The plain truth can often be so obvious as to be invisible.
There are so many obstacles to change on the scale we so desperately need.
We are fast reaching a point that no humans can or will be able to understand the world we live in.
We pass this way just once.
Artificial algorithms are taking over.
Yuval Noah Harari in his latest book ( 21 lessons for the 21st Century) puts his finger on the problem.
” In the coming century biotech and infotech will give us the power to manipulate the world inside us and reshape ourselves, but because we don’t understand our own minds, the changes we will make might upset our mental system to such an extent that it too might brake down.
Surely its time we stop being the free fodder that feds big data. It’s much harder to struggle against irrelevance than against exploitation.
What will be the point to education if algorithms make us redundant?
It is difficult to discern world-wise whether there is any sincere conversation on AI Ethics.
Is it being addressed by any of the big tech companies or are they just giving token nods to what is right or wrong, while taking advantage of all human beings out there?
Are there just pushback from the outside organisations.
What we are witnessing is their profit growth with economic disparity worldwide increases at a starting rate. This certainly rings true if one looks at the state of the world with people judged by their wealth.
So what is the ethics of creating a sentient life form on a planet that is burning?
Perhaps it will be for the best if we continue not to understand the planet we all live on and leave it to AI to sort us out.
Or can we now start contributing to better governance solutions?
If we don’t grasp the nettle soon there will be no coming back.
To have any relevance now and in the future, we need billions to take to the streets to demand the sustainability of our planet (Human vote with their feet, not Social media) before profit-making goes underground.
When it comes to making the world a better place, corporations are often accused of apathy (the flip-side of blind self-interest). But if consumers are truly committed to social change, they must answer the same challenge.
If we can get consumers to make mindful shopping choices, to support brands that act responsibly and to purchase goods from those that dedicate a portion of the sale proceeds to causes, we are well on our way to re-purposing everyday purchases.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
If we are not vigilant we might by accident and neglect combined with the erosion of civil liberties and with the increasing disenchantment of politicians easily sleepwalk into a form of a totalitarian society.
You could say at present that the world has more pressing problems but I consider this as a very dangerous trend and, sadly, unlike climate change perhaps unstoppable.
Why?
Because corporations belong to no land, no country, no people and have no loyalty to anything apart from profit – their profits and the profits today are on an unimaginable scale.
Because individual liberty which our ancestors fought for generations to establish are now been blowing away in the wind with Artifical Intelligence turning our politics into a form of Digital Dictatorship.
Control of society above personality.
The modern sense of entertainment, for example, has led to the shallowness
of life that permeates all aspects of life, separates us from the seriousness of
existence, and fills this existence with false content.
What we are seeing is a widening of inequality, a rise in racism and ant semitic traits all of which are essential to a totalitarian society. Individualism itself is diminishing and in the end, people will embrace the totalitarian state’s ideology.
This fourth industrial revolution as it is called is presently without any AI laws other than the EU guidelines on the trustworthiness of AI – what data to use or not use to train other Algorithms.
The last industrial revolution taught us a lot about basic human rights and social values to wake us up, to help us prepare for the future however what we are seeing with smartphones is a form of doublethinking that leads to banality or to implicit acceptance of the standard of psychological normality, the lost of limits.
You are going to work with a digital colleague that has no set rules, no personal judgment.
The threat of climate change with the rise of stateless refugees is forcing millions around the world to realistically confront a future in which their lives, at a minimum, look radically worse than they are today.
At the same time, emerging algorithms are giving a small technocratic elite the power to radically alter our species to a point when it will no longer resemble itself.
They both will call into question the basic ideas of who are and how we think about ourselves.
There are technologies now already emerging that are asking this question with the very fundamental assumptions about what it means to be human.
Why is this?
Because by limiting the choices and activities that have given us our basic sense of identity we can’t express our own opinions because they fear individual power.
There is nothing we can really do to change the course of our civilization except to patiently and persistently saying the truth about false worldviews, both on climate change and materialistic algorithms for profit both of which are and will have dramatic consequences.
Take Climate change and Fossil fuel:
It seems that fossil fuel owners and technology only goals are to protect their business models at all cost.
Climate change will shrink the size of the world that is livable on. while allowing unregulated technologies to rule it.
Algorithms Data Apps are tools by means of which, once installed, they start making decisions on your behalf. They will enable governments to assert their ideological and intellectual authority over party members and employees of party-run institutions, including schools and media.
Their messages becoming inescapable.
The beauty of digital media technology — disquieting for those who care about privacy and freedom from intrusion — is that our smart apps know a great deal about our actual behaviour.
Technology now interacts with you and takes the measure of you. It can determine just how “smart” you are when it comes to your devotion and your grasp of the ideological essentials.
This is where we seem to be headed for compelling materialist reasons, not ethical reasons.
Habitual smartphone user was spending a great deal of time glued to the screen, as a result, the potential of the smartphone to be used as a tool through which authoritarian regimes can shape and reinforce dominance over the population is no longer a fantasy – China.
It is reinventing the process of ideological dominance for the digital era.
In China, censorship, is now largely automated, reaching “unprecedented levels of accuracy, aided by machine learning and voice and image recognition. It has an estimated 200 million surveillance cameras, with plans for 626 million surveillance cameras by 2020.
China is building a digital dictatorship to exert control over its 1.4 billion citizens. For some, “social credit” will bring privileges — for others, punishment.
If successful, it will be the world’s first digital dictatorship.
The flawless totalitarian state, powered by digital technology, where the individual has nowhere to flee from the all-seeing eye of the Communist state. who has done what (and for how long)
They can leverage digital media products to reshape the whole process of ideological control in ways that are far more personal, and far more effective, than anything we have witnessed in the reform era.
