We all know that massive changes need to be made to the way we all live on the planet, due to climate change.
However most of us are not aware of the effects that artificial intelligence in having on our lives.
This post looks at our changing understanding of ourselves, due digitalized reasoning, which is turning us into digitalized
citizens, relying more on and more on digitalized reasoning for all aspects of living.
Does it help us understand what is going on? Or to work out what we can do about it?
It could be said that the climate is beyond our control, but AI remains within the realms of control.
Is this true?
It is true that the human race is in grave danger of stupidity re climate change which if not addressed globally could cause our extinction.
We know that using technology alone will not solve climate change, but it is necessary to gather information about what is happing to the planet, while our lives are monitored in minute detail by algorithms for profit.
There are many reasons why this is happing and the consequences of it will be far reaching and perhaps as dangerous if not more than what the climate is and will be bringing.
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While biology reasoning usually starts with an observation leading to a logical problem-solving with deductive conclusions
usually reliable, provided the premises are true.
Digital AI reasoning on the other hand is a cycle rather than any logically straight line.
It is the result of one go-round becomes feedback that improves the next round of question asking to ask machine
learning, with all programs and algorithms learning the result instantly.
Example One Drone to the next. One high-frequency trade to the next. One bank loan to the next. One human to the next.
Another words.
Digital Reasoning, is combining artificial intelligence and machine learning with all the biases program’s in the code in the first place without any supervision oversight, or global regulation
It combined volumes of data in real-time to remove the propose a hypothesis, to make a new hypothesis without conclusively prove that it’s correct. An iterative process of inductive reasoning extracts a likely (but not certain) premise from specific and limited observations. There is data, and then conclusions are drawn from the data; this is called inductive logic/ reasoning.
Inductive reasoning does not guarantee that the conclusion will be true.
In inductive inference, we go from the specific to the general. We make many observations, discern a pattern, make a generalization, and infer an explanation or a theory.
In other words, there is nothing that makes a guess ‘educated’ other than the learning program.
The differences between deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning.
Deductive reasoning is a top-down approach, while inductive reasoning is a bottom-up approach.
Inductive reasoning is used in a number of different ways, each serving a different purpose:
We use inductive reasoning in everyday life to build our understanding of the world.
Inductive reasoning, or inductive logic, is a type of reasoning that involves drawing a general conclusion from a set of specific observations. Some people think of inductive reasoning as “bottom-up” logic the one logic exercise we do nearly every day, though we’re scarcely aware of it. We take tiny things we’ve seen or read and draw general principles from them—an act known as inductive reasoning.
Inductive reasoning also underpins the scientific method: scientists gather data through observation and experiment, make hypotheses based on that data, and then test those theories further. That middle step—making hypotheses—is an inductive inference, and they wouldn’t get very far without it.
Inductive reasoning is also called a hypothesis-generating approach, because you start with specific observations and build toward a theory. It’s an exploratory method that’s often applied before deductive research.
Finally, despite the potential for weak conclusions, an inductive argument is also the main type of reasoning in academic life.
Deductive reasoning is a logical approach where you progress from general ideas to specific conclusions. It’s often contrasted with inductive reasoning, where you start with specific observations and form general conclusions.
Deductive reasoning is used to reach a logical and true conclusion. In deductive reasoning, you’ll often make an argument for a certain idea. You make an inference, or come to a conclusion, by applying different premises. Due to its reliance on inference, deductive reasoning is at high risk for research biases, particularly confirmation bias and other types of cognitive bias like belief bias.
In deductive reasoning, you start with general ideas and work toward specific conclusions through inferences. Based on theories, you form a hypothesis. Using empirical observations, you test that hypothesis using inferential statistics and form a conclusion.
In practice, most research projects involve both inductive and deductive methods.
However it can be tempting to seek out or prefer information that supports your inferences or ideas, with inbuilt bias creeping into research. Patients have a better chance of surviving, banks can ensure their employees are meeting the highest standards of conduct, and law enforcement can protect the most vulnerable citizens in our society.
However, there are important distinctions that separate these two pathways to a logical conclusion of what Digitized reasoning is going to do or replace human reasoning.
First there is no debate that Computers have done amazing calculations for us, but they have never solved a hard problem on their own.
The problem is the communication barrier between the language of humans and the language of computers.
A programmer can code in all the rules, or axioms, and then ask if a particular conjecture follows those rules. The computer then does all the work. Does it explain its work. No.
All that calculating happens within the machine, and to human eyes it would look like a long string of 0s and 1s. It’s impossible to scan the proof and follow the reasoning, because it looks like a pile of random data. “No human will ever look at that proof and be able to say, ‘I get it.’ They operate in a kind of black box and just spit out an answer.
Machine proofs may not be as mysterious as they appear. Maybe they should be made to explain.
I can see it becoming standard practice that if you want your paper/ codes/ algorithm to be accepted, you have to get it past an automatic checker – re transparency because efforts at the forefront of the field today aim to blend learning with reasoning.
After all, if the machines continue to improve, and they have access to vast amounts of data, they should become very good at doing the fun parts, too. “They will learn how to do their own prompts.”
company will enable customers to spot risks before they happen, maximize the scalability of supervision teams, and uncover strategic insights from large
The Limits of Reason.
Neural networks are able to develop an artificial style of intuition, leverage communications data to spot risks before they happen, and identify new insights to drive fresh growth initiatives, creating a large divide between firms investing to harvest data-driven insights and leverage data to manage risk, and those who are falling behind.
This will bear out in earnings and share prices in the years to come.
The challenge of automating reasoning in computer proofs as a subset of a much bigger field:
Natural language processing, which involves pattern recognition in the usage of words and sentences. (Pattern recognition is also the driving idea behind computer vision, the object of Szegedy’s previous project at Google.)
Like other groups, his team wants theorem provers that can find and explain useful proofs. He envisions a future in which theorem provers replace human referees at major journals.
Josef Urban thinks that the marriage of deductive and inductive reasoning required for proofs can be achieved through this kind of combined approach. His group has built theorem provers guided by machine learning tools, which allow computers to learn on their own through experience. Over the last few years, they’ve explored the use of neural networks — layers of computations that help machines process information through a rough approximation of our brain’s neuronal activity. In July, his group reported on new conjectures generated by a neural network trained on theorem-proving data.
Harris disagrees. He doesn’t think computer provers are necessary, or that they will inevitably “make human mathematicians obsolete.” If computer scientists are ever able to program a kind of synthetic intuition, he says, it still won’t rival that of humans.
“Even if computers understand, they don’t understand in a human way.”
I say the current Ukraine Russian war is the labourite of AI reasoning this war with all its consequence is telling us that AI should never be allowed near nuclear weapons or….dangerous pathogens.
An inductive argument is one that reasons in the opposite direction from deduction.
Given some specific cases, what can be inferred about the underlying general rule?
The reasoning process follows the same steps as in deduction.
The difference is the conclusions: an inductive argument is not a proof, but rather a probalistic inference.
When scholars use statistical evidence to test a hypothesis, they are using inductive logic.
The main objective of statistics is to test a hypothesis. A hypothesis is a falsifiable claim that requires verification.
Most progress in science, engineering, medicine, and technology is the result of hypothesis testing.
When a computer uses statistical evidence to test a hypothesis it’s assumption may or may not be true. To prove something is correct, we first need to take reciprocal of it and then try to prove that reciprocal is wrong which ultimately proves something is correct.
Finally this post has been written or generated by a human reasoning, that see the dangers of losing that reasoning to Digital reasoning of Enterprise Spock.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Yes. Artificial Intelligence will most likely be needed to help us solve a lot of the big challenges facing society today, be that health, cures for diseases, climate change, etc. It is already predicting the shape of every protein in the human body.
However, in my mind it is deeply wrong that a small group of people ( under the skin of private technology enterprises) without any democratic oversight are making decisions with potentially to affect every life on earth.
Its time to take our blinkers off and let the world have a say in what they are doing.
Why?
Because a three-letter acronym ( God like AI) doesn’t capture the enormity of what Artificial General Intelligence (AIG) will represent, or do. This would be a force beyond our control or understanding and one that will usher in the obsolescence or destruction of the p
The Beady Eye has been bleating on about this and profit seeking algorithms, now for some considerable time, but from the number of comments on the subject it seems not many of us give a hoot for the need for transparencies, regulations, and overall safeties when it comes to technology. So we are running to the finishing line without any understanding of what on the other side.
Since the arrival of the internet/smart phone one only has to look at the state of the Planet to realise that we have gone training – AI ALGORITHMS / TECHNOLOGY TO GENERATE TEXTS/ RECONGISING EVEREYDAY IMAGES/ GENERATING REALISTIC PHOTOS/ AND REPLICATION OF VOICES, BY FEEDING THEM WITH THE ENTIRE INTERNET STRIP-MINING THE LIFEWORLD. (The focus on games and chatbots is sheltering people from the more serious implications of this work.)
The world already has many existential threats, but the threat posed by AIG is the number one risk of this century, with an engineered biological pathogen a close second. The potential for scams and misinformation is significant.
An God like super intelligent machine would be light out for all of us.
So the question is.
Why are these organisation racing to create God like AI ?
Is it that it gives an illusion of illimitable power.
For now the race is being driven by markets, with the Ukraine war the labourite of cyber wars, making private investment not the only driving force but nations also contributing to this contest.
If we put the wrong objects into a super intelligent machine we are bound to lose.
Unlike the human brain that grows large Ai systems are quite different.
They grow themselves with machine learning and their capabilities jump sharply.
We don’t yet full understand how they work and cannot demonstrate likely out comes in advance.
The present harms and AI/AIG are not mutually exclusive and overlap in important ways.
One of the most challenging aspects of thinking about this topic is working out which precedents we can draw on.
WE ARE NOT POWERLESS TO SLOW DOWN THIS RACE.
If we can get our governments to ask under oath about the timeline for developing God’s like AIG. To demand under law a complete record of the safety tests with evidence of understand how the system works, to ensure their aliment with our common values, we might save humanity, before we humans are cut out of the loop.
Unfortunately economics has not been flexible enough to take on this obvious truth The whole field and discipline of economics, by which we plan and justify what we do as a society, is simply riddled with absences, contradictions, logical flaws, and most important of all, false axioms and false gaols.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: IT BEGGARS BELIEF AND IS BEYOND PATHETIC THAT WE ARE UNABLE TO FULLY UNDERSTAND THERE WILL BE NO FUTURE WITHOUT NATURE AND IT’S BIODIVERSITY.
We have heard all of this over and over, but it is impossible to get serious about climate change, because it has been turned into a product to be traded.
The very words Climate Change, Global warming, Biodiversity, Sea levels, Natural disasters, Droughts, Melting ice, the list goes on and on as a result they are falling on deaf ears. For example “sustainable development”: a phrase at which many people quietly glaze over and switch off. Or “Global warming” is another of those deceptive phrases. It doesn’t sound that threatening.
So if words like “climate change” and “global warming” have become a turn-off for most ordinary people, maybe we should change the words. Perhaps we should talk instead about what those things actually mean:
Killer weather, a world under water, and a mortgaged future.
We have been told for over three decades of the dangers of allowing the planet to warm.
We all know this and we know that it’s urgent. The world listened, but it didn’t hear. The world listened, but it didn’t act strongly enough. It hasn’t been enough to change our behaviours on a scale great enough to stop climate change.
As a result, climate change is a problem that is here, now. Nobody is safe. And it is getting worse faster and faster, till one tipping point is reached causing a rolling coaster of from here to eternity.
There are many tipping points to choose from.
Here is mind. The Arctic Ocean’s ice cover melts.
This is a feedback loop with teeth.
Back in the 50s it was more than ten meters thick, reflecting as much as 3% of the sun’s incoming light back into space.
That light is now heating the Oceans of the Arctic and the Antarctic, both becoming the fastest places on Earth with rising temperatures. Which means a greater and greater release of permafrost carbon and methane, 20 times stronger than Co2.
The Arctic permafrost contains as much methane as all the Earth’s cattle could create over the next six centuries.
If released this fart would push the Earth into an irreversible tipping point at which point the sea level would be 110 meters higher than at present, with the global temperatures 5/6 degrees Celsius higher. At that point civilisation would be over.
