Tag Archives: Coronavirus (COVID-19)

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. DO YOU KNOW WHAT A VIRUS IS?

28 Thursday May 2020

Posted by in CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Viruses.

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(Three-minute read) 

 


No, I am not talking about a computer virus, but viruses that do not discriminate whether you are a robot or not.  
Viruses are by far the most abundant biological entities on Earth and they outnumber all the others put together.

So let’s try and put them into layman’s terms.

They are neither dead nor alive!

They are non-cellular organisms, which are enclosed in a protective envelope or protein coat – capsid and have a nucleic acid core comprising of DNA or RNA.

The presence of spikes helps in attaching the viruses to the host cell.

They do not grow, neither respire nor metabolize, but they reproduce.

They are considered both as living and non-living things.

They are inactive when they are present outside of host cells but become active within host cells. They cause several infections and reproduce within the host cell by using the enzymes and raw materials.

They can be transmitted by several methods, airborne, contaminated water, or food, sexual contact with the infected person, transfusion, biting. 

In a nutshell, a virus is a non-cellular, infectious entity made up of genetic material and protein that can invade and reproduce only within the living cells of bacteria, plants, and animals.

A virus cannot replicate itself outside the host cell. Therefore, it enters and attaches itself to a specific host cell, injects its genetic material, reproduces by using the host genetic material, and finally, the host cell splits open, releasing the new viruses.

Viruses can also be crystallized, which no other living organisms can do.

It is these factors that lead to viruses being classified in the grey area – between the living and non-living. During this stage, they remain dormant, until they enter another host, restarting the cycle all over.

They give us everything from the common cold, influenza, chickenpox, and cold sores to serious diseases such as rabies, Ebola virus disease, AIDS (HIV), avian influenza, and SARS, COVID -19 all caused by viruses.

The ability of viruses to cause devastating epidemics in human societies has led to the concern that viruses could be weaponized for biological warfare. 

Viruses infect all cellular life and, although viruses occur universally, each cellular species has its own specific range that often infects only that species. 

There are billions of them, most unknown.

In the evolutionary history of life, it is unclear where they come from because they have no fossils. However, in evolution, viruses are an important means of horizontal gene transfer, which increases genetic diversity.

They are a life form evolving through natural selection and are found wherever there is life.

They are transmitted from nearly every life form to another.

They are now recognized as ancient and as having origins that pre-date the divergence of life into the three biological domains. ie Bacteria – Archaea -Eukaryote.

I can hear you saying what is the difference from one domain to another.

Fortunately, I don’t have the knowledge or space to answer but below might help. 

Bacteria and Archaea – The Major Differences

Basis Archaea Bacteria
Reproduction and Growth Asexual Reproduction, by the process of fragmentation, budding and binary fission Asexual Reproduction. Eubacteria produces spore to stay latent for several years.
Cell Membrane Pseudopeptidoglycan Lipopolysaccharide/ Peptidoglycan
Metabolism Activity Methanogenesis Autotrophy, Aerobic, and Anaerobic Respiration, Fermentation, and Photosynthesis.
RNA Consists of three RNA Consists of single RNA
Thriving Habitat Can sustain in extremely harsh environment such as oceans, hot springs, marshlands, hot springs, and gut of humans They are generally found in soil, organic matter, earth’s crust, water, bodies of animals and plants, radioactive wastes, hot springs, etc.

There are four different types of viruses:

Animal viruses.

Plant viruses.

Insect virus.

Bacteriophage.

(The virus which infects bacterial cells is known as

bacteriophage.)

And one other that is not yet listed. 

Donald Trump wearing a suit and tie: President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, May 5, 2020, before boarding Marine One for a short trip to Andrews Air Force Base, Md., and then on to Phoenix, Ariz.

So here is the Question:

Maybe someone can answer this very confusing question with some layman’s clarity. 

Which came first Bacteria or the VIruses?  

Currently, there are three hypotheses for the origin of viruses, all of which presume either bacteria came first, or they arose at the same time since viruses require a host.

Since viruses do not leave fossils, and their origin goes back to the dawn of life on earth, about 3.5-3.8 billion years ago you would think that they came first, but bacteria were around at the same time. 

They are both the first two branches in the tree of life.

Virus and bacteria share a common ancestor – a fully functioning, self-replicating cell that lived around 3.4 billion years ago, shortly afterlife first emerged on the planet.  

Bacteria became more complex while the virus became simpler as they developed from cells, therefore they should be less diverse because cells would contain the entire range of genes available to viruses.

The biggest difference between viruses and bacteria is that viruses must have a living host – like a plant or animal – to multiply, while most bacteria can grow on non-living surfaces.

Antibiotics cannot kill viruses but they can kill most bacteria and we have spent trillions trying to kill bacteria. 

Hundreds of millions of viruses can be found in one square meter; the same space holds tens of millions of bacteria.

Bacteria are living organisms but opinions vary on whether viruses are.

A virus is an organic structure that interacts with living organisms.