We, on the other hand, need to find out once again how to make decisions not just as individuals but as a society. We need new economics theories of not top-down but bottom-up. Its isn’t capital that creates economic growth its people. It isn’t competition that creates prosperity its cooperation. The economics that is not inclusive will not allow modern society to thrive.
Its painfully obvious that the fundamental assumptions of neoliberal economics are wrong.
The market now with profit-seeking algorithms can never distribute wealth because there is no equilibrium.
So is there any way of combating the technological growing algorithm market.
Inclusion will be the only brake.
We must allow people to get involved while improving all stakeholders in the market. The laws of economics are a choice.
So give people the choice to invest in the future by the creation of Nation backed non-trading Green deal bonds. ( See previous posts) This is about creating a platform for real and measurable engagement.
Algorithms all ready control 99.9% of stock exchanges.
Taking self-responsibility and living life the fullest will not only enrich our own lives but as well the lives of others.
Then the question arises:
No government in what used to be called “the free world” seems prepared to take the steps that can stop this inexorable decline.
Totalitarianism is a political concept of a mode of government that prohibits opposition parties, restricts individual opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high degree of control over public and private life.
Big data: The length of time that it took them to use unfettered free speech to subvert and undermine all of our core institutions. Thus we arrive at the present situation where the brief a historical version of freedom of speech has reverted back towards what the state deems controversial today might be very different to what it deems controversial tomorrow.
Take Brexit for example. Nostalgia is that it’s become a political weapon. Politicians are creating nostalgia for an England that never existed and selling it, really, as something we could return to.
Do we want to be told what to think and do? Or are we ready to come up with our own solutions for the consequences we’ve caused?
The idea of the totalitarian state can never be a true and effective form of government rule. Increasing state interference, a crumbing electoral system, the loss of a free press and loss of freedom of speech are grave threats to our democratic system.
The potential consequences that come from using AI, such as giving up privacy are only the ice cubes in the bucket.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
The world has been so depleted and is being so depleted even at this moment, that the future sustenance and stability for humanity is now imperilled.
Your future and your destiny will not be determined within the next decades. It will be determined now.
It will be determined by humanity’s wisdom or by its ignorance.
The future and fate of humanity will be decided in the years to come, and it will be determined by how humanity responds to the great change that is coming over the horizon in the form of climate change to the world.
No religion nor religious institution as it stands today can prepare humanity for the complexities of life in the universe or what humanity must know to preserve human freedom and sovereignty within this world.
It is what humanity must do to prepare both collectively and individually for climate change and our collective inability to regulate AI.
But because humanity as a whole is dull and ignorant, self-absorbed and unresponsive to a changing world we are still writing ourselves out of the script.
Our universities for years have taught classical/neoclassic/neoliberal economics; like these theories are unmovable divine pillars of reality.
Therefore, while most people see we need a more reasonable and democratic version of our current extreme capitalism, the dominant discourse insists the story not be changed at all. The dominant political narrative of our times is that we must live as individuals crushed between market and state. The relationship between the individual and the state boils down to a zero-sum game where everyone one eventually looses. The state is a pure and simple force.
With the effects of climate change (to come) people are waking up to the deception, let’s hope we can do right, because on all fronts of civilization as we know it time is running out.
We have political failure everywhere leading to the malfunctioning of our altruistic nature.
There is a disconnect between mass (commercial) media, even political science and common sense or popular wisdom.
Sounds to cynical?
Let me oil up my bow.
Present-day political failures are at heart of our problems.
Why?
Because there is a failure of imagination when it comes to the societal structure we evolved to live in and that our brains are still programmed for.
Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, etc.
These new organizations are actually not creating a dream environment of maximum social cooperation.
They are instead removing people’s needs to fulfilling each other’s needs!
Gnawing away our collective and individual identity our senses of belonging to a community for the sake of profit.
We need politics of belonging, but the trouble is, it requires a moral, ethical and educated populations which we don’t have and are now with AI are more than likely than ever never going to have.
As we rely on more and more Algorithms to make decisions without a discussion of facts and morals, against a background of pure data narrative can lead society to dark places.
We are unaware of what I call honest pricing that shows the cost of profit for profit sake to the environment.
If we were to charge fees proportional to harmful impacts on the environment, we would create a monetary representation of the value of natural resources.
So overcoming the material world would be the first step to a sustainable world-shifting us into a new reality.
We are left with the ever-present questions.
Do we give a toss and if so what can be done about it?
What roles do religion and our deepest beliefs play in contemporary life?
What lifestyles are we adopting in an increasingly technological world?
What is the balance of power–and the balance of trade?
What is the pattern of war and peace?
What are the issues facing local and regional communities, and what issues must we confront on a global scale?
What do we remember about our collective past, and how do we see the future?
Have the great issues that preoccupied people since the beginning of time taken new, distinctive forms after more than a hundred years of the fastest technological and cultural change in the history of the planet?
What challenges remain intractable?
What emerging solutions seem to offer the greatest promise?
Social media is full of video on the state of the world.
The need for clear-headed prioritisation of resources to tackle real, not imagined problems.
Despite that long record of success, agricultural production is stressed by floods, deforestation, drought, urbanization (land-devouring cities), and a growing appetite for resource-intensive meat.
More than 150 million people worldwide are at risk from rising sea levels and extreme storms that cause coastal flooding.
In the past 50 years, thanks to education and technology, more than 2 billion people joined the middle class, swelling the human footprint of nearly 50 per cent. At the same time, millions of acres of cropland have been devoured by population growth.
Today more than 6 billion people live in cities—about 70 per cent of the world’s population, roughly double the proportion of a half-century ago.
The Arctic may hold 22 per cent of the world’s undiscovered conventional oil and natural gas resources. Melting ice is liberating immense oil and natural gas reserves.
Although mounting worldwide energy demand continues to stress the environment, it has powered large-scale development of renewable energy.
