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Tag Archives: THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHY IS THE WORLD IN THE STATE IT IS?

24 Sunday Jul 2022

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in 2022: The year we need to change., Biotechnology., Climate Change., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Genetic engineering, Human Collective Stupidity., Imagination., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Reality., State of the world, Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Unanswered Questions., Wars, What is shaping our world., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, World View.

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Climate change, Technology, The Future of Mankind, THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  

( Twenty minute read) 

Following on from the posts under the heading of what shaped the world lets look at the state of the world as it is to day.

The world is becoming increasingly interconnected and interdependent, with ever more political, social, cultural, financial and commercial relations transgressing nation state borders but the convergence of issues facing the earth are now so interrelated that most of them cannot be fully understood out of context.

The recent pandemic served to prove our fragility and our interconnectedness.

When we start thinking about constructing a model of the world it’s better to say that while you are living in the world, it’s fairly difficult to judge it objectively or even understand all of its moving parts.

In addressing that issue I will note that many of today’s issues have legacies 100 years old and will not be addressed in this post.

If anything has brought us together over the last year and a half, it is our feeling of vulnerability about the present and uncertainty about the future.

Now urgent action, taken together, is needed to change course and reimagine our futures and this action must encompass an ethic of care, reciprocity, and solidarity.

But to translating and contextualizing these actions in a collective effort it requires a synopsis of the current state of the world.

It is only when the mess it is presented as a whole not news flashes that we have any concept of the state of the planet. 

The whole structure of today’s world, much of it inherited from an earlier era, is up for serious discussion.

Thinking of the present state of the world its remarkable what can be achieved when leaders are prepared to lead.

To achieve the maximum benefits from the extraordinary possibilities that artificial intelligence (AI) and Robots will usher in tomorrow. 

                            _______________________________

There are many factors behind what I call ‘the disillusioned society’ but greed and fear, two of the ancient enemies of human kind are the big drivers of Earth’s ecological and human systems which are now in severe crisis.

Climate change is a trend that affects all trends- economic trends, security trends. Everything will be impacted. And it becomes more dramatic with each passing year.

Our throwaway society, which in part drives markets and GDP, is continuing to damage the environment. 

A key decision to changing our thinking and attitudes to polluting activities and endless growth is to dump Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the universal measure of progress. It is a totally inadequate measure of societal progress.Who is more powerful – states or corporations?

That said here is an overview of the current state of the world. 

Only 2.5% of the world’s water is fresh—the water on which the world’s terrestrial life depends. Around 70% of this fresh water is frozen in ice or permafrost. An estimated 4 billion people, nearly two-thirds of the world population, experience severe water scarcity during at least one month of the year.

Agriculture accounts for 70% of all freshwater withdrawals globally, a ratio that’s only going to increase – to an estimated 85% – as the population grows and agricultural production rises to meet it (by an estimated 50% before 2050).

About 43% of over 7,000 of the world’s languages are endangered. Just 23 languages are spoken by more than half of the world’s people, inhabiting upwards of 85% of the land surface of the globe.

In 2015, an estimated 2.1 billion people lacked access to safely managed drinking water services and 4.5 billion lacked access to safely managed sanitation services. Over 80% of all wastewater returns to the environment without being treated.

Population, pollution, greenhouse gases and deforestation are creating never before seen changes in Earth’s living systems—including a cultural and species extinction rate that is the highest in the planet’s history.

Higher concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases, mainly as the result of human use of fossil fuels, have been determined to be the predominant cause of earth’s changing climate.

Sea levels are already rising by 2mm a year—faster than during the past 5,000 years.

Evidence is growing that the thermohaline circulation, driven by temperature and salinity, could be slowed or stopped by cold fresh water inputs to the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans.

Our oceans are full of plastics. Sea ice and glaciers are melting throughout the globe. More than 93% of the enhanced atmospheric heating since the 1970s has been absorbed by the ocean.  

Over 90% of plastics produced are derived from virgin fossil feedstocks—about 6% of global oil consumption. This is equivalent to the total oil consumption of the global aviation sector.

Over 70,000 new chemicals have been brought into commercial production and released to the environment in the last 100 years.

An estimated 75% of the Earth’s land surface has been degraded through human activities, negatively impacting the well-being of at least 3.2 billion people, pushing the planet towards a sixth mass species extinction, and costing more than 10% of the annual global gross product in loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

The failure to reduce world hunger is closely associated with the increase in conflict and violence in several parts of the world. In addition, gains made in ending hunger and malnutrition are being eroded by climate variability and exposure to more complex, frequent and intense climate extremes. Approximately one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption—nearly 1.3 billion tonnes—gets lost or wasted every year.

In 2020, nearly 144 million children under 5 suffer from stunting (under height), 47.0 million children under 5 were wasted (underweight) , and of those, 14.3 million were considered severely wasted.

Industrialized civilization is still dependent upon cheap and reliable fossil fuel energy. There is a limited amount of fossil fuel. It is not “renewable” and there is no known way to make more.

The current humanitarian crisis in Ukraine may be in the spotlight right now however there are currently 27 ongoing conflicts.

A quarter of the entire global population lives in conflict-affected areas. 84 million people were forcibly displaced because of conflict, violence, and human rights violations. This year, it is estimated that at least 274 million people will need humanitarian assistance.

The cost of war is almost unfathomable.

Just imagine what the world could do with that money if conflicts were to end worldwide. 

Conflict drives 80% of humanitarian needs and in 2016, the cost of conflict globally stood at an astonishing $14 trillion. That’s enough to end world hunger 42 times over.

Nearly 11 years after it started, the Syrian refugee crisis remains the largest displacement crisis worldwide (13.2 million, including 6.6 million refugees and more than 6 million internally displaced people). At least 2 million people are living in tented camps with limited access to basic services.

Lasting more than 60 years, the conflict in Myanmar (previously called Burma) remains the longest ongoing civil war in the world.

The recent takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban after 20 years of US-led conflict more than half of the country’s estimated 40 million population face “extreme levels of hunger, and nearly 9 million of them are at risk of famine.

Wars are constantly in the news. 

While we tend to hear more about refugees there are actually twice as many internally displaced persons around the world. In 2013, for instance, there were 16.7 million refugees and 33.3 million internally displaced persons. it’s easy to dismiss them and forget that we’re talking about individual people whose lives have been completely disrupted.

The World Bank and the IMF can pursue their loans in perpetuity, regardless of the loans having been given to dictators or incompetent borrowers, and regardless of whether the money actually benefited the poor.

The current depletion of biological diversity and, in particular, the prospect of severe depletion, if not virtual elimination of tropical forests, wetlands, estuaries and coral reefs that have been the “engines of biodiversity” for hundreds of millions of years, may have profound effects on the evolutionary processes that have previously fostered re-diversification.

