THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: What happens after we die?

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( Fifteen minute read)

The fear of death is often linked to the unknown, but death is one of the most fundamental facts of life.

A common view is that after death, the soul ascends to heaven. However, very few say they can explain what happens in heaven. How heaven can be real if different religions view the afterlife differently.

Since people have promulgated religions, the guidance they offer may be imperfect and inconsistent within each religion or in comparison with other religions, even if God originally inspired it.

Why do we have to die?

Theologians and religious believers have long had a ready-made answer: death is simply a transition from this stage to the next in a cosmic proscenium.

In the religious worldview death needs no explanation other than “God wills it” as part of a deific design that will be disclosed once we get to the other side, usually involving a cosmic comeuppance for one’s actions and a settling of all moral scores.

Without consciousness of self life is pointless as it has no inherent meaning, you don’t exist and the world you live is a hallucination, an uncontrolled perception of that conscious.

What is certain is that we all have a finite life and we are all the time call our selves as bodily -self, as peroectival -self, as volitional -self, as narrative – self, as social-self, that’s reality.

It also is reasonable to assume that there are many things we cannot perceive, of which we are unaware.

Thus, rather than a position of certainty about the lack of existence after death, it may be more humble to hold an agnostic position: It is unknowable what happens after death so a humble position is to accept that what happens after death is unknowable.

An eternal life is pointless. Without death there would be no life. We die so others may live.

We are biological machines that see the world not just visually, but with predictions of our brains.

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We’re learning more new things about death everyday.

Much has been said and theorized about the great divide between life and the Great Beyond. While everyone and every culture has their own philosophies and unique ideas on the subject, we’re beginning to learn a lot of new scientific facts about the deceased corporeal form.

At this every moment, within our bodies and all around us, trillions of microscopic combatants are waging a war that shapes our health and life on Earth.

Time of death is considered when a person has gone into cardiac arrest, which is the cessation of the electrical impulse that drives the heartbeat. As a result, the heart locks up.

This moment when the heart stops is considered by medical professionals to be the clearest indication that someone has died.

But what happens inside our mind during this process?

Do we entered a hyper-alert state just before death?

Does death immediately overtake our subjective experience or does it slowly creep in?

Could people who were technically dead be cognizant of what’s happening around them?

After death, you’re aware that you’ve died!

Even after our breathing and heartbeat stop, we remain conscious for about two to 20 seconds. That’s how long the cerebral cortex is thought to last without oxygen. This is the thinking and decision-making part of the brain. It’s also responsible for deciphering the information gathered from our senses.

It can take hours for our thinking organ to fully shut down.

To understand whether consciousness becomes annihilated or whether it continues after you’ve died for some period of time — and how that relates to what’s happening inside the brain in real time is impossible to know.

To break the definition of dead down, an individual must be completely brain-dead so that their breathing and blood circulation stops. This specification is important because there are cases when an individual’s lungs and heart are still beating. The cells of the rest of the body can also remain alive because they still have a supply of oxygen. However when the heart stops pumping blood and the lungs stop breathing, cells won’t receive oxygen or nutrients and will begin to die in a matter of minutes.

There are 4 stages that the body moves through after death:

After death, the body undergoes a series of changes that occur in a timely and orderly manner. These stages are also affected by the extrinsic and intrinsic factors of the corpse. Since there is no fixed duration for these stages, it is impossible to determine the exact time of death unless there is a witness or some other verifiable source of this information.

All these stages of death are often overlapping in their occurrence. They may start separately, but most of them continue to occur simultaneously Hence, you never rely solely on one or 2 factors but rather take as many as possible into consideration and then draw conclusions from there!

Depending on the circumstances of death in space, the body could be frozen, dried out, slowly rotting, or decomposing normally.

Pallor Mortis, paleness in the face, Algor Mortis, the corpse eventually starts to match the outside temperature. Rigor Mortis, all the muscles will become relaxed and limp, but the whole body will stiffen after a few hours. On average, rigor mortis lasts for 24 to 48 hours. and Livor Mortis your blood succumbs to gravity. Lividity starts with the skin where the blood has settled, developing a bright red colour. After a few hours, the colour changes from red to bluish-purple. This can take 6 to 8 hours with a bluish colouring of the skin.

  • Cells are biology’s basic units of life — microscopic capsules with everything needed for life and replication contained within a fat-based membrane and, sometimes, a tough outer wall.
  • All life on the planet — except viruses — consists of cells.

Vastly outnumbering the viruses that do us harm, phage’s power ecosystems, drive evolutionary innovation, and harbour a remarkable capacity to heal life-threatening infections when conventional antibiotics fail. Yet most of us have never heard of them, thinking of viruses only as enemies to be feared.

Microbe rules our world.

  • Researchers estimate there may be as many as ten million trillion trillion phage’s on Earth — that’s 10 with 30 zeros after it.The Immortalists - can science defeat death? © Getty Images                                                         Can science defeat death? 
  • Humanity’s obsession with the afterlife and the quest for immortality.
  • Life is just too long if it lasts an eternity. 
  • It is estimate that before our generation roughly 100 billion people lived and died, and not one of them has returned to confirm the existence of an afterlife, at least not to the high evidentiary standards of science. 

The goal of cryonics, in a phrase, is “freeze—wait—reanimate.” The soul in this scenario is the self as stored in memory, so the cryopreservation of memory preserves the self indefinitely until the day when medical technologies come online to reanimate it. Currently this is done through the vitrification of the brain, which involves turning the cryopreserved brain into a glass-like substance.

The goals of extropy are uplifting if not utopian: longer lives, more intelligence, greater wisdom, improved physical and mental health, and the elimination of political, economic, and cultural limits to personal development and social progress. Once these are achieved “immortality is next” they proclaim.

Transhumanists intend to transform the human condition first through lifestyle choices involving diet and exercise, then through body enhancements (e.g., breast or cochlear implants) and body parts replacements (e.g., artificial knees, hips, and hearts), then genetic engineering, all with the goal of taking control of evolution and transforming the species into something stronger, faster, sexier, healthier, and with vastly superior cognitive abilities.

We will reach a point when medical technologies will add one additional year every year to your life expectancy. There go I but for the grace of God. As the rate of progress of medical technology accelerates the years will pile up for decades, centuries, and beyond, possible to forever. At some point it will be prudent to upload your mind—your self, your soul—into a computer to avoid the problems that a biological substrate like a brain entails.

When that happens humans will achieve immortality.

Do we enter heaven, become an animal, or reset in a simulation with our souls teleporting instantly.

In the meantime, whether or not there’s a hereafter, we live here and now, so we must make the most of our time by making every day, every encounter, every relationship count, for that is where the true meaning of life is found.

The meaning of life is that everyone must choose the answer to that question for themselves. Life is far more absurd than we can grasp. But we have to grasp that absurdity by the horns and deal with it.

Purposes are created by people.

Yes you can have deep meaning without having to deny rationalism or science!

“Are your thoughts and memories really your own?”. After all, if life loses meaning, there’s still life.

You live and die in a universe which has been evolving for billion and billions of years, expanding/ inflating at the speed of light ( 300,000 km per second with a light year equalling  946,000,000,000 km  creating more and more space)

Andromeda the nearest galaxy in this universe of ours is two and a half light years from us.  We see it as as man had only just started using stone tools. Every think in the universe is moving away from us without changing it position. When space expands it stretches space making more space.

Space has no centre, no walls that mark’s its end, so you can roam around the universe without meeting an edge.

Even if you could travel considerably faster than light you would come back to where you started.

Beyond the Cosmic Horizon is undecidable or known by any means we have.

Beyond this horizon how much space is there?

It is calculated that is size of the dimeter of the observable universe is 23 trillion light years away. Our observable universe is home to two trillion galaxies with the unobservable universe housing 30 quint trillion of them.

Life must be playing out on an other world.

As to how far heave is God only knows, as beyond the cosmic horizon no one knows where the space of an expanding universe’s goes. Perhaps God is dark energy.

Ultimately like us the universe will die so for what purpose would a god create such a universe  Long live imagination, perhaps it is God.

If I can control how and what I perceive, then I am the god of my own world.

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Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASKS : IS THE UNITED NATIONS ANYLONGER RELEVANT?

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( Five minute read)

IT’S APRIL FOOLS DAY.