One would think that such a scenario would be sufficient to make all of us pay attention but not so.
Why?
A big part of the reason is our own evolution. The same behaviours that once helped us survive are, today, working against us.
We lack the collective will to address climate change, because of the way our brains have evolved. We have evolved to pay attention to immediate threats. We overestimate threats that are less likely but easier to remember, like terrorism, and underestimate more complex threats, like climate change. Too much information can confuse our brains, leading us to inaction or poor choices that can place us in harm’s way.
Our brains evolved to filter information rapidly and focus on what is most immediately essential to our survival and reproduction.
In our modern reality it’s causing errors in rational decision-making, known as cognitive biases. “Cognitive biases that ensured our initial survival make it difficult to address complex, long-term challenges that now threaten our existence, like climate change.
Hyperbolic discounting. This is our perception that the present is more important than the future. Throughout most of our evolution it was more advantageous to focus on what might kill us or eat us now, not later. This bias now impedes our ability to take action to address more distant-feeling, slower and complex challenges. While we may understand what needs to be done to address climate change, it’s hard for us to see how the sacrifices required for generations existing beyond this short time span are worth it.
To address the issue of climate change it requires collective action on a scale that exceeds our evolutionary capacities.
The larger the group, the more challenging it gets.
The future value is the value of it at some time in the future. The farther into the future we look, the fuzzier our view, but there will be no future unless we invest trillions and trillions into sustainability.
On a warming planet, no one is safe.
The air you breathe, the water you drink and the food you eat all rely on biodiversity.
Unfortunately, we have created a world where an asset from a business perspective, has no value unless it can produce cash flows in the future. The difference in value between the future and the present is created by discounting the future back to the present using a discount factor, which is a function of time that is running out right in front of our eyes.
The world’s ecosystems are capital assets that up to now have escaped valuation and have therefore been mismanaged.
Now they are being bought by rich privateers, together with financial instruments and institutional arrangements that will allow individuals to capture the value of ecosystem assets. For example, Sovereignty Wealth Funds. They buy environmental protection, but only by liquidating natural capital (for example, prairies, forests, fisheries) to generate the funds; even “information” economies are built in proportion to such liquidation. The reinvestment in natural capital never equals the amount liquidated because of procedural inefficiency and profit-taking.
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The process of valuation in the short term might lead to profoundly favourable effects on the stock market, but the decision of how much to spend now to avert climate changes hinges on assessing how much it is worth to us now to prevent that future damage.
Since most of us would prefer money now, over money later, economists typically figure that we’re willing to spend only less than a dollar now to prevent a dollar’s worth of damage in a year, or in a decade.
The percentage less is called the “social discount rate.”
This implies that we either accept an assumption that many argue is economically unjustified (a near-zero social discount rate), or conclude that we should just accept climate change without much of a fight. (A third alternative is perhaps even less appealing to economists: accepting that their calculations simply can’t illuminate the question.)
We’re much happier to have good stuff now than later, so our short-term discount rate is high.
But we hardly distinguish between goods in the pretty far future and goods in the very far future, so our discount rate in the future is far lower to manage the essentials to life.
Now more than ever we must use the power of the law to fight those who would harm our communities, our climate, and the natural world we value so deeply.
We have an International criminal court, why not use it to fine this lot of polluters.
Peabody Energy
Company summary: Coal company Based in: Missouri, United States Founded: 1883 Emissions per capita: 2,231,818 tonnes – or, 449,057 return flights from London to Sydney.
Kuwait Petroleum Corporation
Company summary: Petroleum company Based in: Kuwait City, Kuwait Founded: 1980 Emissions per capita:2,133,248 tonnes – or, 445,354 return flights from London to Sydney
ConocoPhillips
Company summary: Crude oil and natural gas Based in: Texas, United States Founded: 1875 Emissions per capita: 1,464,423 tonnes – or, 305,725 return flights from London to Sydney
Chevron
Company summary: Oil and gas company Based in: California, United States Founded: 1879 Emissions per capita:900,218 tonnes – or, 187,936 return flights from London to Sydney
Saudi Aramco
Company summary: Petroleum and natural gas company Based in: Dhahran, Saudi Arabia Founded: 1933 Emissions per capita:750,126 tonnes – or, 150,930 return flights from London to Sydney
ExxonMobil
Company summary: Oil and gas company Based in: Texas, United States Founded: 1999 Emissions per capita:559,412 tonnes – or, 116,787 return flights from London to Sydney
BP
Company summary: Oil and gas company Based in: London, United Kingdom Founded: 1909 Emissions per capita: 485,306 tonnes – or, 97,647 return flights from London to Sydney
National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC)
Company summary: Government-owned national oil and natural gas company Based in: Tehran, Iran Founded: 1948 Emissions per capita:407,542 tonnes – or, 82,000 return flights from London to Sydney
Royal Dutch Shell
Company summary: Oil and gas company Based in: The Hague, Netherlands Founded: 1907 Emissions per capita: 384,939 tonnes – or, 77,452 return flights from London to Sydney.
Chevron topped the list of the eight investor-owned corporations, followed closely by Exxon, BP and Shell. Together these four global businesses are behind more than 10% of the world’s carbon emissions since 1965. The worst offenders are investor-owned companies that are household names around the world and spend billions of pounds on lobbying governments and portraying themselves as environmentally responsible.
The top plastic polluting companies
Company
Examples of products Number of countries plastic was found in
Pieces of plastic found
Coca-Cola Coca-Cola, Fanta, Sprite 51 13,834
Pepsico Pepsi, Lays, Doritos 43 5,155
Nestlé Nescafé, Kit Kat, Nestea 37 8,633
Unilever Persil, Cornetto, Sunsilk 37 5,558
Mondeléz International Oreo, Cadbury, Milka 34 1,171
Mars Mars bars, M&Ms, Snickers 32 678
P&G Tampax, Pantene, Ariel 29 3,535
Philip Morris International Parliament, Merit, Marlboro 28 2,593
It’s important to remember that, as a consumer, you do have the power to change the future of these polluting companies. As more people switch to renewable energy, cut down on plastic, and live a little more sustainably, these polluting companies will have no choice but to change their habits to stay on trend.
Economists develop new methods to quantify the trade-off between spending now and spending later.
To figure out how much we should spend fighting climate change, economists have some questions for you:
The health of the planet may hinge on the answers.
Most economic analyses of climate change have concluded that we should be spending only small amounts to combat climate change now, ramping up slowly over time. This conclusion mystifies most climate scientists, who argue that immediate action is the only way to forestall dreadful consequences. And at the heart of the disagreement are these very questions, about the value of future generations’ welfare in monetary terms.
The worst consequences of climate change are likely to unfold only over decades or centuries — in other words, in our children’s or grandchildren’s or great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren’s lifetimes, not ours.
The higher the price payed, also equates with a higher level of risk, which generates a higher discount and lowers the present value of any action. The higher the level of risk is represented as beta in the capital asset pricing model, means a higher discount, which lowers the present value of nature.
Discounting is the primary factor used in pricing a stream of tomorrow’s crises. .
By reiterating the importance of the world’s natural capital to the human prospect, the next step, is to focus on stabilizing the scale of human economy. This requires taking on the advertising industry that is promoting consumption. It should be illegal to advertise any product that is not sustainable in their manufacture. Put restrictions on all advertising that is in contradiction to health of not just us, but the earth. It hasbecome a voracious top predator across the entire globe.
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Biodiversity?
It is the variety of life on Earth, in all its forms and all its interactions. Bio means living, and diversity is the variety of life on earth. It represents different relationships (like ecological, cultural, or evolutionary) between several types of organisms on this planet. All living beings on from human beings to the tiny creatures like microbes combined to form Biodiversity.
Starting with genes, then individual species, then communities of creatures and finally entire ecosystems, such as forests or coral reefs, where life interplays with the physical environment. These myriad interactions have made Earth habitable for billions of years.
Wildlife is not something you watch on television. The reality is that the air you breathe, the water you drink and the food you eat all ultimately rely on biodiversity.
It represents the knowledge learned by evolving species over millions of years about how to survive through the vastly varying environmental conditions Earth has experienced. We all interdependent with one another. Hence each species plays an essential role to boost ecosystem productivity.
Some examples are obvious: without plants there would be no oxygen and without bees to pollinate there would be no fruit or nuts.
Humans and our livestock now consume 25-40% of the planet’s entire “primary production”, i.e. the energy captured by plants on which all biodiversity depends.
The intricate jigsaw of life, constructed over hundreds of millions of years, has been thrown into disarray in the last 10,000 years by humans relocating species around the world. These invasive species can devastate ecosystems that have never developed defences – from rats devouring albatross chicks in their nests to snakehead fish decimating native species.
If money is a measure, the services provided by ecosystems are estimated to be worth trillions of dollars – double the world’s GDP. Biodiversity loss in Europe alone costs the continent about 3% of its GDP, or €450m (£400m), a year.
From an aesthetic point of view, every one of the millions of species is unique, a natural work of art that cannot be recreated once lost. “Each higher organism is richer in information than a Caravaggio painting, a Bach fugue, or any other great work,”
The extinction rate of species is now thought to be about 1,000 times higher than before humans dominated the planet, which may be even faster than the losses after a giant meteorite wiped out the dinosaurs 65m years ago. The sixth mass extinction in geological history has already begun, according to some scientists.
The results are scary.
Humans can’t have power over nature in nature.
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Despite the fact that natural resources are limited and take millions of years in the formation, the human is exploiting them for their endless greed and comfort.
Species extinction provides a clear but narrow window on the destruction of biodiversity.
The huge global biodiversity losses now becoming apparent represent a crisis equalling – or quite possibly surpassing – climate change.
Billions of individual populations have been lost all over the planet, with the number of animals living on Earth having plunged by half since 1970. Abandoning the normally sober tone of scientific papers, researchers call the massive loss of wildlife a “biological annihilation” representing a “frightening assault on the foundations of human civilisation”.
Humans may lack gills but that has not protected marine life. The situation is no better – and perhaps even less understood – in the two-thirds of the planet covered by oceans. Seafood is the critical source of protein for more than 2.5 billion people but rampant overfishing has caused catches to fall steadily since their peak in 1996 and now more than half the ocean is industrially fished.
Even much-loathed parasites are important. One-third could be wiped out by climate change, making them among the most threatened groups on Earth. But scientists warn this could destabilise ecosystems, unleashing unpredictable invasions of surviving parasites into new areas.
Today, 75% of the world’s food comes from just a dozen crops and five animal species, leaving supplies very vulnerable to pests or disease that can sweep through large areas of monocultures. Add in the falling yields expected from climate change, and the world’s growing global population faces a food problem.
Locating the tipping point that moves biodiversity loss into ecological collapse is an urgent priority. This being the only living world we are ever likely to know, let us join to make the most of it.
Could the loss of biodiversity be a greater threat to humanity than climate change?
Yes – nothing on Earth is experiencing more dramatic change at the hands of human activity.
Changes to the climate are reversible, even if that takes centuries or millennia.
That call is more urgent than ever. Our posterity is running out of chances.
But once species become extinct, particularly those unknown to science, there’s no going back. To put the matter as concisely as possible, biological diversity is unique in the evenness of its importance to both developed and developing countries is beyond any technical advances.
To spread technical capability where it is most needed, arrangements can be made to retain specimens within the countries of their origin while training nationals to assume leadership in systematics and the related scientific disciplines. Science is the best way to establish links with other cultures because it is concerned not with ideology but with nature and humanity’s relation to nature.
Cognitive biases that ensured our initial survival now make it difficult to address long-term challenges that threaten our existence, like climate change.
It is already clear enough that the missing ingredient is political will.
For example
Recognising the power of small groups.
Humans are more likely to change behaviour when challenges are framed positively, instead of negatively. In other words, how we communicate about climate change influences how we respond. To get people to act, we need to make the issue feel direct and personal by focusing the issue locally, pointing both to local impacts and local solutions: Like moving one’s city to 100% renewable energy.
The key is having a large-scale, organised effort – but one supported and understood by hundreds of smaller groups and communities.