Before 1961, the entire Earth satellite population was just over 50 objects. Since 1957, about 9,600 satellites have been launched and about 5500 are still in space—and 2300 of these are still functioning. The total mass of all space objects in Earth’s is more than 8800 tonnes. Earth’s orbit is now cluttered and dangerous with: ~34,000 objects bigger than 10 cm; ~ 900,000 objects from 1cm to 10 cm; and 128,000,000 objects from greater than 1 mm — 1 cm.

By the time you finish reading this paragraph, four acres of rainforests in Brazil (i.e. about three football fields) will be replaced with farmland, largely to grow cattle and animal feed.

The commercial exploitation, militarization and weaponization of space around the earth is ongoing.

Space Tourism is just getting started but the impact of bioengineering is what is going to have profound impacts on society in the near future.

The development of bioengineering issues in tandem with overlapping

technological areas such as artificial intelligence are what is going to shape

the world for the next generations, if climate change does bot wipe us of the

globe.

(Biotechnological discoveries are increasingly facilitated by automated and roboticides, private ‘cloud labs)

These issues will shape the future of bioengineering and must shape modern discussions about its political, societal and economic impact.

Technology is in the infancy of creating a world state. 

                                   ————————————-

The Bioengineering Technologies to Look Out for in the Next Decade – The  Wire Science

Bioengineering is a discipline that applies engineering design and principles

to biological systems. Some examples of this fusion are artificial organs or

limbs, the genetic synthesis of new organisms, gene editing, the

computerized simulation of surgery, medical imaging technology and

tissue/organ regeneration.

Bioengineering brings with it both huge potential for good, and risks to

regulate. 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.

We need critical thinking to understand what they are, what their impact is and how they are related, with ethical and regulatory frameworks, climate change, inequalities, technological convergence and the misuse of technology, in order to drive informed policy decisions.

Below is by no means a comprehensive list. 

<5Years 5–10 Years >10 Years
Artificial photosynthesis and carbon capture for producing biofuels Regenerative medicine: 3D printing body parts and tissue engineering New makers disrupt pharmaceutical makers
Enhanced photosynthesis for agricultural productivity Microbiome-based therapies Platform technologies to address emerging disease pandemics
New approaches to synthetic gene drives Producing vaccines and human therapeutics in plants Challenges to Taxonomy-Based description and management of biological risk
Human genome editing Manufacturing illegal drugs using engineered organisms Shifting ownership models in biotechnology
Accelerating defense agency research in biological engineering Reassigning codons as genetic firewalls Securing the critical infrastructure needed to deliver the bioeconomic
  Rise of automated tools for biological design, test and optimisation  
Biology as information science: impacts on global governance
Intersection of information security and bio-automation
Effects of the Nagoya Protocol on biological engineering
Corporate espionage and bio crime

Additions.  

  • Using Bioengineering Instead of Animals
  • Using Bioengineering Instead of Plants
  • Using Bioengineering to Create Eco-friendly Materials
  • Using Bioengineering for Greenhouse Gas Sequestration and Removal DNA technology, makes insulin much more accessible to people with diabetes by producing human insulin using bacteria instead of animals.
  • Veggie burgers using bioengineered yeast.
  • Altered yeast to produce collagen, the animal protein that is the main component of leather. 
  • To produce anti-malarial compounds. (Every year, 200 million people are affected by malaria.)
  • Bioengineered yeast to make beer and palm oil.
  • Genetically engineered bacteria that reduce the need for nitrogen fertilizers.
  • Biodegradable product that eliminates both the unsustainable practices
  • Manufacturing biosynthetic indigo could reduce the use of petroleum and the release of toxic chemicals by a factor of five
  • Genetically engineer microbes to actually pull greenhouse gases – such as CO2 and methane – from the air. 
  • Use bacterial fermentation to turn that methane into a biodegradable polymer called poly hydroxy alkanoate (PHA).
  • To  provide nutritious and non-toxic feedstock for farmed fish that doesn’t require overfishing AND removes CO2 from the atmosphere. 

                          ———————————————-

What happens if a world state is reached?

It is natural at this point to ask whether a world state would be desirable— But quite clearly many areas of social life still remain outside state control.

First, all states are sovereign, which means that both domestically and internationally they recognise no jurisdiction superior to their own.

Secondly, all states are equal and should therefore be accorded equality of treatment before the law. 

A world state would not be a utopia in which there was nothing left to struggle over.

But once a world state has emerged those struggles will be domesticated by enforceable law, and so for purposes of state formation will be no longer important. Rather than a complete end of history, therefore, it might be better to say that a world state would be the end of just one kind of history. Even if one telos is over, another would be just beginning.

At the micro-level world state formation is driven by the struggle of individuals and groups for recognition of their subjectivity.

At the macro-level this struggle is channelled toward a world state by the logic of anarchy, which generates a tendency for military technology and war to become increasingly destructive.

The process moves through five stages, each responding to the instabilities of the one before — a system of states, a society of states, world society, collective security, and the world state. Human agency matters all along the way, but is increasingly constrained and enabled by the requirements of universal recognition.

The struggle for recognition is about the constitution of individual and
group identities and thus ultimately about ideas,

Hobbes (1968) justified the state on the grounds that only through
obedience to a common power could individuals escape a ‘nasty, brutish, and short’ life in the state of nature. A common power is necessary because of the physical equality and vulnerability of human beings — since even the weak can kill the strong, it is in everyone’s interest to accept the security provided by a state.

With the transfer of state sovereignty to the global level individual recognition will no longer be mediated by state boundaries, even though as recognized subjects themselves states would retain some individuality (particularism within universalism).

The question remains, however, whether a world state would be a stable
end-state, or be itself subject to instabilities that ultimately undo it.

Since even a world state would remain an at least partially open system, such
shocks could cause it to fall apart.

Equilibria are always vulnerable to exogenous shocks.

Going forward You have to be able to hold two ideas in your head at once: the world is getting better and it’s not good enough”. (Dr. Hans Rosling.)

But we must keep trying. The past is not coming back. The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.

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

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHERE HAVE ALL THE STATEMEN GONE?

17 Sunday Apr 2022

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in 2022: The year we need to change., Climate Change., Fake News., Human Collective Stupidity., Human values., Humanity., Modern day life., Mr Putin., Our Common Values., Political lying., Political Trust, Politics., Russia / Ukraine ., RUSSIA/ UKRAINE/ US/ NATO/ EU, Technology v Humanity, The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The Ukraine., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHERE HAVE ALL THE STATEMEN GONE?

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Capitalism vs. the Climate., Climate change, Global warming, Real statesmen., State of the world, The Future of Mankind, THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  

(Twenty-minute read ) 

  • Faith in the future is justified when investments succeed in improving the future. 

Every country is a work in progress but there are gaping holes where the leadership should be.

Politicians are hanging on to power instead of working for the construction of a better world. We are getting “selfish politicians and cynicism” instead of the statesmen needed to challenge the current crisis all over the world.

