Never in history is such a question more important. Unfortunately, we live in a world of distractions.
In my previous post to this one, (THE HARDEST THING OF ALL TO SEE IS ALREADY THERE.) I attempted to say that the truth has no past.
By this, I meant that the truth is reality, and therefore religion and the state must be separated.
Only then can one hope for value with the same value or worth for all, or almost all, people. A value is considered universal when it goes beyond laws and beliefs; rather, it is considered to have the same meaning for all people and does not vary according to the societies that have evolved.
In fact, cultural relativism is a belief that opposes the existence of universal values; proposes that a value can not be universal because it is perceived differently in each culture.
Given the ambiguity of the term, the existence of universal values can only be understood as the values that have to do with the basic requirements of the human being. Such as Fresh Air, Freshwater, Food, Clean Energy.
Now with AI infiltrating our lives, it seems that the faster we travel, the importance of there place is getting lost.
It seems because there are no universal moral values, our command of science simply can not coexist with morals, and our internet fed imaginations
We talk about the central issues of our times: A universal pandemic, an economic depression, continuing wars, climate change, migration, artificial intelligence, rising inequalities, erosion of the power of the vote, loss of individualism, loss of connection to ecosystems, to mention just a few of the problems to define any values that are universal.
We have many governments doubling down on the blame game and brinkmanship.
We have bioengineering which alone is now much greater danger than a nuclear war.
We have the maldistribution of wealth.
We have world leaders unwilling to see beyond the next election.
We have the extinction rebellion.
We have non-transparent digital data.
We have 10.000 to 130,000 species going extinct each year.
We have a population of 7.7 billion
We have extreme weather and biodiversity loss.
I ask myself why is it that with so many of us tryin’ to improve society, not that much changes but I hope that we don’t make changes to satisfy the noisemakers.
Rather than separating one problem from another, we need to connect them.
i.e. Climate changes to war and war to climate changes.
The question remains.
> How do we the current guardians of the planet achieve a balance between living our lives and the life of the planet, that allows us to live them in the first place.
It is no longer that logic alone will solve the problems, nor protests, or political will but within functional societies, we do still have the ultimate weapon – VIEWING AND BUY POWER and both are available in every type and form of human culture.
They must be added to the deep emotions of religion if we are to achieve change.
The life of now economies and pay later must come to an end if we are to avoid the hazards of the future.
If Extinction Rebellion wants to be heard, it will not do so on top of bamboo towers stopping newspapers to be deliveries, or sticking themselves to windows.
It must use social media digital platforms to encourage its supporters to use their buying power to attack profit for profit sake.
Certain human characteristics as valuable – life regardless of whether or not it is believed in said characteristic.
PROFIT WITHOUT CONTRIBUTION TO UNIVERSAL VALUES IS THE ENEMY.
With these weapons, we can effect change and avoid the hazards to come.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
As global citizens, the news is packed with statistics and updates on the challenges we face. Most of these challenges have existed from time memorial and are too large to be solved by one person at a time and if they affect huge numbers of people we are numb by their enormity.
Photographs can be effective for a while. They capture our attention — they get us to see the reality, to glimpse the reality at a scale we can understand and connect to emotionally. But then there has to be somewhere to go with it.
“There is no constant value for human life.”
Granted that certain global issues cannot be solved by on-the-ground, grassroots-style projects like human rights, climate change, wars, etc.
So is it a perception problem?
No matter how hard we try we are unable to perceive the whole earth never mind the Universe as one.
We witness this many times in history when the value of a single life diminishes against the backdrop of a larger tragedy and now we are once again witnessing it with COVID-19.
We all go to great lengths to protect a single individual or to rescue someone in distress, but then as the numbers increase, we don’t respond proportionally to that.
We don’t scale up, even when we’re capable.
There’s a hard limit to human compassion. The human mind is not very good at thinking about and empathizing with, millions or billions of individuals. As the number of victims increases, our empathy, our willingness to help, reliably decreases.
We seem unable to prevent our past from impacting our present?
However, our current behaviors are not shaped by past events but by mass media in the form of social media which is creating self-limiting beliefs.
They appear so real to the extent that we cant hardly tell whether its a self-limiting belief or a real one, as a result, we are unable to see the world correctly, so we look on as millions die.
Numbers simply can’t convey the costs, there’s an infuriating paradox at play.
We know that we must protect the Earth but are unwilling to pay the cost of doing so.
Our problem is to replace the false beliefs we acquired with the right one.
Which issues are the most urgent?
And can one person, really, truly, make that much of a contribution?
Here are some of the major issues all global citizens should be aware of if not there are living in coco land.
FOOD.
One in nine people in the world goes hungry each day.
It has been estimated that if women farmers could be given the same resources as men, millions of more people could be fed.
How can it be 2020 and people are still going hungry?
Nutritious food is often more expensive. Visit your local supermarket and compare the price of a punnet of strawberries to a chocolate bar.