It’s true that no other species has evolved to create such a large-scale problem – but no other species has evolved with such an extraordinary capacity to solve it, either. If academia, business, government, and citizens act together toward this common goal, we can create a pollution-free energy system; form a prosperous, adaptable and resilient society; keep human, animal, and plant life flourishing; and create a better world for ourselves and generations to come.
We can’t undo the mistakes of the past. But this generation of political and business leaders, this generation of conscious citizens, can make things right. This generation can make the systemic changes that will stop the planet warming, help everyone adapt to the new conditions and create a world of peace, prosperity and equity.
The world is now experiencing the early effects of climate change.
The overall effect of inadequate actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is creating a human rights catastrophe, and the costs of these climate change related disasters are already enormous. The Colorado river in the USA is drying up, the ice shelf is the Antarctic is melting, the glaciers in the Himalayas are melting five time faster. Somali is no the threshold of a Famine.
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If we don’t act, who will?
We have evolved to be able to stop human-induced climate change. Now we must act.
The risk that without intervention we could cross a threshold leading to runaway climate change. An inconvenient truth.
To save natural resources and to bring a change we have to change our habits that exploit our natural resources and directly or indirectly.
If you could ask one question of Global Leader.
What is the main motivation of your leadership?
Which competencies do you see as instrumental to develop in global leaders in order for them to thrive in this new world?
The key to multicultural leadership is in understanding the difference between intent and impact, as well as engaging in supportive interactions that cultivate a nurturing environment.
Sitting in Davis/ G20 ivory tower’s ONE cannot develop global mindset.
“The secret to success is sincerity. Learn to fake that, and you’ve got it made.”
Feel free to add your question.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Some things we can mitigate, some we can’t. Some things we can adapt to, some we cannot.
The question of how (or whether) we respond to climate change ultimately is a matter for policymakers to decide, but politics cannot (and should not) be separated from good science. And so on, and so on. We’ve heard them all.
As CLIMATE CHANGE impacts grow in frequency and severity, they will—and in many cases already have—create crises for people and nature around the world. If unchecked, these impacts will spread and worsen with more animal extinction and biodiversity loss, water shortages, and displaced communities.
Climate change is one of the most contentious issues facing society today.
Over the past several decades, we have seen not only increasing environmental degradation, but also the erosion of the concepts of the public good and collective responsibility to preserve nature.
In embracing the monetary valuation of nature as a strategy for mobilizing support for environmental conservation, environmentalists are resigning themselves to a political status quo that can only comprehend value in terms of money and markets.
By viewing ecosystems and their services through a pecuniary lens, monetization profoundly changes our relationship with nature, and, if taken to the point of commodification, can subject the fragility of nature’s balance to the destructive logic and volatility of markets.
Even though the trend toward the privatization of public goods has been pervasive over the past decades, we should not acquiesce so easily in allowing the privatization of the most basic public good of all—nature itself.
We must meet the grave environmental challenges of the twenty-first century with boldness and prudence, using the precautionary principle, along with the principles of fairness and democracy, to set boundaries that human action must not transgress.
Some argue that monetization, by revealing the economic contribution of nature and its services, can heighten public awareness and bolster conservation efforts. Others go beyond such broad conceptual calculations and seek to establish tradable prices for ecosystem services, claiming that markets can achieve what politics has not. Such an approach collapses nature’s complex functions into a set of commodities stripped from their social, cultural, and ecological context.
Although the path from valuation to commodification is not inevitable, it is indeed a slippery slope.
Do nature’s services need a monetary value?
Do conservation policy need an economic motive to get sufficient attention from policymakers and the public?
One approach seeks to monetize the value of nature simply in order to reveal its immense economic contribution to society.
Monetization is only meaningful and effective if there are markets to set prices for the ecosystem services in question. Markets for such commodified ecosystem services, they argue, can protect conservation policy from the vagaries of political will. Roll back bureaucratic red tape, and let the market work its magic to save nature.
The line between valuation and commodification, although clear in theory, becomes blurred in practice.
The monetization of any resource can cause long term problems for people.
To be sure, valuation alone does not inevitably entail the risks to the preservation of nature intrinsic to commodification. Nevertheless, it changes how we see and relate to nature and can inadvertently pave the way for the privatization of ecosystem services that the advocates of valuation often oppose.
Environmentalists, business leaders, and policymakers have all sought to make environmental protection an economic rather than just a political issue. The introduction of “no net loss” policies, which allow economic development to proceed as long as the net acreage of a specific type of ecosystem is maintained, has effected a paradigm shift in environmental policymaking. However, offsetting ignores how unique and interconnected biodiversity is, and it overlooks the importance of nature for local communities and the ways they suffer when their ecosystems are damaged. Land-use policies based on whether a company can pay for an offset, and not on what local communities and humanity need to survive, undermine basic rights and democratic principles
National economic accounts such as GDP remain blind to the services of nature. Such accounts likewise fail to distinguish between constructive and destructive economic activity with respect to human and ecological well-being. Needless to say, a deeper understanding and greater awareness of the relationship of society to nature is always welcome, but the rigor and usefulness of GDP-level information remains questionable.
Delineating an individual ecosystem from the complex fabric of nature poses numerous significant challenges. For example, the provision of oxygen for humans and animals to breathe is an ecosystem service of global scale.
But how do we value the contribution of individual sub-systems like a single forest to this global service?
We could all still breathe if one forest is cut down, but not if all forests were cut down.
Embarking upon the path of valuation also changes the way we see and understand nature.
The value of the whole ecosystem to society is more than the sum of its monetized parts:
Reducing its value to mere monetary terms, even if it were technically practical, strips away its cultural and spiritual value. A bad policy can be replaced, but the holistic functions of nature cannot.
Through disaggregation, each service can be rendered into a discrete monetizable “package” so that it can have its own market and its own price. Such an approach tilts policymaking in favour of the interests of the economically powerful. The least powerful actors—often local communities, indigenous peoples, women, small-scale farmers, etc.—get pushed to the margins, their voices ignored.
In order to prevent monetization from slipping into commodification, we must revisit one of the hallowed principles of environmental policy: the precautionary principle. It states that when an action or policy could pose a substantial risk to the environment, a very high burden of justification should fall on those seeking to take such an action. Like the classical mantra of medical ethics, the precautionary principle insists upon first doing no harm.
What if one of those billionaires manipulates the market by withholding or restricting the free flow of water?
71% of Earth’s surface is water.
There are 326 million trillion gallons of it on and in the planet. 96.5% of the water is ocean water, and just 3.5% is fresh water. Of that 3%, 69% of that water is locked up in glaciers. Another 30% of that freshwater is underground and usually requires costly extraction. That leaves 114 million billion gallons of readily accessible freshwater, not necessarily drinkable water, but water nonetheless. That sounds like enough, but it represents just 1% of the Earth’s water for every man, woman, child, and animal on the planet. That 1% of the water has to also serve every agricultural and industrial need on the planet. In most cases, it also needs to be filtered and treated before it is safely consumable.
So, though there is plenty of water on the planet, not very much of it is drinkable. Not very much of it is accessible, and the distribution methods are easily manipulated, legislated, and monetized. That’s never good for the common man. Nestle Water, for instance, extracted 36 million gallons of water from a national forest in California in 2015 to sell as bottled water, even as Californians were ordered to cut their water use because of a historic drought in the state.
Farmers, hedge funds, and municipalities alike can now hedge against — or bet on — future water.
While that may seem innocuous enough, the cost disparity probably gets passed on to the cities and individual consumers. It’s easy to imagine how many ways the monetization of water as a commodity is a dangerous first step in government and corporate overreach and intrusion. Mega-banks and investment firms such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Macquarie Bank, Barclays Bank, the Blackstone Group, Allianz, and HSBC Bank, among others, are consolidating their control over water.
Wealthy tycoons such as former President George H.W. Bush and his family, Hong Kong’s Li Ka-shing, Philippines’ Manuel V. Pangilinan, and others are also buying thousands of acres of land with aquifers, lakes, water rights, water utilities, and shares in water engineering and technology companies all over the world.
Complicit governments are legislating your rights to access and accumulate Earth’s free-flowing resources. It falls from the sky onto your property, but it is owned by someone else the minute it touches the Earth.
Water rights are conveyed as real property interests using the same formalities as real estate, but in most cases, everyone is tapped into the same source. If fracking, mining, or industrial operations pollute that source, they spoil it for everyone. So, merely having access to a water source is not enough.
The fact is that water is being restricted, legislated, and monetized more every year, and the rich are grabbing up the rights as fast as they can.
During periods of drought, when water levels are already low, it is easy to imagine how one person’s control over a large water area can lead to huge profits. This is why the super-wealthy are snapping up water, water contracts, water rights, and governments letting them do so all over the world. Two billion people now live in nations plagued by water problems, and almost two-thirds of the world could face water shortages in just four years. Even on a planet covered and steeped with water, water is a resource. As a resource, it can be monetized and controlled, and you could be denied or deprived of access to it.
Whatever you choose to call it, the most important thing is that we act to stop it.
If it is not the capitalization and exploitation of the resources of our planet with climate change will continue.
I can assure you, the super-wealthy are not buying up the water around the planet for altruistic purposes. They are doing so because they see a profit from it. Freshwater first then fresh air.
—–
CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOW A PRODUCT AND NET ZERO A SLOGAN.
There is now no stopping sea levels rising. A two meter rise would displace more than 2% of the world’s population and cut world food production/ supply by 25%. The rate of carbon emissions are the highest they’ve been in 66 million years and the amount of warming in the coming decades is expected to be 250 times greater than the average warming during the past century.
The rate of ocean acidification is the highest it has been in 300 million years!
Warming surface waters may be contributing to slowing ocean currents.
The warming climate is contributing to rising populations of insect / pests.
To mitigate the effects of climate change is going to cost quadrillions.
We are on course to match the worst extinction of earth species both on land and in the oceans.
We at a point where money will not suffice to make a difference.
There’s no consensus on global warming.
Many species are approaching—or have already reached—the limit of where they can go to find hospitable climates. In the polar regions, animals like polar bears that live on polar ice are now struggling to survive as that ice melts.
From straining agricultural systems to making regions less habitable, climate change is affecting people everywhere.
Climate change also exacerbates the threat of human-caused conflict resulting from a scarcity of resources like food and water that are less reliable as growing seasons change and seasons become less predictable. Around the globe, many of the poorest nations are being impacted first and most severely by climate change, even though they have contributed far less to the increase in carbon emissions that has caused the warming in the first place.
Higher temperatures are affecting the length of seasons and in some places, are already crossing safe levels for ecosystems and humans.
Now more than ever in order to enable a just transition to a low-carbon economy, gender and equality, human rights, and food security, with links to climate change we must use the power of the law to fight those who would harm our communities, our climate, and the natural world we value so deeply.
Recently, many countries have focused on mainstreaming net zero emissions targets: 138 states have now made a net zero pledge.
However, targets in all climate-related national laws and policies are currently far from the pledges made in NDCs (Simply put, an NDC, or Nationally Determined Contribution, is a climate action plan to cut emissions and adapt to climate impacts) and from enabling global warming to be limited to below 2 °C.
For NDCs to work, they need to be widely understood and used by businesses, civil society, academia and ordinary citizens. Each has roles to play, which is why many governments invite different constituencies to take part in defining NDC priorities.
For many reasons, including a lack of adequate finance, capacity and, in some cases, insufficient political commitment combined with the pandemic-related economic downturn is expected to constrain implementation.
For developing countries, moving forward depends on developed countries realizing their commitment to provide $100 billion in climate finance to developing countries. Dedicating half of this amount to adaptation, would help close significant financing shortfalls for vital measures to protect lives and livelihoods. Rapid policy developments are required to achieve this goal.
Climate change legislation is less a politically partisan issue than is commonly assumed:
Everyone is a climate actor and can be part of the change that needs to happen.
If we can slow or stop deforestation and manage natural land so that it is healthy, we could achieve up to one third of the emission reductions needed by 2030 to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2°C (3.6°C).
We must as a planet commit ourselves to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
The truth, however, is that even if we do successfully reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, we will still have to address harmful climate impacts, and so the solution to climate change must also include measures to adapt to the impacts of global warming.
We need to increase renewable energy at least nine-fold from where it is today. This cannot be achieved without a major shift to renewable energy.
