Tag Archives: Inequility

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S : What key knowledge would you need to start rebuilding civilization from scratch?

03 Friday Apr 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19

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    ( TWELVE MINUTE READ)  It is now the general consensus that the world and the manner we live on it will change once this Coronavirus pandemic is over. The coronavirus has turned life upside down, and when it’s over—which seems far off and even worse, indeterminate—our lives will be changed permanently. the coronavirus pandemic has ruthlessly laid bare just how fractured our society is.  Living in the modern world, we have become disconnected from the basic processes that support our lives, as well as the beautiful fundamentals of science that enable you to relearn things for yourself – Google it. Leaving the current situation aside we are woefully unprepared for a world that is and going to be affected by climate change. A civilization is a complex human society which is very messy for the majority of the civilians. The word “civilization” relates to the Latin word “civitas” or “city.” The term “civilization” was often applied in an ethnocentric way, with “civilizations” being considered morally good and culturally advanced, and other societies being morally wrong and “backwards.”  Today’s modern definition is still in flux as the concept of “civilization” is hard to define. The problem is that most people have no clear understanding of what civilization is or, perhaps as important, what it isn’t. Wikipedia. According to this seemingly omniscient cyber-seer, civilization is defined most broadly as “any complex state-society characterized by a social hierarchy, symbolic communication forms (typically, writing systems), and a perceived separation from and domination over the natural environment”. How many of us would fight for civilization if we thought that we were fighting for the increasing complexity of the state and its social hierarchy? How many of the agrarians amongst us would fight for a civilization that defined itself as being separate from the natural environment and as seeking to dominate it? How many of us would fight for incessant urbanization, centralization, and the passive domestication of ourselves alongside the domestication of other organisms? How many of us had realized that being civilized was the willingness to make ourselves cattle in the service of increasingly complex social hierarchies? How many of us thought that civilization was marked by the sort of “specialization of labour” that had reduced human work to that of a disposable cog in an increasingly large and complex mechanism? How many of us guessed that civilization was defined by culturally ingrained progressivism and other supremacist ideologies? How many of us perceived that taxation was civilized and that increasing taxation was therefore and presumably a mark of increasing civilization? If this is civilization we would be justified in hoping that civilization would go to hell and that, indeed, we would be equally justified in believing that it was all too evidently going there. However, it is still a helpful framework with which to view how humans come together and form a society. All civilizations have certain characteristics. These include: (1) large population centres; (2) monumental architecture and unique art styles; (3) shared communication strategies; (4) systems for administering territories; (5) a complex division of labour; and (6) the division of people into social and economic classes. Again according to Wikipedia, “civilization” is merely an ideological construct of the eighteenth century! It is not a reality in itself but an idea by which an irreligious and irrational “rationalism” can explain and explain away, to its own prejudiced satisfaction, the history of human culture. This is how civilization is defined on the internet. Is civilization worth defending? Should we aim to conform to it so that we can be considered civilized? Maggie Thatcher once said that there is no such thing as a society.  How wrong she was What is civilization? It is the conforming of the heart of humanity – equality for all.   Culture is everything about human society, i.e. it refers to the knowledge and features of a specific group of people living in a region. Many forget that a culture is only as great as the rival cultures around it, and all history was written by the winners. So if we are to reinvent anything it won’t be civilisation, but the culture that makes us civilised that will have to change.  To do this we will have to ask what has been tried before and what the results were? What resources are available, what new theories are there?  WE CAN’T CHANGE ANYTHING UNTILL EDUCATION/ HEALTH IS FREE FOR ALL. WE CAN’T CHANGE ANYTHING TILL WE SHARE THE RICHES OF THE EARTH– FRESHWATER, FRESH AIR, GREEN ENERGY. ALL FOODS ARE NON-MODIFIED AND SOLD UNDER ITS NATURAL CONDITIONS.   