Even though approximately 12.9% of the world is undernourished, about 30% of the adult population is overweight.
HEALTH.
In a world of more than 1 billion people living in extreme poverty (less than $1.25 per day) and 2.2 billion living on less than $2 per day (2011 data)
The reality is far more complex. Untold hundreds of millions of people lack access to essential health services, in fact over half of the world population do not have basic health care. We are a long way from the universal right to health.
Communicable diseases were responsible for 71% of deaths, and low-income countries are the most severely affected.
EDUCATION.
It’s estimated that approximately 600 million children are not mastering basic mathematics and literacy while at school.
HABITAT AND BIODIVERSITY LOSS. OCEAN CONSERVATION
The earth is full. Full of our waste, full of our demands.
The economy is now bigger than the earth, unimaginable, unattainable, and unsustainable. There is no infinite growth possible on a finite planet because nature sets the rules and individual issues mean nothing if they are not attached to nature.
There are countless studies and evidence all around you indicating that the coming crises are inevitable.
If an economy grows at 2% per year, it will double in 35 years.
Imagine twice as much human economic activity as we now have. Can our planet sustain this? Do we need to do this? Why would we want to? Why are we doing this?
Even though a lot of us know that it makes no sense to try to grow endlessly and outstrip the only planet we have.
What if anything can be changed?
We all know that the road to global decarbonization must involve renewable energy.
Although the Paris agreement’s goals are aligned with science, alarming inconsistencies remain between science-based targets and national commitments.
Its a no-brainer in the current emerging global political climate.
Rather than tackle mitigation measures economies are now due to Covid-19 returning to pumping more not less carbon into the atmosphere.
Climate stabilization must be placed on par with economic development, human rights democracy, and peace.
From a money perspective, we can’t help it—we live in a grow-or-die system.?
Currently, we have a system that provides humans to have an innate cost/benefit assessment tool called the smartphone operating at all times.
Here are a few suggestions.
It is now vital that we consider the motivation and funding sources of those who are shaping our worldview.
Money must be created without debt so it doesn’t force us to grow and consumer beyond our means.
New Money must no longer enter circulation as credit, that is, as debt.
It will simply be money spent into circulation by the government as a permanently circulating exchange medium to enable the country’s economy to function.
This money will be equity on the national balance sheet and be our commonwealth.
It will replace bank-created debt-money ending the privilege of commercial banks to create and issue what we use as money.
Then we have trillions in the form of pension investment funds that are nontransparently invested. If we demanded that these funds were moved from fossil fuel industries to green energy industries whose returns are going to be massive we would be reducing carbon emissions by millions of tonnes.
Next, we have the advertising industry.
All advertising that does not promote sustainability should be curtailed by law. We must turn the direction of humanity towards thriving not consumption for profit.
With the coming economic depression, we do have room for growth—the growth of community cohesion and commons conservation. We can grow our efforts to educate our children, care for our people, and care for the planet. We can grow into a more just, caring, sustainable society.
Because we are careering into a world of a few haves and billions of have -not.
Access to information owned by Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple, to name a few, must become transparent and available to all as the interactions of all our individual worldviews shape the condition of humanity.
Lastly, we must address inequality.
There are now 65.3 million people displaced from their homes worldwide.
Think about that number: 65.3 million. Can you even imagine it?
It’s now or never that we make a profit for profit’s sake contribute to a World Aid fund.
(see previous posts)
As Mahatma Gandhi put it, “Earth has enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.”
We can’t eat drink or shit data.
All human comments appreciate. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
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 wecan’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 noneof 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.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin
No one has the ability to control the outcome of the ovarian lottery, and whether you were born into a life of privilege or disadvantage this COVID-19 business is beginning to ask us all questions about the Capitalist system that has and is failed us.
The one thing that this crisis is doing is making more space to acknowledge that our losses and our failures aren’t our individual faults.
This is now blatantly and brutely clear.
Let’s start with a few very basic questions.
Do people exist to serve the economy, or should the economy exist to serve people?
Can we create an economy that operates on anti-capitalist principles, rather than for private profit?
With COVID-19, it turns out that we’ve created a whole society with culture and institutions around the idea that people exist to serve the economy.
And now millions of people are waking up to the reality that that’s a misplaced priority.
What we need is a money system that actually is connecting real resources with real needs, creating real community wealth at the community level.
That requires a financial system that is rooted in the community and accountable to community interest and that operates by life values rather than financial values.
The biggest problem with our current financial system is that it’s very short-term obsessed.
So we need to change that whole culture. And that means changing what we measure and that now will come with either rewards or unintended consequences of all of us.
Without fundamentally changing as to how we see the economy the current system which is organized around financial values over life values will continue.
If we don’t take the same attitude toward nurturing the human life cycle as we do toward saving the environment from global warming and industrial pollutants were fooling ourselves.