There is not a hard and fast deadline on climate action vs. inaction. There is no definitive line of demarcation that we can protect against; instead it is a matter of minimizing the effects of climate change.
We need to begin reducing carbon emissions RIGHT NOW to give our planet and our population the future that is least impacted.
The low carbon economy that we need to create will also give us cleaner air, better energy choices, new jobs and may even save us money. Likewise, many of the natural solutions that we need to adapt to even today’s climate change impacts benefit all of us: cleaner air and water, more natural recreation opportunities and jobs.
Nature, like climate, may be approaching irreversible tipping points where changes push systems into completely new states, even as more than half the global GDP depends on the planet’s natural systems.
For climate, the world has a clear net zero emissions goal.
But what’s the goal for nature? It hardly takes a genius to see things aren’t going well in the world or for our civilization.
When we actually look at the state of our civilization — in factual, empirical terms — the results are…well, you’ll be able to judge for yourself in just a moment.
Progress has flatlined and ground to a halt.
Living standards are declining in 90% of countries.
Each generation now does worse than the one before it,
Democracy’s in steep decline around the globe
The points above may in truth be small fry, compared to this one.
We are running out of our most basic, critical, fundamental resources.
People are more pessimistic now than at any point during the last century.
Anxiety, rage, anger, and despair are the defining sentiments of now — along with maybe the numbness of endlessly scrolling some algorithmically generated infotainment feed.
I could go on. But it’s hardly necessary. All the above are facts. They aren’t opinions, speculations, or even conclusions. They’re empirical truths about our civilization.
Each of the points above is its own crisis, and each one of them would be bad enough for any age, challenging, threatening, arduous enough.
But all of them, together, at once? That’s something new. They are painting a caricature without really thinking about the state of life as it is now.
All human comments appreciate. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
There are no words to describe the present state of our world.
Here below is a recent picture from Australia, it more than adequately does the job.
A thousand fish per square metre (caused “severe deoxygenation”)
We seen conflict raging for decades across the world, as if war is always and forever an ordinary routine, limited to developing third world nations, however wars are no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations. With the Coming Climate Change we ent seeing nothing yet when it comes to wars.
IT IS THE DEFINING ISSUE OF OUR TIMES, WITH PROFOUND CONSEQUENCES, FOR THE FOOD CHAIN, ENGERY DISEASES, DWINDELING RESOURSE AND FUTURE WARS.
To date we have had summit after summit with countries promising to reduce their carbon emission at varying degrees and rates of time, with 60% not in the west returning home, PROBALY THINKING WHY SHOULD THEY BE CARRYING THE CAN WHEN ITS IS THE COUNTRIES IN THE WEST THAT CAUSED THE PROBLEM IN THE FIRST PLACE.
We are already in a pivotal moment in deciding our planets future, which requires significant societal changes to mitigate it.
Why?
Because our current global political economy solves problems through business as usual growth, wasting precious time to effectively reduce emissions to prevent human suffering and ecological system collapse at an unimaginable scale.
Because we are unable to put the common good in front of short term profit.
Although we have been raising public awareness on climate change for years, this is not enough; the global temperature increases day by day. Unless greenhouse gas emissions and global temperature are reduced within years, the world will face demanding consequences.
Because the fragility of life as we know it, will be shattered by Climate change.
——–
Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. What we fail to remember is that we ourselves live in the very world we do not seem to care what happens to.
We do not realise is that with each day that passes without any action, the number of natural resources available also decreases significantly.
Take the Fashion Industry’s for example.
10,000 litres of water are used to produce just one kilogram of cotton.
WITH OVER 5 BILLIONS PAIRS OF JEANS PRODUCED A YEAR – 60 PAIRS A SECOND USING – 1000 LITERS OF WATER PER PAIR = A MIND BLOWING WASTE OF WATER.
The average jeans collection needs 36,250 litres of water. Hoodies and sweatshirts need 23,450 litres. T-shirts and shirts require 15,000 litres, while our undergarments combined use 45,950 litres of water. The average person drinks 691 litres of water per year.
This means that our jeans collection has used 52.5 years of drinking water for one person.
The next time you put on your best threads, think about the environmental cost of your outfit — you may just be dripping wet.
——
” We are now entering in the politics of eternity and the politics of inevitability.”
How is the Earth going to survive, if the only species it has the chance to lean on, turn their back to it?
Climate is the envelope within which all other environmental conditions and processes important to human well-being must function. ANY TIPPING POINT COULD opened the floodgates.
Inevitability politicians portray history as a journey from savagery to civilization and assume this trend will continue to their desired outcome.
We have witnessed in the past 30 years the degradation of liberal democracy, the spread of Islamic terror across borders, and the resilience of the illiberal Chinese political system.
Up to now very form of society has been based, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes…This is why Capitalism combined with democracy has provided the perfect balance for governance, and as a consequence took root in most countries.
The liberal arrogance shown at the end of the 20th century paved the way for the blowback of the 21st.
Liberals failed to confront the innate inequality of the post-war international order so liberal inevitability politics sealed its own fate. By failing to address the problems of the now rapidly collapsing global order, and those who are committed to democracy and strong institutions have spent this century trying to pick up the pieces.
Where eternity politics is best on display currently is in the Russian narrative on their invasion of Ukraine.
To the Russian eternity politician, the West is simply repeating its century-old tactic to assault Russian values and Russia’s greatness, as they did in the Crimean War, Great Northern War, or any other conflict they may pick.
But the eternity politician makes the same mistake as the inevitability politicians, they remove agency from individuals and movements with personalized beliefs, motivations, and tactics.
Herein lies the problem with both the politics of inevitability and the politics of eternity:
They ignore the fact that developments in the political and social conscience of individuals and societies determine history, not the other way around.
As an entire nation of people is stripped of its agency the war in Ukraine is boiling down into a proxy war between two great powers. However, what cannot be done is to create a single coherent narrative about the historical past, the political present, and the prospective future, because of the simple fact that human beings do not have omniscience.
We cannot possibly isolate the individuals and communities that shape historical development. We cannot aggregate history, and we should not try. Revolutions did occur in China and in Russia (along with many other places), regimes committed atrocities with impunity, as everything they did was in service of the righteous and inevitable world revolution, just as the dogma told them.
The most dangerous facet of the politics of eternity and politics of inevitability is not the gross oversimplification of history they embody, but rather the societal implications they necessitate.
In the case of liberal capitalist democracies, it leads to a small group of wealthy individuals amassing such great control that it threatens the very institutions liberals revere as eternal.
For the Marxist, it leads to the justification of mass arrest, disenfranchisement , and slaughter in the name of an inevitable world revolution that will never arrive. And for the nationalist, it means a constant paranoid struggle for dominance against their neighbours, no matter the cost.
So with the arrival of the Internet /Social media / The smartphone, are we in an “intellectual coma.” left with a form of Capitalism that is no longer working.
In denying historicism, we shouldn’t deny that progress is possible, rather we should accept that progress is not pre-determined, and relies on all of us as active participants to truly make history.
Climate change with out a doubt will lead to social disruption and potentially violent conflict.
I shudder to think about this impromptu utterances.
———-
It’s not that difficult to see that, says mass migration, it will provoke more conflict in the world.
Our tribalism will become more apparent over the next decade or so. Social Media reflects this with the pervasive mentality in western journalism of normalizing tragedy in parts of the world, such as the Middle East, Africa, south Asia, and Latin America, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, your name it and it is perversely turned into entertainment.
Everything will have to adapt to the changing times.
As culture change, so does the way we consume it – all digital and virtual viewing merging into a digital and physical worlds with interactions changing into an endless cycle of content discovery, co-creation and sharing, which will deepen the emotional impact of content or by- pass it completely. This extends beyond our screens and newspapers and easily bleeds and blends into politics.
Righteous outrage immediately mounted online.
Xenophobia is an efficient tool to keep people divided. Colonial powers knew this early on. By separating people based on superficial characteristics, such as skin colour, and then assigning qualities to these features (such as being civilized vs. barbarian, or intelligent vs. backward), people started to believe that they were different from each other based on these highly unscientific classifications. To eradicate racism, we must become aware that our ancestors invented the notion of race for self-fulfilling reasons rooted in unscientific assumptions.
The question becomes how we classify people as strangers. This changes over time. Therefore, the classification of people as strangers is culturally constructed, with racism being one of its many forms.
Race and racism were non-existent during most of human history. To be human has always meant one thing -to be civilised. One was not born human. One had to become human.
Racism is a recently invented classification system that triggers xenophobia.
——-
After demonizing and abusing refugees, especially Muslim and African refugees, for years., now if one does not look like a refugee the chances of being excepted anywhere is almost zero.
You can see it already in Europe.
I suspect we’re going to see more nativism, more xenophobia, and more talk of building walls on our borders. Neighbour helping neighbour is a dying falsify.
Very concept of providing refuge is not and should not be based on factors such as physical proximity or skin colour.
The idea of granting asylum, of providing someone with a life free from political persecution, must never be founded on anything but helping innocent people who need protection. That’s where the core principle of asylum is located. If not we are showing ourselves as giving up on civilization and opting for barbarism instead.
On the one hand, there is something to be said about the idea of mankind as a group defined, beyond gender, race, or class, by a characteristic shared by all humans.
The history of the idea of human nature since the 5th century BC represents the history of Western violence and domination. It bears witness to some of the deepest conflicts and divisions the earth has seen.
The West identifies capitalism, liberalism and democracy as markers of civilisation and progress against Islamic fundamentalism, theocratic rule, and what it irresponsibly calls ‘the Muslim world’.
——–
These things exist with or without climate change, but the effects of climate change — migration in particular — will exacerbate them and help fuel reactionary movements around the world.
Ideology will always be a surface-level justification for conflict — people come up with narratives to justify whatever they’re doing in the political world. But if you look deeply at the source of future conflicts, I think you’ll see a basic resource conflict at the bottom of it all.
We can say with some confidence that climate change will render huge parts of the world less hospitable to human beings, and that as a consequence, humans will have to change how and where they live.
Are we prepared? NO!
Do we have the institutions, the structures, the systems of cooperation we need to deal with this problem? NO!
Have we existing structure of peacekeeping that can hold up under these conditions? NO!
Can Western democratic society, which is built on a system of limitless growth and productivity, change its destructive relationship with nature? NO!
Modern liberal democratic societies are successful at improving the lives and freedoms of people who live in them. The problem is that these systems are based on the exploitation of nature and our environment, and we’re sort of trapped in this paradigm.
The lessons for those of who lived through the coronavirus pandemic today, it that Civilization is a very thin veneer. That your well-being as individuals really depends on the flourishing of the greater society.
Why?
Because under even slight amounts of pressure, that social contract starts to break down, and [when] people lose that veneer … that can be very dangerous. If a pandemic finds a society that is fractured, where there is distrust, where the public health system is neglected or in decay … that is going to be revealed, as it was with profiteers during the pandemic “willing to make money off human misery”
——–
Putting the pandemic into perspective as a terrible episode, but nonetheless just one episode, in a much longer story. This however is not an option when it comes to Climate Change. Overwhelmed by the disaster, people will see what our system of Capitalism has become.
I think one of the things that is clearly exacerbating matters is when the issue is what we’d call politicized.
With technology and social media we humans – we become the stories that we tell ourselves. Our stories are never just stories. They are self-fulfilling prophecies.
That’s because we tend to use history, which is at its heart the study of surprises, as a guide to the future. This should however not stop us from aiming to better understand the future: the knowledge gained through planning is crucial to the selection of appropriate actions as future events unfold. We don’t know the answer, but we can at least ask useful questions and catalyze the conversation!
It’s important to remember that technology is often value-neutral: it’s what we do with it day in, day out that defines whether we are dealing with the “next big thing”.
Is there a way to think of the human being beyond the opposition between the ‘civilized’ and the ‘barbarian’?
Or is such an idea of mankind yet to be invented?
Watch and weep.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
WE ARE STILL BURNING GIGATONS OF FOSSIL CARBON PER YEAR. ( A gigaton is a billion tons)
At 40 gigatons’ a year another 500 gigatons will not take long to burn = 12.5 years.
This means an inexorable rise in temperature.