In a world full of geopolitical tensions unprecedented in decades are we fooling ourselves with the United Nations.

The United Nations stands at a crossroads. It is bedeviled by a litany of challenges, including gross underfunding, bloated bureaucracy, disunity, and geopolitical rivalry among the permanent members of the Security Council.  The stakes could not be higher.Is the United Nations (UN) Relevant in the 21st Century?

People are looking to their leaders to get out of the current global “mess”, the worsening climate emergency, escalating conflicts, technological disruptions, cost-of-living crisisis.

The question is.  Is the United Nations capable of dealing with these conflicts, especially when one of its priorities is to balance its neutrality in the face of differences between member states.

The UN is an old organisation established after World War II to promote peace, now a broken institution that sometimes works when it comes to distribution food aid.

Even though the agency has been marginalised from playing a significant political role, it has still been able to play an important role in providing humanitarian aid, for eradicating poverty, promoting education, and improving health and gender equality around the world.

One of the most significant criticisms has been the ineffectiveness of the UN Security Council in resolving conflicts.

For example, the United Nations Security Council’s all-powerful group, the P-5 (the five permanent members – also veto powers – of the council), excludes huge demographics of the world population such as Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. Members from these regions therefore rightfully feel relegated to be second-class members of the organization’s top brass.

The Security Council, which is responsible for maintaining international peace and security, has often been paralyzed by the veto power of its five permanent members – the United States, China, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom. This has made it difficult for the Security Council to take decisive action in conflicts such as the Syrian civil war, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and more recently in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

I think where we see a lot of people losing faith is when they see these moments of hypocrisy

The powerful role Russia still plays as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, even as it threatens international peace and security

The US, which, while it is able to use its powerful veto power to block resolutions on Palestine because of its bilateral relations, turns around and tries to pass resolutions on territorial integrity in the case of Ukraine.

The UN is going to use a lot of rhetoric, but on an effective level it is not going to be able to carry out any kind of instrument to stop this as no one wants to deployed peacekeeping forces in various conflict-ridden regions of the world.

Against a backdrop of harmonisation among countries seems to be the UN’s priority, but experts think reform is more urgent.

One of the key challenges facing the UN is the increasing complexity of conflicts and the rise of new security threats such as terrorism and cyber warfare.

To address these challenges, the UN must strengthen its conflict prevention and resolution capabilities, investing in early warning systems, mediation, diplomacy, and working more closely with regional organizations.

It must also address the root causes of conflicts, including poverty, inequality, and human rights abuses.

It must promote multilateralism and global cooperation to address global challenges such as climate change, pandemics, and terrorism.

Why?  Because if you don’t have an actor that is able to impose all the legislation, then you have a problem.

It’s obvious that organisations, international organisations, also have to change and their priorities might not change.

Although the UN has faced criticisms for its limitations, it remains an essential institution for addressing the world’s most pressing issues.

One of the reasons why the UN remains relevant is its ability to mobilize resources and coordinate efforts towards global challenges. Its ability to set and promote international standards and norms.

Upholding human rights. The UN’s human rights bodies and mechanisms provide an essential avenue for monitoring and investigating these violations, and for promoting accountability and justice.

It must be Transparent and and accountable by promoting open and inclusive decision-making processes.

It must reform its organizations for equal participation and influence by all global regions and interests.

It must embrace technology and innovation to increase its effectiveness and efficiency.

The challenges facing the world today – such as climate change, pandemics, and terrorism – require coordinated and collective action at the global level, and the UN is uniquely positioned to play a central role in this effort.

The reforms must aim to make the UN nimbler, less bureaucratic, more transparent and accountable, and more decentralized and effective.

They must be about placing sustainable development “at the heart” of the UN because development is the UN’s “best tool for preventing conflict and building a future of peace.

None of these reforms can be achived while the veto power of its five permanent members remain.

The ICJ is the UN’s judicial organ, composed of 15 judges elected to nine-year terms by the General Assembly and Security Council. The ICJ does not have the authority to weigh in on any international legal dispute it wishes; instead, the Court’s ability to hear a case is derived from the consent of the Member States concerned.

Member States are bound to comply with ICJ decisions in any case to which they are a party is now a joke.

The UN system is comprised of more than 30 affiliated organizations, all with conflict of interest.

Perhaps its time to move these agencies out of the UN into independent organiations, subject to an new AI world sustainable legal consitution.

Discussing reforms without making provisions for adequate resources will lead nowhere; ( See previous post on Funding to bring the United Nations closer to “we the people.”)

A permanent coordinating platform should be set up to integrate the UN response across agencies, funds, and related organizations. Data is now a major economic asset, but its use and consequences go well beyond commercial issues to matters such as the quality of society and political systems.

The distribution of power has also shifted considerably. Global institutions need to reflect these changes or lose legitimacy in the eyes of the emerging players, whether governments or their people.

Yet data governance at the global level lags well behind technological developments

.In today’s complex world, identifying problems, designing policies, and delivering change is no longer within the power of states standing alone. It requires participation of diverse actors, including nonprofits, grassroots movements, corporations, and local authorities.

Getting inclusivity right and shifting to a more equitable governance model will be critical to weathering power politics and delivering for all.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: WHEN WE REFLECT UPON OUR ORIGINS IT IS DIFFICULT TO AVOID THE MOST ESSENTIAL QUESTION OF THEM ALL – WHAT MAKES US HUMANS DIFFERENT FROM OTHER ANIMALS?

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( Twelve minute read)

Our brain have difficulties in accepting that we actually are animals and thus highly dependent on nature where nothing exists alone.

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Science has organized human evolution into six levels.

We share the first five with other creatures, while the sixth level makes us unique –  language.

Our use of language and given rise to the sciences and philosophical thoughts that now are transforming the entire biosphere, while abusing it to such a degree that we are currently on the verge of destroying it completely.

It is difficult to understanding that extinctions are not features of this civilization, but virtually all past civilizations have faced this fate. We might be more advanced technologically now, but this gives little comfort as we are not immune to the threats that undid our ancestors.

MAYBE THIS IS THE MAIN REASON THAT WE ARE UNABLE TO ADDRESS THE CLIMATE CRISIS, WHICH IS NOW AN INDUSTRY RATHER THAN A THREATH TO OUR VERY EXISTENCE, to the biodiversity, to food security, access to fresh water, the lack of which will result in wars.

Unfortunately we are still animals living in a world that is changing the atmosphere’s chemistry, which is becoming a reality, not tomorrow, but right now and that’s with the number of people we already have.

Indeed the very technology we now rely on bring new unprecedented challenges.


From the emergence of Homo sapiens, it took roughly 300,000 years before one billion of us populated the Earth, with people evolving into their current form some 200,000 years ago.

(Huts, 2 million years ago. Boats, 900,000 years ago. Cooking, 500,000 years ago. Javelins, 400,000 years ago, Glue, 200,000 years ago. Clothing possibly 170,000 years ago.)

“Behavioural modernity,” evolved 50,000-65,000 years ago.  It took 15,000 to 10,000 years to start growing stable foods.

The planet most likely will surpass eight billion people sometime around mid-November. (The world population is to exceed 10 billion this century.)

Climate change – the world population – technologies inequality – you name it, will determine how many of us will be living on Earth as we approach 2100.

There can be no mistaking the import of this, as it belies the dangers of the next several decades which will see migration on a massive scale, due wars because of runaway climate change.A photograph of a person facing away from the camera, standing with their arms raised, in front of factories with smokestacks emitting smoke

Unprecedented droughts or city-destroying floods would prompt mass migrations, destabilizing the rich world or giving rise to far-right nationalism. Or a global famine could send food prices surging, triggering old-fashioned resource wars.

Survival and success do not depend on brutal force. There is an empirical connection between violence and climate change that’s persists across 12,000 years of human history.

The long chain of evolutionary development has taught us with technology and political trends conflict will continue and even intensify.

“Whether we like it or not changes will be happening, and the situation will not improve by itself.

The future well-being and actual life on earth depends on us all and our ability to express compassion and work together as the eusocial creatures we de facto are.

“No one is doing this in the right way at the moment,”

World hunger, ecological and environmental disaster, global warming, massive shifts in weather systems, the re-emergence of diseases long thought controlled, with political turmoil, in a world where a barrel of water is more expensive than a barrel of oil.