WHAT WE ARE NOW WITTISING ARE COUNTRIES STRUGGLING TO RESTART THEIR ECONOMIES AS IF NOTHING HAS HAPPENED. RETURNING TO WORK WITHOUT ANY NEW VISION AS TO HOW TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM.
So our era is intensifying the almost daily choice for each of us – faced with a moment of unknowing, a new challenge, do I:
In other words, we all facing a lethal challenge with a profound urge to survive and yet without any guarantee of success.
This current ruthless system where the individual desire to succeed overrule all common sense to look after the real rewards of the value of life has kept us up to now quiet about our countries failures.
There are still nurturant values: Freedom, opportunity and prosperity, fairness, open two-way communication, community building, service to the community, and cooperation in a community, trust, honesty.
The world is a dangerous place and it always will be, so let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.
We’ve come a long way but the question remains do our lives have any meaning, any purpose? Every life has two bookends—the day we’re born and the day we die.
Each of us is born with tremendous potential, but ironically, we often end our lives much like we began—weak and helpless and if we are to learn anything from this pandemic it is that the meaning of life is a demanding question, and many dismiss it as simply unanswerable.
The truth of the matter is that every stage of life is equally significant and necessary.
Where do you fit into this story of human life?
In general, worldview has been most influenced by religion and science.
The belief system determines what we think is possible, and what we think is possible influences the results we create or allow in life.
If you think that you are connected with all of life, you will be more apt to steward your environment with care and treat others with compassion. However, if you think that only your race or social class should rule, your behavior will most likely be very brutal.
On a larger scale, however, our beliefs are predominantly determined by those who control our access to information (media) and our social structures, (including schools), because these institutions dictate what beliefs and behaviors are rewarded and which are punished.
So the prevailing worldview of the 21st century, in which war is considered a viable or necessary means of problem-solving, that starvation is inevitable for some people on this planet, and that it is right for some people to tax and control others against their will, is the result of a well-organized elite who own the systems through which information and values are disseminated.
We are careening into a world of a few haves and billions of suffering have-nots.
It is critical to consider this if we want to protect one another, as well as our planetary home, and to turn the direction of humanity toward thriving.
Above all what we need is. To consider the motivation and funding sources of those who are shaping our worldview.
We are at a critical crossroads where our information and our courage enables us to choose to create a thriving world based on protecting the rights of every individual or as our recent trajectory of misinformation and confusion continues to lead us into a global Data police state – seeking daily permission to act from the dictators of one-world tyranny run by Global Data platforms.
We must learn ethical evolution quickly…
What can be done?
First, we must stabilize our climate.
Our sentience, our feelings of wonder and awe emerge out of the universe… These profound feelings are not just ours; they are the universe reflecting upon itself… To live is to enter this beauty, surrounded by enchantment, summoned by magnificence.
Secondly, we must overcome the powerful addiction of our smartphones, of money, power, career, and ego needs of every type. This momentum has kept suffering alive despite the enormous changes in human existence from age to age.
Then, we must not allow Artificial Intelligence to control our minds. Rather than just doing the next centralization of power into the hands of a few as we wake up, do our own thinking, connect with others, and take action, humanity has what it takes to thrive.
Furthermore, we must stop experience every aspect of our lives through the lens of our set of beliefs, personalized social media filters, racism, greed,.
Which is more primary in finding our way, the rights of the individual, or the opinion of the majority about what’s good for the group?
Finally, “Everything we need is already here and we can access it by recognizing and acting from our oneness.” – Kimberly Gamble
Will we do any of it?
Not likely.
Why?
Because we are unable to act as one.
The world’s population is expected to hit seven billion in the next few weeks.
The number of people on Earth has more than doubled in the last 50 years.
As I see it, the economy is just a social construction that lets people produce and exchange goods and services. You can’t serve a social contract. In the end, the agreed-upon valuation between sellers and buyers is all that matters.
What’s it all mean then?
I think the worst thing we could do would be to actually throw out capitalism and I think what we…the second-worst thing we could do would be to actually fail to reform it.
We need to re-orientate capitalism and the financial markets to make them more long-term focused, not let’s put it back in a box.
There is only one way that we might act together is by creating a perpetual funded World Aid fund, ( See previous posts) with a Constitution for the Earth and the use of all technology.
Remember that the economy depends on millions of factors that can have both a positive and negative impact, while the stock market is only affected by one factor, the supply and demand of stocks.
So, again, the stock market is not the economy. And the economy is not the stock market.
GDP is not a means to a healthy economy unless it protects the smallest ant to the biggest
All of us will be a long time dead so hopefully, your legacy will continue after your stages of life have ended.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
NOW IS THE TIME TO WRITE A CONSTITUTION FOR THE PLANET THAT WE ALL LIVE ON – THE EARTH.
We can observe our Planet from space, but many of us are still not able to see it as a unique and precious miracle of life.
Why a Constitution?