We now have a US President who does not know what the word genocide means and a Uk Prime Minister that lies to his Parlement and a Putin that has lost the plot.

The idea that the Prime Minister or president “runs a country” is just nonsense.

The lack of thought invested in the future is a real and pressing problem.

Today’s politicians play on our inherent, false phobia of the word fear; they milk it for every vote it’s worth.

This creates a natural void between the average citizen and the ruling class. 

The only difference perhaps is that nowadays we put a camera on them 24/7, and we expect them to give an answer to a problem mere minutes after some event occurred.

In the past, politicians probably had more time to think, and far less time to speak (or at least, fewer things they said were being recorded). As a result, modern politicians seem to make more mistakes.

I fear it will take a terrifying depth of crisis before there comes a point when this isn’t enough anymore and they will have to face their people with the big picture – which is to ask how much do we want to survive?

                                  ————————– 

Statesmanship is fleeting, and we don’t really appreciate it until it’s gone.

We desperately need a statesman—but, sadly, all I can hear are politicians.

If the world ever needed a Stateman it is now. 

Real statesmen rise above the tawdry political arguments of the day to the much higher realm of political strategy, what is right for the nation, right for everyone, and betters the human condition.

The statesman shuns media campaigns, opting for the power of the written and spoken word. He is an accomplished public speaker that looks over the horizon for future requirements.

Statesmanship and ethics are inseparable. We need a lot of both. We’ve already got a lot of politicians. We need a lot more statesmen. Making no private promises, granted no special favors, and received no personal gifts which would compromise his official integrity.

                                   _________________

What are the differences between a Statesman and a Politician? Winston Churchill, Franklin D Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference, February 1945.

Not all politicians are statesmen. 

Statesmen spend the money, borrowing what’s necessary, to grow the country, restore confidence in the government and the future, and prevent devastating wars—even if the benefits of their actions are not immediate and measurable, but spread instead over many generations. 

Politicians, by contrast, “save money now” to “enhance today’s surplus” or “decrease today’s deficit”—even if “saving money” means leaving embassies unprotected from terrorist bombs, and our intelligence establishment less capable and integrated than it could have been.  

Statesmen see far into the future and know that good investments pay for themselves over and over again, for generations.  

Politicians tend to be penny wise and pound foolish—or perhaps more accurately, present-wise and future-foolish. They are in a “bubble” shuffling portfolios amongst themselves. They have no real-world experience. They go straight from education into politics via internships. They have no choice but to find a way to get people’s attention, in preparation for the next election and fear is one of the best attention-getters of all.

                                           —————

In this age of media coverage, the problem we have is twofold what to believe and what not to believe. 

The Underworld of the huge overarching media presence means that politics is not in control because no system is in control or in a position to lead society.

Take the war in Ukraine for example.

Can The West Stop Russia by Strangling its Economy?   No 

They only reflect liberal frustration over the West’s limited power to

prevent Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

Why?

Because in 2001, the incident of 9/11 changed the whole scenario of the world. US started its War against Terror and announced that it will target anyone, anywhere, who threats the US security and its citizens. Under this US invaded Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya and attacked Daesh in Syria without facing any opposition from other countries at United Nation Security Council (UNSC).

After 30 years, of peace now Russia led by President Putin has challenged the new world order in Eastern Europe, by accepting two eastern regions of Ukraine (Donetsk and Lugansk) as independent regions and allowing its forces to invade Ukraine on Feb 24, 2022.

It’s clear that Russia is not dependent on the west as the west is dependent on Russia. So there is something amiss with a  black-and-white view of the situation in Ukraine.

Since the end of the Cold War, the West has refused to make any concessions to Russia’s security concerns. Neither NATO nor the Western powers, in general, have been willing or able ‘to empathize with the Russian perspective on this crisis’.

Moscow is repeating that it will withdraw its troops from Ukraine only if Ukraine recognizes Crimea as a part of Russia and two eastern regions, Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states, moreover Ukraine makes the constitutional amendment that it will not join NATO.

The truth is that after fighting alone and not getting ground or air support from the West ( because of the fear of a nuclear war) Ukraine has only one option left to compromise and accept the Russian demands for the sake of their and our survival.

Ukraine must learn from Afghanistan’s lessons, and not allow big powers to play a proxy war in its country.  

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will lead to a new world order with an era of grinding compromise. The “new world order” is going to be dominated by Russia and China. Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi are writing their own rules.

The real danger is that the global balance of power is not just being recast, but gradually unraveling. History shows that changes to the balance of power rarely occur without serious conflict.

We must do what we can to contain Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. But we also need to be clear-eyed about it and face the costs.

Economics can’t be separated from politics, and neither can be separated from history.Illustration on a new world order where Russia and China dominate by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times

One lasting story of this war could be the way that Europe uses it to launch its next stage of integration.

                                        ————-

 We cannot continue to fight each other in useless wars.

Take Climate Change.

The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, called the recent IPCC report on the climate crisis a “code red” for humanity. “We are on the verge of the abyss,” he said.

You might think those words would sound some kind of alarm in our society.

Since no one treats the crisis like a crisis, the existential warnings keep on drowning in a steady tide of greenwash and everyday media news flow.

The facts are crystal clear, but we just refuse to accept them. We refuse to acknowledge that we now have to choose between saving the living planet or saving our unsustainable way of life.

Because we want both. We demand both. But the undeniable truth is that we have left it too late for that.

And no matter how uncomfortable that reality may seem, this is exactly what our leaders have chosen for us with their decades of inaction. Their decades of blah, blah, blah. In short, we are totally failing to even reach targets that are completely insufficient in the first place.

Science doesn’t lie, nor does it tell us what to do.

But it does give us a picture of what needs to be done. We are of course free to ignore that picture and remain in denial. Or to go on hiding behind clever accounting, loopholes, and incomplete statistics. As if the atmosphere would care about our frameworks. As if we could argue with the laws of physics.

The climate and ecological emergency are, of course, only a symptom of a much larger sustainability crisis. A social crisis. A crisis of inequality that dates back to colonialism and beyond. A crisis is based on the idea that some people are worth more than others and, therefore have the right to exploit and steal other people’s land and resources.

It’s all interconnected.

It’s a sustainability crisis that everyone would benefit from tackling. But it’s naive to think that we could solve this crisis without confronting the roots of it.   Inequality. 

All it would really take is one – one world leader or one high-income nation or one major TV station or leading newspaper who decides, to be honest, to truly treat the climate crisis as the crisis that it is. One leader who counts all the numbers – and then takes brave action to reduce emissions at the pace and scale the science demands. Then everything could be set in motion towards action, hope, purpose, and meaning.

Who will that leader be?

Ask any hundred people to define a good leader and how many definitions do you think we’d hear?

The leaders of the free world just serve to reassure people that there is someone in charge, someone with a plan while high technology is creating the way we think and feel. 

We have to get used to living in a world without leaders.  

We must understand that global warming is a true threat.   