Artificial intelligence will soon dominate the Earth—it could take decades, it could take millennia. At that point, AI will also take control of the Earths process. Refashioning the planet in ways that are optimal for synthetic life but quite possibly deadly for us.
You can’t help but wonder where it will lead. It’s a very dodgy future.
It may be true that the cosmos started with the Big Bang, some 14 billion years ago, but it took an awfully long time for the consequences of the Big Bang to settle down.
To have an optimistic view is the only one worth having.
So may you recognize that you as an individual must make these decisions and not simply rely upon others to make them for you.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
The British Empire was the largest in history existing from the sixteenth century into the twentieth century.
Unfortunately, it squandered all that it acquired on a victorian class system.
It killed with famine, sword and fire more people than Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Hitler or Stalin.
In the defence of its imperial interests, it precipitated in two World Wars.
Now it is presiding with “Mad cow disease” it’s very own self-destruction.
At stake are fundamental ideas about British sovereignty and whether in a
a progressively globalized world in which some claimed that the individual
the nation-state was becoming unviable with the can sovereignty in its
existing forms remain intact.
Queen Elizabeth II in 1992, referred to the year as the royal family’s “annus horribilis.”
SHE WAS WRONG.
Why?
Because along came a five-year austerity plan aimed at reducing the country’s massive deficit, which had been fueled by bank bailouts and stimulus spending in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and resultant recession which resulted in 52 per cent of voters opting to leave the EU, (making the United Kingdom the first country to ever do so)
Manufactured by Magie Thatcher who turned the market into replacing society as the model of state governance.
Not surprising as worldwide political culture has in fact transformed from one based on class to a new sort of populist, demotic politics, shaped at least as much by the mass media, especially the popular press, as by the politicians.
A sort of firestorm has broken out not just in Brazil but all over the world.
Why?
Because the relationship between public culture and consumer capitalism, while the very Earth itself is struggling with climate change has been close, in many ways the one constantly trying to outguess the other.
This game of one-upmanship, marked by ironic knowingness, has been labelled “postmodern, Brexit or Donal Trump trade wars”.
It points to the growing understanding of the relative nature of truth, itself a reaction against the prevailing supposedly “modern” certainties of the 20th century (reason, freedom, humanity, and truth itself), which indeed have often had and are having appalling outcomes.
However, it is a sign of the times that these antifundamentalist currents, themselves critical of much of Western culture, emerged at much the same time as new fundamentalisms emerged in the forms of American neoconservatism and certain strains of radical Islam. The ferment of intellectual and cultural changes involved are inextricable from the massive changes underway in the transition to the novel forms of society made possible by new information technologies.
What the Smartphone and Social Media have and are doing since the 1960s onward for Africa are also unravelling England and the EU with the perception of poor economic performance and calls for the modernization of not just for British society and the British economy but the EU and the world at large.
Both England and the European Union need to reform.
Optimism only carries you so far.
History rhymes rather than repeats are what is required.
A society where elites are widely loathed, where the political parties are polarized by demographic echoes is on the brink of collapse.
Why?
Now as then — much more now than then, in fact — there is a pervasive mistrust of institutions, a sense that governments are rotting from the head down.
The abject failure of rulers in improving human values has resulted in a downgrading of human to sub-human levels with a race to expect dishonest money is the net result of the ultimate degradation of society.
How do you trick someone into giving you something they have?
First, you offer them something worthless, while convincing them that actually much better than what they have. Second, you convince them that what they do have is worthless.
This is a typical approach used by both con artists and governments.
These huge scams are just diversions from the ultimate crime Climate change.
Our survival instinct has to quickly override our conditioned naiveté and passivity that has been bred into us. We are not just threatened as countries but as species at the same time.
A twitter/ facebook driven world will be a world of shallow values- unravelling our societies.
The thin veneer of civilization that we all depend upon on a daily basis is disappearing at a staggering pace and its not just the melting of ice.
The question now is.
Do we follow the trodden path where we only find all the grass eaten?
Creativity and imagination are what is needed as we are not getting across the problems of probability.
How we discuss and what we discuss is vital.
We must know the facts. We need a world brain bus.
Who is more likely to embrace the marginalized, to work for the disenfranchised?
Who will work for those of all backgrounds, all races and ethnicities, all religions, sexual preferences, gender identities?
Who will work to promote respect and equality for all people in the World?
Who sends a message that I want our children to believe in?
The rich and the poor, the entitled and the marginalized—they all make up the threads that a country needs to weave a unified society. When not include we weaken the material that fabricates our entire fabric of the world.
There has never been such a thing as an empire only a company called East India Company merchants. The British Empire did not exist in the Middle Ages. In the early Middle Ages, England was part of other empires:
The British Empire was a commercial, not a military or political one.
Originally, holding an empire was about power. Throughout history, kings and queens have invaded territories in order to gain strength and power. With colonies, a country gains space, a larger army, more trade markets and the chance to make money out of whatever resources are on offer in them.
The formation of the empire was thus an unorganized process based on piecemeal acquisition, sometimes with the British government being the least willing partner in the enterprise.
An ‘Empire’ is a group of countries ruled over by a single monarch or ruling power. An empire doesn’t need an ’emperor’. The British Empire comprised of Britain, the ‘mother country’, and the colonies, countries ruled to some degree by and from Britain.
(British Empire, a worldwide system of dependencies—colonies, protectorates, and other territories—that over a span of some three centuries was brought under the sovereignty of the crown of Great Britain and the administration of the British government.)
To this day Britain’s ‘cultural imperialism’, suggesting that it was based on nationalism and racist scorn for other people.
With a handshake and the commitment “On the word of an Englishman,” Captain James Cook claimed it for the British crown.In the century 1815–1914, 10 million square miles of territory and 400 million people were added to the British Empire. By the British Empire Exhibition of 1924, Britain was the ‘Mother Country’ of a worldwide empire which covered a fifth of the land in the world, and Britannia ‘ruled the waves’.