Because most of the declarations like the universal declaration of human rights or the US constitution do not, constitute viable instructions for change: they are rather moral discussion papers, containing much wishful thinking, or a list of flaws people are perceived to commit in their relation to Nature.
Because neither human beings nor culture is independent self-sufficient existences – they are dependent on the Earth.
Only the Earth can be thought of as a relatively independent existence within the Universe.
They depend on the health and prosperity of the biotic assembly that constitutes our Planet.
Because there will be no exit strategy without a healthy Earth.
The relationship between man and Earth up to now has been exploited for profit.
All noble sentiments and efforts to understand and resolve the current crisis while ignoring the splitting of the planet into two opposing systems – Culture and Nature – are doomed to failure.
The currently prevailing anthropocentric vision of the world is incorrect, not only in its details and in its specific arguments, but also in its deepest underlying principles – in short, in its entirety.
Culture is not a continuation of natural evolution by different means.
Culture is an artificial system opposing Nature.
If it were set as Nature is in biophilia, life-reverencing format, then Culture’s self-activity would grow in a desirable way.
Culture would respect Nature and both systems would co-operate at a new level.
Our world is not only surrounded by junk it is full of junk.
———————————————————————————————-
HERE: IS A DRAFT EARTH’S CONSTITUTION.
Feel free to add.
Article I
The Earth
The Earth is the natural home to all of its interdependent live beings. It cannot belong to any biological species, not even to the human species. Humans, the founders of Culture, must not ravage the Earth to the detriment of themselves or of any other living beings.
The Earth represents the highest value for both our species and for human Culture. It constitutes the oldest, broadest and most powerful creative activity, the unique planetary subjectivity. We have to defend its right to evolution, and its right to maintain a planet-wide balance between animate and inanimate systems.
Our Culture must not expand further, neither at the expense of the natural diversity of the planet nor at the expense of human health.
As a system superordinate both to humans and to their artificial Culture, the Earth is sovereign and our elected and controlled institutions must become its defenders and advocates.
We commit ourselves to halting the decline, destruction, and pollution of Earth’s natural existence and, to that effect, also to advancing the recognition of a system of human responsibility, including effective and deterrent sanctions against those who fail to respect this Constitution.
Article II
Humans
Human beings are not the immediate cause of the current environmental crisis. The root cause of the crisis is the systemic conflict between the artificial cultural orderliness and the natural orderliness of the Earth.
Humanity is not responsible for the Earth. It is responsible for Culture, its product, which has divided the Earth into two mutually opposing systems: the Cultural and the Natural. It is the paramount task of law, politics, and science in the coming period of life-reverencing – biophilia – Culture to reconcile Culture with Nature.
The human species subjectivity is restricted by the superior subjectivity of the Earth. All persons and government authorities are obliged to respect this wider subjectivity, protect the diversity and unity of the biosphere and sparingly use the inanimate products of the Earth.
We hereby declare that the human species can only be biologically congruent with natural existence – not with artificial cultural existence. We acknowledge that anything that is good for the Earth is good for human beings as well.
All legal systems must protect and enforce the natural orderliness of the Earth.
Article III
Culture
Culture is an artificial system with its own internal, intrinsic information, and that is intellectual culture. A change in the orientation and contents of the intellectual culture, including values, knowledge, and precepts, is a prerequisite of the biophilia transformation of Culture.
Culture, which is a human creation, is neither a continuation of the evolution of Nature nor a process in its improvement. It is an artificial and temporary construct, which is dependent on mass, energy, and information coming from Nature. It is a structure incongruent with the biological structure of human beings and it will cease to exist after the demise of humankind.
The Culture system’s growth marginalizes and exterminates live systems and breaks up the natural structures of the Earth. Should the evolution of the Culture system’s continue, it must abandon the predatory orientation and adopt a position of a humble integration into the superior evolution of our planet.
It has been political entities – States – that have made the ravaging of Nature possible, since these States have, directly or indirectly, supported the development of the predatory entrepreneurship and unrestricted extension of both materials- and energy-intensive consumer techniques. These States, therefore, bear the main responsibility for the current crisis of civilization.
All States must be obliged to take steps towards a state of sustainable co-operation between Culture and the Earth. They are charged with the task of changing the predatory spiritual paradigm of Culture, starting the process of adopting biophile laws and spreading knowledge about the need for reconciliation between Culture and Nature.
Article 1V
Technology.
1. New innovations and uses of technology will be an active and integral part of the
international development story going forward. Developing a deeper understanding of how technology can impact development will better prepare everyone for the future, and help all of us drive it in new and positive directions.
2. The link between technology and governance is critical to consider in a better
understanding of how technology could be developed and deployed. The distinction between “developed” and “developing” nations should no longer apply.
3. Strong global cooperation on a range of issues drives technological
breakthroughs that combat disease, climate change, and energy shortages.
4. Governance, in turn, will play a major role in determining what technologies
are developed and who those technologies are intended, and able, to benefit.
