Category Archives: We can leave a legacy worthwhile.

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHAT IS CREATIVITY AND WHY WILL WE NEED IT NOW?

01 Monday Jun 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., Civilization., COVID-19, Digital age., Economic Depression., European Commission., European Union., How to do it., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Imagination., Innovation., Our Common Values., Politics., Populism., POST COVID-19., Stimulus package., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The Future, The Obvious., The world to day., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What needs to change in European Union., What Needs to change in the World, World Economic Depression.

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(Four-minute read) 

“Creativity is a combinatorial force: it’s our ability to tap into our ‘inner’ pool of resources – knowledge, insight, information, inspiration and all the fragments populating our minds – that we’ve accumulated over the years just by being present and alive and awake to the world and to combine them in extraordinary new ways.” — Maria Popova, Brainpickings.

It brings to our awareness what was previously hidden and points to new life.

The current COVID-19 pandemic is propelling us to get out of commodity hell into a new age of creativity.

Creativity is the Most Crucial Factor for Future Success.

It is critical to economic growth and solving the problems of the planet.

Creativity begins with a foundation of knowledge, learning a discipline, and mastering a way of thinking.

The longer the list of ideas, the higher the quality of the final solution.

Unfortunately, all the creativity in the world without financial support to achieve sustainability that does not address the problems as a whole will only achieve further inequality.

In seeking a transition to sustainability as the organizing principle in a new world order, a piecemeal approach—emphasizing some aspects,
while neglecting others—is unlikely to yield effective, lasting results.

It requires a fundamental shift in consciousness as well as action. It calls for a fresh vision, a new dream, and new approaches for shaping evolving new realities.

We can no longer rely on governments of countries to come together on the one problem the world has that is going to affect us all for generations.

We can no longer expect us, humans, because of the or indeed without the internet to act as one.

We can no longer watch our world plundered for the sake of short term profit.

We can no longer demand change when we are unwilling to change.

WHY?

Because when one looks over the neighbor’s wall we see 

If we want a Tiger, the Amazon, Clean Air, Fresh Water, Green Energy, and Sustainable Eco-Systems, a Future, it can only be achieved in an invisible manner.

No one wants to pay for it and we know that nothing comes for free.

Widespread use of the term sustainability has led today to a growing ambiguity with the employed within a very broad spectrum of meaning, often to the point of trivialization.

The principles of sustainability are articulated in a general fashion but can receive specific operational meaning in relation to particular cases, for example, sectors of the economy, development issues, business strategies, investment guidelines, or initiatives taken by individuals.

By their very nature, sustainable principles are influenced by language, logic, and action all forcing separation, discrimination, and choice, resulting in the artificial distinction and sequencing of the five principles.

When in fact they interacting and co-defining one another.

To restore rigor to the ideas underlying the concept of sustainability we should (We have the technology) create a World Aid Fund by placing a commission on all transactions and activities that don’t contribute to the principles. ( See previous posts) 

This would raise trillions to tackle not just climate change but all other problems, infusing a common purpose, provide a common foundation, and stimulate common resolve.

All distribution of the funds would be on a grant base.

To avoid political interference and lobbying the fund revenue would be granted on a project summit bases on an annual draw of all projects deemed worthy.

To ensure that the grants are used for the purposes they are intended the fund would be open to total transparency.

It is of course totally logical that in order to establishment of such a fund a pilot scheme would have to be implemented to iron out any problems. 

The European Union has just agreed on a massive financial package to enable its members to recover for CORVID-19. 50% of this package is to be granted.

Just think what it would do if none of this money had to be borrowed in the first place.  

The concept is systemic in nature, meaning that each domain affects all the others and is affected by each in return, all are reduced to mere technicalities, an invisible fund of trillions.

Where do you find creativity?

The answer: Anywhere if you know where and how to look, in a space you yourself make.

Any creative ideas and comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. NOW MORE THAN EVER IT’S IMPORTANT TO MOVE PEOPLE BEYOND JUST DREAMING INTO DOING.

14 Thursday May 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., A Constitution for the Earth., Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., Biotechnology., Civilization., Climate Change., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Digital age., Disasters., Disconnection., Environment, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Modern day life., Nanotechnology, Our Common Values., Post - truth politics., POST COVID-19., Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Fifteen-minute read) 

It is now or never to stop dreaming.

No one has the ability to control the outcome of the ovarian lottery, and whether you were born into a life of privilege or disadvantage this COVID-19 business is beginning to ask us all questions about the Capitalist system that has and is failed us.

The one thing that this crisis is doing is making more space to acknowledge that our losses and our failures aren’t our individual faults.

This is now blatantly and brutely clear.

Let’s start with a few very basic questions.

Do people exist to serve the economy, or should the economy exist to serve people?