WE CAN’T CHANGE ANYTHING UNLESS INEQUALITY DISAPPEARS. THE RICHEST 1% NOW OWN HALF OF THE WORLD’S WEALTH. THE GAP BETWEEN THE HAVES AND HAVE – NOT’S WHERE ONLY A FRACTION OF SOCIETY REAPS THE BENEFITS OF ECONOMIC GROWTH WILL HAVE TO BE TACKLED – THE BIFURCATED ECONOMY.  (Forty years of neoliberal policy means that wealthy individuals and large companies today have so much “surplus of capital” that they don’t know what to do with it. billions parkEed in tax havens.) WE CAN’T CHANGE ANYTHING TILL RACISM AND RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY IS ABOLISHED  WE CAN’T CHANGE ANYTHING BY CREATING LOTTO MILLIONAIRES WHILE SLUMS EXIST.  WE CAN’T CHANGE ANYTHING WHILE THE ARMS INDUSTRY EXISTS.  WE CAN’T CHANGE ANYTHING WHILE SOVERGIN FUNDS EXIST.  WE CAN’T CHANGE ANYTHING WHILE PROFIT SEEKING ALGORITHMS EXIST. WE CAN’T CHANGE ANYTHING TILL WE REALISE THAT EARTH COMES FIRST THEN ITS PEOPLE. WE CAN’T CHANGE ANYTHING TILL WE ACT AS ONE.    WE CAN’T CHANGE ANYTHING TILL ALL WORLD DEBT IS WRITTEN OFF. TOTAL PUBLIC DEBT WILL BE IN THE TRILLIONS. WORLDWIDE, THE TOTAL MOUNTAIN OF DEBT HAS REACHED A RECORD AMOUNT OF 322% OF THE WORLD GDP. WE CAN’T CHANGE ANYTHING TILL WE UNDERSTAND THAT ONE’S REACH MUST GO BEYOND ONE GRASP. THE CORONAVIRUS IS THE PERFECT TIME TO LAUNCH A NEW GREEN DEAL THAT IS AMBITIOUS ENOUGHT TO SAVE THE PLANET. NEVER MIND WORLD CONFERENCES TALKING ABOUT IT DO IT. THINK BIG. ACT NOW. TOGETHER.  WE CAN’T CHANGE ANYTHING UNTILL WE DO AWAY WITH DIVIDENDS AND REPLACE THEM WITH A BASIC LIVING INCOME. WE CAN’T CHANGE ANYTHING UNLESS WE REFORM THE UNITED NATIONS REMOVE THE VETO AND TURN IT FROM A BEGGING SHOP TO A FULLY FUNDED ORGANISATION WITH A PERTUPITUAL INCOME FROM A 0.05% WORLD AID FUND. ( See previous posts.) WE CAN’T CHANGE ANYTHING UNLESS WE CURBE CONSUMERISM AND MOVE TO SUSTAINABILITY.  WE’VE CONSUMED BEYOND OUR MEANS FOR A GENERATION AND NOW THE BILL IS COMING DUE SUDDENLY. WE CAN’T CHANGE ANYTHING WITH GDP AS OUR CULTURAL GOAL. WE CAN’T CHANGE ANYTHING WHILE WE TOLERATE ZOMBIE BANKS. NO FEWER THAN 147 INDIVIDUAL NATIONAL BANKS CRISES ACCURED BETWEEN 1970 AND 2011 ACCORDING TO THE IMF. IT’S TIME TO PUT THE BANKING SYSTEM IN GOVERNMENT HANDS AND TO DISMANTLE CASION CAPITALISM. My point is the pandemic and its aftermath will be super-consequential for how we live the rest of our lives. There will be implications across the board; for business,  government, culture, sports and the arts, as well as behaviour. It’s not too soon to think about that. Smartphones have given us an always-on connection to the world’s information but history develops our researching skills and our understanding of human behaviour. What we’ve done in the last generation is we’ve replaced normal human interactions and social capital with technology and money. And we’ve done that with a deleterious impact on our health and our happiness because technology and money hijack our brains in a stronger way than slow, kind of boring conversations do and yet that’s our heritage. Our culture is systems blind. Monetary stability, public safety and all manner of civilised goals have grown too complicated and big. The idea of the trickle-down effect of the free capitalist market is no longer true it continually funnels things towards the top.  It doesn’t speak to the bottom half of society now.   They say that the best things in life are free, that adage is only true if basic needs are covered. A lot of people are living paycheck to paycheck, week to week, month to month.  A universal basic income is the way to go.  A basic income that supports the bottom half of society with enough to pay for basic needs. There is no doubt that many businesses that are booming during the pandemic will continue to thrive. But we continue to look at issues like climate change or renewable energy or poverty and we don’t think of how everything fits together. And right now we’re lacking a map of how to go forward. No matter how this all unfolds, the biggest thing that’s going to contribute to better futures is social nodes of communication and social capital. WE CAN’T GO BACK JUST TO GO OUT AND HAVE AN ORGY OF CONSUMPTION AND BACK TO NORMAL WITHOUT LEARNING ANYTHING FROM THIS.  WE CAN’T ALLOW GOVERNMENTS TO BECOME AUTHORITARIAN. NOR ALLOW SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORKS TO REMAIN UNREGULATED. It is already clear that in future we will look back on 2020 as a turning point, the beginning of a new era. Will we ever shake hands again? Or hug? YES ON OUR TERMS.  NOT GREED AND EXPLOITATION  That’s where we’ve headed back to again if governments don’t cop on to the new slow world  And if you’re a super-rich person … instead of investing in the stock market, maybe take some of that money and invest it locally. All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