A virus is acellular (has no cell structure) and requires a living host to survive and reproduce by injecting their own DNA into the host.

Bacteria are alive. Viruses, on the other hand, hang around outside the body for hours, even days till the get the opportunity to become alive. 

It is unlikely the debate over which evolved first; viruses or bacteria will ever be settled. Because the history and the proofs of origin have faded with time.

So infections caused by harmful bacteria can almost always be cured with antibiotics and some viruses can be vaccinated against, most, such as HIV and the viruses which cause the common cold, are incurable.

The only virus that man has particularly partially conquered to date is Polio, Measles, and Chickenpox. The rest some of which you will never hear off are Ebola, Zika, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Marburg hemorrhagic fever, Lassa fever, MERS and SARS coronavirus diseases, Nipah and Rift Valley fever, Chikungunya, Thrombocytopenia, Smallpox, and the new contender Covid-19. 

Are all killers. 

So let’s get to the point.

I have often wondered with us spending trillions on killing bacteria does bacteria passed on its mutations to mutating Viruses.

We told to wash our hands with soap because it dissolves the fat membrane of a virus killing it– or rather, we should say it becomes inactive as viruses aren’t really alive.

Now I am not advocating a Donal Dump that we should be all shallowing Parazone that kills all known cling on’s.

 Most bar soaps are considered harmless (nontoxic) and most people usually recover after swallowing soap. We swallow millions of capsules in our lifetime so why not a soap capsule.  

We are still in an arms race against many diseases, but we stand at a unique period in human history where it’s possible to imagine a day when we have conquered the disease. 

Here’s a quote from “The Matrix”  It’s from Agent Smith (An entity the “I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague and we are the cure.”

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS. WE WILL NEVER HAVE A PERFECT WORLD, BUT WE DO STILL HAVE A WORLD OF INDESCRIBABLE BEAUTY.

21 Thursday May 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., A Constitution for the Earth., Climate Change., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Disasters., Disconnection., Economic Depression., Environment, Evolution., How to do it., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Pandemic, POST COVID-19., Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Internet., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, World Aid., World Economic Depression.

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(Ten-minute read) 

There is no such thing as a perfect world here or anywhere else especially when it is inhabited by a species that thinks that it can survive at the cost of all that surrounds it.

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

This is true if you can behold what you are looking at while accepting that it can’t be perfect in the true sense of the earthly word. 

We might be living in history’s most peaceful era, with violence of all kinds – from deaths in wars to mass shootings, streets stabbings, in a world as interconnected and algorithmically driven that it could simply spiral out of control with an invisible virus that could kill untold numbers worldwide. 

In some sense, unlike our precedents who had gods for everything, from Wars to Famines we live a great deal of our lives in a reality of only what is visible but there is more and more becoming invisible. 

If all this were really true, it would suggest that an overwhelming proportion of the energy we dedicate to debating the state of humanity – all the political outrage, the warnings of imminent disaster, the exasperated op-ed columns, all our anxiety and guilt about the misery afflicting people all over the world – is wasted.

This is not an irrational thought.

Perhaps we should have or will have enough good reason to assume things will continue to improve but when you live in a world where everything seems to be getting better, yet it could all collapse tomorrow, “it’s perfectly rational to be freaked out,” by COVID-19.

It wasn’t so long ago that dogs gnawed at the abandoned corpses of plague victims in the streets of European cities.

With countries now endeavoring to kick start their economies, lurking behind everything else is our collective inability to act as one, to appreciate or understand that we all live on the same planet with all of its invisibility.  

Rational optimism holds that the world will pull out of the current crisis, but what if it’s the very strength of democracy – and our complacency about its capacity to withstand almost anything – that augurs its eventual collapse. 

We have created – the very engine that is so complex, volatile, and unpredictable that catastrophe might befall us at any moment. If it happens no one will remember the internet.

The worlds we live in are now so self-centered that we see charities begging to save everything from donkeys to starving children, all saturated in a media-era, that is constantly misleading us, with an advertising industry promoting unsustainable consumption for profit.   

Digital technology has unquestionably helped fuel a worldwide surge in economic growth but it has turned us into digital slaves detached from a genuine knowledge of how our world works and concern for the future.  

In these hyper-connected times, our addiction to bad news just leads us to vacuum up depressing or enraging stories from across the globe, whether they threaten us or not, and therefore to conclude that things are much worse than they are.

We live now in the Age of the Take, in which a seemingly infinite supply of blog posts, opinion columns, books, and TV talking heads compete to tell us how to feel about the news. (Including this blog.)

While the usual intractable political disagreements about the state of the planet improvements in sanitation and life expectancy we can’t prevent rising sea levels from destroying your country.

This shouldn’t really come as a surprise:

The internet economy is fuelled by attention, and it’s far easier to seize someone’s attention with emotionally charged argument than mere information – plus you don’t have to pay for the expensive reporting required to ferret out the facts.

Or, worse, is the internet with its social media platforms now counterproductive, insofar as a belief that things are irredeemably awful seems like a bad way to motivate people to make things better, and thus in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The point is that if something does go seriously wrong in our societies, it’s really hard to see where it stops.