We have to become conscious of environmentally friendly measures of living.

                                       —————–

This is where we are at the moment.

I and you are going to see a lot of the long-term effects of what’s happening now with Climate change. 

Time will tell if great statemen will return to power and change the direction in which current politicians are leading the world.

Without leaders, there is little alignment and hardly any coordinated moving together towards common goals. Without leadership, there is hardly a chance for fair distribution of wealth nor for peace.

This doesn’t mean that leadership as such grants these values but without leadership, it’s probably impossible to enjoy them at all. 

Three-quarters of the world could not give a dame about the war in Ukraine, Syria, and Yemen, or any of the other wars. 

Only resistance from within Russia can shorten the conflict. 

Brussel is pretty much kowtowing to the gazillion of different demands of basically all European leaders and interest groups, resulting in policies that are confused, contradictory, and ultimately useless.

European leaders with the outbreak of war in Ukraine are reduced to the role of extras. 

Unfortunately, we lack business statesmanship in the advertising Industry promoting more and more consumption for short-term profits with the media whose role seems to be to stop the shaping of modern statesmen.

                                      ———————-

There is only one choice that is to declare war on Climate change. 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS. HERE IS THE GOOD NEWS.

02 Wednesday Mar 2022

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in 2022: The year we need to change., Our Common Values., Russia / Ukraine ., State of the world, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The Obvious., The state of the World., The Ukraine., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Unanswered Questions., Uncategorized, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Organisations., World Politics

≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE SAYS. HERE IS THE GOOD NEWS.

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Artificial Intelligence., The Future of Mankind, THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Visions of the future.

 

( Fifteen-minute read) 

Up to now, we humans have tried everything to change the planet that we all live on – such as wipe out each other,  political systems,  cities,  religious beliefs, weapons of mass destruction, world organizations without any global clout, financial institutions manipulating power, money, elections, corruption, all enhancing inequality.

All are devoid of any asperation for peace and sharing. In fact, we have designed a world around the mantra  ” Pay as you go ” which includes all aspects of life even the privilege of paying for your own funeral. 

In the meantime, Earth is never stationary it spins at 1000 miles per hour. 

As Galileo Galilei said, “Nature is relentless and unchangeable, and it is indifferent as to whether its hidden reasons and actions are understandable to man or not.” 

                                                  ————

 The “New Earth” that people envisioned never quite materialized as predicted. 

With the dramatic worldwide impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and now a new war in Ukraine, one could not be blamed for thinking what next rather than where next. 

I suppose that eventually, we will reach a tipping point, after which we will consider 4D/5D things “normal”.

Maybe in the distant future  “enlightenment”, will be more about knowing yourself as the consciousness that is witnessing reality.

Creating one’s reality for life and the planet that we truly love in which we are fully conscious and in full control over everything that we experience in our subconscious reality. Even so, we will still not be in full control of what happens to us and the environment we are in, because of our collective inability to agree that we are all the same.

So where are we? 

The most distinctive aspect of our approach is the lack of ‘long-term’ action.

Longterm is the idea that because such huge numbers of individuals might live in the long-run future, and because we think everyone’s interests matter equally, approaches to improving the world should be evaluated mainly in terms of their potential for long-term impact — over thousands, millions, or even billions of years.

In the 1950s, large-scale production of nuclear weapons meant that a few world leaders gained, for the first time, the ability to kill hundreds of millions of people.

This was a striking milestone in a robust trend: as technology improves and the world economy grows, it gets easier to cause destruction on an ever-larger scale.

This is where we are.

                                        ——————

When we look at the history of the human race, we see many examples of major moral problems that most people were completely oblivious to. These include slavery, the deplorable treatment of foreigners, the subjugation of women, the persecution of people who aren’t heterosexual, and the gross mistreatment of animals.

New transformative technologies may promise a radically better future, but also pose catastrophic risks, and mitigating these risks is presently all but totally ignored.  Work on mitigating many risks remains remarkably neglected — in some cases receiving attention from only a handful of researchers.

With machine learning, the fate of humanity may come to depend more on the actions of machines than our own. This could lead to large, rapid improvements in human welfare, but there are good reasons to think that it could also lead to disastrous outcomes.

The problem of how one might design a highly intelligent machine to pursue realistic human goals safely is very poorly understood. You might think ‘why can’t we just turn it off?’, but of course, an intelligent system will give every indication of doing exactly what we want, until it is certain we won’t be able to turn it off.

Even if advanced machine intelligence does not get ‘out of control’, it is likely to be very socially disruptive and could be used as a destabilizing weapon of war.

There have been surprisingly few serious attempts to make such big-picture comparisons. 

There are many global issues we haven’t yet seen investigated much at all. These are not always the biggest problems in the world — rather they are the issues that receive little attention compared to how important they are and how much can be done about them.

Different problems could be bigger if there are problems that humanity hasn’t even thought of yet. And it seems likely that we haven’t discovered all the serious global problems which exist.

You might think by now that world politicians won’t be motivated to act on the results of global priorities.

I would say that if anyone is looking at the state of the world our focus should be more on oneness and unconditional love for all existence with a distinct set of rules about what you can and cannot do.

So here is the good news.

Humanity’s superior intelligence is pretty much the sole reason that it is the dominant species on the planet. 

The chance of great power conflict this century was around 45%, now it’s 100% and the chance of an extinction-level war was around 1% it is now with technology a lot more than doubters cannot dismiss. 

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

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. JUST HOW FUCKED UP IS THE WORLD WE LIVE ON?

23 Wednesday Feb 2022

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in 2022: The year we need to change., State of the world, Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE ASKS. JUST HOW FUCKED UP IS THE WORLD WE LIVE ON?

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State of the world, The Future of Mankind, THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  

(Six-minute read) 

There has never been a period like this in the history of humanity.

The past 50 years of human activity caused massive losses in biodiversity, habitat, soil health, and air quality and the impacts are clear in every corner of the globe.

Overall, humans have now directly altered three-quarters of the globe and the rate of global extinction is estimated to be tens to hundreds of times higher now than at any prior moment in human history.

 Life on earth is deteriorating fast.

Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) warns a million could be wiped out if humanity keeps delivering blows to nature. Even the status quo is untenable: an estimated 500,000 land species already don’t have sufficient habitat for long-term survival.

With the global population set to rise to 9 billion by 2050, conservation is about more than a touchy-feely walk in the vibes of the wood (though the report also shows enjoyment of nature is one of its undeniable benefits). It’s about ensuring everyone has enough to eat.

We have 12 years to drastically start drawing down emissions to prevent global warming from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius, but we cannot tackle nature deterioration separately from climate change and our social goals.

I don’t think we – the modern people – can even survive a day without having access to the internet. The problem is, most people are sheep sitting on the sidelines through no fault of their own doing what everyone else does, supporting the status quo, and not stepping out of line.