Sorry but Empires have benefited no one nor will any future trade deals that are not attached to sustainability do anything to resolve Climate change.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
We all accept that in a thousand trillion years from now when what left of the Universe that the human species and all others will not exist.
So there is no need to worry nor will there be any need to worry in 6 billion years that the earth will be fried by the sun.
Or in 50 years or perhaps in twelve years our human footprint is predicted to make most if not all the earth unlivable dehumanizing us all.
We have all witnessed today the consequences of dehumanization, ISIS, Rwanda Genocide, Extermination of Jews by the Nazis but it is wrong to assume cruelty comes from dehumanization it’s not the whole picture we often fold to the social pressures of our environment.
Since the dawn of humanity, we are all capable of it in one form or another and there is no doubing that it will follow us into space.
Wars, Famines, Genocides, Religious bigotry, Racial discrimination, Mass killings you name it and you could have participated in that, and that’s the ugly truth.
The conclusion is that almost anyone is capable of committing staggering atrocities under the right circumstances as we don’t behave in stressful situations the way we think we would or the way we would like to.
Military service relies on dehumanization so people are able to do terrible things to other people only after having dehumanized them.
Acknowledging other people’s humanity won’t solve our problems.
We need a culture less obsessed with power and honour and more concerned with mindfulness and dignity.
If you were able to realize that Jews, Blacks, Gays, Muslims, were people just like you, then evil might disappear but brutality would still prevail within all.
Take white supremacists they know about the humanity of Jews and black people and whoever else they’re discriminating against — and it terrifies them.
One of their slogans is, “You will not replace us.” Think of what that means.
That’s not what you chant if you thought they were roaches or subhuman. That’s what you chant at people you’re really worried about, people who you think are a threat to your status and way of life.
So cruelty isn’t an accident or an aberration, but something central to who and what we are. This is reflected in the psychological appetites we have, like an appetite to punish those we think have done wrong.
Dehumanization is real and terrible.
We all know what is wrong with the world we live in – inequality.
As long as human civilization continues to be dominated and is disfigured by capitalism we will see one atrocity after and other.
Such as.
There are over 35 major conflicts going on in the world today.
35% of the world’s people live in countries in which basic political rights and civil liberties are denied (such as freedom of speech, religion, press, fair trials, democratic political processes, etc).
20 million people held in bonded labour.
Up to 2 million, mostly woman and children, are victims of human trafficking worldwide.
Why are human beings so cruel to each other? And how do we justify acts of sheer inhumanity?
60 per cent of mammal species are not known to kill one another at all.
The simple answer is that it’s in our genes.
One could rattle on forever on the subject and get nowhere but because of the effects of Climate Change to come in the next 12 to 50 years, we are going to see humanity test to breaking point.
However evolutionary history is not a total straitjacket we can build a more pacific less cruel society if we wish.
Climate change is going to intensify our efforts to solve the world’s most serious and pervasive problems. With all our technological advances both climate change and cruelty will be intimately linked.
Who will decide upon areas to be saved?
On what criteria. By the general appearance or what are the main ecosystems in them.
When it comes to murderous tendencies, humans really are exceptional.
Success will be hard won, mostly because there will be no single path to saving, room for reefs, forests, and other keystone habitats given the huge diversity of cultures, political systems, geographic situations and stages of development in human communities from the inhabitable fringes of the poles to the Equator.
We can’t save ourselves without saving the very ecosystems we all rely on.
A moral abyss.
Humanity is a juggernaut which is essentially mindless presently displaying a combination of ignorance and despair.
With the building toward a stabilizing earth’s climate will see cruelty on a global scale.
The range of threats is dizzyingly varied.
But there are many pathways to solutions, we have no need to surrender to nihilism.
The causes—human population growth, habitat loss, climate change—are complex and interlocking, fueling each other in an ever faster destructive spiral.
We are still at the beginning of a potential mass socialist movement, not a Consumerism, not Communism but an era in need of citizens attachment, with a vested interest in our future — a priceless opportunity we cannot afford to waste.
(See the previous post on Citizens Bonds)
This could be an era, in which value is extended to saving the rest of nature. Knowing it, preserving it, studying it, understanding it, cherishing it, and holding on until we know what the hell we’re doing.
I think that, for the most part, people who do terrible things are just like us. They’ve just gone astray in certain specific ways.
So why worry?
The human populations of the plante is incapable of recognizing the cruelty it inflicts on all forms of life till it s to late.
All human comments much appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Most of us sit in front of our TV sets and watch the devastation of Fire’s, Hurricanes, Floods, Droughts, Heatwaves, Bleaching coral reefs, Ice Melting, Nature destruction, and forget about it in the morning.
THE SOLUTION TO CLIMATE CHANGE IS IN FACT JUST A CLICK OF A BUTTON AWAY.
You would think that by now we should all be waking up to climate change and instead of blaming everything, realise that the hard fact is that the chemistry of climate change cannot be changed no matter what action we or the world does.
What we have done and now do in life echos in climate changer. On a human scale, inequality and climate change are going to mess together so the blame games will achieve nothing.
Climate activists will achieve nothing except resentment.
The Paris Climate promises are achieving little or nothing.
As they turn climate change into profit, technological fixes or geoengineering will not stop it.
Unfortunately: IT TAKES YEARS FOR TREES TO GROW AND OVERALL HUMAN HISTORY WE ARE INCAPABLE OF ACTING AS ONE.
It’s becoming plain that not only are we affecting the other living things with which we share the planet, we’re also altering the physical systems of the planet itself.
In every respect, the world we inhabit will henceforth be the world we have made.