Empathy, compassion and cooperation are now so saturated by Tec that we are becoming a species totally unscrew and desentized to reality, others, and their needs, becoming algorithms predictions.  

Efforts so far to incorporate climate change into future population projections have been inadequate.

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Where is it leading us?

To answer that, we have to think about how we got here in the first place – Greed

Currently it is estimated for that 50 million people are living on less than the $3.65 a day, with half of the global population lives on less than US$6.85.

You could add another few billons who are not poor enough to feature.

The world is divided into the very rich, and the very poor. And since everybody knows there aren’t a whole lot of very rich people, they assume the majority of the world’s population is living in extreme poverty. But that’s completely wrong; the overwhelming majority of people live somewhere in the middle.

Our problem is inequality, attached to Greed, which is now plundering the world in the form of profit seeking algorithms that are generating profits for the few, using the latest technology Algorithmic trading designed to capitalize on market inefficiencies, trades can be completed at speeds and frequencies impossible for mere mortals. 

Algorithm’s are creating a new social contract between a sovereign and citizens, in which the people collectively who were sovereign are becoming digitalised citizens.

Power now resides with those best able to organize knowledge.

The knowledge revolution should bring a shift to direct democracy, but those who benefit from the current structure are fighting this transition. This is the source of much angst around the world, including the current wave of popular protests.

Neither, physical military strength, nor access to capital are now sufficient for economic success.

If we are to have any chance, we have to change to direct democracy which is easier to achieve than big, sprawling governments.

I’m not sure we can, but I know it will happen because capitalism or any other systems will no longer generate sufficient income to sustain social welfair states.

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The problem is how do we reconcile that with democracy in countries composed of millions of citizens?

Talk of artificial intelligence destroying humanity plays into the tech companies’ agenda, and hinders effective regulation of the societal harms AI is causing right now.

Barely a week seems to go by without a tech industry insider trumpeting the existential risks of artificial intelligence (AI). Fearmongering narratives about existential risks are not constructive.

Serious discussion about actual risks, and action to contain them, are.

The sooner humanity establishes its rules of engagement with AI, the sooner we can learn to live in harmony with the technology.

Algos require an uninterrupted power supply and reliable internet access. Even a brief failure in these conditions can prove cataclysmic.

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Memorandum for Green Bond Issuers: Certain Aspects and Considerations -  Herman, Henry & Dominic LLP

What is needed are direct opportunities for all to invest in the future.

One of our fundamental challenges in the years ahead will be to mobilize the substantial sums needed for investment in everything from green infrastructure to the cutting-edge technologies that we will need to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 and slow the course of climate change.

At the moment we have Green bonds/Climate change bonds are issued exclusively to finance projects that positively impact the environment. Today, more than 50 countries have issued green bonds. However, the appeal of this market and the fact that there is no binding regulatory framework for green bonds may lead to suspicions of ‘greenwashing’ (false green claims).

There’s nothing new or specifically European about green bonds.

They’ve been around since the beginning of the 21st century. Although they weren’t yet called green bonds, the first of them are thought to have been issued in 2001 by the City of San Francisco to finance a solar power project.

Any organization – such as governments, corporations, and financial institutions – can issue a green bond.

The green bond market is a portion of the larger debt market. Historically, over US$2 trillion of green bonds have been issued globally to date, with the potential to grow to US$5 trillion by 2025.

Industry bodies and investor action groups such as Climate Action 100+, as well as large
market investors such as sovereign wealth funds and pension funds, are in a strong position to drive development of this market. However there is no universally accepted legal and commercial definition of a green bond.

Green bonds are proven to be an effective means to secure the resources required to meet the national climate change goals, so why not issue green bonds that any joe soap could invest in.

Lotteries exist in 46.67% of countries worldwide. In many countries, with the adoption of digitalization the Lottery is a lifestyle and a massive contribution to their revenues. The Lottery industry continues to grow worldwide, with an expected increase of 4.1% CAGR by 2031. The spread of online lotteries associated with the increase in smartphone and internet usage is one of many factors that can drive growth in the global market. The Lottery market is projected to grow to $405.20 billion by 2028.

US POWERBALL 59 tickets were sold every second of the year.

MEGA MILLIONS 2,817 tickets every minute or about 47 tickets every second—of the whole year!

EUROMILLIONS 342 EuroMillions tickets were sold every single second of 2019—or 20,566 tickets a minute!

UK LOTTO 122 lottery tickets for every one of the 31,536,000 seconds in 2019

They allows us all the chance to change our lives.

A staggering amount of money that goes into lotteries on a daily basis. In fact, just about every second of every day.

By making 1% OF ANY LOTTO TICKETS purchase eligible to acquire a climate Bond (with a gurantee interest return in twenty years from now..) RATHER THAN BIN THE TICKET ON LOOSING ONE COLLECTS THEM IN ORDER TO FUND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT.

 It would be everyone’s collective interest to identify with the physical manifestations of climate change.

Climate change is a defining issue of our time.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS: WHILE BECOMING THE MOST DANGERIOUS THREATH TO ALL OUR LIVES, TECHNOLOGY HAS AND STILL IS CHANGING HOW WE INTERACT AMONG OURSELVES.

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( Four minute read)

Humans are highly social creatures.

Advancements in technology is now completely re-shaped the everyday routine of the Modern Human.

Developing a chokehold on our lives, to the point of corverting us all into product to be harvested on a 24/24 bases by profit seeking algorithms.

Our brains have become wired to process social information, and we usually feel better when we are connected.  Social media taps into this tendency.

When you develop a population-scale technology that delivers social signals to the tune of trillions per day in real-time, the rise of social media isn’t unexpected.

It’s like tossing a lit match into a pool of gasoline.

The once-prevalent, gauzy utopian vision of online community is disappearing,

Why?

BECAUSE ITS NOT GETTING ANY EASYER AT BEING A PERSON, IN THIS TECHNOLOGICALLY FUCKED UP SUPPOSELY CONNECTED WORLD.

Along with the benefits of eaiser connectivity and increased information, social media has also become a vehicle for disinformation and political attacks from beyond sovereign borders.person on a smartphone

With little or now privacy left, we are now left to endure, rather than enjoye a life on social media, gorging on the most lurid speculation which one feels kind of stuck and unconsciously obliged to check it way more than you want to

I dont know about you but I am sick of seeing people so drawn to their phones at social events and in general I wonder are we are all just becoming AI predictions as what we are and how we live our lives. 

Companies like Google, X, and Meta collect vast amounts of user data, in part to better understand and improve their platforms but largely to be able to sell targeted advertising.

Collection of sensitive information around users’ race, ethnicity, sexuality, or other identifiers are now not just putting people at risk, they are also desentizing us at large to the state of the world.

Even for users who want to opt out of ravenous data collection, privacy policies remain complicated and vague, and many users don’t have the time or knowledge of legalese to parse through them.

At best, users can figure out what data won’t be collected, but either way, the onus is really on the users to sift through policies, trying to make sense of what’s really happening with their data.

There’s a very strong corollary between the data that’s collected about us and current state of the world -wars – growing inequality  – demishing democracy – lack of long term actions, such as on Climate Change that has now turned into an industry not a threat to our very existence.

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The emergence of smartphones in 2007 generated macro data, which uses artificial intelligence  transforming our daily routines.

There are no laws that require platforms to show how they use or sell the data collected.

So far, attempts to curtail the collection of users’ data has been piecemeal, largely driven by state-level laws and individual enforcement actions. Regulation continues to be extraordinarily behind.

The companies are not going to change on their own.

However it barely scratches the surface of what they have enabled, with few arenas of human endeavour left untouched by the smartphone.

Against the backdrop of the constant rise in time spent by young people on social media, a staggering 74% of them are checking their social media accounts more than they would like to. Instagram, TikTok and other social media have become daily fixtures in their lives with 59% of young people now spending more than two hours of their average day on social media.

The five most popular platforms are Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat and Facebook.

Whilst YouTube and TikTok dominate as sources of entertainment, Instagram, Snapchat and BeReal are the platforms most widely posted on by young people.

Addictive platform design take on young people’s mental health and their feeling of powerlessness in the face of global companies’ constant nudging to participate in a vicious cycle of personal data sharing and content consumption.

The “addictive” lure of the constant stream of updates and personalized recommendations, often feeling “overstimulated” and “distracted”, but algorithms pick up on mental health issues and expose users to ever more related content, bombarding us with bad news as it stimulated more viewings, till we are all officially desensitized.