Can we create an economy that operates on anti-capitalist principles, rather than for private profit? 

With COVID-19, it turns out that we’ve created a whole society with culture and institutions around the idea that people exist to serve the economy.

And now millions of people are waking up to the reality that that’s a misplaced priority.

What we need is a money system that actually is connecting real resources with real needs, creating real community wealth at the community level.

That requires a financial system that is rooted in the community and accountable to community interest and that operates by life values rather than financial values.

The biggest problem with our current financial system is that it’s very short-term obsessed.

So we need to change that whole culture. And that means changing what we measure and that now will come with either rewards or unintended consequences of all of us.

Without fundamentally changing as to how we see the economy the current system which is organized around financial values over life values will continue. 

If we don’t take the same attitude toward nurturing the human life cycle as we do toward saving the environment from global warming and industrial pollutants were fooling ourselves. 

WHAT WE ARE NOW WITTISING ARE COUNTRIES STRUGGLING TO RESTART THEIR ECONOMIES AS IF NOTHING HAS HAPPENED. RETURNING TO WORK WITHOUT ANY NEW VISION AS TO HOW TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM. 

So our era is intensifying the almost daily choice for each of us – faced with a moment of unknowing, a new challenge, do I:

In other words, we all facing a lethal challenge with a profound urge to survive and yet without any guarantee of success.

This current ruthless system where the individual desire to succeed overrule all common sense to look after the real rewards of the value of life has kept us up to now quiet about our countries failures.

There are still nurturant values: Freedom, opportunity and prosperity, fairness, open two-way communication, community building, service to the community, and cooperation in a community, trust, honesty.

The world is a dangerous place and it always will be, so let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.

We’ve come a long way but the question remains do our lives have any meaning, any purpose?
Every life has two bookends—the day we’re born and the day we die.

Each of us is born with tremendous potential, but ironically, we often end our lives much like we began—weak and helpless and if we are to learn anything from this pandemic it is that the meaning of life is a demanding question, and many dismiss it as simply unanswerable.

The truth of the matter is that every stage of life is equally significant and necessary. 

Where do you fit into this story of human life?

In general, worldview has been most influenced by religion and science.

The belief system determines what we think is possible, and what we think is possible influences the results we create or allow in life.

If you think that you are connected with all of life, you will be more apt to steward your environment with care and treat others with compassion. However, if you think that only your race or social class should rule, your behavior will most likely be very brutal.

On a larger scale, however, our beliefs are predominantly determined by those who control our access to information (media) and our social structures, (including schools), because these institutions dictate what beliefs and behaviors are rewarded and which are punished.

So the prevailing worldview of the 21st century, in which war is considered a viable or necessary means of problem-solving, that starvation is inevitable for some people on this planet, and that it is right for some people to tax and control others against their will, is the result of a well-organized elite who own the systems through which information and values are disseminated.

We are careening into a world of a few haves and billions of suffering have-nots.

It is critical to consider this if we want to protect one another, as well as our planetary home, and to turn the direction of humanity toward thriving.

Above all what we need is. To consider the motivation and funding sources of those who are shaping our worldview.

We are at a critical crossroads where our information and our courage enables us to choose to create a thriving world based on protecting the rights of every individual or as our recent trajectory of misinformation and confusion continues to lead us into a global  Data police state – seeking daily permission to act from the dictators of one-world tyranny run by Global Data platforms. 

We must learn ethical evolution quickly…

What can be done? 

First, we must stabilize our climate. 

Our sentience, our feelings of wonder and awe emerge out of the universe… These profound feelings are not just ours; they are the universe reflecting upon itself… To live is to enter this beauty, surrounded by enchantment, summoned by magnificence.

Secondly, we must overcome the powerful addiction of our smartphones, of money, power, career, and ego needs of every type. This momentum has kept suffering alive despite the enormous changes in human existence from age to age.

Then, we must not allow Artificial Intelligence to control our minds. Rather than just doing the next centralization of power into the hands of a few as we wake up, do our own thinking, connect with others, and take action, humanity has what it takes to thrive. 

Furthermore, we must stop experience every aspect of our lives through the lens of our set of beliefs, personalized social media filters, racism, greed,.    

Which is more primary in finding our way, the rights of the individual, or the opinion of the majority about what’s good for the group?

Finally,  “Everything we need is already here and we can access it by recognizing and acting from our oneness.”
      – Kimberly Gamble

Will we do any of it? 

Not likely. 

Why?

Because we are unable to act as one.

The world’s population is expected to hit seven billion in the next few weeks.

The number of people on Earth has more than doubled in the last 50 years.

As I see it, the economy is just a social construction that lets people produce and exchange goods and services. You can’t serve a social contract. In the end, the agreed-upon valuation between sellers and buyers is all that matters.

What’s it all mean then? 