We can’t keep using the atmosphere as a free waste dump for carbon and expect to have a safe climate no matter what. Many aspects of climate change and associated impacts will continue for centuries, even if anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are stopped.
When we insert ourselves so deeply into the workings of a planet, we are unlikely to be able to predict all of the consequences of our actions.
If you take seriously the amount of harm that unchecked global warming will cause, if you recognize that these harms will fall disproportionately on the global poor, if you acknowledge that these populations are not only the least equipped economically to cope with climate change but are also the least implicated in the rise of greenhouse gases in the first place, and if you concede the undeniable reality that conventional strategies for reducing the harms of climate change are not being implemented quickly enough, then there seems to be a strong moral case for doing something dramatic.
THE INEVITABLE REALITY IS AS NO ONE IS WILLING TO PAY AND THERE CAN BE NO SOLUTION WITHOUT TRILLIONS.
However, rest assured;
BY THE TIME WE HAVE MILLIONS OF CLIMATE REFUGEES LIFE AS WE KNOW IT WILL BE DISRUPTED BEYOND REPAIR.
It is already shaking up social, health and geopolitical balances in many parts of the world. The scarcity of resources like food and energy gives rise to new conflicts.
CLIMATE CHANGE CANNOT BE HALTED BY PUTTING SOLAR PANELS ON ONE HOUSE AT A TIME OR PLANTING A TREE, OR DRIVING ELECTRICAL CARS, OR EATING LESS MEAT, OR REDUCING OUR OVERCONSUMPTION/POPULATION OR BY US AS INDIVIDUALS- ONLY SLOWED.
SO HERE IS A SOLUTION TO CONSIDER. BEFORE WE ARE GENETICALLY ENGINEER INTO PRODUCTS.
WHY NOT MAKE PROFIT FOR PROFIT SAKE GENERATE A SELF PERPETUATING FUND OF TRILLIONS TO REDUCE CO2 EMISSIONS WORLDWIDE.
THIS CAN BE ACHIEVED WITH THE CLICK OF A BUTTON BY APPLYING A 0.005% WORLD AID COMMISSION ON ALL HIGHT FREQUENCY TRADING, ON ALL SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUNDS ACCUSATIONS, ON ALL FOREIGN EXCHANGE TRANSACTIONS OVER $50,000, ON ALL WORLD LOTTOS AND GAMBLING WINS, ON ALL PROFITSEEKING ALGORITHMS, ON ALL PRODUCTS CONTAINING PALM OIL.
WITH THIS FINANCIAL CLOUT WE COULD TRANSFER WORLD ENERGY TO GREEN ENEGERY, CREATE MILLIONS OF JOBS WORLDWIDE REDUCING INEQUALITY, BOOST OUR ECONOMIES AND REVERS THE EFFECTS OF CLIMATE DAMAGE.
I believe that humans have the ability as a species to change this planet for the better I just hope we can achieve that before it is too late.
All human comments and suggestions appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
By not be able to coordinate any universal action we now pose the greatest threat to our own survival.
Future civilisation might well create a world without need or want, and make mindblowing intellectual and artistic achievements but in this new age, what should be our biggest priority as a civilisation be?
We could build a far more just and virtuous society but if we let civilisation end, then none of this can ever happen.
An overwhelming amount of political attention goes on concrete issues that help the present generation in the short-term since that’s what gets votes but at the cost of future generations that have no way to stand up for their interests, whether economically or politically.
You might be surprised if you ask the above question using AI.
Climate change comes some way down the list.
Natural risks are still quite small in absolute terms.
The risks from nuclear weapons are greater than all the natural risks put together. So, it seems like the chance of a massive climate disaster created by CO2 is perhaps similar to the chance of a nuclear war.
Since these risks are caused by humanity, they can be prevented by humanity, but what stops us is the difficulty of coordinate action.
Take Artificial Intelligence.
(There is a 50% chance we will develop high-level machine intelligence in 45 years, and 75% by the end of the century.)
It is difficult to predict what something smarter than us would do. A sufficiently powerful system might be difficult to control, and so be hard to reverse once implemented.
What’s less appreciated is that new technologies will present further catastrophic risks.
Like genetically engineer a virus that’s as contagious as the Spanish Flu, but also deadlier, and which could spread for years undetected. That would be a weapon with the destructive power of nuclear weapons, but far harder to prevent from being used.
So, let’s ask the question again.
What should be our biggest priority as a civilisation be?
(The flippant answer is we first have continued to exist so that we’ll have the chance to solve all our other problems.)
Improving technology? Helping the poor? Changing the political system? Free Education? Geo-engineering?- to mention a few.
Most of the best ways to tackle these risks are not easily taken by for-profit entities because the beneficiaries live in the future and can’t pay you.
For instance, a better-educated population would probably elect more enlightened leaders (cough). Improve the decision-making ability of people and institutions, this would help to make society, in general, more resilient, and solve many other problems.
However, in order for education to achieve anything, it would have to be on a very large scale to have any noticeable effect.
Improving technology holds the possibility of enormous gains, but also enormous risks.
Avoid accidents from AI systems are the most neglected of all risks.
More to the point, no matter what you think has happened in the past, if we look forward, improving technology, political organisation and freedom gives our descendants the potential to solve our current problems, and have vastly better lives.
Then, among the catastrophic risks, climate change gets the most attention, while issues like pandemics and AI are the most neglected.
An issue can be big but comparatively well-known and crowded, like climate change, or it can be small but neglected, like land use zoning reform.
In most countries, there is no government agency that naturally has mitigation of these risks in its remit.
So, even if we only focus on the impact on the present generation, these
catastrophic risks are one of the most serious issues facing humanity.
Probably part of the reason most people aren’t immediately ready to jump into action is that there appear to be so many problems and no simple solution presents itself for any of them.