Something bad happens across the country? We hear about it. Something bad happens across the world? We hear about it. Something good news happens, for all intitive purpose it is ignored.  

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The natural question at this point, it would seem, would be to ask where we should draw the line.

Why tragedies stop seeming so tragic – and why this needs to stop.

The sheer amount of violence present in the world only seems to be increasing with Netflicks quietly capitalizing on another form of content. More than other entertainment outlets, Netflix’s hit shows spotlight gruesome violence. More than other entertainment outlets, a number of Netflix’s hit shows spotlight gruesome violence, often committed against women.

Escalating violence on-screen can make us more tolerant of it in real life.

Gone are the days of bang bang ypur dead Graphic, realistic violent content is considered the ‘norm’ post-watershed.

This is not necessarily because people are becoming more violent in their nature, but is rather due to increased methods of communication brought on by technological improvements like playing violent video games.

Is it possible that individuals who consume violent media not only become more aggressive, but also make their friends and family more aggressive, even  if those do not consume violent media themselves? The consumer is actively influencing her/his friend to make her/him more alike.

We don’t process large numbers as well as we do smaller numbers.

How sad should we be over the news of those dead in Gaza? Utterly distraught, significantly, not much?

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Mobile phones are now extraordinarily multi-functional, but mass access to knowledge in the age of communications threatens basic concepts such as individual identity and autonomy.

To maintain our empathy for others, it is important to first extend it to ourselves and to those within our immediate circle.  

Smartphones have enabled the digital and real worlds to be blended through augmented reality, allowing users to track aircraft overhead, for example (Credit: Getty Images)

The Smart phone is destroying this empathy, one of the most ubiquitous technology devices of all time, with the ability to take the device everywhere comes the idea that no one is ever far from the things that matter most to them.

With the death of proximity, the smartphone has become your home, but home is no longer a refuge.

We don’t know about how our smartphones are affecting us.

Are they alienating people from each other, or helping them to connect with others?

Do they affect children differently than adults?

And how do we step away from our phones if our whole lives are on them?

Smartphones are basic necessities but it is only by looking at the vastly different uses and contexts that we can fully understand the consequences of smartphones for people’s lives around the world.

Combining artificial intelligence with the extraordinary data-gathering capabilities of smartphones, is creating other opportunities. Millions of people across many parts of the world that are conflict-bound or subject to some of the worst effects of the climate crisis have left their homeland behind completely in search of a new life are using their smartphone to navigate their circumstances and situations.

(According to the UN, there were 110 million forcibly displaced people in the world.)

If you ask people how much they care about all people on earth dying, it’s not seven-and-half billion times more concern, than if you told them one person would die.

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If we assume that transcendentally brilliant artificial minds won’t be along to save or destroy us, and live according to that outlook, then what is the worst that could happen – we build a better world for nothing?

We need a cultural change in values, to enable more deliberate decision-making.

If we don’t the future of society, as defined by the scientific and technological revolutions needs a custom ethical and philosophical direction, as the world is rapidly moving to each person doing what’s best for themselves.

Or to put it more bluntly.

Someday in the future, someone will arrive at another turning point where the fate of the species is theirs to decide.

If our extinction proceeds slowly enough to allow a moment of horrified realisation, the doers of the deed will likely be quite taken aback… if the Earth is destroyed, it will probably be by mistake.

Society used to be able to make a long-term plan and that’s not something that happens now.

We go to quick fixes.

———————-

Clearly, technology by itself is neither good nor bad.

It is only the way and extent to which we use it that matters. It is indisputable that thanks to technology, we get a chance to live a life our predecessors could not even dream about. However reality does not take place in Smartphones.

There is no economy or individual that is unaffected by climate change. By 2050, this problem could force 216 million people to relocate within their own nations.

When all areas of human activity get rapidly digitized, it’s easy to become desensitized to the importance of innovations and advancements for the overall progress of society.

Those in the tech industry know that the opportunities on this horizon are endless.

——————

What are today’s challenges for artificial intelligence?

Building technology for the sake of technology won’t cut it in a globalized society.

There’s a juxtaposition between the need for a more connected world and hesitation from people toward technology that tech innovators need to account for and solve.

The development of new advancements must be rooted in a holistic mindset balancing desire for more conveniences with feasible solutions to meet the needs of future generations.

To accomplish this, education will play a critical role in bridging perceptions and fostering authentic trust between technology and humans.

Indeed it is my belief that all teenagers are now in need to be educated in classroom in the use of mobiles.

Do you believe technology should be more focused on the problems of society or individual needs?

Is technology being used sufficiently to tackle society’s major issues?

—————

The human species will change with genetic editing, artificial intelligence challenges the concept of “I” and “individual;” and robotics will bring new “companion robots,” which we need to define and adopt socially.

In the last 10 years, genetics has made it possible to analyse old DNA and, as a result, revealed the history of the planet’s first inhabitants. We are now a single human species but we finally know that descend from other species. We now have unprecedented tools to inform and transform society and to protect the environment.

How should we harness this potential in the future?

How does this perspective change our understanding of the current human diversity?

Excessive use of gadgets, lack of offline communication, and social media abuse were proven to cause negative effects on mental health.

It is indispensable to give machines “common-sense knowledge” in order to move toward the ambitious goal of building “truly intelligent” general AI.

This is the time to make the necessary decisions to outline this path.

When robots take the final leap from our imagination to our homes and workplaces, they will become our companions; they will add new possibilities and countless variables to our patterns of behaviour:  they will change how and where we build, how we move or the materials we use to create things.

——————–

How, exactly, could AI destroy us?

We humans have already wiped out a significant fraction of all the species on Earth.

That is what you should expect to happen as a less intelligent species – which is what we are likely to become, given the rate of progress of artificial intelligence. For example, in many cases, we have wiped out species just because we wanted resources.

The worst-case scenario is that we fail to disrupt the status quo, in which very powerful companies develop and deploy AI in invisible and obscure ways.

As AI becomes increasingly capable, and speculative fears about far-future existential risks gather mainstream attention, we need to work urgently to understand, prevent and remedy present-day harms.

These harms are playing out every day, with powerful algorithmic technology being used to mediate our relationships between one another and between ourselves and our institutions.

—————————–

How would AI get physical agency?

In the very early stages, by using humans as its hands.

You feel as though you are encountering absolute reality, whatever the hell that is, enlightenment is nothing more than a “pure consciousness event which is just a stepping-stone, at best, to true enlightenment, which does not make you permanently happy, let alone ecstatic. It is a state that incorporates all human emotions and qualities: love and hate, desire and fear, wisdom and ignorance.

Enlightenment does not give you answers to scientific riddles such as the origin of the universe, or of conscious life,  just as electrons can be described as waves and particles, so ultimate reality might be timeless and aimless—and also have some directionality and purpose.

The ability to hold opposites, emotional opposites, at the same time is really what we’re after.

However the mind remains in many respects unchanged, you discover a void at the heart of reality.

Not until  you realize you’re the same jerk you were all along.

The biggest power trip you can imagine” and an “aphrodisiac.” you think you’re God.

The object vanishes and only consciousness remains, it becomes its own subject and object.

It becomes aware of itself, seeing life as an illusion that makes accepting death easier.

What you are, and what the world is.

I must be missing something. What can we do about it?”

I want to bring us back to a more practical reality, which is that technology is what we make it, and we are abdicating our responsibility to steer technology toward good and away from bad.

That is the path I try to illuminate in this post an issue of social responsibility.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: IF YOU HAD A CHOICE WHAT SORT OF WORLD WOULD YOU LIVE IN?

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( Five minute read)

On July the 20th this year it will be fifty five years since one of us stood on another planet. Since then only 24 people have seen the whole of Earth. Achived with less computer power that is now in our phone’s.

In those fiftyfive years we have had fifty-five active conflicts. Eight of these 55 conflicts were classified as wars.

This is the world we got.