        .      The weather is extreme, with searing heat most of the day.    army was eventually left without wars to fight, religions with vague ‘new age’ beliefs, all of which eventually blended into a new religion,      Political Parties are abolished. Only Candidates can represent themselves in all elections.        I not only suggest and encourage constructive criticism

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S : Where will we be in six months, a year, ten years from now?

31 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Climate Change., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Democracy., Digital age., Disconnection., Environment, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Lock Down., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Political Trust, Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Poverty, Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The Future, The Internet., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Truthfulness., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, Wealth., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Economy., World Organisations., World Politics

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( An essential twenty-minute read) 



It all depends on how governments and society respond to coronavirus and its economic aftermath.

As we know COVID-19 is highlighting serious deficiencies in our existing system. 

Hopefully, we will use this crisis to rebuild, produce something better and more humane. But we may slide into something worse.

My focuses on this post are on the fundamentals of the modern economy: global supply chains, wages, and productivity.

I argue that we will need a very different kind of economics if we are to build socially just and ecologically sound futures.

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

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The COVID-19 pandemic is simply the amplification of the dynamic that drives other social and ecological crises: The prioritisation of one type of value over others. 

From an economic perspective, there are four possible futures:

Descent into barbarism, robust state capitalism, radical state socialism, and a transformation into a big society built on mutual aid.

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.

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.

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

Tackling both COVID-19 and climate change is much easier if you reduce nonessential economic activity.

The epidemiology of COVID-19 is rapidly evolving. But the core logic is similarly simple. People mix together and spread infections.

We can see from Wuhan that social distancing and lockdown measures like this are effective.

Political economy is useful in helping us understand why they weren’t introduced earlier in European countries and the US.

We are now facing a serious recession and we are living with an economic system that will threaten collapse at the next sign of pandemic.

The economics of collapse is fairly straightforward.

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.

Businesses can and do (over short time periods) hold on to workers that they don’t need immediately: They 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.

In a normal crisis, the prescription for solving this is simple.

The government spends, and it spends until people start consuming and working again.

This pressure has led some world leaders to call for an easing of lockdown measures.

But normal interventions won’t work here because we don’t want the economy to recover (at least, not immediately). The whole point of the lockdown is to stop people going to work, where they spread the disease.

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.

At its core, the economy is the way we take our resources and turn them into the things we need to live.

Looked at this way, we can start to see more opportunities for living differently that allow us to produce less stuff without increasing misery.

So how do you reduce the amount of stuff you make while keeping people in work?

You have to reduce people’s dependence on a wage to be able to live.

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

This is why markets are seen as the best way to run society. They allow you to adapt, and are flexible enough to match up productive capacity with use-value.

What COVID-19 is throwing into sharp relief is just how false our beliefs about markets are. 

There are lots of contributing factors to this. But let’s take two.

First, it is quite hard to make money from many of the most essential societal services-key workers low-paid employee. This is in part because a major driver of profits is labour productivity growth: doing more with fewer people – automation.

Second, jobs in many critical services aren’t those that tend to be highest valued in society. Many of the best-paid jobs only exist to facilitate exchanges; to make money.

People are compelled to work pointless jobs (they serve no wider purpose to society: ie. consultants, huge advertising industry and a massive financial sector) because, 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.

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.

While state-capitalist society continues to pursue exchange value as the guiding light of the economy. It also enacts a massive Keynesian stimulus by extending credit and making direct payments to businesses.

The expectation here is that this is will be for a short period.

Could this be a successful scenario?

Possibly, but only if COVID-19 proves controllable over a short period.

Limited state intervention will become increasingly hard to maintain if death tolls rise.

Increased illness and death will provoke unrest and deepen economic impacts, forcing the state to take more and more radical actions to try to maintain market functioning.

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.

Could this happen?

The concern is that either it could happen by mistake during the pandemic, or by intention after the pandemic peaks.

Potentially just as consequential is the possibility of massive austerity after the pandemic has peaked and governments seek to return to “normal”.

This would be disastrous. The subsequent failure of the economy and society would trigger political and stable unrest, leading to a failed state and the collapse of both state and community welfare systems.

Then there is the possibility that we could see with a cultural shift that places a different kind of value at the heart of the economy.

The state steps in to protect the parts of the economy that are essential to life: so that the basic provisions of life are no longer at the whim of the market. The state nationalises hospitals and makes housing freely available. Finally, it provides all citizens with a means of accessing various goods – both basics and any consumer goods we are able to produce with a reduced workforce.

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

Payments are made to everyone directly and are not related to the exchange value they create.

Instead, payments are the same to all (on the basis that we deserve to be able to live, simply because we are alive), or they are based on the usefulness of the work.

A Basic Universal Income.

Supermarket workers, delivery drivers, warehouse stackers, nurses, teachers, and doctors are the new CEOs.

If deep recessions happen and there is a disruption in supply chains such that demand cannot be rescued by the kind of standard Keynesian policies we are seeing now (printing money, making loans easier to get and so on), the state may take overproduction.

There are risks to this approach – we must be careful to avoid authoritarianism. But done well, this may be our best hope against an extreme COVID-19 outbreak.

Mutual aid is the second future in which we adopt the protection of life as the guiding principle of our economy. But, in this scenario, the state does not take a defining role. Rather, individuals and small groups begin to organise support and care within their communities.

The most ambitious form of this future sees new democratic structures arise. Groupings of communities that are able to mobilise substantial resources with relative speed. People coming together to plan regional responses to stop disease spread and (if they have the skills) to treat patients.

This kind of scenario could emerge from any of the others.

What hopefully is clear is that all these scenarios leave some grounds for fear, but also some for hope.

The upside of this is the possibility that we build a more humane system that leaves us more resilient in the face of future pandemics and other impending crises like climate change. 

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) organising around those values.

Not low-paid workers or National Minimum Wage or National Living Wage because their work is so vital.

Successive governments had failed to reduce inequality between rich and poor despite two decades of interventions.

We must now with an uncertain future focus more on the journey, rather than the ultimate destination.

But be no doubt that we are at a crossroad where the low pay culture that has trapped people in poorly jobs is coming to an end. 

Capitalism Inequality can not be allowed to continue. 

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

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: ARE WE NOW REAPING THE REWARDS OF PROFIT FOR-PROFIT SAKE?

30 Monday Mar 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology, 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., Truth, Unanswered Questions., Universal Basic Income ., VALUES, Wealth., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Economy.