Because most of the decision-making power in the world now belongs to a relative handful of idiots who want to empower themselves and disempower everyone else, the evolution of the human race has been held back for hundreds of years.

Evolution is the purpose of life, and the purpose of all non-living matter in the universe is to create the conditions under which life can evolve.

We, it seems are so busy creating such a fucked up world that nobody cares any longer.  When you hear politics speak they always mention stuff like health care, transportation, city infrastructure, human rights, free markets. Even though these things are of importance, they don’t set a path for others to follow in the long term.

The result is that Politics don’t have a clue what our future should look like. We all know what happens after the elections. The winning party hardly executes more than 30% of what they’ve promised. 

For most people, the idea of long-term thinking is a luxury good with most of us finding it difficult these days to make both ends meet, thus we can’t afford to think about something pleasant in the future. Our idea about tomorrow narrows down to “what’s for dinner.”

Thanks to technology most of us are now living this hamster wheel life where we’re in constant pursuit of more things, but we never actually reach a state where we are truly satisfied.

Your desire to feel good now destroys each and every thought about a possible long-term project. Meaning, you scroll mindlessly on your phone where you see stuff you don’t have and you start wanting them. This loop becomes your ultimate habitat and your one purpose in life becomes feeling good all the time.

Unfortunately, there is no product or service that can make us happy all the time.

Up to recently, we live in a globalized world where everything seems possible then came Covid which has shown that nothing is possible without those things we take for granted.

Have we learned the Covid lesson? Not on your nelly. It has just made some Drug companies super-rich with I am all right jack syndrome countries.   

I’d say that it’s not the world that’s fucked up, it’s people who are fucked up.

                          ————————-

In our hectic world where trivial content is spreading like a wildfire, we are preoccupied with trying not to drown in the vast ocean of poorly organized information corrupting our senses.

Not a future anyone wants but, unfortunately, everyone seems to have.

We’re not the only ones on this planet.

Is there any way to un fuck it?   Of course, there is. 

There is only one thing that has happened on planet Earth, and it is still the only thing happening here, just as it is the only thing that has ever happened, or will happen, in the entire universe, and that one thing is… evolution.

So what should we do?  

Capitalism must be saved from its own excesses. 

We should keep our technology but do away with the things that enslave us.  We should enshrine common goals of what would be in the interest of the country in law.

A different yardstick than profits:

The capitalist vehicle in which humanity is progressing must be redesigned. It is putting too much pressure on the Earth’s resources. It is leaving too many people behind with inequality. 

Different ownership: 

Who owns the enterprise?  The people at the bottom, or people at the top of the economy?

We need innovations in production models that provide more jobs so that business is not only for the people but by the people too.

We need to rethink the purpose of the corporation. Serve the people or profit. The idea of who owns the enterprise by taking a broader view of the benefits companies provide to societies, one may conclude that the private sector is not all good and that the public sector is not all bad.

Community-owned – genuinely ‘social enterprises’, with clear public purposes, with limitations on the returns their investors can get, and with transparency in their accounts to the public of the value they create for society, could be partners with governments in providing some public services.

The expansion of government to its present scale has political­ized virtually all economic life. The wages being paid most work­ers today are political wages, reflecting political pressures rather than anything that might be considered the normal working of supply and demand. The prices farmers receive are political prices. The profits business is earning are political profits. The savings people hold have become political savings, since their real value is subject to abrupt depreciation by political decisions.

We should remove private enterprises from making profits from the essentials of life – water – energy –  transport – health – education

The entire “reason for being” for capitalist-based entities, is the maximization of profit for the ownership of the company or corporation.

With the result that many of us view life as simply a struggle for survival, and sadly, for many people, that’s all it is.

Technology:

We should ensure that technology does not enslave us.

                              ————————-

You can take this post however you’d like, not everyone thinks the same as I do, and I understand that. But, you can’t deny that this world is a tad bit messed up and it’s only getting worse.

Fortunately, there is a way out.

If you want to make a change, start caring more about others. No matter what you’re doing.

There is no reason that allowing all of us to invest in the future by issuing Green Bonds would not be a step in the right direction. ( See previous posts)  It would allow us to address and finance the changes needs fairly, giving all of us a stake in the future.

Global cooperation towards a sustainable future. 

Of course, the above is only words but the way we are going it would not surprise me to hear Donate a pound to save a Ukrainian.  

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS; IS THIS OUR BRAVE NEW WORLD?

26 Monday Jul 2021

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in 2021. The year for change., Climate Change Summit Scotland 2021, Climate Change., Disaster Capitalism., Earth, Enegery, Human Collective Stupidity., International solidarity., Modern day life., OLYMPICS GAMES., Our Common Values., Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE ASKS; IS THIS OUR BRAVE NEW WORLD?

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Capitalism vs. the Climate., Climate change, Earth, Environment, Global warming, The Future of Mankind, THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Visions of the future.

 

 

(Ten-minute read) 

We are at a pivotal moment in human history not because we still don’t really know where we come from, or if we are alone in the Universe, or do we really matter. 

It is, of course, impossible to put into a sentence or a paragraph what is wrong with the world never mind the Universe.  

But it’s possible to describe our world in a word.  Beautiful and we humans occupy an extraordinary place in it. 

The strange fact is that in this age of information when data is our currency of communication, most of us have no idea how to picture the world never mind the universe. 

The last time the Western culture shared a coherent understanding of our world I would say, was away back in the middle ages, when Galileo discovered that we were not the center of the universe. 

Now with climate change and the current Pandemic, it is as if we have just started to see the world in color,  and that changes, not just what is far away, but what’s right here. 

This discovery of the state of our plant challenges us to reframe everything and there is little point in learning a lot of science unless you can do something valuable in life with that knowledge.

                                                       ——–

There is only one image of our world that shows us this.

The photo shows no countries on our planet, only landmass, oceans, and clouds. 

Our endless preoccupation with nations and racial or ethical groups is completely misleading our intuitions.

This image shows our glorious plant in its true state without language in all its forms, cultural identification, religious beliefs, all are just tools, to shepherding ourselves successfully through the coming state of the world 

This is going to require tremendous creativity, combined with more than a large dose of common sense, which unfortunately down the centuries and now is lacking in the collective management of our planet Earth.  

                                                          ————–     

However, we live in a world where all information is freely available at the click of a mouse, so what has changed?

We’re seeing a lazy entitlement wash over the world where everyone feels as though they deserve what they want from their government the second they want it, without thought of repercussions or the rest of the population.

It seems like people don’t actually want democracy anymore, they want a dictator who agrees with them.

The sickest and most grotesque NEWS TOPPING THE CHART, dominating our attention and the news cycle, dividing and recruiting us into its ever more polarized camps, giving us a skewed view of how other people in the world really think, act, and live.

It seems like our new brave world is JUGED by a group of people that represents 0.01%, who take refuge in their own precious identity politics with us buying more and more into a worldview that is disconnected from cold data and hard facts?