21st Century
  • Vietnam War (1962 – 1973
  • Persian Gulf War (1991)
  • War in Afghanistan (2001)
  • Operation Pillar of Defence (2012)
  • War in Iraq (2011)
  • 2014 Gaza War (2014)
  • Russian Annexation of Crimea (2014)
  • War in Donbas (2014-present)
  • Yemeni Civil War (2015-present)
  • Turkish coup d’état attempt (2016)
  • 2021 Israel-Palestine crisis (2021)
  • Russian Invasion of Ukraine (2022)

We are truly living in a very unique time in the history of our civilization, facing several simultaneous challenges and converging crises:

Because the world is a cauldron where dozens of cultures, religions and ideologies mix with each other, which always leads to a conflict. We are all born of frailty and error.

A deteriorating environment, a 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.

What can we do about it?

The answer to such question is certainly not simple, and you will not find it in any textbook.

All these problems and converging crises are systemic.

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.

The 20th century revolution of technologies that permits long distance travel and instant communication across the world has brought all cultures closer together, making us more aware than ever of the many diverse spiritual-cultural traditions that have flourished for millennia as intricate, elaborate meta-solutions to the challenges and opportunities of living in a particular place.

Now we are challenged to integrate the wealth of knowledge and capability that this remarkable period has brought us into a new narrative of interbeing — a synthesis of ancient wisdom of our interconnectedness and interdependence with modern science and technology.

We now have a choice to make!

Either we move into a new phase in the evoloution of consciouness and a new ear of life on planet Earth, 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 along 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!

A world with less gravity and more humanity.

Where people get what they deserve rather than deserve what they get.
Where there is a God for everyone and no one God is better than other.
Where an empty stomach is an alien concept.
Where mind is held high and heart is held higher.

Where people are immaterialistic.
Where people think logically, question and reason everything without blindly following anything or be superstitious.

Where people respect each other and not judge others for their actions.
Where one should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.

History shows us that none of the above is possible without AI augmentation of human intelligence to enshrin values of beauty, agency, and individuality. by benevolent, incorruptible agencies that are beyond human intelligence.

The era of Artificial Intelligence is here. AI has already started.

AI is not a living being that has been primed by billions of years of evolution to participate in the battle for the survival of the fittest, as animals are, and as we are. It is math – code – computers, built by people, owned by people, used by people, controlled by people.

Its true that AI doesn’t have goals of its own, but its influnce on our lives is endangering the very meaning of life and  instead of us embracing a worldview based on facts, it will cause us to lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most.

Understanding what “we” want is among the biggest challenges facing AI.

It is very difficult to encode human values in a programming language, but the problem is made more difficult by the fact that we as humanity do not agree on common values, and even parts we do agree on change with time. The question then becomes how do we aligne AI with Human values.

Whose human values?

Ah, that’s where things get tricky.

A major change is coming, over unknown timescales but across every segment of society, and the people playing a part in that transition have a huge responsibility and opportunity to shape it for the best.

So here are some of the questions we should be asking.

What does it mean to you to have artificial intelligence aligned with your own life goals and aspirations?

How can it be aligned with you and everyone else in the world at the same time?

How do we ensure that one person’s version of an ideal AI doesn’t make your life more difficult?

How do we go about agreeing on human values, and how can we ensure that AI understands these values?

If you have a personal AI assistant, how should it be programmed to behave?

If we have AI more involved in things like medicine or policing or education, what should that look like?

What else should we, as a society, be asking?

Globally, humankind must think about the kind of future we want to have.

The recently articulated United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer a good starting point, but these goals are merely the preconditions necessary for survival and flourishing, so they are not
enough. A further step is needed to determine our common goals as a civilization, and more
philosophically, the purpose of human existence, and how AI will fit into it.

Generative AI is not hype.

Instead, it acts at a scale so large that it will transform how we interact with technology itself.  It will far outpace what we’ve seen so far today.

AI has been used to help sequence RNA for vaccines and model human speech, technologies that rely on model- and algorithm-based machine learning and increasingly focus on perception, reasoning and generalization.

If we reach a point where AI is able to understand our languages, AI systems would be able to read and understand everything ever written. In the mean time rest assured that we will continue to fight wars against each other, as we have done since day until the end of time, or at least Earth’s time which is in about 5.4 billion years.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: WE NOW ENTERING INTO A MORAL DARKNESS IN THE ISRAEL /PALESTINE WAR.

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(Two minute read)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the Israeli army and other officials to submit to the cabinet a plan to evacuate Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost governorate.

International humanitarian law prohibits the forced displacement of civilians except when temporarily required for their security or imperative military reasons.

Forcing the over one million displaced Palestinians in Rafah to again evacuate without a safe place to go would be unlawful and would have catastrophic consequences.

I say that its time that all states that are party to the Genocide Convention now have a legal obligation BEFORE IT TOO LATE.  To take material steps to put an end to Israel’s genocidal acts in the besieged Strip.

If they dont do so we are very likely entering another long and painful era where armed struggle and violent domination become increasingly and mutually dependent on each other for survival. Yet neither can win.

After Hamas’s deadly attacks in Israel and Israel’s hellish bombardment of Gaza is the world going to sit back and watch what remains of Gaza and its people wiped from the face of the earth, endorsing further murderous violence against civilians.

Who gets to count as human?

The real aim of Israel’s lobbying efforts to undermine UNRWA is the liquidation of the Palestinian identity and the right of return of the Palestinian people that the UN agency has come to embody. If the Western states, and especially the United States, continue to bow down to Israel’s genocidal demands they will only add further weight to the accusations that they are complicit in its genocide in Gaza.

What is at stake today is not only the future of millions of Palestinians and the very viability of the Israeli state, but the stability of an entire region, and the future of the rules-based world order.

The Palestinians will remain. They cannot be eliminated. Israel too will continue to exist. The future is full of unnecessary and horrific bloodshed all around.

Terrorist organisations like ISIL and al-Qaeda could not have asked for a better environment to regroup and mount new attacks on the West, as the global majority now views the West solidly as an enabler of the ongoing genocide of an occupied and oppressed Indigenous people.

The international community must first ensure the safety of the Palestinian people.

Given the current gridlock and the total devastation of Gaza, the first step towards ending occupation should be to bring the Palestinian people – who have now been identified by ICJ as a unique “group” – under international protection.

The inclusion of Hamas in any peace process is crucial as no sustainable settlement can be achieved without acknowledging the concerns and expectations of the group that has led Palestinian armed struggle against occupation for many years.

This means the killing must stop, captives on both sides should be released, the siege should end, adequate aid and basic services should reach all Palestinians in Gaza immediately.

The international community must make it clear to Israel that it cannot infringe on the territorial integrity of Gaza by occupying any part of the territory, establishing a so-called “buffer zone” within it or dividing it into smaller settlements.

The international community must unanimously call for an immediate and unconditional cessation of all illegal construction and land-grabbing activities in the West Bank and demand accountability for the violence and aggression perpetrated by Israeli settlers against the Palestinians. World’s nations must insist on Israel decommissioning all the settlers outposts in the West Bank, and obviating any such intentions in the Gaza Strip.

To ensure that the Palestinian people can live freely and with dignity under the governance of their own elected representatives, the international community should officially recognise a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital and commit to ensuring the swift implementation of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals in post conflict Palestine.

Desperate western attachment to morally bankrupt double standards bears a large portion of the blame.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE SAYS: No matter what era we are in — or what new technology comes along — our fundamental beliefs will always be with us. Not True. Algorithms are exploiting the very foundations of everything.

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( Fifteen minute read)

Put simply, the meaning of life is life itself.

You can write volumes on the state of the world, but one has only to look at the state of the world to see what algorithms are doing.

Algorithms form an increasingly important part of our daily lives, even if we are often unaware of it.

Most of us have no idea what they are — or how we’re being influenced by them.

They have become instrumental in our everyday lives.

Algorithms are making hugely consequential decisions in our society on everything from medicine to transportation to welfare benefits to criminal justice and beyond. Subtly shifting the way our society is operating.

We can see them at work in the world. We know they’re shaping outcomes all around us.

Are we making a mistake by handing over so much decision-making authority to these programs?

This paradox—that the internet is both saviour and executioner of democracy is part of a massive unfolding social experiment.

The proliferation of algorithms is eroding our ability to think and decide for ourselves. They are turning people into products, and they don’t even realize it.

Billions of people around the world are interacting with these technologies, which is why the tiniest changes can have such a gigantic impact on all of humanity.

We will blindly follow them wherever they lead us. There is no one assessing whether or not they are providing a net benefit or cost to society.