One approach is to address each risk directly. Or rather than try to reduce each risk individually, we can try to make civilisation generally better at managing them – if we could all coordinate — if every nation agreed to contribute its fair share to reducing climate change, then all nations would benefit by avoiding its worst effects.
Unfortunately, such an approach in our capitalist consuming world is pie in the sky.
The truth is we only do so out of self-interest.
As we are witnessing with the Paris Climate Agreement made on 12 December 2015 when it comes down to the nitty gritty no one wants to pay either in the short term or long term.
It would be great if we could make the government have more concern for future generations.
To enable a universal action it has to be unseen and paid for by all without knowing.
You only have to look at the reaction of the yellow jackets movement spontaneous calls to protest against the increase of the internal consumption tax on energy products. A rebellion of the provincial under-classes that typifies the 21st century (web-populism, fake news and a visceral, exaggerated hatred of both media and political elites).
Like the 5Star Movement in Italy, they started as an internet rebellion against representative democracy.
We all live in an apocalyptic bubble of social media- SO IF WE ARE TO GENUINELY TACKLE ANY OF THE WORLD PROBLEMS IT REQUIRES A PERPETUAL FUND THAT GENERATES ITS FUNDS FROM PROFIT FOR PROFIT SAKE NOT INCREASED TAXES.
(SEE PREVIOUS POSTS)
Such a fund would turn the United Nations from a begging organisation into a world organisation with clout.
AI CALCULATES 19% chance of extinction before 2100.
It’s possible to grow the capacity of a community faster than you can grow your individual wealth or career capital. WE NEED TO USE OUR BUYING POWER TO EFFECTS CHANGE.
Why?
Because we will need to change our way of thinking and the extent of how we consume resources.
To achieve food and water security. To stop HABITAT AND BIODIVERSITY LOSS AND OCEAN DESTRUCTION – TO CREATE A MORE MODERN AND EFFECTIVE UN.
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After decades of globalisation, our political systems are becoming obsolete.
Half a century has been spent building the global systems on which we all now depend.
The question is- are they here to stay or do we need a new world system in order for it to serve the human community.
If so it must be subordinated to an equally spectacular political infrastructure, which we have not even begun to conceive.
Without political innovation, global capital and technology will rule us without any kind of democratic consultation, as naturally and indubitably as the rising oceans because any alternative to the nation-state system is a utopian impossibility.
This is the main reason we will not be able to tackle Climate change.
We have to move away from the Nation by Nation Paris Climate Promises Agreement with its new rules to a Collective World undertaking not a state by state input as there is no ecosystem immune to another.
When we discuss “politics”, we refer to what goes on inside sovereign states; everything else is “foreign affairs” or “international relations” – even in this era of global financial and technological integration we are unable to act like one.
Exhaustion, hopelessness, the dwindling effectiveness of old ways: these are the themes of politics all across the world.
In each country, the tendency is to blame “our” history, “our” populists, “our” media, “our” institutions, “our” lousy politicians.
This is understandable since the organs of modern political consciousness – public education and mass media – emerged in the 19th century from a globe-conquering ideology of unique national destinies.
However, it is becoming clearer every day – the real delusion is the belief that things can carry on as they are.
Distracted by wars, the magnification of presidential powers and the corresponding abandonment of civil rights and the rule of law.
We may all use Google and Facebook, but political life, curiously, is made of separate stuff and keeps the antique faith of borders.
All countries are today embedded in the same system, which subjects them all to the same pressures: and it is these that are squeezing and warping national political life everywhere.
The current appeal of machismo as political style, the wall-building and xenophobia, the mythology and race theory, the fantastical promises of national restoration – these are not cures, but symptoms of what is slowly revealing itself to all: Nation states everywhere are in an advanced state of political and moral decay from which they cannot individually extricate themselves.
National political authority is in decline, and, since we do not know any other sort, it feels like the end of the world.
Why is this happening?
In brief, 20th-century political structures are drowning in a 21st-century ocean of deregulated finance, autonomous technology, religious militancy and great-power rivalry.
Meanwhile, the suppressed consequences of 20th-century recklessness in the once-colonised world are erupting, cracking nations into fragments and forcing populations into post-national solidarities: roving tribal militias, ethnic and religious sub-states and super-states.
Finally, the old superpowers’ demolition of old ideas of international society – ideas of the “society of nations” that were essential to the way the new world order was envisioned after 1918 – has turned the nation-state system into a lawless gangland; and this is now producing a nihilistic backlash from the ones who have been most terrorised and despoiled.
The result?
For increasing numbers of people, our nations and the system of which they are a part now appear unable to offer a plausible, viable future. This is particularly the case as they watch financial elites – and their wealth – increasingly escaping national allegiances altogether.
Today’s failure of national political authority, after all, derives in large part from the loss of control over money flows. At the most obvious level, money is being transferred out of national space altogether, into a booming “offshore” zone. These fleeing trillions undermine national communities in real and symbolic ways. They are a cause of national decay, but they are also a result: for nation states have lost their moral aura, which is one of the reasons tax evasion has become an accepted fundament of 21st-century commerce.
The unwillingness even to acknowledge this crisis, meanwhile, is appropriately captured by the contempt for refugees that now drives so much of politics in the rich world.
In my view, it is unjust to preserve the freedom to move capital out of a place and simultaneously forbid people from following.
The ensuing vacuum can suck in firepower from all over the world, destroying conditions for life and spewing shell-shocked refugees in every direction. Nothing advertises the crisis of our nation-state system so well, in fact, as its 65 million refugees – a “new normal” far greater than the “old emergency” (in 1945) of 40 million.
After so many decades of globalisation, economics and information have successfully grown beyond the authority of national governments.
Today, the distribution of planetary wealth and resources is largely uncontested by any political mechanism – thanks to fourth Industrial technological revolution platforms with their algorithms, profit for profit sake is alive and growing while the inequality gap grows and grows.