5. Transparency allows states to glean insights from massive datasets to vastly improve the management and allocation of financial and environmental resources.
6. All technology must carry a world-recognized seal of safety verifying the authenticity of anything.
——————————————————————————————-
But no one was prepared for a world in which large-scale catastrophes would occur with such breathtaking frequency. Not surprisingly, the coronavirus pandemic has put enormous pressure on an already overstressed global economy.
Most nation-states could no longer afford their locked-in costs, let alone respond to increased citizen demands for more security, more healthcare coverage, more social programs and services, and more infrastructure repair.
So yes I can hear you saying this will never happen.
How would such a constitution be ratified, by who, at what cost, who will pay?
It can be ratified in the United Nations, passed at the next global climate summit, the cost of not doing so outweighs any alternative, and it can be paid for fairly by placing a world aid commission on all activities that are for-profit sake. ( see the previous post on world aid commission)
As you have seen, each of the scenarios, if it were to unfold, would call for different strategies and have different implications for how a range of organizations will work and relate to changes in technology. But no matter what the world might emerge, there are real choices to be made about what areas and goals to address and how to drive success toward particular objectives.
“Biodiversity is the totality of all inherited variation in the life forms of Earth, of which we are one species. We study and save it to our great benefit. We ignore and degrade it to our great peril.” Wilson, Edward O.
All comments and contributions welcome. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
We already have the power to destroy ourselves without the wisdom that we don’t, but this Coronavirus pandemic is another kettle of fish altogether, there is no need to press a button.
Most species live for millions of year so we are at 200,000 are teenagers.
If we play our cards right we could be around for hundreds of thousands of years to come.
Now that we realized the truth, of the fragility of our present times we need to revamp our World Institutions to get the risk of living down and keep it down forever.
Perhaps after this Pandemic, we as a species need to write a constitution for humanity to set us on the right course to sustainability.
Why?
Because no one individual, no president or politician has been able to solve in the last century even if they wanted to, the problems that Earth our home must tackle as a species.
———————————————————————————————-
Worldwide we are now looking at more than 838,000 cases of COVID-19 leaving the majority of citizens jobless, broke, and without options.
You’d think people would be used to it by now. Every couple of years the world is thrust into hysteria by the latest virus that is threatening to wipe out a significant portion of the population.
How many shocks can an international economy sustain?
How many shocks are likely on their way?
Forests are burning. Glaciers are melting. Ecological systems are collapsing. Resources are running out.
Coronavirus has and is changing everything and not everything.
We just haven’t noticed it yet.
But those changes will become more apparent by the day.
Suddenly, we may have to think about things we’ve never needed to consider before.
Like a social bomb that can explode at any moment.
In our global society, this outbreak moved from a remote village to a major city on the other side of the world in under 36 hours.
Despite generous government-mandated disaster pay, unemployment, and stimulus checks, it’s only a matter of time before many issues combine to become the flashpoint that leads to an explosion of civil unrest.
The consequences will be very different in countries where political institutions are weaker and where the illness or death of a leader has been known to generate the kind of power vacuum that might inspire rival leaders, opposition parties, or the military to launch a power grab.
HOWEVER, ultimately its impact will not be counted in human fatalities.
Nor in the cost of treating the sick.
It will be in our minds. It’s in our economic system. In our societies that are all linked to the overwhelming extent of globalisation, urbanisation and ecosystem collapse.
Our interconnected world – and its ultra-efficient flow of trade, investment, knowledge and people – has been revealed to have feet of clay.
Globalisation will have to be rethought because most of the population is the urbanised disassociated from even basic agriculture, NOT TO MENTION THE WORLDS ECOSYSTEMS.
We have skewed supply chains so far to the extremes that when they are perturbed, people get into a lot of strife and our way of life isn’t built to cope with it.
What COVID19 is emphasising is that our system is set up ideally to transmit such a disease and is extremely susceptible to even small interruptions.
It jumped into a world humans have moulded to their own purposes. But that world is also nirvana to a virus.
We’ve actually put ourselves in an ideal position from the perspective of a virus, which is why we see estimates of anywhere between 30 and 60 per cent of the population likely to get it.
It has burst on an unready world.
COVID-19 will eventually pass and become more controllable with vaccines and developed natural immunity, but not yet and not before it could wreak profound change on those who currently hold political, economic and military power around the globe.
It has set in motion a chain of events that will bring consequences, that none of us IMAGINE NOW.
Everybody is suddenly very aware of just how reliant we are on China for everything from medicines and machinery to electronic components and rare Earths.
There is a big judgement call to make such are the levels of interdependency built by reliance on global just-in-time supply chains that the developed economies will largely sink or swim together.
But it’s not just China. It’s the whole globally specialised network of supply.
Diversification is now a necessity, not just strategic aspiration.
Suddenly the logic of many belts and many roads is plain.
It is not possible to manage the truth.