WE DON’T HAVE TO CREATE A WORLD IN WHICH MACHINES ARE TELLING US WHAT TO DO OR HOW TO THINK, ALTHOUGH WE MAY VERY WELL END UP IN A WORLD LIKE THAT WHERE ALGORITHMS DECIDE WHO LIVES OR WHO DIES.

How you see the world matters.

————————

 Beliefs are the things we hold true, regardless of whether we have any proof of their objective truth.

You see, in time, beliefs become labels.

We plaster them on our foreheads and use them to justify our action or inaction. That belief will then drive how you behave as you interpret it as being damning or empowering.

We all would be a lot happier if everyone else around us had the same beliefs as we do, or at least, that they would not challenge us on them. Of course, that is impossible, and this is precisely what fuels most of the world’s conflicts.

And here comes the kicker:

You can decide the direction you take. Your beliefs do not control you, so long as you become self-aware and take charge of your life. Or maybe if you assume everything will fall apart, you never get disappointed.

So, herein lies the persistent conflict of our society:

All of us are driven by our life experiences and by merely being human, but the creeping influence of algorithms in our lives are fucking up the world. We’re increasingly moving towards government by algorithm.

Automated systems are being rolled out with little transparency or public debate, and risk exacerbating existing inequalities.

The algorithm takes the biases and prejudices of the real world and ‘bakes them in’, and gives them a veneer that makes it seem like a policy choice is actually neutral and technical. But it isn’t,”

The problem is, both beliefs and values have strong momentum and seem glued to our character.

How do these beliefs played out in real life?

Are we just becoming throwaway survival machines, following our genetic and neurological programming in an indifferent world?

I believe that human life and the world mean much more than that.

There’s beauty everywhere—we have only to open our eyes to see it.

——————–

When it comes to climate change, the science is settled.

When it comes to technology its all together the opposite.

The sobering truth is that both the climate and technology are out of control.

Given the difficulty of getting the human brain or our political system to tackle anything beyond immediate crises, our attempts to rectify what’s wrong are usual puny compared to what’s really needed.

If you listen to our politicians, there is a strong consensus on climate change.

It consists of four parts.

First, carbon emissions are causing significant changes to our climate. Second, we need to take urgent action to reduce those emissions, including reaching net zero by 2050. Third, we have already made good progress in reducing emissions. And fourth, the steps we need to take to reduce emissions further will also bring many positive benefits for society.

We have a pretty clear understanding of the threat climate change poses to us, our children and our grandchildren. We are already being forced to cope with more droughts, more floods, more extreme storms. At the same time, we have in our arsenal effective policies that are difficult for rational people to demagogue as crippling to the economy or as a subversion of our cherished way of life.

So why does climate misinformation continue to spread online and in our media?

Dire warnings of the looming climate disaster may just make people throw up their hands in despair, sink into denial, or dig their heels in deeper against government action.

Instead, we seem to firmly believe that climate solutions inevitably mean more government, higher taxes and less freedom — and thus are threats to all our core values and identity.

———————-

Technology’s benefits are numerous in all fields, however in the system’s that effect our daily lives it is becoming a threat to our core values, through the use of algorithms. Pushing us like a digital slave army to mindlessly, unwittingly and unwillingly livestream our digital existences into the commercial coffers of companies that see us as nothing more than walking dollar signs.

Examples:

Every time you pick up your smartphone, you’re summoning algorithms. At this point, they are responsible for making decisions about pretty much every aspect of our lives.

The right to an explanation of an algorithm-generated decision does little to fix “systemic injustices” Getting an explanation but no democratic say in how systems work is like getting a privacy policy without a ‘do not consent’ button.

Deciding who gets access to welfare. Using automated interviews with a virtual border guard, based on “deception detection algorithm. Using algorithms to model when and where crime will happen — an area known as predictive policing — is on the rise. Using algorithms to come up with a personality assessment. Having your credit rating scored decided by an algorithm based on questionable data.

Grading algorithm does not not relied solely on automated means. Substituting a mathematical approach for human judgment does not automatically make it fair.

Profit seeking algorithms. Market making algorithms. Execution algorithms Scheduled algorithms. Participation algorithms. VWAP and TWAP algorithms are time-slicing algorithms. Liquidity-seeking algorithms (a.k.a. opportunistic algorithms) Arrival price algorithms seek to trade close to market prices.

Recent developments in algorithmic trading include clustering and high-frequency market forecasting  are playing a central role in finance.

The worst-case scenario is that we fail to disrupt the status quo, in which very powerful companies develop and deploy AI in invisible and obscure ways.

We have no right to see all of the data these companies collect about us, no right to get a percentage when they resell our data without our knowledge or informed consent, no right to ask them to stop. We are for all purposes indentured servants, offered free digital room and board in return for paying with our digital souls and our real-world time.

Social media companies have managed only to create a toxic brew of horrific hate speech that they cannot seem to get rid of.

Algorithms really are so powerful that a few lines of code can push us into any behaviour.

The right message targeted at the right time could mass convert the entire population of a country into mindless zombies who would readily convert even their most deeply held beliefs in an instant.

 When it is obvious to all is that the world is changing, responding faster than expected to Technology’s

Why are we being such idiots?

What gives? It’s not that we are stupid or blind our core values are under attack.

If everything is a core value, then nothing is really a priority.

In this age where technology is dominant, core values may seem like something from the past. So core values may not seem like they have a place.

All of this data is used first and foremost to make money from us. 

There is a really frustrating lag between what AI is capable of and what it’s legislated for. 


Core values are the foundational beliefs held by an individual or an organisation.

Anyone can go to Google and search the meaning of core values,. There are another thing on your to-do list that you don’t have time for, but what about the bigger picture?

When you hear about core values, what comes to mind?

Core values make the biggest difference between successful and failure.

There are more than just words on a wall — it’s how you behave. It’s who you are at your core.

Everyone knows their role, what is expected of them, and they are empowered to act in accordance with their core values.

Once upon a time voting or making decisions in alignment with your core values were the foundation of who we are as individuals. Not any longer with Algorithms running social media.

——————–

To look at it simply, culture is just a collection of people. It is the environment created by the cumulative behaviour of the people.

We all have things that we value deeply, whether we realize it or not.

You remember values, don’t you? You know, those moral thoughts and behaviours we used to hold dear, like decency, civility, honesty and respect, as well as caring, optimism, empathy, and tolerance?

They were once a beacon of idealism. Rewarding behaviour based on them, and align all of our decisions with them.

Core values represent the lens which we view the world. They must be embedded in everything we do.

These “alt” credos and codes of behaviour are the trademarks of the incivility we witness on a daily basis, often expressed with rancour and rage. They have become commonplace on television, in social media and in everyday life. Of even more concern is that these new “moral standards” serve as models of behaviour for our impressionable children and youth.

Hold one another accountable for staying aligned with the values—it’s better not to profess any values at all.

———————

Education and knowledge were cornerstones of our achievement.

We are now living in society that at large looks to social media /television and film personalities for political advice.

You must ensure they are accurate, meaningful, relatable and fully operationalized.

If we continue our descent into callousness, selfishness and hostility, we negatively impact and harm the quality of our lives. We could lose sight of our basic human values and diminish the essence of what MAKES THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL.

Achieving a more transparent and less manipulative media may well be the defining political battle of the 21st century.

Just as we are using our formidable intellect and creativity to reduce our carbon footprint, we can similarly mobilize our resources to improve our emotional footprint, or how we treat and affect each other.

Values are the criteria by which individuals judge ideas, objects, people, situations, and actions as good, worthwhile, desirable, wrong, worthless, or undesirable

.Values are individuals’ embedded abstract motivations. They guide individuals to understand, justify, and explain norms, attitudes, and actions. One of the limitations of examining values is that values cannot  be generalized because they vary between a person and another, culture and another, society and another, even a country and another, thus scrutinizing values will be different in the future.

Core values can be only be fostered in Education, not in schools but with compulsory NATIONAL SERVICE.

ALL HUMAN COMMENTS APPRICIATED. ALL LIKE CLICKS AND ABUSE CHUCKED IN THE BIN.

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com.

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: IS THE USA ITCHING FOR YET ANOTHER WAR?

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( Four minute read)

The U.S. is in danger of slow-walking itself into a war with Iran.

ONE WOULD THINK:  THAT AFTER THE RECENT US INVOLVEMENT IN DISASTROUS WARS, THAT IT AND ALL OF US, WOULD LEARN THAT MILARTY DETERRENCES DON’T WORK.