A wet- bulb temperature of 35 will kill humans, making swaths of the globe inhospitable to humans in the next century turning the essential resources of the earth, Fresh Air, Fresh Water into products. (Wet-bulb temperature is literally what a thermometer measures if a wet cloth is wrapped around it.) (35 °C, or around 95 °F, is pretty much the absolute limit of human tolerance)
Understanding our limits and what determines them will be more important as global temperatures creep upward and extreme weather events become harder to predict.
There are already hundreds of extreme heat events around the world. In a study published in 2020, researchers showed that some places in the subtropics have already reported such conditions—and they’re getting more common.
Around 30% of the world’s population is exposed to a deadly combination of heat and humidity for at least 20 days each year, that percentage will increase to nearly half by 2100, even with the most drastic reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions.
When your core temperature gets too hot, everything from organs to enzymes can shut down. Extreme heat can lead to major kidney and heart problems, and even brain damage.
We’re changing our planet.
It’s not just Australia one of the hottest countries on Earth, England is looking at a drought this year with other places already
pushing the limits of human tolerance.
Australia is a country on the brink of a water crisis.
With river flows expected to drop by 10- 25% within ten years, pressure on Australia’ water systems will grow as demand from
population rises.
Despite the continent’s vast size, nearly the entire population lives in cities. These are predicted to grow by an additional 20
million people in the next 30 years, with water consumption in larger cities expected to rise by 73% to more than 2,650 gigalitres.
Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin has one of the world’s most advanced water markets. Water can be bought by the highest bidder.
Water users can buy or sell their water rights, on a permanent or temporary basis. This encourages the best use of our scarce water
resources. Trading encourages efficient water use by allowing it to be used where it’s needed most.
Water rights can be traded in various ways. It can be as simple as a change of ownership. Trades may change either the ownership
or the location of the water right, or both.
all of this is contributing to appalling environmental damage on the planet’s driest inhabited continent.
It has allowed a ruthless market to form, exploited by traders who buy and sell water as if it were a currency like Bitcoin.
The widespread acceptance that environmental sustainability is a crucial goal of water management.
The deadly heat events already experienced in recent decades are indicative of the continuing trend toward increasingly extreme
humid heat, are underlining that their diverse, consequential, and growing impacts represent a major societal challenge
for the coming decades.
What do you do when there’s not enough of something to go around? “Put a price on it!”
MARK MY WORDS TURNING NATURAL RESOURCES INTO PRODUCTS FOR SHORT TERM PROFIT IS ONLY IN ITS
INFANCY.
CLEAN AIR WILL BE NEXT.
It’s important to remember that the causal links between climate and conflict are rarely direct.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin
Unfortunately, the future isn’t talking. It’s just coming, like it or not being able to see the future might not play to our advantage.
Let’s not kid ourselves: Everything we think we know now is just an approximation to something we haven’t yet found out.
To imagine and think about the future, is a risky task that frequently ends up in an incomplete, subjective, sometimes vacuous exercise that, normally, faces a number of heated discussions.
Thinking about the future requires imagination and also rigour so we must guard against the temptation to choose a favourite future and prepare for it alone.
In a world where shocks like pandemics and extreme weather events owing to climate change, social unrest and political polarization are expected to be more frequent, we cannot afford to be caught off guard again.
Let’s look at some of the areas that are and will cause everything from wars to radical changes.
—–
Every day, we use a wide variety of automated systems that collect and process data. Such “algorithmic processing” is ubiquitous and often beneficial, underpinning many of the products and services we use in everyday life.
This is why we now need to thoroughly understand what’s at stake and what we can (and cannot) do …today.
Otherwise it is an ill wind for the next 60/100 years.
But what does the future hold for ordinary mortals, and how will we adapt to it?
We have been searching the universe for signs that we are not alone. So far, we have found nothing.
Given our genome and the physiological, anatomical and mental landscapes it conjures, what could Homo sapiens really become – and what is forever beyond our reach?
It’s hard to know what to fear the most.
Even our own existence is no longer certain.
Threats loom from many possible directions: a giant asteroid strike, global warming, a new plague, or nanomachines going rogue and turning everything into grey goo or the dreaded self inflicted nuclear wipe out. However we look at it, the future appears bleak.
Where is all of this leading us?
What we do now set the foundations for a future.
The chaos theory taught us that the future behaviour of any physical system is extraordinarily sensitive to small changes – the flap of a butterfly’s wings can set off a hurricane, as the saying goes.
Computers simulations of future reality of a world are already producing ever more accurate predictions of what is to come, showing us that we are under immense stress, environmentally, economically and politically instabilities.
There is no God that’s is going to change the direction we on or save humanity from self destruction, its in our hands
—–
ENGERY: FUSION POWER.
We already live in a world powered by nuclear fusion. Unfortunately the reactor is 150 million kilometres away and we haven’t worked out an efficient way to tap it directly. So we burn its fossilised energy – coal, oil and gas – which is slowly boiling the planet alive, like a frog in a pan of water.
Fusion would largely free us from fossil fuels, delivering clean and extremely cheap energy in almost unlimited quantities.
Or would it? Fusion power would certainly be cleaner than burning fossil fuels, but it …Fusion works on the principle that energy can be released by forcing together atomic nuclei rather than by splitting them, as in the case of the fission reactions that drive existing nuclear power stations.
Sadly it won’t help in our battle to lessen the effects of climate change.
Why?
Because there’s huge uncertainty about when fusion power will be ready for commercialisation. One estimate suggests maybe 20 years. Then fusion would need to scale up, which would mean a delay of perhaps another few decades. Fusion is not a solution to get us to 2050 net zero. This is a solution to power society in the second half of this century.
—–
THE INTERNET/ ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE/ SELF LEARNING ALGORITHMS/ROBOTS.
Billions of dollars continue to be funnelled into AI research. And stunning advances are being made but at what future cost.
Are we at the point in time at which machine intelligence starts to take off, and a new more intelligent species starts to inhabit Earth?
Synthetic life would make the point in a way the wider world could not ignore. Moreover, creating it in the lab would prove that the origin of life is a relatively low hurdle, increasing the odds that we might find life.
POWER.
Neither physical strength nor access to capital are sufficient for economic success. Power now resides with those best able to organize knowledge. The internet has eliminated “middlemen” in most industries, removing a great deal of corruption but replacing it with profit seeking Algorithms that are widely used increasing the inequality gaps.
——
WARS.
What does future warfare look like?
It’s here already.
Up goesdigital technology, artificial intelligence and cyber. Down goes the money for more traditional hardware and troop numbers.
The present war in the Ukraine is the laboratory for machine learning decision killing, with autonomy in weapons systems – precision guided munitions. (Autonomous weapon system: A weapon system that, once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by a human operator.) This includes human-supervised autonomous weapon systems that are designed to allow human operators to override operation of the weapon system, but can select and engage targets without further human input after activation.
(AI)-enabled lethal autonomous weapons in Ukraine, might make new types of autonomous weapons desirable.
There is still no internationally agreed upon definition of autonomous weapons or lethal autonomous weapons.
‘Fire and forget’
Many of the aspects of a major conflict between the West and say, Russia or China, have already been developed, rehearsed and deployed.
—-
CLIMATE CHANGE.
Global climate change is not a future problem with some of the changes now irreversible over the next hundreds to thousands of years.
The severity of effects caused by climate change will depend on the path of future human activities.
Climate models predict that Earth’s global average temperature will rise an additional 4° C (7.2° F) during the 21st Century if greenhouse gas levels continue to rise at present levels. A warmer average global temperature will cause the water cycle to “speed up” due to a higher rate of evaporation. Which means we are looking at a future with much more rain and snow, and a higher risk of flooding to some regions. Changes in precipitation will not be evenly distributed.
Over the past 100 years, mountain glaciers in all areas of the world have decreased in size and so has the amount of permafrost in the Arctic. Greenland’s ice sheet is melting faster, too. The amount of sea ice (frozen seawater) floating in the Arctic Ocean and around Antarctica is expected to decrease. Already the summer thickness of sea ice in the Arctic is about half of what it was in 1950. Arctic sea ice is melting more rapidly than the Antarctic sea ice. Melting ice may lead to changes in ocean circulation, too. Although there is some uncertainty about the amount of melt, summer in the Arctic Ocean will likely be ice-free by the end of the century.
Abrupt changes are also possible as the climate warms.
Earth Will Continue to Warm and the Effects Will Be Profound.
The consequences of any of them are so severe, and the fact that we cannot retreat from them once they’ve been set in motion is so problematic, that we must keep them in mind when evaluating the overall risks associated with climate change.
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IMMIGRANT’S /REFUGEE’S
History—particularly migration history—has shown time and again, that large population movements are often a result of single, hard-to-predict events such as large economic or political shocks.
Imagining migration’s future is urgent, especially now, when we are witnessing the highest movement of people in modern history, which is presented in a political context with strong populist and nationalist overtones, peppered with growing inequality in and between countries; in addition to an environmental crisis and a growing interconnection and proliferation of information that is usually deliberately distorted.
In today’s acts rests the seed of what we will harvest tomorrow. What we do today with and for the migrants will define not only their future but also ours.
We will always struggle to anticipate key changes in migration flows but that it’s more important to set up systems that can deal with different alternative outcomes and adjust flexibly. Most Western countries no longer openly support or defend the universality of human rights. Most countries apply “multilateralism à la carte”, that is, they participate only in multilateral agreements that strictly benefit their national interest.
Migration control systems collapsed because the international community failed to develop multilateral migration governance regimes. The international protection system has ended up being irrelevant. Many people are moving, the number of displaced people has increased dramatically as well as the number of refugees – The Trojan horses.
Immigration isn’t a new phenomenon, but with the effects of the future climate the scale and variety of countries from which people are moving will be greater than ever.
The idea that you have to learn a foreign language to make yourself understood in your own country is no longer a probability.
We now have immigration from everywhere in the world.
Very few people have issues with genuinely high skilled migrants coming over to work as doctors or scientists. The anxieties are always around mass immigration of low skilled labour (and in particularly about those from diametrically opposed cultures with completely different norms and values). As for the ageing populations thing, replacing your population with younger migrants from different cultures does technically solve the ageing population problem but then you end up with a completely different culture and country…
What ever you think, it’s becoming more difficult to do the old-style identity politics where you found a particular group and did what they wanted. Effectively assimilating people from the Muslim world looks to be a particular difficult.
Nearly all nations are mongrels
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EDUCATION.
By imagining alternative futures for education we can better think through the outcomes, develop agile and responsive systems
and plan for future shocks .We have already integrated much of our life into our smartphones, watches and digital personal
assistants in a way that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago.
The underlying question is: to what extent are our current spaces, people, time and technology in schooling helping or hindering
our vision?
It would involve re-envisioning the spaces where learning takes place. Schools could disappear altogether.
ALGORITHMIC SYSTEMS.
Brute force algorithm: This is the most common type in which we devise a solution by exploring all the possible scenarios.
Greedy algorithm: In this, we make a decision by considering the local (immediate) best option and assume it as a global optimal.
Divide and conquer algorithm: This type of algorithm will divide the main problem into sub-problems and then would solve them individually.
Backtracking algorithm: This is a modified form of Brute Force in which we backtrack to the previous decision to obtain the desired goal.
Randomized algorithm: As the name suggests, in this algorithm, we make random choices or select randomly generated numbers.
Dynamic programming algorithm: This is an advanced algorithm in which we remember the choices we made in the past and apply them in future scenarios.
Recursive algorithm: This follows a loop, in which we follow a pattern of the possible cases to obtain a solution.
90.72% of people in the world cell phone owners. Algorithms are everywhere.
Algorithmic systems, particularly modern Machine Learning (ML) approaches, pose significant risks if deployed and managed
without due care. They can amplify harmful biases that lead to discriminatory decisions or unfair outcomes that reinforce
inequalities.
They can be used to mislead consumers and distort competition. Further, the opaque and complex nature by which
they collect and process large volumes of personal data can put people’s privacy rights in jeopardy.
Now more than ever it is vital that we understand and articulate the nature and severity of these risks.
Those procuring and/or using algorithms often know little about their origins and limitations
There is a lack of visibility and transparency in algorithmic processing, which can undermine accountability.