The impact of the pandemic is showing despite loud warnings that continuing economic growth is incompatible with sustainability.

                                      ——————–

So let’s take a look at the state of the world.

Even if we did stand on the moon it is a sad read and any solutions will not be found in religious beliefs or technology or in politics but in learning from history.  

There have been over 250 major wars in the world since World War II, in which 23 million people have been killed., tens of millions made homeless, and countless millions injured and bereaved. Over 37 (or 42) million people have by killed by wars in the 20th century. Three times more people have been killed in wars in the last 90 years than in all the previous 500.

Over 35 major conflicts are going on in the world today.

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

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

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

33% of the world’s people live under authoritarian, non-democratic regimes. 35% of the world’s people live in countries in which basic political rights and civil liberties are denied.

 1/3rd of the world’s labor force is unemployed or underemployed.  

1 out of 6, children ages 5 to 17 worldwide are involved in child labor.

3 billion of the world’s people (one-half) live in ‘poverty.’

Women account for 70 percent of the world’s people who live in absolute poverty.

800 million people lack access to basic healthcare. 

1.1 billion do not have safe drinking water. By 2025, at least 3.5 billion people, or nearly 2/3rd’s of the world’s population will face water scarcity. 

870 million of the world’s adults are illiterate.

Over 100 million people live in slums.

The richest 1% of the world’s people earned as much income as the bottom 57%.

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

Poor countries (which contain 4/5th of the world’s people) pay the rich countries an estimated nine times more in debt repayments than they receive in aid.

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

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

60% of the world’s coral reefs, could be lost in the next 20-40 years.

More than 20 percent of the world’s known 10,000 freshwater fish species have become extinct.

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

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

An estimated 40-80 million people will be forcibly evicted and displaced from their lands.

                                               —————-

The reality no matter how one looks at it, is that the old assumptions that provided the unifying ideas within our cultures are eroding because of our technological advancement, and although we are seeing what may prove to be the emergence of a new worldview consensus based on the Critical Theory it has not solidified its hold on society as yet.

With technology and Algorithms, our cultures have and are continuing to accept the idea that objective truth is inaccessible and that truth itself is, therefore, relative and personal, but how we conduct ourselves is just as important — even more important is how we do it sustainably and so far we have made a great job of it.

The world is now facing a collision of not just climate change but is colliding with finite resources in a much that the current economic growth could end or totally collapse in the not-so-distant future.  

                                              —————

But a free and functioning democracy demands a populace that can sustain discomfort, tolerate dissatisfaction, be charitable and forgiving of groups whose views stand in contrast to one’s own, and most importantly, that can remain unswayed in the face of some violent threat.

The words ” We Need” are only words.  They should be replaced the words ” Action Now” 

Why?

Because we also need to be clear in our own hearts and minds about the solution to the world’s problems. If we are to do anything we must break the alignment between theological advancement –  climate change and pollution. 

The world is at a crossroads as the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on the global economy have combined with increasing polarization and highly charged elections.  

                                                    —————

So what will we do? 

Probably have a conference.

But if you could change the world, what would you do?

We live our entire lives as aspiring presidents, aspiring movie producers, aspiring artists, aspiring authors, aspiring human rights activists, aspiring world-renowned scientists, and aspiring thought leaders while we sit in front of our TV screens, walk around glued to Smartphones, or Ipads that fed us pictures of climate change, wars, the covid pandemic, racism, political/economical collapse.

All Encouraging us on one hand, to think that the world is more violent than it really is while on the other hand promoting the glamorous life of people that believe that they are better off than we are;

What I fear is that we’re seeing now is a loss of that ability to handle discomfort and dissatisfaction.

What I would do is help people think for themselves.

Amazon Owner Jeff Bezos Travels Into Space  

While governments introduce more and more taxes to pay for inequality/economic growth charities competing to raise funds to save almost everything, from adopting everything from a child to a fish or animal to a plant, in the real world.

Taxes form a key ingredient in the social contract between citizens and the economy but How taxes are raised and spent can determine a government’s very legitimacy. 

Health programs:  Military: Social Security: Interest on the national debt: Education programs:  Food and agricultural benefits: Pensions. Government machinery.

                               —————————-

Our new world now needs solidarity more than ever to make the world a better place.

Presently in a year when the world is fighting a pandemic, the Olympics in Japan will once again show us what we are capable of in sport to bring our true authentic selves to every situation.  ( See:  Post –  The Olympics games show be permanently hosted in Greece.)  

It represents a true coming together not separation, in a true spirit of humanity.

Without this coming together there will be no new world but a world run by algorithms that will not treat us as equal.

But how can you take on the problems of the world when there’s so much to do already?

In science, we have been staggered by revelation after revelation that things are not what we previously thought them to be, and beneath each layer of reality we have unpeeled lies another.  It is not hard to piece together all this information to comprehensively picture what the end times will look like.

 If so, what are we to do about it?

The only way to beat the attention economy is to opt out of it.

As the growth models of countries cannot be sustained Countries need to overcome political hurdles to invest in infrastructure and human capital.

How?

One way is to publish the information about political capture so that the public can hold politicians to account for reforms.

Because the only way for human rights to persist is for everyone to collectively agree to accept that things don’t have to go their way 100% of the time.

Freedom can only exist when you are willing to tolerate views that oppose your own when you’re willing to give up some of your desires for the sake of a safe and healthy community when you’re willing to compromise and accept that sometimes things don’t go your way and that’s fine.

Finally, we must accept that world problems will always be with us.

The world has woken up to the need to curb emissions and invest in climate resilience.
But we all need to move faster down this path, we now have less than 100 days to go until the UN climate summit, Cop26 arrives in Glasgow.

Five years on from the Paris Agreement, and with countless evidence that the climate crisis is worsening, the negotiations will focus on nationally determined contributions to stop the world from warming above 1.5 degrees. But as the countries confer with each other, it will be the people of the world who have the most to say: we need action, need more of it, and need it now.

They will not address nature and climate as one. 

HOW CAN YOU GET INVOLVED? 

We know that the production of energy is the biggest contributor to global warming.

If we want action not promises to reduce carbon emissions in twenty years in thirty years there is no reason that non-repayable grants could be made available to everyone to convert to green energy by installing solar panels.

So why not use the tools that are available to demand our governments to do so on

Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Emails to  cop26@cabinetoffice.gov.uk.    

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

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE.?

27 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in 2021. The year for change., The Reset. Fact or conspiracy., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  

≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE.?

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The essence of our humanity., The Future of Mankind, The Reset. Fact or conspiracy., THE SAD WORLD., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  

 

 

( Half an Hour read.) 

If I was writing a post about what is right about the world it would be a few minutes read. best things in world

Of course, this is a flippant remark as there are many things right with the world. 

Technology and Science has produced vaccines to fight Covid-19 and millions of us are every day doing our bit, to ensure that the most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.

However, to put it mildly, we live in a topsy-turvy world and its present state is pretty grim right now.  

