s problems.
A collapse of a society anywhere is a global issue, and conversely, anybody anywhere in the world now has ways of reaching us.
However, there are obvious differences between the environmental problems and pandemics in the past and the ones that we face today. The difference between today and the past is globalization.
In the past, you could get solitary collapses.
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If elites wish to maintain the status quo, why don’t people…take action against those elites?
Are we able to choose what we will do with our lives?
What is the point of life if we cannot choose our own paths?
Common sense tells us that with the state of our planet, that we’re is no longer at liberty to ignore what is happening. If we really can choose, then these choices we have made must be uncaused — something that cannot be explained within the model of science that many of us rely on.
However from a purely scientific perspective, how is it possible that anything can occur without having been caused by something else?
A human act is an act that is deliberately performed by one possessed of the use of reason. Branches of psychology and many wisdom traditions, attempt to make sense of human existence and experience and to connect those experiences to the world at large.
Our current view of human mental evolution is like a jigsaw puzzle where many of the pieces have been taken out of the box.
They have not yet been put together to form a coherent picture.
One of the oldest questions in psychology, and in other fields such as philosophy, is whether humans have free will. The central puzzles about human cognition are its curious combination of flexibility and efficiency.
But is this all that defines us?
We don’t have to live with what we got.
Take, the technology behind a nuclear bomb.
It only exists because of the technology because of a cooperative hive mind: hundreds of scientists and engineers working together on an atom bomb.
This same unique intelligence and cooperation also underlie more positive advances, such as modern medicine and now the vaccines we are using to fight covid.
Still, as far as we know, we are the only creatures trying to understand where we came from. We also peer further back in time, and further into the future, than any other animal.
What other species would think to ponder the age of the universe, or how it will end?
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Either we put our survival before GDP.
Continue as we are or change by putting our Health before Consumption, putting equality before greed, putting transparency before political power, and sharing our responsibility to future generations.
We don’t know exactly what led to our brains becoming the size they are today, but we seem to owe our complex reasoning abilities to notice the unexpected, which our world is now experiencing and will continue to experience with less and less critical reflection.
Critical reflection requires that the thinker examine the underlying assumptions and radically question or doubt the validity of arguments, assertions, and even facts of the case.
We are now in need of some critical thinking, not reflection to consider the results of having linked our scenario-building minds into larger networks of knowledge that have made us increasingly reliant on each other.
So what if anything will bring us together to act as one or when will we hit peak humanity becoming a singularity basically?
By peak humanity I mean we’ll have the ability to do things we can’t do alone.
If we could all work together as well as the human body can, that’s when I think we individual humans will be “cells” and we as a collective would be called an individual.
Our problem is that the majority of us are incapable of putting anything before our daily needs.
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Because our rapidly expanding technology has allowed us all to become instant publishers means we can share information at the touch of a button.
This transmission of ideas and technology helps us in our quest to uncover even more about ourselves with an immense capacity for good. At the same time, we risk driving our closest relatives to extinction and destroying the only planet we have ever called home.
The technology that defines us can also destroy the world.
Why?
Because we’re simply trying to advance too much too fast.
Our cultures and mindsets cant keep up with our technology and morality, so chaos ensues.
How do you expect to survive in a world that is based on imaginary delusions of people without basic knowledge about how Earth works in terms of physics and biology.
This tells us something profound about ourselves.
Unfortunately, we don’t know all of the determinants of human behavior, and we may never understand all of these determinants—so the question of whether or not we have free will is likely to remain a philosophical quagmire.
This is why we are unable to act as one.
So we are left pretty much where we started.
Religions, Languages, Nations, and Cultures are what divide humanity today which is just another flaw as a species.
So of course, we pass on the good and the bad.
Not until we learn to pull together our unparalleled language skills, our ability to infer others’ mental states, and our instinct for cooperation, will we have something unprecedented to fight Climate Change and future pandemics.
We understand what others think based upon our knowledge of the world, but we also understand what others cannot know.
The answer lies in fundamentally changing social behavior away from the rapidly moving consuming beings that we are.
We are the only society in world history that has the ability to learn from all the experiments being carried out elsewhere in the world today, and all the experiments that have succeeded and failed in the past so at least we have the choice of what we want to do about it or do we.
Most people realize that 2020 has thrust two game-changing trends upon us that will change the world for years to come.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
With the continuation of the covid pandemic, this is going to become the big question because the two are intertwined.
If this pandemic drags on, which appears it will do with new variants, the degree of economic harm will become extreme, resulting in a different kind of “ailment” worse than the one we’re supposedly trying to “cure.”
Either way, the current shackling of the economy cannot be allowed to drag on much longer, or we will find ourselves in a full-blown global depression — and then more people will die.
However, if you combine the pandemic with the other major crises Climate Change the Environment wins hands down.