They are already being woven into many digital products and services.
Algorithmic processing is already leading to society-wide harms making automated decisions that can potentially vary the cost of,
or even deny an individual’s access to, a product, service, opportunity or benefit.
For example, using live facial recognition at a stadium on matchday could impact rights relating to
freedom of assembly, or track an individual’s behaviour online, which may infringe their right to privacy.
At the moment there is very little transparently in providing information about how and where algorithmic processing takes place
or how they are deployed, such as the protocols and procedures that govern there use, whether they are overseen by a human
operator, and whether there are any mechanisms through which people can seek redress. The number of players involved in
algorithmic supply chains is leading to confusion over who is accountable for their proper development and use.
As the number of use cases for algorithmic processing grows, so too will the number of questions concerning the impact of
algorithmic processing on society.
Already there are many gaps in our knowledge of this technology, with myths and misconceptions commonplace.
They are the TikTok erosion of human values for profit, that will become the full individual personalization of content and
pedagogy (enabled by cutting-edge technology, using body information, facial expressions or neural signals) for commercial
platforms to rival Government’s.
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BIOENGINEERING.
In a world of mounting inequalities, the question of who benefits and misses out from bioengineering advances looms large.
Unfortunately, we don’t have space here to talk about all the effects in the future concerning Bioengineering.
Artificial organs or limbs, the genetic synthesis of new organisms, gene editing, the computerized simulation of surgery, medical imaging technology and tissue/organ regeneration.
Like any other technology, bioengineering has damaging potential, whether it be through misuse, weaponization or accidents.
This risk can create significant threats with large potential consequences to public health, privacy or to environmental safety.
Foreseeing the impacts of bioengineering technologies is urgently needed.
All these issues have implications for academics, policymakers and the general public and range from neuronal probes for human enhancement to carbon sequestration.
These issues will not unfold in isolation:
Biotechnological discoveries are increasingly facilitated by automated and roboticides, private ‘cloud labs’.
The effects on biodiversity and ecosystems have not been fully studied.
Protein engineering and machine learning, leading to the creation of novel compounds within the industry (e.g. new catalysts for un-natural reactions) and medical applications (e.g. selectively destroying damaged tissue which is key for some diseases).
These newly created proteins have the potential to be used as weapons due to their high lethality.
Healthcare is facing a tug of war between democratization and elite therapies.
Plant strains which sequester carbon more effectively, rapidly and can even aid solar photovoltaics (the production of electricity from light) and light-sustained biomanufacturing.
Due to political unrest and the spread of fake news, citizens are scared about this approach and protest against it.
These issues will shape the future of bioengineering and must shape modern discussions about its political, societal and economic impact. This is now a very complicated question with no foreseeable answer.
To answer we have to think about how we got here in the first place. Of course “The herd” might not want to think about something like this.
DEMOCRACY. ———–
Our democracy is in crisis. Many institutions of our government are dysfunctional and getting worse.
Our politics have become alarmingly acrimonious;
Technology is enriching some and leaving the vast majority behind.
Democracy, has never been without profound flaws, cannot be taken for granted. Trust in political institutions – including the electoral process itself – are at an all-time low. Societies the world over are experiencing a strong backlash to a system of government that has largely been the hallmark of developed nations for generations
We don’t know where it’s heading as politicians are now basically middlemen to Social media which is changing the way people viewed their political leaders as under constant pressure promoted by populist as a result all decomacies are now “flawed” and exposed to the vulnerability of pure democracy to the tyranny of the majority
We don’t know how serious it is. So, what’s going on?
What’s behind the erosion of a political system that’s guided the world’s most developed economies for decades?
GREED.
As a result government’s are becoming more and more soulless, in failing to talk about the things that mattered to people.
With political parties running away from talking about the issues that matter to people.
When people feel threatened, either physically – by terrorism, say – or economically, they tend to be more receptive to authoritarian populist appeals and more willing to give up certain freedoms. When people are saying they can’t stomach any more immigration, when they don’t know if they’re going to be able to retire or what kind of jobs their kids are going to get, the political elite needs to listen and adapt or things are going to unravel.
Some may argue that this is because governments no longer feel like they are “of the people, by the people, for the people.
Maybe we are going to have some shocking lessons about the durability of democracy.
Non-democratic states have many forms, like China’s meritocratic system – in which government officials are not elected by the public, but appointed and promoted according to their competence and performance – should not be dismissed outright.
A democratic system can live with corruption because corrupt leaders can be voted out of power, at least in theory. But in a meritocratic system, corruption is an existential threat. Elections are a safety valve that isn’t available in China so the government is not subject to the electoral cycle and can focus on its policies while the West has tried to export democracy not only at the point of a gun, but also by imposing legislation. The whole idea is wrong in principle because democracy is not ours to dispense.
The US and Western Europe have we hope abandoned most of their ambitions for regime change around the world.
So looking inwards may be no bad thing. If the West wants to promote democracy then they should do it by example.
How do we reconcile that with democracy millions of citizens?
Hence, the knowledge revolution should bring a shift to direct democracy, but those who benefit from the current structure are fighting this transition. This is the source of much angst around the world, including the current wave of popular protests.
Smaller political entities should find the evolution toward direct democracy easier to achieve than big, sprawling governments.
Today’s great powers have little choice but to spend their way to political stability, which is unsustainable, and/or try to control knowledge, which is difficult.
Each individual’s share of sovereignty, and therefore their freedom, diminishes as the social contract includes more people.
So, other things being equal, smaller countries would be freer and more democratic than larger ones.
I’m not sure we can. It worked pretty well for a long time but maybe, as population grows.
FINALLY THE LANDS WE NOW INHABIT COULD DISSAPEAR IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE.
Rising seas could affect three times more people by 2050 than previously thought, some 150 million people are now living on land
that will be below the high-tide line by mid-century. Defensive measures can go only so far. We know that it’s coming.
The math is catching up to us – the amount of Co2 – the number of refugees / immigrants, the inequality gap, the numbers dying in wars~ natural disasters, the erosion of democracy, trust.
We need to know in plain English and without hype or hysteria of technologies ,social media, or selective algorithms news, only then will we begin to understand what’s coming and how to begin preparing yourself.
impossible to know everything about a quantum system such as an atom.
President Vladimir Putin cast the confrontation with the West over the Ukraine war as an existential battle for the survival of Russia and the Russian people – and said he was forced to take into account NATO’s nuclear capabilities.
Putin is increasingly presenting the war as a make-or-break moment in Russian history – and saying that he believes the very future of Russia and its people is in peril. “In today’s conditions, when all the leading NATO countries have declared their main goal as inflicting a strategic defeat on us, so that our people suffer as they say, how can we ignore their nuclear capabilities in these conditions?” Putin said.
completely unaware of the relentless pressure that’s building right now.
wasn’t always the United States. Nothing requires it to remain so. At some point, it will develop into something else.
THE COST OF THINGS.
Globalization vs. Regionalization, US-centric vs China-centric.
Modern Western economies have become knowledge based.
Technology and political trends are aligning against mega-powers like the US and China.
The West is beset with widening wealth gaps, shrinking middle classes and fractured societies.
There is only one country that has got it right Norway.
This small Scandinavian country of 5 million people does things differently.
It has the lowest income inequality in the world, helped by a mix of policies that support education and innovation. It also channels the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, which manages its oil and gas revenues, into long-term economic planning.
Norway does not have a statutory minimum wage, but 70% of its workers are covered by collective agreements which specify wage floors. Furthermore, 54% of paid workers are members of unions. The government has prioritised education as a means to diversify its economy and foster higher and more inclusive growth.
The Norwegian state heavily subsidies childcare, capping fees and using means-testing so that places are affordable, although some parents report difficulty in finding an available place. Norway has provided for 49 weeks of parental leave at full pay (or 59 weeks at 80% of earnings). Additionally, mothers and fathers must take at least 14 weeks off each after the birth of a child.
Currently some 98% of its energy comes from renewable sources, mainly hydropower.
While Norway is more fortunate than most, it does offer some valuable lessons to policy-makers from other parts of the world.
TOMORROW’S GODS.
Religions never do really die.
We take it for granted that religions are born, grow and die – but we are also oddly blind to that reality.
When we recognise a faith, we treat its teachings and traditions as timeless and sacrosanct. And when a religion dies, it becomes a myth, and its claim to sacred truth expires. If you believe your faith has arrived at ultimate truth, you might reject the idea that it will change at all. But if history is any guide, no matter how deeply held our beliefs may be today, they are likely in time to be transformed or transferred as they pass to our descendants – or simply to fade away.
As our civilisation and its technologies become increasingly complex, could entirely new forms of worship emerge?
We might expect the form that religion takes to follow the function it plays in a particular society – that different societies will invent the particular gods they need.
The future of religion is that it has no future.
Perhaps with the march of science it is leading to the “disenchantment” of society so supernatural answers to the big questions will be no longer felt to be needed. We also need to be careful when interpreting what people mean by “no religion”. “Nones” may be disinterested in organised religion, but that doesn’t mean they are militantly atheist. Accordingly, there are very many ways of being an unbeliever. The acid test, as true for neopagans as for transhumanists, is whether people make significant changes to their lives consistent with their stated faith.
People have started constructing faiths of their own. Consider the “Witnesses of Climatology”, a fledgling “religion” invented to foster greater commitment to action on climate change.
In fact, recognition is a complex issue worldwide, particularly since there is no widely accepted definition of religion even in academic circles.
A supercomputer is turned on and asked: is there a God? Now there is, comes the reply.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin. Please keep comments respectful. Use plain English for our global readership and avoid using phrasing that could be misinterpreted as offensive.
Let’s face it, stereotypes are common in this day in age, resulting in preconceived notions about people and their culture.
Whilst stereotypes can provide some sort of understanding of another’s culture, they are generally unhelpful and misleading, creating bad first impression that can lead to so many misunderstandings.
Oh, you’re Asian? Are you Chinese? if you are Asian, you are automatically Chinese.
You cannot distinguish one Chinese person from another they are all brainwashed.
Chinese are by far the most complicated individuals to understand, founded as an agriculture – based society formed on the Yellow river 5000 years ago.
Almost a century before Vasco da Gama and Christopher Columbus made voyages that kicked off the era of European colonialism, the Chinese admiral Zheng the greatest explorer that the world had never heard of, brought back maps that helped to develop European cartography. With his description of Japan setti a definite goal for Christopher Columbus in his journey in 1492.
The author Gavin Menzies even found success publishing “1421: The Year China Discovered the World,” a best-selling—claims that Zheng actually circumnavigated the globe in his sixth voyage discovered. Chinese ships had reached America 70 years before Columbus & had circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan.
(Historians have rejected Menzies’ theories and assertions and have categorised his work as pseudohistory.) Whether it is or not, it is a fascinating read, suggesting that Marko Polo meet Zheng, who give him a map of the Americas, which he subsequently gave to the Vancian, who doctored it so Columbus would make the discover.
Anyway, recorded by Polo was widely used in the late 15th and the 16th centuries, during the age of the great European voyages of discovery and conquest. He was among the first Europeans to describe many of the advanced technologies found in China.
Like Menzies he is say to have been a bit of a fibber, as he never mention seeing the wall of China.
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If you’re doing any sort of analysis of China, it pays to remember that until relatively recently, China was an isolated country closed off, with little substantive contact with the rest of the world.
China was and still is a bit of an outcast of the world.
One of the oldest cultures in the world, known throughout the world by the middle of the 19th century. There were many other central Asian states that coexisted with the Chinese dynasties, different kingdoms, states, and empires all existing at the same time!
Including the Xiongnu, Tibetan Empire, Zunghars, Mongols, Manchus, and others.
Ranking as the eight oldest country in the world, with thousands of years, behind the Great Wall of history, its unbroken culture has spread itself over centuries, through out East Asia.
The Chinese population is now four times that of the United States. It is the fourth largest country in the world, with about 56 different ethnic groups, with over 300 languages, spoken, in 22 provinces, with the world’s longest continuously used written language.
People have lived in the area we know today as “China” for at least 1.7 million years.
One in every five people in the world is Chinese.