We are not merely ignorant of the facts; we are actively convinced of depressing “facts” that aren’t true.

You might argue that comparing the present with the past is stacking the deck.

Of course, things are better than they were. But they’re surely nowhere near as good as they ought to be.

Humanity indisputably has the capacity to eliminate extreme poverty, end famines, or radically reduce human damage to the climate. But we’ve done none of these, and the fact that things aren’t as terrible as they were in 1800 is arguably beside the point.

If you start from the fact that plague victims once languished in the streets of European cities, it’s natural to conclude that life these days is wonderful. But if you start from the position that we could have eliminated famines, or reversed global warming, the fact that such problems persist may provoke a different kind of judgment.

They’d say, the world’s getting better, but it doesn’t feel like that around here.

For people to feel deeply uneasy about the world we inhabit now, despite all most indicators pointing up, seems to be reasonable, given the relative instability of the evidence of this progress, and the [unpredictability] that overhangs it.

And I would say, ‘Yes, but this isn’t the whole world!

Should we be a  little bit cheered by the fact that really poor Africans are getting a bit less poor? There is a sense in which this is a fair point. But there’s another sense in which it’s a completely irrelevant one.

When we don’t see the progress we have made, we begin to search for scapegoats for the problems that remain.

Progress isn’t inevitable, progress is problem-solving but not problem solving that addresses the whole problem.  

Everything really is pretty fragile and it is now beyond a doubt that the world is going into an economic depression. The pandemic has exposed our failings in many ways with the need to reverse that last four decades of the prevailing policies of growth at any cost.

Observations alone, however, will not bring transformation.

God forbid we should be naive to think that once ideas are discussed and made popular they will permeate policymaking and bring about change. In reality in a pandemic it is more than likely with a world economic depression the first thing that happens is not a radical reengineering of the economy. 

What happens is, what is dispensable, how many death can we afford before the economy suffers? Is the loss of life at a level acceptable to big business and the government?

So we will for the foreseeable future lurch forward with broken economies while millions are made scapegoats. Yes, your data will be centralized. The data doesn’t lie. Just look at the numbers, whatever happens, things could always, in principle, have been worse.

If we are not vigilant history shows, that whatever horrors the crises expose they will be covered up in the shattered aftermath.   

It took millions and millions of lives to win your freedom so why should we give it up to AI apps that are non-transparent, non-regulated, owned by you-know-who. 

To save lives Yes. To control lives NO.

We should look at things like climate change and nuclear war and pandemics as problems to be solved, not apocalypses in waiting. But they aren’t newsworthy. And you’ll rarely see a headline about a bad event that failed to occur.

Nature might be healing and the green deal looks like to way to go but a sustainable world requires that we address the world as a whole not just piecemeal solving one problem after another. 

There can be no sustainability with economies that don’t have their activities vetted against the knock-on effects they have on the whole ecosystem of our planet.    

Can this be achieved?

As I have said our problem is that we humans cannot act as one or see ourselves as a whole, inhabiting a planet that is interconnected to each and every one of us.

We will never be able to do so. 

How do we overcome this problem before the damage may not be repairable?

It has to achieve by invisibly means and on a sufficiently long timescale.

There is no reason with the computer power now at our disposal that we could not tap into the greed( profit for profit sake) by placing a world Aid commission of 0.005% on all activities that are not contributing to the health of our planet. ( See previous posts) 

Frankly, we have the knowledge so our prevailing mood of despair is irrational, and a bit self-indulgent.

Stay Alert. 

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS: WE HAVE THE DREADED C – WORD AND SOON WE WILL HAVE THE DREADED R-WORD WHICH WILL TURN INTO THE DREADED D- WORD.

16 Saturday May 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., COVID-19, Economic Depression., How to do it., Modern day life., Pandemic, POST COVID-19., Purchasing Power., Survival., The common good., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Truthfulness., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, World Economic Depression.

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(Four-minute read)

Unless you already live in a cave or you are a complete and total mindless follower of the establishment media, you should be able to see very clearly that our society is more vulnerable now than it ever has been. Just as the course of the virus is uncertain, so too is its likely economic impact.

The reality is that very many people will be caught totally unaware and totally unprepared when the Economic Depression befall our generation…

Although we have all seen recessions most of us have little or no concept of an economic Depression.

A recession persists for 2 or more years.

Its starting gun is.

Two consecutive negative quarters of GDP over 6 months. A rise in unemployment of around 2%.Falls in GDP, Stock Markets, Real Estate prices, Exports/Imports, Real income, Savings rates, Industrial production, Corporate investment, Wholesale/retail sales, Interest rates falling. 

A Depression is altogether another kettle of fish.

Depression means the downturn has lasted a much longer time—usually years—with a much deeper impact.

I am not being alarmist but it’s time to start calling the current situation what it is: A Depression and it will drag on for many years.

True, that this one will not be a full replay of the Great Depression, but that’s cold comfort considering it lasted some 23 years.