In a world that has been governed by inequality and recently by ‘fake news’ and leaders who dismiss ‘facts,’ it no wonder that we are in such a mess.  

With this continuing statistically meticulous presentation of global trends is vitally important to understand the world today, including the economic, health, and geo-political reverberations of Covid-19.

 

The overall state of our world makes sad reading. 

ACCORDING TO WORLD REVOLUTION ORG.

THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  

  • Around 258 million people live outside the country of their birth.
  • 14% of the world’s children are economically active
  • Nearly 2 billion people in the world are overweight or obese.
  • More than 800 million people are undernourished.
  • By 2050 almost all seabirds will have ingested plastic.
  • Nearly 50% of the world’s economic output is generated in places aiming to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
  • Violence costs the world around $8.3 trillion a year – twice the amount needed to meet the UN’s development goals.
  • There have been over 250 major wars in the world since World War II, in which 23 million people have been killed., tens of millions made homeless, and countless millions injured and bereaved.

    Over 35 major conflicts are going on in the world today. In armed conflicts since 1945, 90 percent of casualties have been civilians. 3 out of 4 fatalities of war are women and children.

    In the wars of the last decade, more children were killed than soldiers. In the last decade, child victims of war include an estimated 2 million killed, 4 to 5 million disabled, 12 million left homeless, and more than 1 million orphaned.

    There are 300,000 child soldiers in the world.

    Landmines maim or kill approximately 26,000 civilians every year, including 8,000 to 10,000 children. At least 75% of landmine victims are civilians. It is estimated that there are between 60 and 70 million landmines in the ground in at least 70 countries.

    More than 500 million small arms and light weapons are in circulation around the world. In major conflicts since 1990, they have caused 4 million deaths – about 90 percent of them civilians, and 80 percent women and children.

    There are approximately 30,000 nuclear warheads in the world today. Some 5,000 nuclear weapons are on hair-trigger alert, ready to be launched at a few minute’s notice.

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

    Genocide and other mass murders killed more people in the 20th century than all wars combined. Between 54 and 80 million people have been killed in genocides in the last century. Between 170 and 360 million people have been killed, in total, by governments (democide) in the 20th century, apart from war.

    Human rights & social justice.

    33% of the world’s people live under authoritarian, non-democratic regimes. 35% of the world’s people live in countries in which basic political rights and civil liberties are denied (such as freedom of speech, religion, press, fair trials, democratic political processes, etc).

    1 billion people – 1/3rd of the world’s labor force, are unemployed or underemployed. An estimated 37 million people are enslaved around the world, including an estimated 20 million people held in bonded labor (forced to work to pay off a debt, also known as ‘debt bondage’). At least 700,000 people annually, and up to 2 million, mostly women and children, are victims of human trafficking worldwide (a modern form of slavery — bought, sold, transported, and held against their will in slave-like conditions).

    About 246 million, or 1 out of 6, children ages 5 to 17 worldwide are involved in child labor. Nearly three-fourths of these, about 180 million children, including 110 million under age 15, are exposed to the worst forms of, or hazardous, child labor. Some estimated 8.4 million children are trapped in the most abhorrent forms of child labor – slavery, trafficking, debt bondage, prostitution, pornography, and other such activities.

    Women account for 70 percent of the world’s people who live in absolute poverty. Women work two-thirds of the world’s working hours, produce half of the world’s food, and yet earn only 10% of the world’s income and own less than 1% of the world’s property. Worldwide, a quarter of all women are raped during their lifetime. Depending on the country, 25 to 75 percent of women are regularly beaten at home. Between 10% and 50% of women report they have been physically abused by an intimate partner in their lifetime. Over 120 million women have undergone female genital mutilation. Women hold only 12% of parliamentary seats worldwide. Women account for 2/3rd of the world’s illiterate adults, and girls account for 2/3rd of the world’s children without access to education.

    In 1998, extrajudicial executions were carried out in 47 countries, ‘disappearances’ occurred in 37 countries, torture occurred in 125 countries, prisoners of conscience were held in 78 countries, unfair trials for political prisoners occurred in 35 countries, detentions without charge or trial occurred in 66 countries, executions were carried out in 36 countries, and human rights abuses were committed by armed opposition groups in 37 countries.

    There are over 45 million refugees and internally displaced people in the world.

    Poverty & development.

    3 billion of the world’s people (one-half) live in ‘poverty’ (living on less than $2 per day). 1.3 billion people live in ‘absolute’ or ‘extreme poverty’ (living on less than $1 per day).

    800 million people lack access to basic healthcare. 17 million people, including 11 million children, die every year from easily preventable diseases and malnutrition.

    800 million people are hungry or malnourished. Nearly 160 million children are malnourished worldwide. 11 million people die every year from hunger and malnutrition.

    2.4 billion people lack access to proper sanitation. 1.1 billion do not have safe drinking water. By 2025, at least 3.5 billion people, or nearly 2/3rd’s of the world’s population will face water scarcity. More than 2.2 million people, mostly children, die each year from water-related diseases.

    275 million children never attend or complete primary school education. 870 million of the world’s adults are illiterate.

    3 million people die every year from HIV/AIDS. Approximately 25 million people have died from AIDS in the last 20 years. 70 million will die from AIDS by 2020. 40 million people are currently infected with HIV/AIDS, who will die within 10 years. 13 million children have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS since the epidemic began, and the number is expected to double to 26 million by 2010.

    Over 100 million people live in slums. An estimated 25 to 50 percent of urban inhabitants in poor, developing countries live in impoverished slums and squatter settlements.

    The richest 1% of the world’s people earned as much income as the bottom 57% (2.7 billion people). The top 5% of the world’s people earn more income than the bottom 80%. The top 10% of the world’s people earn as much income as the bottom 90%. The richest 16% of the world’s population receives 84% of the world’s annual income.

    The wealth of the world’s 7.1 million millionaires ($27 trillion) equals the total combined annual income of the entire planet.   The combined wealth of the world’s richest 300 individuals is equal to the total annual income of 45% of the world’s population.  The world’s 3 wealthiest families have a combined wealth equal to the annual income of 600 million of the world’s people.  The wealthiest one-fifth of the world’s population receive an average income that is 75 times greater than the poorest one-fifth.

    Poor countries (which contain 4/5th’s of the world’s people) pay the rich countries an estimated nine times more in debt repayments than they receive in aid. Africa alone spends four times more on repaying its debts than it spends on health care. In 1997 the foreign debts of poor countries were more than $2 trillion and growing. The result is a debt of $400 for every person in the developing world – where the average annual income in the very poorest countries is less than a dollar a day.

    Environment & sustainability.

    Half of the forests that originally covered 46% of the Earth’s land surface are gone. Only one-fifth of the Earth’s original forests remain pristine and undisturbed.