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(Five-minute read) 

First, let me state the obvious.

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.

All human comments appreciated

. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. WE ALL KNOW WHAT TO DO BUT ARE WE WILLING.

23 Monday Mar 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., Capitalism, COCID-19, CORONA VIRUS., Disconnection., Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Poverty, Reality., Refugees., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., United Nations, VALUES, Wealth., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Economy.

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(Five-minute read) 


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.

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: THIS CORONA VIRUS IS ASKING ALL OF US WHAT TYPE OF WORLD DO WE WANT?

19 Thursday Mar 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Disasters., Disconnection., Evolution, Honesty., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., Poverty, Reality., Refugees., Religious Beliefs., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The current state of our oceans., The essence of our humanity., The Future, THE FUTURE OF OUR OCEANS/SEAS, The Obvious., The Refugees, The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Truthfulness., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, War., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, World Organisations., World Politics

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(Seven-minute read) 

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. A basic 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.”

THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT THE CRISES FACING THE WORLD.

08 Sunday Mar 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Disasters., Environment, HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., Poverty, Survival., Sustaniability, Technology, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, War, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, World Organisations., World Politics

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Five minute read.

With all aspects of our life made into a form of viewing entertainment. We live in a world that has become desensitized. 

The result is that most if not all of us pay little attention to the state of Earth.

The drawn-out nature of many crises now facing us all underscores the importance of coming together to urgently resolve the root causes of a humanitarian crisis.

It is unlikely the situation will improve. 

 Where do you even start? Which issues are the most urgent?

 

So this post is not intended to be an exhaustive list. Rather, it serves as an overview of some of the major issues all global citizens should be aware of.

Sometimes it can seem as though there are too many – from climate change to inequality around the world, too many people living without access to medical care its not worth knowing. 

But just in case here is why we are in such a mess. 

12.9% of the world is undernourished, about 30% of the adult population is overweight.

Conflict continues to drive displacement and food insecurity but communicable diseases are still responsible for 71% of deaths.

The international community, and in particular wealthy nations, are failing to meaningfully share the responsibility for protecting people who have fled their homes in search of safety. 

  • 25.9 million refugees globally — the highest level ever recorded
  • Half of the world’s refugees are children
  • A third of refugees — 6.7 million people — is hosted by the world’s poorest countries
A mother rocks her sick child in a camp in Afghanistan's Badghis' Muqur district, where the IRC supports displaced families.

Driven by nearly two decades of conflict and political instability; 9.4 million Afghans (25 per cent of the population) need humanitarian assistance. There are almost 2.5 million registered Afghan refugees living outside the country.

4.6 million Venezuelans have fled the country as of November 2019. 

There are over 2 million displaced Nigerians.

Eleven million Syrians (65 per cent of the population) are in need of humanitarian assistance.

The Democratic Republic of Congo 15.9 million people require humanitarian assistance. 

Over 24 million Yemenis (80 per cent of the population) are in need of humanitarian assistance,

South Sudan 7.5 million people need humanitarian assistance. 

600 million children are not mastering basic mathematics and literacy while at school.

Forests are key to producing the air we breathe, yet these are being depleted at a rate of 26 million hectares every year.

Extinctions are happening at what scientists estimate to be about 1,000 times the normal pace. Not only are we losing flora and fauna, but we are also damaging our ecosystems, and throwing them out of balance

Our oceans are under threat.  

Sand and gravel are now the most-extracted materials in the world, exceeding fossil fuels and biomass.

Climate change is another issue.

There is actually not enough fresh water for each person currently living on the planet. 

Population growth. The number of people on the planet is set to rise to 9.7 billion in 2050 with 2 billion aged over 60.

More than 61 million jobs have been lost since the start of the global economic crisis in 2008, leaving more than 200 million people unemployed globally.

With 43% of the world’s population connected to the internet, regulatory frameworks are unable to keep up.

In this complex moment in history, in which so many are suffering and the Earth itself is in peril

The cloud of nuclear destruction hangs over each of our days.

But the question remains what kind of society do we want to have?

The reasons behind current trends are many and complex.

The detail of the information that we are beginning to capture about our world is mind-blowing. The granularity of the data we are beginning to collect through advances in technology. While improving our lives through cleaner energy sources, personalized nanomedicine and nano-engineered materials.

In all of these areas, progress will undoubtedly lead to a reduction in conventional jobs and inequality on a global scale not seen before.

But technology alone can not break the self-reinforcing mechanism that causes poverty to persist. 

As highly innovative products emerging will, however, promote inequality if only a few have access to this new technology and the knowledge to master it.

Education is probably the single most important tool for turning technology into an engine for opportunities for all.

Public policies, which are currently mainly focused on fostering economic growth, should focus on providing further opportunities, less inequality and a more sustainable economic, social and environmental future.

Technology is not the solution but it is, for sure, a powerful tool towards achieving this ambitious objective.

Whether it’s turning promises on climate change into action, rebuilding trust in the financial system, or connecting the world to the internet there is an overall lack of long-term investment, which has serious implications for global growth.

But the most astonishing canvas is right in front of us if only we would listen with our ear to the earth we might see the light we cannot see.

In short, the world urgently needs a new, global plan based on genuine international cooperation and a meaningful and fair sharing of responsibilities. 