Its starting gun is.

When GDP experiences a serious decline greater than 10%.

The Unemployment Rate spikes dramatically sometimes up to 25-40% in some sectors. Credit Liquidity dries up. Banking and Financial Crises rock the world.
Corporate and personal bankruptcies escalate. Corporate and personal bankruptcies escalate. Sovereign Debt Defaults and Bank closures cause a flight to cash, gold, or silver. International commerce and trade are curtailed as Trade Wars break out.
Desperate Currency Devaluations between nations result in a desperate “race to the bottom.” Entrenched Price Deflation replaces concerns over Inflation or Stagflation.
Civil strife sees law and order break down, crime and rioting escalate. Political tensions result in wars and a break down in societies.

Running the money printing presses day & night will not stop a Global Economic Depression. 

Unemployment in both the United States and Europe remains disastrously high. Leaders and institutions are increasingly discredited. And democratic values are under siege. 

It’s no wonder that working-class person is scared to death they’re going to lose their house, and scared to death they’re going to lose their job and it may prove almost impossible to find another quickly.

So here are a few beady eye possible suggestions:

The sad truth is that the vast majority of people would last little more than a month on what they have stored up in their homes. 

Falling asset values and falling wages or income are a killer if you’re lumbered with high debt and interest repayments. Cash Is King in a Deflationary Environment.

Now is the time for preparation to form buying Co-ops/ Neighborhood Aid associations, Growing clubs. 

The greatest responsibility for healthcare will have to be taken on by community-based organizations and family networks, which would provide services more efficiently than the formal health system. 

Everything comes to an end, including Depressions

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

14 Thursday May 2020

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

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(Fifteen-minute read) 

It is now or never to stop dreaming.

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

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

This is now blatantly and brutely clear.

Let’s start with a few very basic questions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where do you fit into this story of human life?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We must learn ethical evolution quickly…

What can be done? 

First, we must stabilize our climate. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will we do any of it? 

Not likely. 

Why?

Because we are unable to act as one.

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

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

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

What’s it all mean then? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

09 Saturday May 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Big Data., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Digital Friendship., Disconnection., Economic Depression., Emergency powers., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Freedom, GPS-Tracking., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Imagination., Inequality, Innovation., Modern day life., Modern day Slavery, Our Common Values., POST COVID-19., Reality., Robot citizenship., Sustaniability, Technology, Technology v Humanity, The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Tracking apps., TRACKING TECHNOLOGY., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Twenty-minute read) 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where to start? 

Unfortunately, this pandemic is a present-day dystopia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

However, the big problem remains the same.

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

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

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

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

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

Machines will never be made to think like people.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It will be a massive mistake.

So is technology an imaginary friend or foe?

Will we lose that human touch?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who will benefit more?

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

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

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

( See post on setting up World Aid Depots)  

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

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

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

But can tech solve everything?

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

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

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

Data security is something for healthy people.

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

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

The internet might just be facilitating.

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

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

Take video conferencing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Imagination makes our world an even more spectacular place.

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

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

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

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

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

It fails to exclude such things as remembering.

We can leave a legacy worthwhile.   So comment. 

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS: EVERYBODY SHOULD WATCH THE BELOW VIDEOS, BECAUSE THE INTRODUCTION OF TRACKING UNDER THE CLOAK OF PREVENTING THE SPREAD OF COVID-19 WILL TURN INTO MORE THAN WHAT YOU THINK.

05 Tuesday May 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Fourth Industrial Revolution., GPS-Tracking., Human values., Modern day Slavery, Our Common Values., Political Trust, Post-Covid-19, Reality., Survival., Technology v Humanity, The common good., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., TRACKING TECHNOLOGY., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, WiFi communication., World Economy., World Leaders

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(Two-minute depressing read)

This is a very dangerous situation.

With the economies melting all around the world, countries nearing bankruptcy, the world is becoming ripe for a one-world currency, controlled by unregulated AI tracking.

We are still living as if nothing is going to happen and losing sight of what is important.

If we are not vigilant COVID -19 is going to turn us all into trackable slaves with no recourse as to who, what, or how, any of this collected information is used.

We have been so conditioned by television, the internet, smartphone, magazines, billboards, etc, we are inclined to just take things for granted.

Of course, we still have a right to our own opinions. 

However, with a blink of an eye, our world is changing.

Are we about to see the end of the covetous age when people thought about ME, ME, ME!.

Because tracking data is going to create a world of the Have and Have not.

Why?

Whatever about you I don’t want to live in a world of Social Stratification. In a society that is categorized into groups of people depending on whether they are COVID_19 free or not.

IT IS BAD ENOUGH AS IT IS WITH RACISM, RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY, WALL BUILDING, ETC.

We have for years listened to the current rhetoric that deals with wealth alone creating preconceived notions surrounding those of lower socioeconomic class.