When benefits run out on a national scale, fear, lack of food, employment, the number of people dying with the potential for much more yet to come there is risks of a domino effect leading to Civil unrest.
Fear becomes the default emotion. The very emotion that motivates people to take to the streets to engage in civil unrest and protest.
Exceptional conditions of imbalance between needs and available resources.
Historically, larger outbreaks of civil unrest tend to occur in largely populated areas.
But most people don’t go further and ask the question; “What exactly are people afraid of?” Is it death? Of course, that is mankind’s greatest anxiety, especially for those who have children.
Civil unrest affects more than just the civilians involved and the law enforcement that are called on to subdue it. It isn’t limited to riots. Violence and destruction aren’t necessary to classify civil unrest. It can start for many reasons. Of course, any prediction is hard to make given that infections haven’t yet peaked.
The sooner you accept the need to go into lockdown, the better.
The sacrifice isn’t fun, and borders on tragic. Hopefully, people will see fit to prepare for such setbacks in the future as history has shown that this will not be the last impending “catastrophe” to derail us from our lives.
All human comments appriciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
The Covid-19 doesn’t just call our bluff it is questing the way we allow our society to be run.
It is bringing into sharp relief what some of us have always known to be true. Our current way of living must end.
Capitalism and the culture of hierarchy that props it up is now extremely screwed up.
The story of Capitalism up to now has been selling your labour so you don’t end up on the streets.
We should not behave to exist this way.
We come into this world kicking and screaming for our own needs while our birth’s, and our eventual departure’s, have all been turned into a product by capitalism to generate profit. We leave silent.
We live in a world where nearly everything has some kind of cost and the increased workforce automation is suggesting that things will keep getting worse.
What is considered valuable by man or the people of this world are of little or no value when one is confronted by a virus (which unfortunately some of us are witnessing this very minute) that does not discriminate any grounds.
Money, wealth, riches, gold, property, power and so on are either transitory, fading or can be destroyed in the blink of an eye and are of no value in the long term.
In the past few years, the money markets have fallen in a heap with the global financial crisis and the value of money becoming very shaky. The same can be said of shares, property and other investments. And this is nothing new for the economic cycle goes through boom and bust every seven to ten years making fortunes at one time and destroying them at other times.
However, men believe that wealth gives you the power to be able to rise above the problems and issues of the world.
How wrong he is.
The coronavirus is not the only virus we have to confront we also have to confront capitalism and the world that sustains it.
Climate Change was not enough to make the world pause.
The challenge man faces is that we think only of the here and now.
We now have a moment to consider what a rapid response to the climate emergency would look like – how we build a society that completely transforms our social order towards something that is in equilibrium with the biosphere and gives to each according to their needs.
But will more sustainable capitalism emerge from Covid-19 highly unlikely as the protection of private interest over public interest remains the same?
What the coronavirus has and is showing is that our cheapskate governments can provide far more in social programmes than they have.
While none of us can predict the future let’s hope that this time the penny drops.
The risks of Covid – 19 are now but the risks of climate change with the clock ticking needs us to wake up before the alarm goes off.
It’s not science, not protest, that will save the planet. Science alerted us to global warming but understand the nature of the world is crucial to dealing with it.
Everything has a function and our function is to fit into our world and not divorce ourselves from nature.
With the age of technology and its Algorithms working themselves into everything relentless, enabling profits to disappear far from the trickle-down effect the coronavirus is revealing heroes and villains across the world.
The markets might be paralysed with numerous industries entering a state of suspended animation the environment is getting a recovery period.
Covid -19 is showing us that on the horizon, capitalism in its current form threatens value. It is built on the premise of instant gratification.
Many businesses today are aware of this failing in mankind and play to it to great effect encouraging us to insure ourselves against the cost of living and dying but we are now trading for time and for eternity.
The corona-virus is certainly a much greater reward than the fleeting pleasures of this life.
The new WFH world that emerges from this will be intriguing – Universal Basic Income.
STOP DESTROYING OUR PLANET: It’s no secret that our planet is in a pretty dire condition.
The problem is a massive one.
It’s so big that there are things that you do every day that are helping to bring about the end of the world, and chances are that you might not even know it.
Here are a few.
China produces a whopping 80 billion disposable chopsticks every year. The vast majority are used—and thrown away—That kind of production takes 20 million trees, and not just any trees.
Estrogen, one of the active ingredients in birth control pills and hormone therapy treatments, was introduced into a freshwater lake research facility in Ontario.
The impact was almost immediate. Male fish first began producing egg proteins and then producing eggs.
Wastewater treatment and its impact on freshwater ecosystems.
Hormones that aren’t absorbed or used end up in the sewer system after they cycle through the human body. In areas where sewer water is dumped into lakes and rivers, the average fish population is about 85 per cent female. The cause has been traced back to the release of improperly treated wastewater that contains hormones from hormone therapy drugs and birth control pills. A stark contrast to the normal 55 per cent. Fish exposed to the hormones not only lose the ability to reproduce, but their accidental hormone treatment impacts eggs at the development stage as well.