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

 

https://youtu.be/dnxRCHVLGRo

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S; HERE ARE THE BIG QUESTIONS THAT ARE YET TO COME WHEN IT COMES TO TECHNOLOGY.

19 Wednesday Feb 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Digital Friendship., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Google, Google it., Google Knowledge., Human values., Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Reality., Sustaniability, Technology, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., War, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders

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Thirty-minute read.

Who owns what?  What’s our purpose in life?  What are the values that we believe in? How do we think and make decisions?  What do we mean by work?  Can our work ever have true meaning unless it is to serve others?

What will help us all think deeply about the questions we need to ask and answer?

Climate change or technology.

However, for many of us, the answers to these questions differ in our working lives, compared with our personal lives, with family, friends and neighbours.

Were a ruling elite like Google to impose a command-and-control, fear-driven culture in which power is abused and the outcomes are social and economic misery for the vast majority?

Our reaction, if we are to go by what is now observable, will be So what? Now what?

MAKING sure companies compete fairly is a tricky business. The firms being regulated know far more about their business than those doing the regulating;

“Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia but for all of humankind.” Says Putin. “Whatever country comes to dominate this technology will be the “ruler of the world.”

His rhetoric is entirely appropriate. Automation and digitalization have already had a radical effect on international systems and structures.

Technology can easily be referred to as the scientific knowledge to the practical problems we are experiencing in the world today.

On the other hand, its core strategy is to gobble up market share with profit-seeking algorithms.

Our environments are all so full of technology to the point that most of the time we take it for granted.

So are we all becoming personified idiots?

Technology has a great impact on all the fundamental aspects of all our cultures including laws and how they are enforced, language, art, health care, mobility, education and religion.

The obvious problem with all of this is that countries will not own or be in control of the technologies.negative effects of technology

While we all sit back and accept the benefits technology it also brings manipulation on a  worldwide scale with our future in the hands of only a handful of corporations and the vast amount of people that are okay with that.

It’s hard to argue against innovation. It’s hard to argue against greater choice, more convenience and lower prices.

One way or the other it is also hard to underestimate the fundamentally different rules that Google /Amazon/ Facebook/ Apple/ Baidu play by.

Hiding behind forked rhetoric that the data they collect does no harm as it is anonymous.

You do not need to know who you are. It is enough to know what you consume, your habits, your tastes, and where you are, through the IP address, the GPS of the mobile, or your Google account. Your name, or your phone number, is not important to sell you things.

Blurring the borders of privacy. Replacing real-life communication.

And on top of it, violent games and videos killing empathy and bring destruction into an individual’s life. Plagiarism and cheating are increase while analysis and critical thinking decline, ending up in social isolation.

(We now have a new perverse sexual harassment of Cyber flashing which is not against any law. Why? Because our laws cannot keep up with the speed of change)

Commercial technology like Smartphones, I pads, Home Alexa/Echo and there like is about creating another consumer touchpoint for their robust ecosystem of e-commerce, services, and media taking advantage of less sophisticated consumers and trick them into consuming items for short-term satisfaction and long-term pain.

Originally created to serve faithfully to humanity, digital devices are revealing their harmful impact on our lives.

We should all be careful what we wish for.

There’s an argument made by big corporations for each country to charge corporations the lowest possible tax rate, to loosen environmental regulations down to zero, and to eliminate employee protections. All so that a country’s commodity producers can be the cheapest ones.

The voice market war has only just begun.

The contenders:

Amazon-Echo v Google-Alexa.amazon-echo-google-home

Once they figure out how to improve their recommendations and push more people to make regular household purchases via voice it will lead to an explosion in voice-based shopping.

Google already has one of the most valuable brands in the world.

Google maps have virtually no meaningful rival.  Gmail…Google basically controls our handheld existence.

Google controls your life, literally, even if it costs you to believe it.

Google trackers have been found on 75% of the top million websites.

When you search on Google, they keep your search history forever.

Google is a company that offers almost all its products for free because the money is earned by selling the data it collects with those products, to advertisers and companies.

Last year Google made over $161 billion in total revenues.

As it is the premier search engine in the U.S., Europe, and many developing countries Google has the tools to control much of the world.

That’s just Google then you have Amazon.

With around 225 million customers around the world, Amazon wants to deliver everything you want to your doorstep, including Foods anywhere in the world. ( 300 items a second) These days half of all product searches start on Amazon.

Our lust for cheap, discounted goods delivered to our doors promptly and efficiently has a price.

Amazon has done a lot of good for consumers by expanding choice, making shopping far more convenient and by delivering extraordinary product value.

Yet, we can’t–and shouldn’t–ignore the profound effect that Amazon is having on just about every corner of the retail world they set their sights on.

Amazon is selling its facial recognition technology, known as Rekognition, to law enforcement agencies.

First and foremost, Amazon isn’t required by its investors to make any real money.

For us the Great unwashed there’s always the opportunity to cut a corner, sacrifice lifestyle quality and suck it up as they race to grab a little more market share.

With their algorithms, they tell you what restaurants you have to eat in, choose your music, label your photos associating them with each family member or friend that appears in them, pay for your purchases, suggest the movies you should see, and the apps that may interest you.