We hear about wealth inequality, and lawmakers push policies designed to redistribute wealth, usually by increasing taxes on the successful to support programs for those that have less. Redistributing that wealth doesn’t help solve the issue because it destroys the very thing you are trying to preserve, the focus should be the equality of ability and opportunity. 

The 1 percent vs. the 99 percent.

Either way, the theme is simple: Someone has something, and others don’t. 

All of this is going to get worse if we allow unregulated tracking which will result in a world where everyone is afraid of commitment.

With the coming, economic depression I don’t want to live in a world of ignorance before the Next Pandemic arrives. 

What is needed is more transparency not less so we can know that the second coming is ‘at the door.’

So what if anything should we be doing. What is needed is a de stimulating package to secure the future. 

We should as it is obvious to be reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

We should be preparing for the impacts of climate change.

We should be restoring the vitality of natural systems

We should be increasing local, regional, and national self-sufficiency.

We should be developing a circular economy.

We should be more socially responsible.

We should be all working together. 

We should be achieving all of them at the same time.

We should not have a mindset of we’ll do whatever it takes. 

We should not allow the introduction of unregulated tracking. 

I can hear you saying that we are all already tracked. 

This is true and perhaps a well-designed tool could offer public health benefits, but a poorly designed one could pose unnecessary and significant risks to privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. 

For there to be trust.

The tool must protect privacy, be voluntary, and store data on an individual’s device rather than in a centralized repository.

Even then there will still need to be strict policies to mitigate against overreach and abuse.

The data should not be used for purposes other than public health — not for advertising and especially not for any punitive or law enforcement purposes.

Rather than identify the people who own the phones, apps based on the protocol could use identifiers that cannot easily be traced back to phone owners. 

Then how does the tool define an epidemiologically relevant “contact”?

The public needs to know if it is a good technological approximation of what public health professionals believe is a concern. Otherwise, the tool could be collecting far more personal information than is warranted by the crisis or could cause too many false alarms.

Another issue is whether phone users control when to submit their proximity logs for publication to the exposure database.

Also, when users share their proximity logs, what will they reveal?

Both the technology and related policies and procedures should ensure the deletion of data when there is no longer a need to hold it. To ensure tracking does not outlive the effort against COVID-19.

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

In the coming weeks and months, we are going to see a push to reopen the economy — an effort that will rely heavily on public health measures that include contact tracing.

Obviously, you’d have absolutely no civil liberties, freedoms, or powers, if you are deceased.

The COVID-19, however, has set in motion a paradigm shift in how nations prioritize and conceptualize personal freedom. So if the virus weren’t scary enough, its potential ramifications for privacy and civil liberties make it even scarier.

We all live here because Earth is the only planet known to humans that sustain life.

The signs of the end are prevalent.

I think it’s time that more people open their eyes to the problems of our society and acknowledge that we do, in fact, have a problem.

Yet these impacts will be trivial compared to the likely economic and social disruption if we continue to destroy the environment.

Short term thinking is prevailing. The sort of thinking that will condemn us to a very risky future. 

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: AS IF YOU DID NOT KNOW NO ONE WANTS TO UTTER THE POSSIBLE TRUTH WHEN IT COMES TO THE COVID-19 VIRUS.

02 Saturday May 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., COVID-19

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(Five-minute read) 

The outbreak of Covid-19 has the potential to cause not just millions of deaths but a global depression that will resemble a global war.

Ultimately both will be determined not by the spread of the virus in wealthy countries but how it evolves (which is almost impossible to predict ) in what is called third world countries. 

Dare I say it if no vaccine is found with such a contagious virus unimaginable devastation is becoming a very real possibility.

Sure, if the current level of disruption is manageable our way of life will return drip by drip until the virus hits ill-equipped countries when it will return with a vengeance.

Then we won’t be worried then about the potential cascading economic effects.

It could end up for lack of better terminological words like Donal Dump’s might voice it, ” It’s going to be great. Really big and really really serious.”

What can be done?

The UN is too cumbersome.

The big powers of the financial world are exhausted from a decade of fighting anemic growth.

With global debt three times, the size of the global economy coordination of any global response is unlikely in an increasingly fractured world.

Multinational institutions have little or no teeth when it comes to day to day issues.

So we the people of the world (While vaccines are in development and initial treatments are showing some signs of success, the potential human impact of the disease is immense and a cause for global concern.) need to start thinking about it now and not just muddle through, hoping to put it all back together with sticking plaster over the next few years.

Broadly speaking, the economy will cease to function. Capitalism will be suspended.

At the outset, politicians will tend to prefer maintaining the current system – even though it will have been completely broken by Covid-19.

Globalization will go into reverse.

The speed of any reversal will depend on the type of government that emerges from the crisis. There is a higher likelihood of more nationalist, protectionist, and less cosmopolitan politicians emerging in countries traumatized by the virus.

The world is mired in the worst disaster of our times.

Unpalatable as it may sound, we must anticipate the even bigger problems of climate danger.

I fear they will be unimaginably catastrophic in countries with fragile infrastructures, economies, and medical services.

Of the 195 countries in the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that virtually all have confirmed cases.