    Between 10 and 20 percent of all species will be driven to extinction in the next 20 to 50 years. Based on current trends, an estimated 34,000 plant and 5,200 animal species – including one in eight of the world’s bird species – face extinction. Almost a quarter of the world’s mammal species will face extinction within 30 years. Up to 47% of the world’s plant species are at risk of extinction.

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

    Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles and marine mammals are entangled and drowned by irresponsible fishing practices every year.

    More than 20 percent of the world’s known 10,000 freshwater fish species have become extinct, been threatened, or endangered in recent decades. Sixty percent of the world’s important fish stocks are threatened by overfishing.

    Desertification and land degradation threaten nearly one-quarter of the land surface of the globe. Over 250 million people are directly affected by desertification, and one billion people are at risk.

    Global warming is expected to increase the Earth’s temperature by 3C (5.4F) in the next 100 years, resulting in multiple adverse effects on the environment and human society, including widespread species loss, ecosystem damage, flooding of populated human settlements, and increased natural disasters.

    An estimated 40–80 million people have been forcibly evicted and displaced from their lands to make way for the construction of large dams, resulting in economic and social devastation for these people.

                                      ——————————

 

IT APPEARS THAT THE WOLRD IS IN SUCH A STATE THAT TRUTH HAS ALREADY CEASED TO MATTER AND EVIDENCE OF THIS IS WHATEVER OF APPROVAL NARRATIVES WANT IT TO BE. 

We think we understand environmental damage: pollution, water scarcity, a warming world. But these problems are just the tip of the iceberg. 

Evidence is growing that the thermohaline current may be slowed or stopped by cold freshwater inputs to the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans. This could occur if global warming is sufficient to cause large scale melting of arctic sea ice and the Greenland ice sheet. Such a change in the current may be gradual (over centuries) or very rapid (over a few years).

Either would cause planet-wide changes in climate. This effect may be part of what starts and stops the ice ages.

The land in the northern hemisphere has been unfrozen for less than half of the last 400,000 years.  In 2005, it was discovered that deep water formation under the Arctic “Odden ice tongue” had almost stopped.

                                       ——————

If perpetual economic growth on a finite planet is impossible, what are the alternatives?

Can national governments manage the transition to sustainability, to a world of sharing?  

I think not. 

The capitalist system and its institutions have lurched from disaster to disaster, blatantly incapable of mastering the social, economic, environmental, and now health emergencies it has created.

Industrial civilization, economic growth, and the lifestyles of the developed world are dependent on inexpensive oil and gas. The energy and products from cheap oil have made possible the major changes in globalized industrial civilization in the last 100 years, including its huge impact on indigenous cultures and planetary ecosystems.

Affordable food production by industrial agriculture needs inexpensive natural gas and oil inputs for fertilizers, pesticides, industrial machinery, planting, cultivating, harvesting, processing, packaging, transportation, and marketing.

We use six times as much water today as we did 100 years ago.

Where do we go from here? 

One question is:

How did we get to this state of extreme polarization?

Who (or what) started us down this destructive path?

All hail to the machine learning profit-seeking algorithms that run Social Media.

We are only as strong as our weakest link and the weakest link is Big Tech which is completely out of control.

Suppression of information, online bullying, and intimidation— are good if they serve politically correct causes, for which the ends justify the means but do anyone with a functioning brain not now realize that is it is conceivable that well-trafficked truth-telling sites are impossible?  

Does this information break your heart?

Of course not.

Because we don’t see where the locus of power is, that it lies with the interlocked networks of corporations that command advanced communications technology, not in “their” government.

So wherever we are right now is not necessarily where we’ll end up.

The coronavirus has changed everyday life for many around the world affords us the opportunity to take responsibility for each other—to leave the myth of individualism and blaming behind, but the problem: Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, etc., are not “private companies” in any meaningful, real-world sense. These-are-private-companies like Facebook Twitter, Google, etc, simply aren’t in the real world.

These are private companies; they can do business with whoever they please and deplatform whoever they please. The myth of individualism has all but disappeared. 

Social media is legitimately criticized as a destroyer of your time. ( See previous Posts) 

The evidence for this is what happened in the Twitter presidency of the USA, the rejection of membership of the EU by England on lies, the Arab spring, and now the continuing coronavirus death toll.    

New social media uploads last as long as those who control information want them to last. 

Now, Biden says he wants “healing.” Biden-Harris “healing” will mean bowing before the cult of woke, a baffling concept because the awakened are still asleep.  

Of course, slavery is an abomination. Of course, there should be free speech. Of course, there should be full emancipation of women. Of course, there should be the defense of all the Great Freedoms, even religion. That is how we progressed to this lofty condition of humanity.

Lots of ideas fail when put into practice.

It’s worth pointing out, too, that today’s striven-for norms may well confound the concepts of future generations. Although the wokes, or the wakes, hold strong opinions now who is to say what other ideas may take over and differently bias the next to awaken?

One wonders if when the pendulum swings future generations might not come to regard the woke clientele as equally misguided, just as today’s woke contingent deplores the earlier generations that thought memorial statues and patriotism well worth it.

Meanwhile, Rule Britannia and Land of Hope, and Crosby may be held to refer to slavery but are all also part of the great learning curve of human progress.

Perhaps we should all start replacing the customary ‘Good Morning’ greeting with an abject apology for consuming the commonly shared oxygen supply of the planet.

Anyway, I’ve had about enough of hearing the whining of those who stand, head bowed, around the catafalque of patriotism.

The speed at which things have been unraveling in 2020 has been jarring. From normalcy to Pandemic Panic lockdown with maximum fear in a matter of weeks; from ostensibly united against the pandemic to if we were not careful to nationwide riots and cultural revolution in a matter of days not years. 

While the threat of the former will inevitably pass with time, the threat inherent in the latter is pervasive, aggressive, and emboldened.

Where do we go from here?

Even though we are living in a technological age every day we see appeals to save critically endangered animals, from Bees that are dying at an alarming rate, to Children, to Climate change. 

In the next decade, we will see more than a hundredfold boom in the world’s output of human genetic data thanks to Covid-19 from the cradle to the grave which will not save the Bees that pollinate our plants. I would say that relatively few people would on reading this think that the world they are living in is getting better.

What comes next is anyone’s guess.

Giving up your freedom, trusting “your” government, wearing your face mask, and by the way, getting the jab so you can go back to consuming, while the real economy drops into the worst depression of modern times.

We might be confused by what is happing in the world but we should not be deluded.

There’s always something we can do.

At the moment with covid-19 there is a lot of millionaires Davos verbal diarrhea on social media about a Reset – without any financial commitments – it is just multimillionaires and multi-billionaires spouting their neoliberal capitalist ideology turning nature into a product. 

There is huge inequality in the world and they are literally the representatives of the 1%, actually, the 0.001%.

The only thing that can be reset is Accountability and Transparency, with large financial fines for breaches of sustainability, while harnessing profit for profit’s sake to convert the world to green economies. ( See previous post: World aid commission of 0.05%  

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

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