Since 1989, barely 5% of the world’s wars have taken place between states:
National breakdown, not foreign invasion, has caused the vast majority of the 9 million war deaths in that time. Climate change will enhance those 9 million deaths and perversely might save the planet.
Even if we wanted to restore what we once had, that moment is gone.
We need to find new conceptions of citizenship. Citizenship is itself the primordial kind of injustice in the world.
It functions as an extreme form of inherited property and, like other systems in which inherited privilege is overwhelmingly determinant, it arouses little allegiance in those who inherit nothing.
97% of citizenship is inherited, which means that the essential horizons of life on this planet are already determined at birth.
National governments themselves need to be subjected to a superior tier of authority: Oppressed national minorities must be given a legal mechanism to appeal over the heads of their own governments.
Nations must be nested in a stack of other stable, democratic structures – some smaller, some larger than they – so that turmoil at the national level does not lead to total breakdown.
The EU is the major experiment in this direction, and it is significant that the continent that invented the nation-state was also the first to move beyond it.
The EU has failed in many of its functions, principally because it has not established a truly democratic ethos. But the free movement has hugely democratised economic opportunity within the EU.
Finally.
If we as the custodians of the world are to address any of the major problems – Fresh Air, Freshwater, Clean Energy, Soil erosion, to name but a few and are unable to act as one we must put financial rewards in the path of those who do so.
Without this, our political infrastructure will continue to become more and more superfluous to actual material life.
In the process, we must also think more seriously about global redistribution: not aid, which is exceptional, but the systematic transfer of wealth from rich to poor for the improved security of all, as happens in national societies.
We’re all responsible for the state of the world.
Creating this sense of ownership, connection, empathy and compassion should not be left to chance, but should be bred into all of us through the education system and how we raise our children.
In a landmark climate report last year, the United Nations last year called for “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.” It warned the world has only 12 years to avert a climate disaster.
“The enormity of the problem has only just dawned on quite a lot of people … Unless we sort ourselves out in the next decade or so we are dooming our children and our grandchildren to an appalling future.” David Attenborough.
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( A three-minute read that could save millions of lives)
If you ever wanted proof that Capitalism is driven by greed just watch what can only be described in the above words the recent plea made by António Guterres to the International community for funds to tackle the declared famine in parts of Nigeria, South Sudan, and looming in Somalia, Nigeria and Yemen.
The estimated number of affected children is now 450,000, with 14 MILLION PEOPLE needing humanitarian assistance across the region.
Five years ago, more than a quarter of a million lives were needlessly lost, 130,000 of them children. We simply cannot have a repeat of that tragedy. The only way to prevent this devastating loss of life is for donors and international leaders to act now.
Global hunger levels are at their highest for decades. There are currently 70 million people in need of food aid. The reality of life for a fifth of the world’s people, on a planet which produces enough food to satisfy everyone is that humanitarian aid to Africa has been shrinking.
Rich countries have been giving money to poor ones for many decades and for many reasons — from geopolitics to post-colonial guilt to altruism so there is little point here in reiterating the reasons why the world is in such a mess.
What is needed in the long run is a fully funded Humanitarian Affairs United Nations. Not a begging Institution.
Rather than boasting our compassion with wasteful foreign Aid there is only one course of action:
To make the Greed / Profit for profit’s sake segment of Capitalism system Pay.
This can be achieved with modern-day technology by Placing a World Aid commission of 0.05% on all. High frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange transactions over $ 50,000. on all Sovereign Wealth Funds acquisitions, on all gambling winnings.
This would create a Perpetual fund of billions.
The real question, though, is (with climate change and technology) is whether aid will remain relevant, and if so how.
The answer boils down to this: solutions.
Governments in developing countries will seek assistance only when they have a problem that they cannot solve by themselves.
They know how to build schools, hospitals or ports, and can pay for them. But they will look for other countries’ experiences when reforming educational curricula, designing health insurance systems, or regulating private suppliers of infrastructure.
They will want to avoid the mistakes of others, and learn from their successes.
At times, they may ask for support in implementing particularly tricky projects, mostly as a way to keep graft, pollution or displacements at bay.
This can only be achieved if the United nations see themselves more as partners than as donors. This will stop Aid countries of exporting their own way of thinking.
Donors would be sought after, rather than just accepted.
They will be those that can deliver ideas, experiences, expertise, lessons, evidence, and data.
In other words, what will make future aid relevant will be knowledge, not dollars.Development aid will be a more difficult business — for you will need to operate at the technical cutting-edge — but a more useful one.
To the extent that there are internal leaks in Africa–As a first order of priority, the leaks should be plugged to ensure that the little aid that comes in, stays.
In politics, no good deed ever goes unannounced.
It’s is very hard to feel hungry and not to be able to do anything about it.
Contributors to United Nations aid and development programs have provided slightly more than half of the $800 million requested in 1999 for African countries suffering from “complex emergencies”–the term applied when war and failed institutions, often combined with a natural disaster, leave vast numbers of people homeless and starving.
The reasons for the decline are not hard to find.
Donor nations are and will be more so under pressure to attend to problems at home rather than foreign assistance that is wasted by bloated aid agencies pouring money into the pockets of corrupt African governments, senseless civil wars, wasteful military expenditures, capital flight, and government wastes–Pouring in more foreign aid makes little sense.
However if asked we all want a more prosperous and equal world that will serve everyone’s best interests.
To create a less threatening world beyond our borders we must tackle inequality head on.
We are on track for a tipping point of Inequality with the web only speeding up this process through digitization and universal access. We’ll be postulating about social media’s impact on the more long-term future of the world.
Aid can be fearful of the future – but it can also be a force for good.
No transformation will occur overnight.