Despite compelling evidence of this danger, the climate crisis, too many, still feels futuristic.

The much-needed stimulus packages that governments are readying to revive their economies and lessen the suffering must ameliorate rather than aggravate the even more deadly climate crisis.  

Should COVID-19 cases skyrocket in regions of extreme poverty, conflict zones and refugee camps the effects will be deadly and will jeopardize decades of global health progress and efforts to eradicate poverty for generations to come.

It is in these very places that the coronavirus can infect not thousands, but millions of people.

According to the World Bank, 10% of the world’s population lives on less than $1.90 a day. That’s 700 million or 7 billion fingers that can buy a bar of soap.

How we respond to this pandemic will reshape humankind.

No one is safe until we’re all safe

There are few times in collective memory that call us to a united human

community as now.

Our duty calls us to stop the third wave. 

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

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THE BEADY EYE’S ACTION PLAN. FOR A GREEN ECONOMY.

02 Saturday May 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., COVID-19, POST COVID-19., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Seven-minute read)

At the moment we are inundated with rhetoric that the world is going to change due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Now the big question yet to be answered is how in the midst of a coming a Global economic depression to restate countries’ economies.

But the truth remains that few politicians are prepared to take substantive leadership towards changes that could alienate powerful interest groups that benefit from the current paradigm.

It appears that we have a brain drain as existing legal frameworks and regulations do not encourage improved environmental and economic practices or innovations.

However, issues that created a sense of solidarity among civil society and academia in
earlier decades are now back on the table thanks to the Pandemic.

While the rationale for change is clear even with the evidence of climate change, and the possibilities of future pandemics there are a number of barriers or challenges to making this transition.

Key issues affecting the rate of transition to a green economy include entrenched interests supporting the status quo, lack of data and information, organizational obstacles, reaching competitive levels of risk and return for financing, and the need to scale up.

It’s about getting everyone – from governments through to the business community – to work together to do things differently, and this requires a common language.

Whether that is at the international level, the national level, or within the business community. All levels need to be striving towards the same goals, and the indicators provide a common way of talking about this – allowing a better-managed with system corporate social responsibility.

Green Economics principles should be developed to meet the needs and vision of each country and each sector. The goal is not to simply arrive at a list of principles but to engage in discussions with stakeholders about the priorities and approaches to moving toward a green economy.

Environmental well-being contributes to economic well-being when the environment is
able to properly carry out its functions. For longterm prosperity through equitable distribution of economic benefits and effective management of ecological resources; it must be economically viable and resilient, self-directed, self-reliant, and pro-poor. 

The need for a convergence – that all sectors need to work together to deliver these goals.

The first thing to say is that a green economy would not have to be any different than the regular economy.

Supply and demand. 

What role does public policy play in encouraging and facilitating the green economy?

1. The green economy is a means for achieving sustainable development.
2. The green economy should create decent work and green jobs.
3. The green economy is resource and energy-efficient.
4. The green economy respects planetary boundaries or ecological limits or
scarcity.
5. The green economy uses integrated decision making.
6. The green economy measures progress beyond GDP using appropriate
indicators/metrics.
7. The green economy is equitable, fair, and just – between and within countries
and between generations.
8. The green economy protects biodiversity and ecosystems.
9. The green economy delivers poverty reduction, well‐being, livelihoods, social
protection, and access to essential services.
10. The green economy improves governance and the rule of law. It is inclusive;
democratic; participatory; accountable; transparent; and stable.
11. The green economy internalizes externalities.

Thanks to COVID-19 we’re going to see a huge amount of capital flood into sustainability.  It is already happening if at a slow pace.

The government can spark a clean energy economy by setting the rules and letting the private sector scale up.

Of course, finance will not be the only factor in this transition, but rather the forthcoming Economic Depression.

What better way to stimulate growth by securing self-efficiency in green energy (Energy production results in the emission of 80 percent of global carbon dioxide.)   

What better way to promote Tourism that depends on the environmental quality of a destination – i.e. – clean air, water, and land. It depends on the natural environment for its wide array of ecosystems, for example, beaches and coastal areas, mountains, and forests. 

What better way to stop pollution that has an impact on global warming has a potential cost from flooding and hurricane damage, low agriculture yields, and population resettlement.

What better way to realize that GDP is increasing while emissions are going down.

What better way to leave a legacy for the next generation.

What better way to engage the whole population.

What better way to make wealthy countries finally realize that the greenest investments also look like the wisest. 

What better way for the European Union to live up to its name ( Union) by Investing in the sunshine of the south with energy grants to establish solar farms. The north could manufacture them creating millions of new jobs in their economies, in Italy, Spain, Greece.  

The benefits arising from the green economy are extended to all levels of population and all countries, as well as interconnected among the features of mutual influence and common development: the more countries and companies “go green”, the more the economy grows; the more the economy grows through “green plans”, the more research and development on the green economy will be conducted. The more green economy dominates markets, the sooner the world will be a clean place after more than two hundred years of increasing.