When in fact the searches we do, what websites we visit, what products we look at, where are we, your medical history, your political beliefs, your associations with others your employment prospects, everything from the womb to the grave is collected and analyzed

Before I hear you calling me a hypocrite I also have used Amazon.

If this scenario prevails, would this be really the way information is supposed to be organized?

In short, does the fact that an algorithm is able to provide more relevant information than a human justify this scenario?

These big brands platforms are more powerful than governments. They’re wealthier. If they were countries, they would be pretty large economies. They’re multinational and the global financial situation allows them to ship money all over the world.

Can we do anything to make a difference?

We need to be supporting the development of an efficient circular economy.

Why?

Because sustainability is an unstoppable force.

Let’s not race to the bottom.

Country’s population size will become less important for national power as small countries that develop a significant edge in AI technology will move far above their weight.

Ultimately, however, winning and losing will not be determined by which country gains the most growth through AI. It will be determined by how the entire global community chooses to leverage AI — as a tool of war or as a tool of progress.

They can eliminate rules protecting clean water, air or consumer safety, but they will always find a way to be cheaper or more brutal than you.

We all assume that Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, are spying our activity and up to now advertiser is not interested in your name when they are it will be too late and the winner will be Inequality.

So what does all this mean and what are we all going to do about it when we’ve stopped talking about it?

Once you start to connect all the invisible dots together the impact on society will, in the end, be down to the people that use the technology they have to be responsible for it and if they use it irresponsibly they have to be held accountable.

A Footnote:

For me, there is little point in Jeff Bezos setting up an Earth fund when Amazon is one of the biggest promoters of pollution. Pretending to be a do-gooder.

The brown box doesn’t begin to address the larger issue: Each year in the United States alone thrown paper in the trash that represents approximately 640 million trees or roughly 915,000 acres of forest land.

Amazon ships an average of 608 million packages each year, which equates to (an estimated) 1,600,000 packages a day.

Then when we talk about energy consumption, we’re talking about the sources of energy that generate our power: oil, coal, natural gas and alternatives like solar, wind, hydropower and biofuels.

How much electricity they use and the bill is, god only knows, so its no wonder that they have contracts with oil and gas companies.

Now consider that people conduct over 1,6 billion searches per day, and you get a massive energy footprint of roughly 12.5 million watts.

Is e-commerce reducing or increasing our carbon footprint?

Google’s worldwide operations, collectively worldwide use about 2.26 million megawatt-hours per year to power its global data centre operations, which is equivalent to the power necessary to sustain 200,000 homes.

In 2018 Google generated 39.12 billion dollars earnings out of which it paid 243 Million a day in electricity.

This is only an educated guess.

The link between global warming and energy demands is obvious. Surely both of these players should be investing in Green energy.

There’s a deafening silence from pundits and elites and columnists and politicians on our joint self-destruction.

They are simply going on pretending it isn’t happening.

We don’t, as societies or cultures, value learning or knowledge or magnanimity or great and noble things, anymore.

The average person has become a tiny microcosm of the aspirations and norms of elites. We’re the only people on earth who thwart our own social progress, over and over again — and cheer about it.

We are caught in a death spiral now. A vicious cycle from which there is probably no escape. The average person is too poor to fund the very things — the only things — which can offer him a better life:

The result is that a whole society grows poorer and poorer.

Unable to invest in themselves or one another, people’s only real way out is to fight each other for self-preservation, by taking away their neighbour’s rights, privileges, and opportunities — instead of being able to give any new ones to anyone.

Though it’s too late to escape for them, let us hope our governments regulate their algorithms for profit sake.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHY IS IT THAT WE ARE ALLOWING ALGORITHMS TO RUN OUR LIVES.

28 Tuesday Jan 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Climate Change., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Innovation., Modern day life., Post - truth politics., Reality., Robot citizenship., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., 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, Where's the Global Outrage., WiFi communication.

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(Twenty-minute read)

Technology is getting increasingly personal.

With algorithms becoming the masters of social media are we all just becoming clickbait?

Devices are providing immediate information about our health and about what we see, where we go and where we have been.

Our lives are being shaken to their very core.

With 5G technology what we experienced at the moment will pale in comparison to the vast array of possibilities carried under its belt by this new generation of wireless connectivity, which is being built over the foundations of the previous one.

It will allow millions of devices to be connected simultaneously.

All stakeholders – business, government, society and individuals – will have to work together to adjust so these technologies and rapid changes are harnessed for the development of all, not just profit.

Swathes of the globe will be left behind.

Regardless it is no longer just about repetitive factory jobs rather an increase in inequality globally.

It is not only a moral imperative to ensure that such a scenario does not happen as it will pose a risk to global stability through channels such as global inequality, but migration also flows, and even geopolitical relations and security.

We already live in a world that has been profoundly altered by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Yet there is not much debate on the likely size of the impact.

Why?

Because there are such divergent views it is difficult to measure.

But within the next decade, it is expected that more than a trillion sensors will be connected to the internet. By 2024, more than half of home internet traffic will be used by appliances and devices that are connected to internet platforms.

With almost everything connected, it will transform how we live never mind how we do business.

If there is no trusted institution to regulate it we can kiss our arses.

Now is the time to make sure it is changed for the better.

The internet of things will create huge amounts of data, raising concerns over who will own it and how it will be stored. And what about the possibility that your home or car could be hacked?

The internet is great for ideas, but ultimately, the things that will amaze you are not on your computer screen.