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The venue of the worlds oldest lifestyle, it is no wonder that they view foreigners as inferior, corrupt, decadent, disloyal, and volatile – the devils. You would too if you had to pass 1.4 billion other people and get to where you’re going.
It is not a country of ping-pong players, full of bamboo eating Pandas, rather a country that will have 36 per cent of its mobile customer base on 5G by 2025.
You got to realise there are others live on this planet too! China personify this.
However its fair to say, they (more than likely) view their imperial glory of the world in decline, disintegrating, having succumbed to materialism, and consumerism, has changed the stereotype.
Most of us have never been in China, but we all have met a Chinese in our lives, so stereotypes linger in the minds of those who have never been to China.
To understand them the most important influence on their way of life is Confucianism based on unequal relationships between people, diametrically opposed to British or American ideas.
Even with one child per family up to recent times collectivism is very strong in China where the extended family is seen as more important than the individual. Chinese traditionally believe that every person turns one year older on the New Year and, thus, that day is considered to be everyone’s birthday.
The bicycle is now the primary transportation for millions of Chinese.
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In the last two posts we’ve already mentioned the role of Hollywood has had in reinforcing the stereotype – Russian and American, China it is no different, with movies casting Chinese actors, as glasses-wearing nerds and mathematic geniuses smoking opium, with kung Fu, small with slanted eyes with shaved forehead and long braid down the back, shovelling rice into their mouths with chopsticks, or eating cats and dogs and rats, openly urinating, grinding rhino horns for medicine, carving elephant trunks, running around under mile long dragon effigies, letting of thousands of lighting lanterns, while the woman shuffle around serving tea in traditional Hanfu and garments with binding feet (euphemistically called “golden lilies”) squashed toes, to a Emperor seated in the Forbidden City, surrounded by Eunuchs. ( The Forbidden City was so named because commoners were forbidden to enter the city. Any commoner who saw the emperor was killed.)
(The dragon is typically seen as an evil creature in Western culture, it holds first place among the four greatest creatures in Chinese mythology, including the phoenix, tiger, and tortoise. It is typically associated with the emperor.)
Of course any self- respecting Chinese would be abhorred with the above image and rightfully justified to totally reject such an image.
In fact, stereotypes about Chinese food choices are so entrenched that many non-Chinese readily brought into the notion that the Coronavirus had been caused by the Chinese predilection for bat meat!
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China is a country that is not founded and ruled by Anglo-Saxon people. This is a communist-led country, that dares to succeed economically and materially. However you would be a brave man to say this was achieved through democratic and liberal ideas of individual freedom and rights.
The Boxer Rebellion between 1898 and 1901 in northern China was against Christian missionaries, foreign diplomats, and technology by a secret group called the “Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists” (Yihequan or I-ho-ch’uan) so named because its members practiced weapon less martial arts as well as secret rituals. Westerns called it “shadow boxing” and the members “Boxers.”
All Chinese are masters of Martial arts have deep roots in Chinese cultural history; forming an important part of Chinese cultural identity.
The Taiping Rebellion is known as the bloodiest civil war in human history, and the largest conflict of the 19th century.
China and the West were in contact more than 1,500 years before European explorer Marco Polo arrived in China, before the formal opening of the Silk Road. ( Many people think the Silk Road is a real road from China to the West. Actually, the term “Silk Road” was invented by a German mapmaker who was making a map of Asia in 1877.)
Qin Shi Huang lived between 259-210BC and became the first emperor of a unified China. His tomb (200 times bigger than Egypt’s Valley of the Kings) .discovered in 1974 with his Terracotta Army, the Acrobats and the bronze sculptures, were inspired by ancient Greek sculptures and art.
The modern word “China” most likely derives from the name of the Qin (pronounced “chin”) dynasty.
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China was the first country in the world to use an iron plough.
Toilet paper was invented in China in the late 1300s they invented paper, the compass, gunpowder, and printing.
First to use stirrups.
By the fourth century B.C., the Chinese were drilling for natural gas and using it as a heat source, preceding Western natural gas drilling by about 2,300 years.
The Chinese were using the decimal system as early as the fourteenth century B.C., nearly 2,300 years before the first known use of the system in European mathematics. The Chinese were also the first to use a place for zero.
Chinese coins had holes in them to be carried easily.
The crossbow was invented and first used by the Chinese. They were also the first in the world to use chemical and gas weapons, 2,000 years before gas was used in Europe during WWI.
Tea was discovered by the Chinese along with Gun power.
China’s Grand Canal is the world’s oldest and longest canal at 1,114 miles.
Suspension bridges were invented in China in 25 B.C, 1,800 years before such bridges were known in the West.
The Chinese were the first to invent the waterwheel to harness water in A.D. 31—1,200 years before the Europeans.
In A.D. 130, Zhang Heng, an astronomer and literary scholar, invented the first instrument for monitoring earthquakes. The machine could detect and indicate the direction of an earthquake.
In 1974, a group of farmers digging for a well in the Shaanxi province uncovered some bits of very old pottery. They discovered the tomb of Qin (259-210 B.C.) the first emperor who united China. The tomb contained thousands of amazing life-sized soldiers, horses, and chariots.
During the first half the twentieth century, Shanghai was the only port in the world to accept Jews fleeing the Holocaust without an entry visa.
The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games were estimated to cost a whopping $40 billion.
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To day:
China’s national flag was adopted in September 1949 and first flown in Tiananmen Square (the world’s largest public gathering place) on October 1, 1949, the day the People’s Republic of China was formed. The red in the flag symbolizes revolution. The large star symbolizes communism, and the little stars represent the Chinese people and their respective social classes.
The United States is increasingly using China as a “frame of reference.”
There’s probably an element of fear. China’s success threatens to undermine America’s globally dominant position.
China’s military strength has also improved greatly, and the US no longer can afford a war with China.
It’s saying US you can continue to be the No.1
With the drama of balloons there’s a real schizophrenia going on about China in the US which leads to no coherent foreign policy objectives, when it comes to the second largest economy in the world..
Because their is now a profound shift in the global balance of military power is under way. It has the largest navy in the world, spending more on its armed forces than any country except the US with 1,000 warheads.
China is now fully committed to developing “intelligentised” warfare.
Is China moving away from non-confrontation towards a more threatening stance?
The risk of war far exceeds any fool’s imagination.
Russia as its invasion of Ukraine nears its first anniversary and fresh concerns have arisen about the possibility that China may be getting ready to support Russia in the war effort.
China is probably the only external actor that could put effective diplomatic pressure on the Russian president.
Democracy is not about letting people die in pursuit of profit. The understanding of democracy by Westerners has already been distorted.
I don’t know when the concept of democracy became the private property of Westerners.
There is a saying. Keep them in the dark and feed them Shit!
In 1996, China produced 600,000 tons of mushrooms, making it the world’s leading producer, and it has 60% of the world’s mushroom varieties.
“Let China sleep, for when she awakes, she will shake the world.” – Napoleon
Unlike the United States.it is certain that China has no intention of policing the world.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
It seems to be easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; perhaps that is due to some weakness in our imaginations.” — Frederic Jameson, The Seeds of Time
The stakes facing our generation are much more than they first seem, because our actions might have the potential to bring about a far better world, or cut it short.
The shifting meaning of “capitalism,” and how societies hide their downside with culture.
We’re unclear on what “capitalism” is supposed to be.
From the proletarians, nothing is to be feared.
Left to themselves, they will continue from generation to generation and from century to century, working, breeding, and dying, not only without any impulse to rebel but without the power of grasping that the world could be other than it is.” — George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
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Rather than us asking questions of this world, this world asks questions of us.
We need to listen to the world in new ways and hear the fundamental questions that it askes us.
WITH CLIMATE CHANGE – WARS – AI – INEQULITY. – UNITED NATIONS
ALL AT THIS VERY M0MENT ARE ASKING: DO WE WISH TO CONTINUE TO EXIST?
Might it be, then, that we have trouble imagining the end of capitalism because we think capitalism is great, and we’d fear that any alternative would be worse?
It is not we who are permitted to ask about the meaning of life — it is life that asks the questions, directs questions at us… our whole act of being is nothing more than responding to — of being responsible toward — life.
Have we been indoctrinated so that we subscribe to an ideology or a myth of capitalism?
All are questing, just what are our values.
We have an easier time imagining an apocalyptic death of the planet than capitalism being surpassed by a superior economic system, promoting equality.
Do we trust in capitalism on what are effectively theological grounds, so that the specious neoliberal arguments in capitalism’s favour are so many superfluous rationalizations?
Will AI Have a Soul? And does it even matter? Everybody uses the internet, but nobody trusts it.
The recent state of the world certainly hasn’t helped.
Even if capitalism is justifiable, it doesn’t follow that those who benefit from that system should be unable even to imagine a better kind of economy.
Neoliberals will say that we can imagine an alternative to capitalism, after all, namely the communist one that failed in the Soviet Union. But that, too, is a red herring since the question is whether we can imagine improvements to capitalism, not worse economies.
Likely, you find your smartphone handy, but that doesn’t mean you can’t imagine improvements to it. You’d prefer to keep your phone, of course, and you may even be addicted to social media. But science fiction is replete with re-imagined technologies. For instance, we could miniaturize smartphones and hardwire them into the brain.
Science doesn’t demonstrate that the quantityof life matters more than its quality, nor can science show which qualities of life should matter more than others.
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How do I get people to do what I want them to do?
Unfortunately there are collective forms of self-deception.
Individuals, of course, can prevent themselves from reckoning with unwanted truths, in that they can underestimate obstacles, confabulate, procrastinate, and so on, unable to realize the meaning of the present moment.
“You can get everything in life that you want if you’ll just help enough other people get what they want.”
Give and you will receive.
Maybe there are social mechanisms that operate in an analogous fashion, protecting whole populations by steering them towards the party line. The analogue of the individual ego, or of the conscious self, might be the upper class that dictates mass media narratives, such as by instilling neoliberal values via Ivy League education, as Thomas Frank explains.
Societies have worldviews called “cultures,” along with institutions that enforce their biases.
Once large, sedentary societies emerged in history, so too did mechanisms for managing mass opinion. Religion was one such device, but we can speak more neutrally about “ideologies,” as Karl Marx did, to account for how we may protect capitalism, too, with myths and collective fallacies.
If you’re looking for signs of such capitalist myths, have a look at advertising, at how thousands of misleading slogans and manipulative, hyperbolic messages stream through everyone’s consciousness on a daily basis.
In the boom-and-bust cycle in which government spending alone can stabilize.
Capitalism is in runaway mode and must be curtailed.
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The recent pandemic, natural disasters, wars, all shine a light on the inequality that exist and have existed since time immortal.
If we want a world worth living in and on, we must make profit contribute to PROTECTING all the essential values of life, not the pockets of the few.
Whether it’s turning promises on climate change into action, rebuilding trust in the financial system, or connecting the world to the internet.
OUR COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY MUST BE TO REPAIRING THE DAMAGE OF CENTURIES OF GREED.
To achieve these objectives we will need to address a host of issues, with more than common sense but with trillions and trillions pumped into removing and protecting before the planet becomes uninhabitable.
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The Earth’s average land temperature has warmed nearly 1°C in the past 50 years as a result of human activity, global greenhouse gas emissions have grown by nearly 80% since 1970, and atmospheric concentrations of the major greenhouse gases are at their highest level in 800,000 years. We’re already seeing and feeling the impacts of climate change with weather events such as droughts and storms becoming more frequent and intense, and changing rainfall patterns.
By 2050, the world must feed 9 billion people. Yet the demand for food will be 60% greater than it is today. Despite huge gains in global economic output, there is evidence that our current social, political and economic systems are exacerbating inequalities, rather than reducing them. Rising income inequality is the cause of economic and social ills, ranging from low consumption to social and political unrest, and is damaging to our future well-being. 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.
To function efficiently, the system needs to re-establish trust.
The internet is changing the way we live, work, produce and consume. With such extensive reach, digital technologies cannot help but disrupt many of our existing models of business and government. We are entering the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a technological transformation driven by a ubiquitous and mobile internet. The challenge is to manage this seismic change in a way that promotes the long-term health and stability of the internet. Within the next decade, it is expected that more than a trillion sensors will be connected to the internet.