Since Biden refuses to pressure Israel to stop its bombardment of Gaza and accept a ceasefire, he is escalating the US confrontation with the Houthis.

Biden and his administration are practically sleepwalking the US into another war.

In the process, Biden risks entangling the US in another open-ended conflict, which is likely to expand by accident or miscalculation, rather than by design.

Either way, it threatens to prolong the forever war.

With persistent support of Israel, the Biden administration has alienated its allies in the Arab world and is now a heartbeat or an election result away from another war that it will lose.

The Gaza invasion has already spilled into clashes in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and the Red Sea.

They all require serious effort and inevitable trade-offs.

Why

Because it’s nearly impossible to dislodge an Indigenous insurgent movement without a huge commitment of ground troops.

Because today’s U.S. military is not designed to fight wars against two major rivals simultaneously.

This isn’t because the United States is in decline.

It’s because unlike the United States, which needs to be strong in all three of these places, each of its adversaries—China, Russia, and Iran—only has to be strong in its own home region to achieve its objectives.

Because in past conflicts, it was always able to outproduce its opponents. That’s no longer the case:

Because in past conflicts, it could easily outspend adversaries. That’s no longer the case:

All of that pales alongside the human costs that the United States could suffer in a global conflict.

In the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan, the United States would be hard-pressed to rebuff the attack while keeping up the flow of support to Ukraine and Israel.

——————-

The US administration has multiple options to lean on the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

It could threaten to withhold billions of dollars in military aid, which allow Israel to continue its assault, or it could stop using Washington’s veto power on the UN security council to quash resolutions calling for a ceasefire.

The Houthis are portraying themselves as one of the few forces in the Middle East willing to stand against Israel and its western allies in defence of the Palestinian cause. Aside from the Houthis and Hamas, the alliance also includes several Shia militias in Iraq and Syria, and the powerful Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

True global leadership at this moment means de-escalation and forging visions for a just future for all.

Without demanding a ceasefire in the immediate future, the putative US/UK commitment’s to peace rings hollow and feels more like it’s been overshadowed by their own and very real addictions to war.,

Any sane person would hear this.

Do most Americans realize how steeped in violence their country is?

A country beholden to its own violence’s is not limited to mass murderers.

How many of us have read the Creed of a United States Marine? “My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life,” it states, along with “my rifle, without me, is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless.”

Maybe this makes sense as part of military indoctrination but, let’s face it, culturally, we are all expected to buy into this idea, and with interest.

The truth of the matter is that the US make a lot of war.

Military conflicts make up perhaps 93% of its history. Roughly a quarter of the country has lived only in a time of war. And within that history, American weapons are an industry, a mythology and identity simultaneously.

Why do they call armed, military helicopters “Apache” helicopters for goodness’ sake?

When will the US face the fact that it is a country baked in its own violence, much of it racist in intent and effect?  That reflects its own genocidal and racist past. If they were to be honest they would see that this dark heart of violence is not simply a partisan issue but is a much longer and more intimate part of its our own national tragedy.

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WITH OUR WORLD DISINTERGRATING, IS IT NOT TIME TO REPLACE THE UNITED NATIONS?

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( Six minute read)

WORLD, COME TO MY HOME!: 1174-1176 UNITED NATIONS - The flag of the ...

The United Nations is the most powerful international organisation in the world. Founded after World War Two, the UN aims to maintain global peace and security though international cooperation and dialogue.

Although the UN is seen as a bed-rock of the post-War world order, it is regularly criticised for its failings.

There are some who say the world would be better without the UN. Bedevilled by a litany of challenges, including gross underfunding, bloated bureaucracy, disunity, and geopolitical rivalry among the permanent members of the Security Council.

Would it be?

Today, many countries still put their own geo-political objectives ahead of any UN requirements.

This is the main failing of the United Nations.  Western powers, for example, are overrepresented in the five permanent members. Entire regions lack a permanent seat but nevertheless are bound to Security Council resolutions. Today, it lacks strong support in popular culture.

—————–

The United Nations stands at a crossroads.

The need to reform the United Nations is critical.

Political leaders, experts, and civil society agree that the United Nations is lagging behind global change, failing to anticipate emerging risks, and not adequately resolving or mitigating global challenges.

There is no longer any doubt that three primary threats endanger the existence of humanity: Climate change, infectious disease, and nuclear weapons are the core global challenges but disruptive technological, societal, and ecological developments impose new challenges that require new partnerships beyond the current state-centric global architecture.

The age of disinformation and ever-increasing influence of social media has left truth and facts more coloured by predesignated concepts and ideas.

Ideally, the Security Council should be stripped of veto power when a matter relating to any these existential threats is on the agenda.

The greatest challenge confronting the organization—one that has repeatedly rendered it unable to act decisively on critical global issues—is intransigence among the permanent members of the Security Council.

At a time of profound global change and increasing competition over values, treating climate change as simply another environmental problem rather than a crosscutting factor affecting all aspects of human life should have a dedicated UN institution focusing on Climate change not as one problem among many, but as a unique crisis that affects all activities.

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UN reform has been on the agenda since the organization was created in 1945.

The Security Council as currently constituted in terms of membership, functions, and powers cannot effectively respond to the myriad crises engulfing the world.

As powerful countries move toward unilateralism, populism, and nationalism at the expense of multilateralism and collective action, a united and forward-looking Security Council capable of effectively driving the wider United Nations to achieve its goals is sine qua non.

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What would actually happen if the United Nations collapsed, or was disbanded?

Realistically, there are two main ways that the United Nations could collapse. There are many ways that the UN might cease to exist but these can be divided into ‘internal’ and ‘external’ causes.

Internal:  Financial collapse, or a major internal scandal, or the UN deciding voluntarily to disband itself.

External: National governments collectively deciding to dispend the UN, some major, or many minor countries deciding to leave or countries withdrawing funding. Data governance at the global level lags well behind technological developments.

The collapse of the UN would also remove a key arena for global dialogue and could be followed by a potential re-alignment of the world order as there would no longer be a forum for dialogue between nations and its conceivable with a vacuum in international law many conflicts could reignite.

The first thing that would happen if the UN collapsed is that funding to the UN’s international programmes would stop.

It is likely that it would be replaced with another inter-governmental organisation.

The pre-curser to the UN was the League of Nations, disbanded in 1946.

Historians generally agree the League of Nations failed for five main reasons. These are:

  • It failed to encompass all countries, with major powers such as the United States not joining. Many countries also left the League of Nations or only joined for a short-time.
  • Countries put their own geo-political objectives ahead of the League of Nations requirement for collective security.
  • The League of Nations did not have its own army, and so relied on member states to use military force. Many were not willing to as their populations did not support another war.
  • Disarmament was a major aim of the League of Nations, meaning countries were encouraged to reduce military spending. This meant intervening militarily against countries that went against the League was made more difficult.
  • The League had no power to stop countries taking aggressive action. When countries such as Germany or Japan began attacking their neighbours, the League was powerless to stop them.

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Let’s take each one and see if the modern United Nations could fail for the same reasons?

It currently supports the global order. All major nations, especially those included in the Security Council, have a vested interest in retaining the United Nations as it helps them maintain power.

Another reason why the United Nations is unlikely to collapse is that, although there are many legitimate criticisms of the UN, any organisation that were to replace it would unlikely be more successful.

This is because any global forum of nations requires a degree of flexibility and pragmatism in order to incorporate all countries. Although this means the UN’s power to affect change is limited, a more controlling inter-governmental organisation would see nations leaving when decisions went against them.

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Today, everyone seems to have problems with multilateralism, which is eroding the authority of global institutions.

More than ever the world needs collective action.

Working out how to bring the United Nations closer to “we the people” and remaining relevant for future generations should drive the organization as it enters its next phase.

It’s the place where leaders come and give public speeches but that really nothing meaningful gets done.

The Security Council, which is responsible for maintaining international peace and security, has often been paralyzed by the veto power of its five permanent members – the United States, China, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom. This has made it difficult for the Security Council to take decisive action in conflicts such as the Syrian civil war, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and more recently in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

It is unable to stop war, it is unable to end famine, it is unable to stop conflicts, it is unable to manage migration, it does not push for global disbarment

Somewhere, the spirit of collectivist has to be regenerated.