Artificial Intelligence may well invent new life forms but if we as humans do not contrive and manage global acceptable ethical parameters for all its forms – (bioengineering, gene editing, nanotechnology, and the algorithms) that run them we are more than idiots.

As Yuval Noah Harari says in his most recent book ( 21 Lessons for the 21st Century) ” There is no such thing as ‘Christian economics’, ‘Muslim economics’ or ‘Hindu economics’ ” but there will be Algorithms economics run by big brother. 

The digital age has brought us access to so much information in just a few clicks of the mouse button or the remote control everything from the news, Tv programmes with the internet becoming somewhat glorifying sensationalism rather than giving us the truth.

The question is.

Are the technologies that surround us tools that we can identify, grasp and consciously use to improve our lives?

Or are they more than that:

Powerful objects and enablers that influence our perception of the world, change our behaviour and affect what it means to be human?

What can we do?

The Second Industrial Revolution and the Third Industrial Revolution have lead us to this revolution the Fourth Industrial Revolution which can be described as the advent of “cyber-physical systems” involving entirely new capabilities for people and machines.

Unlike previous revolutions, it is not the world as a whole that will see any of its benefits or disadvantages it is individuals and groups that could win – or lose – a lot.

Unfortunately, expanded connectivity does not necessarily lead to expanded or more diverse worldviews it will be the opposite with our increased reliance on digital markets.

At the moment it’s just not very evenly distributed nor will it be.

At best we can moan about it and hope that climate change shifts our reliance on biomass as primary sources of energy.

Back to Clickbait.

The issue with clickbait is that the reader or site visitor is being manipulated into clicking something that is misleading.

Clickbait is not one-dimensional. Each time you run a Google search, scan your passport, make an online purchase or tweet, you are leaving a data trail behind that can be analysed and monetized.

Most clickbait links forward a user to a page that requires payment, registration or a series of pages that help drive views for a specific site.

It can also point to any web content that is aimed at generating online advertising revenue.

We’re all guilty of being gullible of clicking links online but Clickbait websites are notorious for spreading misinformation and creating controversy in the name of generating hits.

Have you not ever felt that you’re being played as dumb individuals whenever you watch the news or scroll through a media site?

Thanks to supercomputers and algorithms, we can make sense of massive amounts of data in real-time. Computers are already making decisions based on this information, and in less than 10 years computer processors are expected to reach the processing power of the human brain. A convergence of the digital, physical and biological spheres challenging our notion of what it means to be human.

Today, 43% of the world’s population is connected to the internet, mostly in developed countries.

Cooperation is “the only thing that will redeem mankind”.

We can use the Fourth Industrial Revolution to lift humanity into a new collective and moral consciousness based on a shared sense of destiny, and that’s until 6G comes along or living robots.

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

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WILL 2020 BE THE YEAR OF THE BIG MELT OR THE BIG FRY.

02 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., Climate Change., Evolution, HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Purchasing Power., Reality., Social Media, Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What needs to change in European Union., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Aid., World Leaders, World Organisations.

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(Fifteen-minute read) 

 

It looks like being both.

We are the first generation to know we’re destroying the world, and we could be the last that can do anything about it.

SO AS IF YOU DON’T ALREADY KNOW WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE HERE IS YOUR CHANCE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.  

We need to recognize that everything we do, every step we take, every sentence we write, every word we speak—or don’t speak—counts. Nothing is trivial.

Take personal responsibility.

We need to use social media – this is one of the most effective ways to get brands to listen to you, so tell them that you want a change.

Why?

Because, unfortunately, the politicians who dominate the world stage are, depressingly, mostly cut from the old cloth, and the leadership challenges they face, are particularly complex and will require different skills — notably a clearer vision among leaders of organisation’s shared purpose.

Because the digital revolution is far from over the pace of change only seems to be quickening when in fact it is causing isolation. 

Because, we are allowing non-regulated large technology platforms to become too powerful, using their size to dominate markets and we are not paying enough attention to how the tools they create can be used for ill –  like device addictions, as we drown in notifications and false news feed posts.

Because there is an increasing imperative for all of us to respond to climate change.  Which will and is challenging our lives developing on a daily bases right in front of our eyes into our biggest need to act as one.

How can any of this be achieved? 

How will the changing political, economic and environmental landscapes shape the world?

Don’t get caught up in the how of things. Don’t wait for things to be right in order to begin.

Because in our age of tectonic geopolitical shifts, “alternative facts,” and conflicting narratives, our routine everyday life is losing sight of our true goals and aspirations.

Because with the rise of short-sighted populism we will solve nothing, other than feeding the great unwashed with short term gratification.

We need to write a piece of software that eliminated malware, viruses and all of that crap. 

We need to show our political leaders that they want to change, to understand our common humanity.

We need to try to put yourself into another person’s headspace and accept people for who they are and what their beliefs are.

We need to collaborate and push for policies that complement both sides of the political spectrum.

We need to make wasting our resources unacceptable in all aspects of our life.  Every product we buy has an environmental footprint and could end up in a landfill. The impact of plastic pollution on our oceans is becoming increasingly clear, having drastic impacts on marine life.

We need to be more conscious about what we buy, and where we buy it from. Living a less consumerist lifestyle can benefit you and our planet.