I think the worst thing we could do would be to actually throw out capitalism and I think what we…the second-worst thing we could do would be to actually fail to reform it.

We need to re-orientate capitalism and the financial markets to make them more long-term focused, not let’s put it back in a box.

There is only one way that we might act together is by creating a perpetual funded World Aid fund, ( See previous posts) with a Constitution for the Earth and the use of all technology.

Remember that the economy depends on millions of factors that can have both a positive and negative impact, while the stock market is only affected by one factor, the supply and demand of stocks.

So, again, the stock market is not the economy. And the economy is not the stock market.

GDP is not a means to a healthy economy unless it protects the smallest ant to the biggest 

All of us will be a long time dead so hopefully, your legacy will continue after your stages of life have ended.

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

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S : WE KNOW THE RIGHT WAY TO GO BUT WHY IS IT SO HARD? IS IT BECAUSE IMAGINATION IS DISAPPEARING.

09 Saturday May 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Big Data., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Digital Friendship., Disconnection., Economic Depression., Emergency powers., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Freedom, GPS-Tracking., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Imagination., Inequality, Innovation., Modern day life., Modern day Slavery, Our Common Values., POST COVID-19., Reality., Robot citizenship., Sustaniability, Technology, Technology v Humanity, The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Tracking apps., TRACKING TECHNOLOGY., 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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(Twenty-minute read) 

If ever there was a need for imagination when this pandemic is over or is eventually under control, hopefully, imagination is going to play a massive role in redesigning not just our societies but the way we live and die on this planet.

The responses to the COVID-19 pandemic are simply the amplification of the dynamic that drives other social and ecological crises.

If we have learned anything from Covid-19 is that global problems require global solutions, whether it is a pandemic, hunger, or access to quality education, reversing climate change, poverty, and inequality, you name it.

Imagination allows us to engage in thinking about alternatives and there is no doubt that we will need some radical changes.

Here I am referring to creative imagination the role it plays in our thinking.

The key point is that in using a term such as ‘imagining’, I am not just referring to some mental activity, but also evaluating that activity in some way, with all its relations and ramifications.

So here is your chance to submit you imagine creative ideas.

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

Where to start? 

Unfortunately, this pandemic is a present-day dystopia.

It’s not the stuff of science fiction set in some distant future or on another planet it’s damage is ongoing and will only get worse as it continues.

To understand the “real world” one has to experience it not imagine it.

At the moment there is a lot of rhetoric about using a tracking App to monitor the spread of COVID_19. In other words, unregulated squealing Apps (that are owned by private corporations) that Id people that have or had the virus. 

 We recently celebrated VE day that won us freedom at the cost of millions of lives. 

In my view, such a tracking proposition is not far removed from what the Nazis did in identify Jews by marking them with a yellow star. 

It is imperative that we in their honor that we now don’t rubbish there sacrifice by becoming Data slaves. 

(As I have said in the previous post, to ensure tracking does not outlive the effort against COVID-19. Both the technology and related policies and procedures should ensure the deletion of data when there is no longer a need to hold it.)

When people feel that their phones are antagonistic rather than helpful, they will just turn location functions off or turn their phones off entirely.

Imagine living under a Chines automatism system run by a Donal Dump.

Such techniques violate some of the core values of liberal democratic regimes.)

Up to now, we thought that Capitalist Globalization was the bee’s knees when in fact it increased inequalities and undermined democracy.

Now we realize that ecological transition IS more than NECESSARY with a bottom-up economy to protect the world and not the top-down begging world we have a the moment.  

However, the big problem remains the same.

How to distribute the gains of any economy. and now the losses.  

Technology will treat people as units and as such the relentless growth and accumulation of wealth and power for the few, will continue to grow. 

Cutting-edge technologies are now powered by artificial intelligence and are fundamentally shifting the distribution of power between people who provide data and entities that can make sense and use of these data.

It will become a battle between protecting individual rights and confronting an existential threat to our collective right to health, to a basic living wage. 

Of course, all of this data helps epidemiologists model the movement and the future of the virus but beyond the privacy and data rights, there are questions of biases and discrimination built into the algorithms that power the technology. 

Machines will never be made to think like people.

We have for decades underpaid the people that we now call essential workers as interchangeable units.

Currently, the AI field is mostly controlled by corporate interests. 

As global COVID-19 cases continue to rise, the unmatched connectivity that defines our era serves as both bane and blessing. 

Let’s ask the question one more time, in taking advantage of big data to create databases to track and predict infectious risk, should we be enforcing social- distancing by squealing on each other?

If you are at risk, the odds change rapidly, you become in favor of sharing or donating data.

There’s really no way to stop the movement of microbes and we need to realize that now our citizens really need to realize that.

Mapping potential carriers with big data notwithstanding privacy concerns, analysis of personal, travel, and other data like clinical data allow accurate predictive modeling.