Prozac. Might have something to do with the decline in the starling population over the last few decades—to the tune of about 50 million birds.
Drinking straws.
The United States alone uses about 500 million drinking straws made from a polypropylene plastic that doesn’t disintegrate or dissolve.
These millions of straws are around forever, making up a huge part of the estimated 12 to 24 tons of plastic that end up ingested by fish and other marine wildlife every year. And that includes about one million seabirds that die after eating plastics. One of the most common items found in autopsies? The drinking straws that come attached to juice boxes.
Eating frogs.
The fungus that’s being spread by the live food trade is different than one that’s being blamed for most of the recent die-offs.
The consequences of the fungus and its ability to hybridize create the potential to unleash an epidemic across the globe.
Antibacterial soaps, washing liquids/tablets use triclocarban and triclosan, chemicals while most of those chemicals are removed from wastewater when they’re run through a treatment plant, they have to go somewhere. When triclocarban degrades, it degrades into two chemicals—both carcinogens.
When triclosan is run through a treatment plant to make drinking water, it doesn’t exactly make safe drinking water. Instead, it makes other chemicals that can include chloroform. And those chemicals travel through the food chain in plants, animals, and ultimately humans.
Farm-raised fish.
Shrimp aquaculture has resulted in the large-scale degradation of coastal areas, the destruction of wetlands, and salinization of freshwater areas and drinking water. Salmon farming relies on the release of fish food and nutrients into the water, which always results in wasted feed and a huge amount of fish droppings in the water
Extra waste products end up sinking to the bottom where they react with the medicines and other nutrients used to keep the fish healthy along with antifoulant agents used to keep nets clean. That means fish farms are a breeding ground for sea lice, which are as disgusting as they sound. More chemicals are used to control the sea lice, which end up killing the other marine life that was supposed to be in the area in the first place.
Not the eco-friendly choice you’d think.
Soybeans 80 per cent of the world’s soy production goes into livestock feed.
1.2 million hectares of soy was planted in Brazil’s rain forest in 2005 alone.
Global food waste.
Every year, global food waste amounts to about 1.3 billion tons, and that’s such a big number that it’s impossible to imagine. Meanwhile, about 870 million people are starving.
Inequality: Lack of Healthcare, Nutrition and Education.
We all know that the world’s richest 1 per cent, those with more than $1 million, own 44 per cent of the world’s wealth. In many countries, a decent education or quality healthcare has become a luxury only the rich can afford.
Being poor all too often means more sickness and an earlier grave.
The story of inequality in many developed countries, including the U.S. and U.K., is more sobering. However, when you are born in a poor place where every tenth child dies, as the well-to-do’s share of the national economic pie surges, a pandemic is a joke.
So what can be done to right this unsettling imbalance and restore a sense of opportunity for the billions of people who are being excluded from the gains of economic development?
The first and most important step may ultimately be recognizing the scope and scale of the problems caused by inequality in the first place and resolving to do something about them.
Inequality is out of control with the human costs devastating.
Like many other environmental problems, there’s absolutely no easy answer but it is time we opened our eyes.
Ironically, with the coming economic collapse due to the coronavirus, we might finally be recognizing inequality’s great economic costs may be just the motivation that financial interests need to take the issue seriously.
Its not Amazon fortune and power that will grow exponentially.
The growing gap between rich and poor is undermining the fight against poverty, damaging our economies and tearing our societies apart.
If not with climate change added to next pandemic it won’t be the virus that kills you but the influx of refugees.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
I know that humans are the only type of species that are suitable to manage the earth but it does not make them the right species!
Apparently not.
Did we ever think that we would be living in a world where it is life-threatening to go our side and I am not talking about terrorists or any other Hollywood science fiction movie scenario?
There’s a lot of bad news out there but this is not a death sentence.
It’s time to save the world. ” We can use it as we wish”
No one owns the earth. No one has the right to do whatever they want.
We’re not the only thing that lives here, nor are we more important in any way.
We cannot use the world as we please as our actions are endangering not just us but other species.
Our Earth was meant to be lived on in union with its Ecosystems and we cannot allow that to be broken.
The Coronavirus ( Covid 19 ) is illuminating what is wrong with our world.
So our most crucial life questions are:
What Kind of World Do We Want to Leave to Our Children?
Whatever your interest — whether it’s the environment, health care, poverty, or education — there are simple steps each of us can take to make life better not just for someone in our own community.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” now needs an Earth Declaration.
Here are the top six of my non-legal binding the goals.
Use Global Warming to Solve Global Warming.
Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts to protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, and halt biodiversity loss.
Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development.
Sustainable Development Goals which will take years for a critical mass of governments to actually rally behind.