That there is a need for a new model of economic development but unfortunately, that is what it is Rhetoric.

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

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THE BEADY EYE’S: HOW TO SURVIVE THE COMING ECONOMIC DEPRESSION.

30 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., Economic Depression., How to do it., POST COVID-19.

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(Two-minute read)

Ok, This post is to encourage suggestions as to the best practices 

That last the Great Depression lasted for 10 years so you will have plenty of time to add your suggestions.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, countries have poured funds into saving their economies.

You don’t need a Bachelor’s in Economics, to know that where the demand goes out the window so does the supply. Just watch the Unsustanianle Advertising Industry desperately trying to create demand. It would not surprise me before long if they will be promoting Bio corona free recycled paper to wipe your troubles away.  

At the intersection of social science and mathematics is economics, the science of money.

COVID-19 is exposing the weakness of money and the lack of attention to what should have been valued in the first place to make social science with the result that the great lockdown is now on course to turn into the great slump. 

So here are 10 steps to personally take to prepare for a deflationary depression. 

  1. Don’t sign up for a tracking App unless it is 1000% transparent.
  2. Don’t trust the banking system. Don’t think bank runs can’t happen- they can. “Cash is king” as average joes like you and I will not be able to depend on credit to get the things we need.
  3. Gain some control over the necessities of your own existence if you can afford it.
  4. Be prepared to work with others as that will give you far greater scope for resilience and security. Form buying clubs. Growing Coops.Independent food security as much as possible.
  5. Be worth more to your employer than he is paying you.
  6. Look after your health!
  7.  Hold no debt (for most people this means renting)
  8. If possible Pay off your debt and do not take on a new debt no matter how low-interest rates may appear to be. 
  9. Instead of focusing on debt and credit, pay attention to your liquid assets.
  10. If times get tough, you’re gonna want like-minded people to work, trade, and barter with. Don’t rely too much on internet “prepper groups.” Instead, you’re going to turn to family members and friends you already know and trust. Invest in relationships with people who actually live near you and will be able to physically lend a helping hand when you need it.

(Deflation, for those of you who don’t know, is the phenomenon when prices for goods and services get lower and lower and lower during a given period of time.) Much worse than inflation because debts, in real terms, become far harder to pay off.

All contributions appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS: AT THE MOMENT THERE IS A LOT OF HYPE THAT AFTER THE CORONA VIRUS PANDEMIC IS OVER THE WORLD WILL HAVE CHANGED.

29 Wednesday Apr 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Emergency powers., Fourth Industrial Revolution., GPS-Tracking., Human values., Inequality., Lock Down., Modern day life., Modern day Slavery, Pandemic, Post - truth politics., Post-Covid-19, Reality., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, World Politics

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(Fifteen-minute read) 

Obviously, where will we be in six months, a year, 10 years from now is unknown but what Covid-19 is throwing into sharp relief is just how false our beliefs about markets are. 

We all know what is needed and one could compose a list as long as your arm but all are connected to where and what we live on the Earth.

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

“We’re all in this together and nobody has a clear answer to a way out.”

However, when all of this is over together in lockdown will become more than an appropriate word in more ways than we might like.  

As with sheep, it is easier to control a flock when they are enclosed. 

There is a chance that the herd scenario will be the most dangerous scenario, with profound implications for all. 

Big untransparent data is a minefield to the civil liberties we enjoy at the moment.

We won’t be clapping when the freedom of choice disappears. 

So as responses to the virus evolve, how might our economic futures develop?

The main fact exposed in our societies by COVID-19 is that so many people work pointless jobs because, they make lots of money we have lots of consultants, huge advertising industry and a massive financial sector. Meanwhile, we have a crisis in health and social care, where people are often forced out of useful jobs they enjoy because these jobs don’t pay them enough to live.

In a society where exchange value is the guiding principle of the economy, the basic goods of life are mainly available through markets. This means you have to buy them, and to buy them you need an income, which comes from a job.

In other words, people are compelled to work in pointless jobs.

This is partly why so many countries were so ill-prepared to respond to Covid-19.

There are a number of possible futures, all dependent on how governments and society respond to coronavirus and its economic aftermath.

So, will, we take the opportunity of prioritization of one type of value over others.

(This dynamic has played a large part in driving global responses to Covid-19.)

First, it is quite hard to make money from many of the most essential societal services.

The best-paid jobs only exist to facilitate exchanges: to make money. They serve a no wider purpose to society.

We need a very different kind of economics if we are to build socially just and ecologically sound futures.Civil liberties under attack during COVID-19

From an economic perspective, there are four possible futures:

Descent into barbarism, robust state capitalism, radical state socialism, or a transformation into a big society built on mutual aid run by unregulated AI. 

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

From the economic point of view, this has to be is a Green sustainable Economy because the challenge of producing less is also central to tackling climate change.

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

From an individual point of view, the solutions are not so clear.

Should we give up our liberties for the common good?

When faced with a complete lack of evidence about a tracking policy’s long term effects crisis situations afford the state the opportunity to stretch its power into areas of life that were before beyond its reach.