The ineffectiveness of the UN are simply a reflection of those dysfunctional characteristics of the international system.

The most important prerequisite for an effective global institution may be a concert of powers.

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There is no credible alternative in sight so the UN must be retooled and updated to tackle today’s challenges

Can 193 nations with competing agendas undertake major reforms?  NO!

However we are inching closer to “a great fracture.” Conflicts, coups and chaos are surging. The climate crisis is growing. Divides are deepening between military and economic powers, the richer North and poorer South, East and West. A new Rubicon has been crossed in artificial intelligence.

Can it be reformed?

THIS CAN ONLY BE ACHIVED IF THE UN IS BROKEN UP INTO A MORE TARGETED ORGANISATION.

By creating an international antivirus consortium, protecting biodiversity, and strengthening warning protocols within UN agencies.

We cannot inch towards agreement while the world races towards a precipice.

It must and we all must unite behind a common purpose, or we all be speaking to an empty room.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: ARE WE GOING TO ALLOW THE ISRAELIANS TO BULLDOZE THE GASA STRIP INTO THE MEDITERRANEAN?

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( Seven minute read)

Israel’s post 7/10 resort to massive force, dropping an unprecedented total of about 30,000 bombs by mid-December 2023 (equivalent to two Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs), has so far failed to eradicate the military force established by Hamas amid the torrent of bloodshed, 25,000 Palestinian dead and the 62,000 wounded, and the mass displacement of 1.9 million Palestinian civilians in Gaza (85% of the population), easily exceeding the toll of the ethnic cleansing that accompanied Israel’s establishment in 1948.A woman and child sitting next to a ruined building in Rafah (January 2024)

Hamas’s brutal tactics in its 7 October assault have been washed out of Palestinian political consciousness by the subsequent indiscriminate and mass erasure of Palestinian civilian lives.

A TWO MONTH CEASFIRE WITH EXCHANGE OF ISRAELIANS HOSTAGES/ PALISTIAN PRISONERS WILL NOT BRING AN END TO THE WAR.

Its most likely effect will be to remythologise the notion of resistance and sow the seed for future iterations that may be inspired by Hamas but have no necessary connection to its history, ideology or organisational structure.

The real issue is how to incorporate Hamas and its associated “spirit of resistance” into a new Palestinian authority, rather than how to quash or excise it. Within or associated with such an authority, Hamas could be part of the solution; outside, it would remain both a spoiler and an opposite pole of attraction.

Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have made it clear that they will seek to impose a strict and indefinite Israeli-determined security regime over the Gaza Strip for the foreseeable future.

In other words, to reinstitute what amounts to a long-term occupation.

This, in turn, will not only keep the flame of Hamas alive and galvanise Hamas-inspired resistance but will ensure that Israel’s “right of self-defence” will only produce the very insecurity that Israel and its allies claim to be addressing. Gaza Strip

It took years for the ANC and IRA to be recognised as partners to a resolution.

Hamas rejects Israel’s right to exist and is committed to its destruction, so a two state resolution would create a Palestinian state ( what left of it ) that would exist alongside Israel.

Another words The world’s largest ‘open-air prison.

It takes one hour to drive from its southern point, Rafah, to Beit Hanoon in the north.

Sixteen years of an Israeli land, air and sea blockade has crippled its economy and tightly restricted the movement of its people in and out of the enclave. Gaza residents need special permission to cross into Israel and Egypt. This is usually for urgent medical treatment but is very difficult to obtain.

The enclave has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world at 45 percent. Access to education and medical treatment is also lacking after years of Israeli air strikes on schools and hospitals.

More than 60 percent of Gaza’s people are refugees from what is currently Israel.

More than 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homes by Israeli militias in 1948 when Israel declared its independence.

YOU TELL ME IF YOU WERE IN THE GAZA WITH YOUR FAMILY WIPED OUT, WITH YOUR COUNTRY REDUCED TO DUST, WOULD YOU TAKE UP ARMES?

There will be no two state as it requires two states to agree one.

And that’s before dealing with the same difficult details  – borders, refugees, security, and the sharing of Jerusalem.

Israel is a very different country to the secular state that was created in 1948 – with far more religious citizens who believe God gave them the land, and who have massive political power. The Palestinians will need to bridge the deep divide between Hamas and Fatah. Because as much as the world might condemn Hamas for the atrocities of October 7 – and much that came before – it’s still there.

All the walls and barber wire (which Israel has now learned) does not and will not bring security.

Any future agreement must make it impossible for either side to inflict the horrors we are now witnessing.

Leaving behind all the religious conations there can only be a one state solution and that is a Federal/Confederation State with a written constitution that protects all its citizens both Jews and Arabs.

To make two states, you would need to create a new state of Palestine. And to do that, you would need to agree where its borders would be.

The steady and systematic expansion of settlements [is] moving Israel in the wrong direction.

The prospect of a two-state solution has become even more remote, with Mr Netanyahu naming settler activist Itamar Ben-Gvir — a convicted criminal, with a rap sheet that includes inciting racism and supporting a terrorist organisation — as minister for national security and another settler leader, Bezalel Smotrich, controlling planning in the west bank. (He caused an uproar in March when he quoted French-Israeli Zionist Jacques Kupfe: “There is no such thing as Palestinians, because there is no such thing as a Palestinian people.”)

A one-state solution would mean absorbing everyone in Israel and the Palestinian territories into a new nation with the Holy Sites of Al-Aqsa and the Temple Mount, as their capital city.

How it can remain a Jewish state if the majority of its population is Palestinian.

When this crisis is over, there has to be a vision of what comes next. Lasting peace must follow the bloodiest fighting between Israelis and Palestinians for decades.

A confederation with a written constitution is the only solution.

What it present is a flexible model:

As a means of facilitating a two-state/one state solution, providing a new framework for the negotiation

A  permanent solution between the two sovereign states of Israel and Palestine, and not as a substitute for it.

Under the confederation plan, Israelis living in settlements deeper in the West Bank would be able to choose whether to relocate to homes inside Israel or stay where they are as Israeli citizens who are permanent residents of Palestine, agreeing to abide by the new state’s laws. A comparable number of Palestinian citizens would be able to move to Israel on the same terms.

A setup between states rather than citizens; that is, the citizens belong to their respective state and are not direct members of the confederation.

This would involve both states in joint strategic defence through close coordination and would focus them on maintaining internal law and order.

The Old City of Jerusalem could host some of the joint authorities, paving the way toward dual sovereignty or other creative solutions over that sensitive area of less than 1 km2 or 0.39 mi2.

The first step would be to negotiate a permanent agreement and establish an independent Palestinian state, without the confederal umbrella. An implementation period of up to 30 months would follow.

Palestine and Israel would live side by side as sovereign States and only at the end of the implementation period, they would establish the HLC (Holy Land Confederation) if they want it.

The European Union, which does not call itself a confederation, is the most successful and consequential confederation ever.

The EU, which has changed Europe and fostered a continent of peace after centuries of endless wars, is a miracle in the eyes of many. It includes aspects of a federation (freedom of movement, currency, trade, and agriculture) and aspects of a confederation (no common language, separate education
systems, no joint army, and relatively weak central institutions), as well as aspects of sovereign states. In many ways, the EU is sui generis, but its structure is very close to that of a confederation and may serve as a model for the HLC.

We have to distinguish between aspiration and reality. The odds are very, very low. It’s essentially mission impossible as we will be left with two deeply traumatised societies. What is lacking on both sides is leadership and political will. Both sides need to wake up after this horrible war and find new leadership.

Rest assured if not Israel will go down in history not as a country that was found on compassion for the Jews but a

Compassion knows not whom it chooses to help in some way, shape or form, it just knows it’s the right heartfelt thought to have for another and to bestow some type of good upon another.

One thing sees another, but two things feel together, creating unity.

#Compassion is one of Judaism’s highest values. The existence of the entire world depends on this virtue.

Below link to one written by Israel, which would have to be amended to accommodate the few Palestinian left a live.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=Awr.glp2drpluGgJQFIM34lQ;_ylu=Y29sbwNpcjIEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Ny/RV=2/RE=1706747638/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2fstatic.timesofisrael.com%2fblogs%2fuploads%2f2023%2f09%2fConstitution-for-Israel.pdf/RK=2/RS=ON4b20C6mgVanCVi1qX5fwtE1TE-