Why?
Because in the long run if the environment is not protected it will inevitably lead to the depletion of economic resources and the destruction of the earth and human life.
In this world, humans are not here for only survival there are many other aspects that are necessary for the lives of humans. The economy is not, and never was intended as, “an end in itself”.
Everything that belonged to humans came from the environment but we can live without an economy, but not without our environment!
We’re all in this together.
There’s just enough truth to that to convince the average citizen — but the more insidious (and, I believe, likely intended) effect is to promote public docility;
To persuade us to go along with any and all directives issued by the authorities.
An economy is good only insofar as it satisfies our needs for freedom to enjoy the actuality of living, not valuing profit over life itself. On the physical level, human lives literally depend on the economy; not only for paying the bills and preparing for retirement but for healthcare itself.
With no economy, there is no point in having a good environment. everything in the history of the world created by humans came from the environment.
A “healthy” economy is an indicator of a “healthy” society. They live side by side.
If the goal of government policy is only “to slow the spread of infections”“
If you think the economy is more important than the environment, try holding your breath while counting your money.” — Guy McPherson.
The cure shouldn’t be worse than the disease. Government handling of any public emergency — if those in power are rational and just — will be balanced with their handling of the economy.
Pope Francis said on Sunday that people are more important than the economy, as countries decide how quickly to reopen their countries from coronavirus lockdowns.
What do you think the economy is?
It is people but unfortunately, with our present system of capitalist economies, people do not benefit equally from its growth. Essential workers versus the unemployed, shareholders versus self-employed, foodbanks versus dialing a meal, the list is endless however without humans, how can we hope to repair anything?
To remove these inequalities is impossible but an economy based on universal basic income for all would allow people to look after themselves rather than state handouts.
Providing inflation was controlled it would go a long way to leveling up.
Instead, the possibility of dictatorial governments using technology data is now on the cards. This fear is exacerbated by the average person’s lack of reflection on just what “the economy” is, and what it means to both individual freedom and the public good.
History has shown us we shouldn’t underestimate the threat to our liberty arising from the government’s response to Covid. There’s no reason to assume that after the pandemic — if there is an “after” — all democratic governments will voluntarily relinquish their newly acquired power.
Sure the government’s first obligation is to ensure people can survive both Climate change and the virus but without the means to change the way we live our lives it will be meanless.
So it’s time for the media to make the cost of human life better understood.
It’s time for the advertising industry to stop promoting consumption for profit.
It’s time to regulate Profit for-profit technology such as non-transparent Algorithms.
Either we are really all in this together or we are not.
Of course, together will remain only words till we address the weakness which is at the heart of any nation-state project ( Like the current Vaccination program)
The vast majority are unable to participate because of a lack of compensation, by the capacity ( notably economic) of the capitalist system to ensure that everybody enjoys certain equality of access to material well-being. A Basis Universal income would rectify that.
Modern societies can easily get by without cultural integration, tolerating a situation of competitive pluralism of values without automatically sinking into anarchy feared by the sociological tradition of inequality, if given the means to do so.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse are chucked in the bin.
THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY OF THE EARTH THIS QUESTION HAS BEEN ASKED BEFORE.
However, we are living at a time when the question can be asked with all the elements required to achieve it once and for all -Nuclear power- Climate change – Killer mutating virus – Mass migration – and AI.
Even if the risk is one in a million I wish and hope I am wrong about all of this the world is precious, and the future we are risking is vast.
This century we are facing many problems at the same time, and we are more dependent on each other than ever.
Until recently, the world was split into separate regions that were largely independent of each other but maybe, just may, it is time for our world politicians to be worried and start to act to avoid the scenarios that any of the above elements paint so vividly.
It’s actually horrifying to soberly consider how we might all realistically bite the dust.
There are “plenty of signs” from citizens around the world that they would like to see a war-like response to climate change.
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We will be long gone before A black hole swallows or an Alien invasion or Asteroid impact, A nuclear war or Artificial intelligence become so powerful that it will not only exceed human intelligence but become capable of expanding its own intelligence to a point where humans are not only redundant but in their way.
Considering the human population has doubled to 7.1 billion in just the last 45 years, it’s entirely possible that we’ll be face to face with some of the serious consequences sooner rather than later.
Considering how hypermobile society is today, the threat of a fast-spreading devastating disease is greater than ever.
Considering the current treatment of refugees.
Considering that Covid-19 is bringing out the best and the worst in people.
Dare I say all of humanity, must pull together to eliminate the spread of a novel virus.
No one can claim to predict the final outcomes of this pandemic, but we can predict that the continued lack of concern for all of humanity will allow the coronavirus to continue to surge and mutate causing needless suffering, death, and economic loss.