We need to use our purchasing power and make sure our money is going towards positive change.

We need to realize that what we eat contributes around a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions and is responsible for almost 60% of global biodiversity loss.

We need to be supporting eco-friendly products.

We need to try to waste as little food as possible, and compost the organic waste we can’t eat.

We need to make education free for all.  Start educating not for profit but for a better understanding of what is the common values of life.

We need to stop asking the world’s smartest scientists to find us more time and to reverse gravity’s effect on our lives.

We need to stop killing each other. Countries start wars and people die and more people are in poverty.

We need to create out of profit for profit sake a World Aid fund with perpetual funding. (See previous posts) A new nonprofit called Carbon Offsets to alleviate address Climate change and Poverty. 

We need to realize that all significant change throughout history has occurred not because of nations, armies, governments and certainly not committees. They happened as a result of the courage and commitment of individuals. Believe that you can and will make a difference. 

The genesis for change is awareness so I need to stop. 

This year will not only be another opportunity for the leading minds in media in all its forms to highlight consumption for consumption sake.

However, if they wanted to spread a message that helps us all they would ban advertising that promotes consumption for consumption sake/profit. 

Feel free to add your priorities. With rapid innovations in technology and open access to data its no longer “wait and see.” We need to stop the huge feeling of apathy. 

The coming year, let alone the next decade looks unpredictable.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. IS THIS THE WORLD YOU WANT TO LIVE IN NEVER MIND LIVE ON.

14 Thursday Nov 2019

Posted by in 2019., Artificial Intelligence., Humanity., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Reality., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World

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(Twenty-minute read) 

Never mind standing on the moon here are some depressing reality about your planet Earth.

We live in a world of trillions of living organisms and billions of humans and few millions of other species.

There are over 35 major conflicts going on in the world today.

There are nearly 210 million orphans in the world.

More than 500 million small arms and light weapons are in circulation around the world.

There are approximately 30,000 nuclear warheads in the world today.

Current global military spending is approximately $800 billion per year; more than the total annual income of the poorest 45% of the global population.

Genocide and other mass murders killed more people in the 20th century than all wars combined.

AND THAT JUST FOR OPENERS. 

35% of the world’s people live in countries in which basic political rights and civil liberties are denied (such as freedom of speech, religion, press, fair trials, democratic political processes, etc).

Over 100 million people live in slums.

1 billion people – 1/3rd of the world’s labour force, are unemployed or underemployed.

Cows earns more than 1.2 billion of the world’s poorest people.

An estimated 27 million people are enslaved around the world, including an estimated 20 million people held in bonded labour (forced to work in order to pay off a debt, also known as ‘debt bondage’). 

At least 700,000 people annually, and up to 2 million, mostly women and children, are victims of human trafficking worldwide (a modern form of slavery — bought, sold, transported and held against their will in slave-like conditions)..

About 246 million, or 1 out of 6, children ages 5 to 17 worldwide are involved in child labor

3 billion of the world’s people (one-half) live in ‘poverty’ (living on less than $2 per day). 1.3 billion people live in ‘absolute’ or ‘extreme poverty’ (living on less than $1 per day). Both in rich countries and poor, a staggering 30-50% of all food produced rots away uneaten.homeless

By 2025, at least 3.5 billion people or nearly 2/3rd’s of the world’s population will face water scarcity. More than 2.2 million people, mostly children, die each year from water related diseases.

The richest 1% of the world’s people earned as much income as the bottom 57% (2.7 billion people) The top 5% of the world’s people earn more income than the bottom 80%. One fourth of humanity lives without electricity.

The wealth of the world’s 7.1 million millionaires ($27 trillion) equals the total combined annual income of the entire planet.

The combined wealth of the world’s richest 300 individuals is equal to the total annual income of 45% of the world’s population. 

The world’s 3 wealthiest families have a combined wealth equal to the annual income of 600 million of the world’s people.  The wealthiest one-fifth of the world’s population receive an average income that is 75 times greater than the poorest one-fifth.

Half of the forests that originally covered 46% of the Earth’s land surface are gone.

Between 10 and 20 percent of all species will be driven to extinction in the next 20 to 50 years.

Almost a quarter of the world’s mammal species will face extinction within 30 years. Up to 47% of the world’s plant species are at risk of extinction.

60% of the world’s coral reefs, which contain up to one-fourth of all marine species, could be lost in the next 20-40 years.

Land degradation threaten nearly one-quarter of the land surface of the globe.

An estimated 40-80 million people have been forcibly evicted and displaced from their lands to make way for the construction of large dams,

Global warming is expected to increase the Earth’s temperature by 3C (5.4F) in the next 100 years.

While we witness the horrific events that are occurring within our society and world today now with a blink of an eye, our world is constantly changing, for the good, but also for the worst.

With technology, we are losing sight of what is important.

We have begun to categorize people based on how they act, what they wear, their political party, their skin color, where they live and so many other factors. 

We are always forgetting ourselves until someone wakes up to remind us of who we really are.  Humans?

The world was always beautiful. It’s only becoming lesser and lesser.

There is only this world, only this single reality, and its shared by everybody, everyday… Not created.

 Were economically and morally bankrupt.

THIS IS THE WORLD WE LIVE IN.

The world has no one society. Surely its time we started to vote with our eyes not our ears. 

All human comments appreciated

. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.