The allocation of resources to fight climate change and other environmental issues over the next decade can be achieved by making a profit for profit sake pay. ( See the previous post on a 0.05% World Aid Commission. How it could be implemented so the costs are spread fairly)
End poverty in all its forms everywhere.
Global poverty. Reduce inequality within and among countries. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
Expand access to clean drinking water, green energy.
Artificial Intelligence and Automation.
The 2020s sounds like such a radical futuristic decade however to strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development requires a coherent and plausible conception of social justice. Abasic income, a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement.
Stop the sale of arms.
The estimate of the total value of the global arms trade in 2017 was at least $95 billion.* However, the true figure is likely to be higher. On any given day at any given moment in your life, there are at least 15 wars and armed conflicts actively going on all around the world — even if you’re only hearing about a few of them on the news.
There are an estimated 11-12 million refugees in the world today with between 12-24 million Internally Displaced Persons.
Electoral Reform with Citizens’ Assemblies.
These aren’t just focus groups or consultations though but for the members to engage in serious, informed reflection on important policy matters with people they may never normally meet.
As Hubert Reeves ( Canadian-French Astrophysicist) say’s, ” Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and Destroys a Visible Nature. Unaware that this Nature he’s destroying is this God he’s worshipping “
Feel free to have idea sex between your ideas and mine so we can come up with even better ideas. It’s a way of saying: “We agree that these are the world’s top priorities right now.”
NO MATTER HOW MUCH THE TRUTH IS HIDDEN BEHIND LIES IT EVENTUALLY BURST THROUGH AND THE IMPLICATIONS OF THAT TRUTH WILL REVILE THE FELICE OF CAPITALISM SYSTEMS WHICH ARE THE CURRENT MARAIDIME OF OUR TIMES.…
The eco of our origins is being heard in as much that we can’t continue living in abstract economic systems with limitless consumerism. Where everything that we consume is filmed while everything we rely on life is not.
When now the unconscious world is surging up the powerlessness of the market is evident to all: The global financial system is already insolvent.
Where is the bottom? There is no bottom.
Everyone expecting the economics and financial markets to magically return to January 2020 levels once the pandemic dies down is delusional.
We are all connected to one another whether its an Airline or an Individual. The rules of capitalism have to be suspended and help given to all.
There is no place for Governments loans to get through this.
Loans must still be serviced or paid off, and if the borrowers default, then the losses must be absorbed by the lenders or taxpayers.
This is the time to introduce a National basic income to one and all. ( We don’t need the virus to tell or see this – Stay at home – AI Automation – Wifi you name it)
Up to now, one could argue that everything we do is to secure our future as a species, but for the last thousand year, we have become more and more out of touch with NATURE AND OUR OWN NATURE.
So what does the future hold in terms of how humans will evolve?
During our first four billion years we made very little progress in terms of social or technological advancements. It took over a billion years to transfer from one basic stone tool to the next. Today our brains still cannot visualize dark matter or dark energy that makes up over 90% of our universe.
And that is with brains about the same size as those that used stone tools.
However, as we PAVE THE WAY TO OUR SELF DESTRUCTION IN A WORLD OF MATERIALISTIC PARADIGM our behaviour is now unrecognisable.
One of the possibilities of human evolution is that we are done evolving.
Another possibility is the exact opposite: we are still changing.
Survival of the fittest can’t operate if the “less fit” are helped to survive. So it’s no surprise that much technological advancement is currently aimed at the human body.
For those of us that survive this current threating world Pandemic, we are going to see a fundamental change to society – SELF ACTUALIZATION.
We have invested so much in self-destruction our perception of reality relies on the filter of our minds that have been educated not to value the planet we all live on but to use in for Profit.
When those filters are dulled by psychedelics we see the true nature of reality.
God forbid we don’t learn the lessons of values.
Biological evolution relies on mutations as a source of new characteristics and involves much longer time periods of a Pandemic.
WHAT IS THE VALUE OF A NATION IF WHEN NATURE SURGES BACK IT FALLS APART?
Where the panic lands will determine our future – Toilet Paper or the Gun.
The quest for the single explanation that could unite all the observed forces at play in our universe must leave the arena of religion and spirituality and become the search for the Unified Field Theory.
Perhaps we need a Shaman. One who mediates between the visible world of form and matter, and the invisible world of energy and spirits. For the shaman, there is no supernatural world. Only the natural world exists, with its visible and invisible dimensions.
The shaman is dedicated to service to her community, whereas the mystic is dedicated to dwelling on her own experience of the divine, and lets the world unfold as it may.
When a person regains health after being near death, it is believed by some that they have a special ability to overcome hardships and they can help others do so as well, and so are looked at as a shaman.
It is better to classify shamanism among the mysticisms than among the religions of the world.
Today many of us feel compelled to describe our art and practice using the language of quantum physics, I believe that doing so actually devalues the 50,000-plus year tradition of shamanism.
Therianthropes are found among all religious theology with their visions based in shamanism.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