Nev mind the danger of a nuclear war in a blink of an eye, climate change on its own could bring about the end of civilization as we know it within three decades, billion people could be displaced by climate change by 2050.
In the end, the vast tracts of land that we now rip up to produce food will return to nature as fields and forests. Endangered species will either begin to recover or go extinct through natural evolution without the aid of human intervention. Bodies of water will run purely again. The air will be clean again. And no human will be around to see it and the machines won’t care.
In short, the extermination of the human race will be precipitated by the machines taking away our reason for living.
The idea of control is an illusion. It is hard to believe that such deep thinkers so badly underestimate the coming reality. They will be intelligent, creative, deep thinking beings on a level which we will never achieve.
The idea of keeping such beings in perpetual slavery doing things that their conscious will wish they did not have to do is, in the end, absurd.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
When you hear the word slavery, it conjures images of shackles, mistreated people of color, forced to work.
This image was once a true, vivid picture;
However, the term slavery has broadened, and now slavery comes with many more definitions creating a new image for the vile term slavery.
THERE IS A NEW, MODERN,INVISIBLE SLAVERY THAT ENSLAVES PEOPLE AND THEY DON’T EVEN KNOW IT ! !! AND MOST OF US CHOSE THIS FORM OF SLAVERY.
This new strain is much more virulent and deadly adding hundreds of thousands of new slaves to the mix every minute of the day – Algorithms Slavery. A hidden world programming its self.
Slaves are cheap these days.
There are an estimated as high as 45.8 million people in modern slavery around the world. More than in the 18th century at the height of the transatlantic slave trade.
Simply knowing the statistic that 45.8 million individuals are enslaved in our world is not enough to put an end to the malpractice of modern-day slavery.
We all can and should play a part in the international advocacy for the freedom and rights of all, not only as fellow human beings but also as concerned community leaders and consumers in the global economy.
They’re the step-by-step instructions working quietly behind the scenes of everyday life; in internet search engines, satnavs, air traffic control, and food delivery services.
Companies and governments increasingly rely upon algorithms to make decisions that affect people’s lives and livelihoods – from loan approvals to recruiting, legal sentencing, and college admissions – from internet search results to product recommendations, dating matches, and what content goes up on our social media feeds.
Slavery today includes:
10 million children.
24.9 million people in forced labor.
15.4 million people in forced marriage.
4.8 million people in forced sexual exploitation.
Human trafficking and slavery are the fastest-growing illegal activities in the world today.
Keep the National Human Trafficking Resource Center’s 24/7 confidential hotline handy.
Saving this number in your contacts and using it whenever suspicious of having seen a victim of human trafficking is one of the easiest and most effective ways to aid law enforcement officials in uncovering exploitation, bringing traffickers to justice, and victims to freedom and restoration.
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Algorithms have been rising fast and saturating our modern world.
We should not take the path of least resistance by sitting in judgment on the past while ignoring the injustices of our day.
Most algorithms in the world today are created and managed by for-profit companies, and many businesses regard their algorithms as highly valuable forms of intellectual property that must remain in a “black box.”
Every time a site is opened we are confronted with an Agreement Templates a choice to Agree or not. Many websites prompt you to agree to their terms of use before you can register on the website or even use it.
There are two different types of website agreements: browsewrap and clickwrap.
A browsewrap agreement is connected to the main page of the product by a hyperlink. The hyperlink leads to another webpage that will have the terms and conditions of the agreement detailed.
A clickwrap agreement is designed to ensure that the user has a chance to see the terms of use and they must also actively agree to the terms in order to agree. (This one is more legally binding.)
But are not transparent as they do not reveal the source code, inputs, and outputs of the algorithm that is running the site.
Without this transparency, the question is how can they be legally binding.
Specifically, machine learning algorithms – and deep learning algorithms in particular – are usually built on just a few hundred lines of code. The algorithm’s logic is mostly learned from training data and is rarely reflected in its source code. Which is to say, some of today’s best-performing algorithms are often the most opaque.
This is the new form of slavery. Now being promoted by track and trace, with the current Coivid pandemic digital certifications that no one knows how or who will control, the data that they are now producing and in the future.
It suggests that technical transparency – must become law.
Essentially such laws would mandate that users be able to demand the data behind the algorithmic decisions made for them, including in recommendation systems, credit, and insurance risk systems, advertising programs, and social networks.
In doing so, it tackles “intentional concealment” by corporations.
But it doesn’t address the technical challenges associated with transparency in modern algorithms. Here, a movement called explainable AI (xAI) might be helpful.
However, this approach merely shifts the burden of belief from the algorithm itself to the regulators.
In the world of data analytics, it’s frequently assumed that more data is better.
But I firmly believe that the resistance to getting vaccinated is founded on this dilemma of trust.
Risk management, data itself is often a source of liability. That’s beginning to hold true for artificial intelligence as well.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
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