Imagine if we created a society where everything is predicted and determined by big data. Its presence depends on “symbolic function”, the ability to pretend that one object is another thing entirely.

It will be a massive mistake.

So is technology an imaginary friend or foe?

Will we lose that human touch?

There’s no doubt that the coronavirus pandemic has changed daily life.

But what changes will last? How will we live when it’s all over? 

Even now, when we’re seeing a massive, rapid change in most walks of life — inspired by a push in science or technology, or nudged by a freak, global health emergency — it’s hard to find sound prophecy. And that’s despite access to mountains of data.

Who would have imagined that global consumerism could be crushed by the wheels of its own industry … quite so suddenly.

But perhaps this is the kind of tipping point that we secretly crave — a slowing of society.

Many people will struggle to deal with an increasing rate of change and, as a result, suffer a social or personal shock. Whether we survive the shock depends on how well we adapt.

What complicates things is that no two societies are ever fully the same.

We’re seeing that friction today, between so-called “forces” and “anti-forces.” The push and pull of people and places adapting this way or that way. But it’s nigh impossible to predict how much of that change, and its effect on daily life, will remain, and how much — or what — will change back.

Whatever happens, it won’t be on a massive scale because our regular behavior will start to reemerge.

Who will benefit more?

We might discover that work is not really part of your life or something you like to do, but something you must do exactly seven hours and 42 minutes a day. And then your real life starts.

This Pandemic will not be a ‘one-off’ event. 

Now is the time to start investing in spare capacity, in people and equipment, to cope with such events. 

( See post on setting up World Aid Depots)  

We must envision a path that allows humans to flourish by asking: how can we protect people financially, should widespread technological unemployment happen even sooner than we anticipated?

A realization among some that the dominant ways of knowing and organizing, which characterize our modern techno-industrial cultures, cannot handle the realities of living, complex, relational, human, and non-human systems.

This may help bring into focus the need to update the conceptual foundations of our cultures.

But can tech solve everything?

That raises the question of whether privacy isn’t just a cultural construct.

If your health depended on it, wouldn’t you share your data willingly?

So we need to say goodbye to our concepts of data security.

Data security is something for healthy people.

On the other hand fear of infection is limiting “in-person” interactions, forcing us deeper into an “increasingly chilling use of online systems and all-electronic communication.

Change depends on how we see ourselves as individuals and groups living through the now.

The internet might just be facilitating.

But it’s still about the real world and a reminder that you can’t eat anything on your computer screen.

In the next Pandemic and the forthcoming Depression, there will be nowhere to hide” from economic collapse in our networked world. 

Take video conferencing.

It’s fine as an exception, but as a rule, it fails to fully translate subtle forms of communication — body language below the head and shoulders. All sound is normalized, mics get muted, along with nervous hands or a lost, downward gaze.

In the end, previous pandemics have profoundly re-shaped society and despite huge advances in medical knowledge, we are once again forced to respond in much the same ways as we did to previous pandemics.

Until a worldwide vaccine we’re really back to what our ancestors would have had in terms of dealing with this kind of disease – just stay away from each other in an effort to slow down its spread.

What we’re doing now is keeping it running at any cost.

However, it is obvious that the right path in tackling both COVID-19 and climate change is much easier if you reduce nonessential economic activity.

There is now an opportunity to change course, the earth must be respected.

So imagination without reality is the osmotic membrane between matter and mind, the antechamber between outside and inside, the free zone between the laws of nature and the requirements of reason.

Without, it indicates a lack of commitment to the truth or existence of what is thought of by the person or persons who invented big data. Thinking of something that is not present to the senses without commitment to its truth or falsity a Digital prison. 

Up to now, we live in a world of the short-term profit-driven corporate world, with the support of the trillion-dollar advertising industry and complicit governments who have fetishized economic growth.

If technology dominates us, not only is the whole struggle to imagine a world of equal opportunities betrayed but the opportunity is lost.

So it’ll only be when it’s all over that we’ll have the luxury of telling the story as a neatly bound series of logical events.

The impacts we’ll see from this is going to be far greater than what happened before. Whether imagery is a form of imagination, and whether supposition is a form of imagination as quick as you can imagine there is a depression of historic proportions coming.

Imagination makes our world an even more spectacular place.

We imagine even when we don’t think that we are imagining.

Everything that humans have achieved has started with the glimmer of imagination.

It is, in sum, the pivotal power in which are centered those mediating, elevating, transforming functions that are so indispensable to the cognitive process that philosophers are reluctant to press them very closely.

Why does it seem to diminish over time for all but the most creative among us?

My own ability to imagine up a story or new world seems far weaker than it used to be. Or is it?

It fails to exclude such things as remembering.

We can leave a legacy worthwhile.   So comment.