By 2025, 10% of people are expected to be wearing clothes connected to the internet and the first implantable mobile phone is expected to be sold.
Equality between men and women in all aspects of life, from access to health and education to political power and earning potential, is fundamental to whether and how societies thrive.
The growth of the digital economy, the rise of the service sector and the spread of international production networks have all been game-changers for international trade. Despite fundamental changes in the way business is done across borders, international regulations and agreements have not evolved at the same speed. In addition, negotiations to reach a new global trade agreement have stalled. There is a pressing need to reform the global trade framework.
Investing for the long term is vital for economic growth and social well-being, serious challenges to global health remain.
The number of people on the planet is set to rise to 9.7 billion in 2050 with 2 billion aged over 60. To cope with this huge demographic shift and build a global healthcare system that is fit for the future, the world needs to address these challenges now.
In short, the most pressing problems are those where people can have the greatest impact by working on them.
As we explained in the previous article, this means problems that are not only big, but also neglected and solvable. The more neglected and solvable, the further extra effort will go. And this means they’re not the problems that first come to mind.
First, future generations matter, but they can’t vote, they can’t buy things, and they can’t stand up for their interests. This means our system neglects them. You can see this in the global failure to come to an international agreement to tackle climate change that actually works..
We can’t so easily visualise suffering that will happen in the future. Future generations rely on our goodwill, and even that is hard to muster.
We all know where the Solutions are to be found – in how wealth is distributed.
We should go beyond the focus on reducing the global poverty rate to below 3% and strive to ensure that all countries and all people can share in the benefits of economic development. Nearly half of the world’s population currently lives in poverty. 2/3 of the population in low-income countries is under 25 years old.
The world is facing multiple converging crises — growing food insecurity, rising fuel prices, economic instability, and the climate crisis — and they are all hitting poor countries the hardest. With 349 million people across 79 countries facing acute food insecurity, this is the worst food crisis in decades. While COVID-19, climate change, and conflict have been major drivers, political action has also fallen short.
Poverty entails more than the lack of income and productive resources to ensure sustainable livelihoods. Its manifestations include hunger and malnutrition, limited access to education and other basic services, social discrimination and exclusion, as well as the lack of participation in decision-making.
And we still wonder why the world we live in is going down the tube.
It is quite obvious that there is no point in been rich without giving – the power to solve some of the most pressing global challenges is not to be found in the words of the United Nations Declaration to end poverty in all its forms everywhere is Goal 1 of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Why?
Because it has to beg for funds to implement any of its aspirations.
What is needed is a preputial Fund to create a World Aid system with clout.
HERE IS HOW THIS CAN BE ACHIVED.
We now live in a world driven by technology – Apps for this and Apps that – Smartphone – Algorithms running world stock market, plundering everything for the sake of profit.
Why not introduce a World Aid commission algorithm to collect 0.05% on all activities that produce profit for profit sake.
This funding could be delivered by non repayable grants prioritising adaptation re climate change, vetted projects to reduce poverty, food sustainability, environment protection, etc ( Unlike The International Monetary Fund (IMF) the lender of last resort.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
I don’t have to tell you that wars expose the barbarity in all of us.
They say that its impossible to deal with Mr Putin. Call him what you like there have been many like him that have come and gone that did almost anything to survive in power.
Most probably during the next week we will observe the intensification of the Russian military aggression in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions as well as the rest of Ukraine.
War by its nature is unpredictable.
Whether a larger war happens will depend partly on President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions, partly on the West’s military response, and partly on plain luck.
Aside from the risk of an unintended or unexpected incident, like a missile that goes astray along Ukraine’s western border, fired by either Russia or the Ukraine or a nuclear accident at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant (which demands more action) the war could be catapult into a disaster beyond belief.
The question everyone has to ask—if this is going to be a large-scale war, if there is Ukrainian resistance and the conflict is prolonged over years—is whether the fighting can be contained to Ukraine or whether it will spill over into the rest of Europe.
You don’t have to be a military general, or strategists to know that the more fuel you put on a fire the hotter it gets and the more likely it will spread.
Weapons might have changed, but wars have not, they run their course till there is no one left to kill, or to be killed, or the combating get sick of the killing and opt for peace.
What past wars tell us about how to Save Ukraine?
Most conflict since the end of the Second World War tends to involve counterinsurgency campaigns and proxy wars, making large-scale invasions—like what is currently happening in Ukraine—rare events.
Wars that end within a month last on average eight days, and 44 percent end in a ceasefire or peace agreement.
When interstate wars last longer than a year, they extend to over a decade on average, resulting in sporadic clashes.
Why?
Because the longer a war lasts with absent concessions by both parties, the more likely it is to escalate into a protracted conflict, despite the bravery of the Ukrainian people in the face of Russian aggression, that is a dangerous prospect.
The refugee crisis will grow. More civilians will die. Russia will become even more paranoid and irrational.
Mr Putin could declare Western arms supplies to Ukrainian forces are an act of aggression that warrant retaliation. He could threaten to send troops into the Baltic states – which are members of NATO – such as Lithuania, to establish a land corridor with the Russian coastal exclave of Kaliningrad.
This would be hugely dangerous and risk war with NATO. (Under Article 5 of the military alliance’s charter, an attack on one member is an attack on all.) But Mr Putin might take the risk if he felt it was the only way of saving his leadership. If he was, perhaps, facing defeat in Ukraine, he might be tempted to escalate further.
What is needed is a viable diplomatic offramp that addresses the concerns of all parties.
The time for crisis diplomacy is now.
How this might be achieved?
This is about Russia wanting to restore a sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space, and particularly about Putin wanting Russia to reabsorb Ukraine. Russia doesn’t just want a neutral Ukraine. It’s also demanding that Ukraine formally give up Crimea and parts of the Donbas.
Amid the fog of war, it can be hard to see the way forward or potential outcomes. Most are bleak.
The sense of outrage and injustice on the part of Ukraine will be difficult to overcome.
Moscow demands recognition of the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, the “states” in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region recognised by Russia at the outset of the conflict. Their supposed independence was cynically used by Russia to argue a right of self-defence of these purportedly sovereign states.
Perhaps if the Ukraine we to offer a form of “asymmetrical federation,” would see overall claims of statehood abandoned, but areas – or Oblasts – within the Donbas that have ethnic or linguistic majorities be given greatly enhanced local self-governance.
A settlement that keeps them as Ukrainian provinces but in an environment of self-government – almost virtual statehood, offering plenty of autonomy to both districts yet keeping them within Ukraine’s sovereign territory.
This could be balanced by internationally guaranteed rights to genuine local elections and safeguards for the right of minority populations – whether Russian speaking or Ukrainian.” with cross-border links to the Russian Federation to placate separatist groups.
However, Ukraine must not suffer de-facto division forever more as a consequence of turning the invasion into a frozen conflict. The Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian people who must have their sovereignty, their independence and their territorial integrity. It is vital the Ukrainian government is not pressured into accepting outcomes that reward a war of aggression.
So after an agreed period of lets say twenty years the asymmetrical federation decides by Referendum to stay as such, or join Russia or Ukraine.
During these twenty years providing Russians return to negotiations on limitations of intermediate-range nuclear weapons (and providing there is no further conflict ) NATO agrees to stop its enlargement, as part of “confidence-building”
Till than nuclear arms controlled by the United States remain in Europe.
NATO is a defensive alliance.
NATO’s world view is simple. The world is divided between two kinds of states. Those that defend something called a “rules-based international order,” called democracies, and those who don’t know what on earth they’re talking about, called authoritarians. The remedy for this unfortunate condition is of course, always more NATO.
(NATO holds its expansion to be a sacred right. It has spread across 14 countries of the former Eastern bloc to the borders of Russia. It has brought war to Europe by encircling a country that suffered about 27 million deaths the last time panzers rolled from the West.)
Ukraine is not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), but it borders four nations that are—Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. Biden and other NATO allies have pledged to protect their eastern and central European members under the NATO treaty’s mutual defence commitments.
For Ukraine to give up its ambitions to join NATO, since that has long been a Russian red line.
I think what we’ll ultimately arrive at is something that satisfies no one, but at least is better than a hot war.
When Putin first came to power, his forces levelled the Chechen capital, Grozny, in order to recapture it. And more recently, Russian forces helped the Syrian government besiege cities and towns, a strategy now playing out in Ukraine. The war has sparked some protests inside of Russia, but don’t expect a popular uprising in a country that is imposing an Iron Curtain. You would have had a hard time convincing Russians them that there country has actually invading Ukraine.
We that is the west are not going to invade Russia to effect an regime change, its not a realistic policy goal.
Why?
Because changing the regime in Russia and doing our utmost to weaken the Russian state, you cannot do that and claim that you are actually acting in the interest of the Ukrainian people because you’re not.
You are condemning them to an endless war for U.S. geopolitical purposes. There is nothing moral about that – nothing.
Where are we with the war.?
No matter how this conflict plays out, the world has changed.
It will not return to the status quo ante. Russia’s relationship with the outside world will be different. European attitudes to security will be transformed. And the liberal, international rules-based order might just have rediscovered what it was for in the first place.
This is now a proxy war “to weaken Russia” is destroying Ukraine, impoverishing Europe, and escalating, without an off-ramp, it has all the hall marks of spreading into an all-out war that threatens all of humanity with nuclear annihilation.
The bloc politics of NATO is, from the perspective of those who recall the tender mercies of its European and Japanese practitioners, nothing but the politics of imperialism in a world it no longer comprehends.
Putin will not deliberately extend an offensive beyond Ukraine unless he believed Biden would be unwilling to go to war to defend NATO allies, however he will retaliate in the cyber world, broadening the conflict quickly and dangerously.
A Russian takeover of Ukraine would deliver a blow to European order like none since World War II.
After the most recent wars with American involvement the United States will not get drawn into it unless it is dragged by NATO.
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In all ages war has been an important topic of analysis.
In the latter part of the 20th century, in the aftermath of two World Wars and in the shadow of nuclear, biological, and chemical holocaust, more was written on the subject than ever before. Endeavours to understand the nature of war, to formulate some theory of its causes, conduct, and prevention, are of great importance, for theory shapes human expectations and determines human behaviour.
Utilizing psychological approaches emphasize the significance of psychological maladjustments or complexes and of false, stereotyped images held by decision makers of other countries and their leaders.
This is insufficient because man behaves differently in different social contexts and nearly all wars are wage against the wishes of peacefully inclined people.
The ideal of the nation-state is never fully achieved. In no historical case does one find all members of a particular nation gathered within one state’s boundaries.
There is no rational basis for deciding on the extent to which the self-determination principle should be applied in allowing national minorities to break away.
As a rule, the majority group violently opposes the breakaway movement with violent conflicts ensue and, through foreign involvement, turn into international wars.
Nationalism not only induces wars but, through the severity of its influence, makes compromise and acceptance of defeat more difficult.
Although industrialists in all the technologically advanced systems are undoubtedly influential in determining such factors as the level of armaments to be maintained, it is difficult to assume that their influence is or could be decisive when actual questions concerning war or peace are being decided by politicians.
Improving the rationality of the decision making of individual states through a better understanding of the international environment, through eliminating misperceptions and irrational fears, and through making clear the full possible costs of engaging in war and the full destructiveness of an all-out war, possible in our age.
War can only be abolished by a full-scale world government.
Of course the likelihood of this happing is zero.
The complex phenomenon of war represents a potential calamity of such a magnitude that all theorists must endeavour to understand it and to apply their understanding to the prevention and mitigation of war with all the means at their disposal.
Yes, as many as 200 million people may have died in wars throughout the 1900s, but roughly 10 billion lives were lived during that period. One may argue that this has merely been a matter of food production outpacing the production of assault rifles, so that violence has not so much been suppressed as overwhelmed by science.
Keep in mind, though, that these optimistic scenarios and others may, among other things, be products of their times. For we still live in the relatively benign aftermath of World War II, in which the greatest interstate war in history has led to 70 years without interstate war between the great powers.
We have a world full of beauty, with inherent call to protect that which is true, good, and beautiful.
Humanity after millennia of war may reach a culmination point, in which the number of humans killed by other humans continues to drop dramatically.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
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