Politics is plagued by a do-something bias and this question is unanswerable because we cannot know how much the forcible suppression of civil society will cost and we won’t know the benefits.

The actions of governments if not reversed when the pandemic is over or under control to date if not reversed are of magnitude more dangerous than this virus.

Thinking critically we are now confronted nonetheless with the question of who gets to make such a decision on tracking, the government on a compulsory law backed bases or the individual on a voluntary base.  

It’s a social theory question, not a medical one: how does a comparatively tiny group of people at the top of government acquire the right to make this call for all other people. How could anyone or any group attain to such a power?

This leads us to some troubling questions.

For example, What kinds of communicable diseases function to void one’s right to free movement? How deadly does the disease have to be? How contagious? 

It is not worth giving up for a problem that has existed even before our time.

After giving up this right, what other rights will follow?

Where will be the balance? Do we become mindless government slaves?

Where is the line between where our right to choose is more important than the government’s right to impose their standards on us? Even if it’s for our own good?

Governments don’t give us our rights. Our rights are ours.

If we let freedom and liberty slip away a little at a time, then we are a people who don’t deserve to be free.

Just as the government has a duty to serve us, we as a people have a duty to defend our freedom and to understand and appreciate the rewards of being a free and open society. If we as a people fail in our duty to protect our freedom, then we no longer deserve to be a free people.

Once you give up even just a little, it is unlikely you will ever get them back. The individual is all that matters when it is you.

Philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote, “Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of great fear.”

These times of crisis are when we must be vigilant, guarding our rights and liberties, watchful of overreach, as transparency of who, what, and how we are governed will disappear into big data run by algorithms that learn from each other owned by god only knows.   

Will the world change as we are told?  Will the draconian laws revert?  

Will this happen?

More than likely not to all three.  

Why?

Because we are in a capitalist system that cannot or is unable to manage greed, inequality, and profit for profit sake.

Because businesses, of course, want to be able to meet demand when the economy picks back up again. But, if things start to look really bad, then they won’t. So, more people lose their jobs or fear to lose their jobs. So they buy less. And the whole cycle starts again, and we spiral into an economic depression.

Because we are now facing a serious recession if not a global depression.

Our modern generations have lost so much of the sensibility, practicality, frugality, and “know-how.”  Very few of us alive today have experienced an economic depression.

The fan is spinning and something very brown is beginning to hit the economies of the world at some point they will be unable to sustain themself.…so be preemptive.

Preparing for that eventuality now is really the only way to be ready when we will actually need to be much more self-reliant for our food.

A full-on economic collapse isn’t simply a disaster threat we should look out for, if you can’t appreciate what you have, you’ll never be content even if you exceed every goal you set for yourself.

Initially, chaos will reign but people will start banding together and not spending money. Debt will become a dirty word. You can’t eat money or your smartphone so start digging your garden. Get your village to open communal gardens.

Before you throw something away as it could be re-purposed.

The prescription for solving this is simple – the government spends, and it spends until people start consuming and working again. 

However, it is my belief that this type of intervention won’t work here because we don’t want the economy to recover (at least, not immediately). 

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

What is needed is an “anti-wartime” economy and a massive scaling back of production.

A key task for us all is demanding that emerging social forms come from an ethic that values care, life, and democracy. The central political task in this time of crisis is living and (virtually) organizing around those values.

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

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

However, Governments are now providing people with an income in order to stop them from going to work reducing people’s dependence on a wage to be able to live.

This is viewed both by the market and governments as a temporary necessity to keep their economic where-with-all to deliver a good quality of life, so it must be protected. 

The market will always return to normal after short periods of crisis.

We do not have the right “mindset” in order to adopt the protection of life as the guiding principle of our economy. The use of profits as the primary way of organizing an economy can only continue if it is used to remove inequality on all fronts.

If it delivers a good quality of life, for all so it must be protected.

Barbarism is the future if we continue to rely on exchange value as our guiding principle and yet refuse to extend support to those who get locked out of markets by illness or unemployment.

It describes a situation that we have not yet seen.

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

We must be careful to avoid authoritarianism and massive austerity after the pandemic has peaked that will only consolidate wealth into tracking apps.

We can expect the lure of tracking citizens to infect politicians. The ideals of democracy will be surrendered to the relative security of authoritarianism. 

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

It is hard to believe but there was a time when computers didn’t control every aspect of the world, just like it is hard to believe that the world survived before electricity.

Nowadays it is hard for most to believe that people lived without cellphones.

I believe that sooner or later we will be facing a Greater Depression. While I certainly ‘hope’ not, logic is telling me that it is inevitable.

I do believe when things change, people will change also because it will become necessary. 

Which of the overwhelming number of urgent global issues should I focus my attention on first? 

Maybe you can’t save the world, but you can save your backyard.

Imagine what would happen if we all did the same?

Rather than waiting for the elected leaders to listen to your concerns, the quickest and most effective way of making a difference is to do it yourself.

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


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