The debate on aid comes down to lack of imagination. We have cemented in our minds the idea of a hierarchy in the world’s nations: the developing world is below us and we need to help them, preferably to our advantage. But we do not want them to rise above us.
Catastrophe evokes a human response to help fellow creatures.
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Here is who to donate to: UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), Care, Oxfam, British Red Cross, Cafod, Tearfund, Christian Aid, World Vision, WFP, Unicef.
It is important to understand this topic since it is apparent that the consequences of the rise of populism continue to play out and they are likely to be profound.
Populist forces have already proven decisive for the outcome of the British referendum on membership in the European Union, and the election of Donald Trump as the President of the United States.
Populists support charismatic leaders, reflecting a deep mistrust of the ‘establishment’ and mainstream parties who are led nowadays by educated elites with progressive cultural views on moral issues.
Since about 1970, affluent Western societies have seen growing emphasis on post-materialist and self-expression values among the younger birth cohorts and the better educated strata of society.
This has brought rising emphasis on such issues as environmental protection, increased acceptance of gender and racial equality, and equal rights for the LGBT community.
In recent decades, however, in Western democracies the backlash against cultural change has become increasingly prominent. Throughout advanced industrial society, massive cultural changes have been occurring that seem shocking to those with traditional values.
Moreover, immigration flows, especially from lower-income countries, changed the ethnic makeup of advanced industrial societies.
The newcomers speak different languages and have different religions and lifestyles from those of the native population—reinforcing the impression that traditional norms and values are rapidly disappearing.
All of the above combined were reinforcing each other in part, with long-term processes of generational change during the late twentieth century have catalyzed culture wars, and these changes are particularly alarming to the less educated and older groups in Western countries.
It therefore would be a mistake to attribute the rise of populism directly to economic inequality alone. The rise of populist parties reflects, above all, a reaction against a wide range of rapid cultural changes that seem to be eroding the basic values and customs of Western societies.
On one hand this cultural shift has fostered greater approval of social tolerance of diverse lifestyles, religions, and cultures, multiculturalism, international cooperation, democratic governance, and protection of fundamental freedoms and human rights. Social movements reflecting these values have brought policies such as environmental protection, same-sex marriage, and gender equality in public life to the center of the political agenda, drawing attention away from the classic economic redistribution issues.
But the spread of progressive values has also stimulated a cultural backlash among people who feel threatened by this development.
Less educated and older citizens, especially white men, who were once the privileged majority culture in Western societies, resent being told that traditional values are ‘politically incorrect’ if they have come to feel that they are being marginalized within their own countries.
As I have said, as cultures have shifted, now a tipping point appears to have occurred with the election of Donald Trump who exploited this change as did the Brixit supporters.
Britain’s decision to withdraw from the EU threatens to reenergize populist forces across Europe with France next on the list with Madame Le Pen. Perhaps the most widely held view of mass support for populism is the economic insecurity perspective–emphasizes the consequences of profound changes transforming the workforce and society in post-industrial economies.
If the cultural backlash argument is essentially correct, then this has significant implications; the growing generational gap in Western societies is likely to heighten the salience of the cultural cleavage in party politics in future, irrespective of any improvements in the underlying economic conditions or any potential slowdown in globalization.
Alternatively, the cultural backlash thesis suggests that support can be explained as a retro reaction by once-predominant sectors of the population to progressive value change.
Populist leaders like Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Norbert Hoffer, Nigel Farage, and Geert Wilders are prominent today in many countries, altering established patterns of party competition in contemporary Western societies. The net result is that Western societies face more unpredictable contests, anti-establishment populist challenges to the legitimacy of liberal democracy, and potential disruptions to long-established patterns of party competition.
Education also proves significant, with populist parties winning greater support from the less educated sectors of the population.
Anti-immigrant attitudes, mistrust of global governance, mistrust of national governance, support for authoritarian values, and left-right ideological self-placement.
All cultural indicators that are significantly linked with populist voting and the coefficients. Not surprisingly, given populist xenophobic rhetoric, members of ethnic minorities are less inclined to support Populist parties.
In short, Populist support is greatest among the older generation, men, the less educated, ethnic majority populations, and the religious.
Given that populism does not appear to be waning in contemporary democracies let me ask these questions.
Under what circumstances are populist claims viewed as credible or not by their target audiences?
What accounts for temporal fluctuations in particular forms of populism within specific countries—and possibly across democracies in general?
Which groups are included in the category of the virtuous people and which elites (and associated groups) are vilified as morally suspect?
How is this classification process shaped by the broader political context (e.g., the position of the populist actors in the political field, the relative consolidation of political coalitions, the ability of mainstream actors to employ populist language)?
Populism which can be found on all sides of the political landscape is a thin-centered ideology. Driven by modern-day technology interlinkages of Smartphones, Social Media, Facebook, Twitter and the lack of long-term political aspirations it fill the void between the political space and the need for more equality in opportunity for all.
The burning question of today is, shall we drop all other reform issues and run to meet the populist with open arms? or is the Populist platform almost too absurd to merit serious discussion.
I fear not.
Remember that The National Socialist German Worker’s Party founded in Germany in 1919 and brought to power in 1933 under Adolf Hitler was a fascist populist party.
Call it what you want, Authoritarianism, Elitism, Nationalism, Populism, Trumpism it must never be allowed power on its own.
Trump’s rhetorical is unmoored from any sense of reality whatsoever and there is nothing he says than can be taken at face value.
It is intellectual dishonesty.
A better way to describe populism I think would be cosmopolitan socialists.
Its followers see see themselves in opposition to elites of all kinds with the main bone of contention being a system corrupted by economic elites.
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Development aid will be a more difficult business — for you will need to operate at the technical cutting-edge — but a more useful one.
Perhaps the most widely held view of mass support for populism is the economic insecurity perspective–emphasizes the consequences of profound changes transforming the workforce and society in post-industrial economies.