Wednesday, April 22, 2009

21st Century and the End of Pre-historic Humanity

Preface

this project is overdue. I will continue where I left off. But before I do that, I need to shine some light over the integrity of writings independent of what my gut feelings telling me about which one of different scenarios that can playoff will play off. I may have some opinion or revelations if you can call it that, but I will not let it interfere with the objective explanation of both positive and negative outcome that can follow. I will ask you to make and draw your own optimistic or pessimistic conclusion or something in between.
Beside, I need to add some exploration about the economic direction the world is stuck with today and the failed capitalist system and so called free market. Just like communism didn't have the answers to people’s needs, neither did capitalism. That is the additional paragraphs which I hesitated to include. But without it the objectivity will not be achieved. Sometime the truth is ugly and painful but still need to be told. OK, now enjoy the text:

The Issue
"Once upon a time there was a community of our predecessor, living in an Era that we call prehistoric humanity. They went to great length of effort that made it possible for us to exist and to continue our civilization. Despite a world of tremendous challenges and hardship they didn't stop.
Their minds fogged by mythology, their emotions controlling the reason. They came to brink of extension by wars and religion, racism and divisions.....environmental and natural disaster… but they made it and we still exist and thrive. Science and spirituality is not in war anymore. Primitive energy sources that they were using, now enriches the nature and environment."

Those are the quotes from a 23rd century history book, if we are going to be optimistic and if we are going to make it that far. That is going to be an easy reading book of history made for children in an unknown format beyond our imagination.

Or there is going to be no book and no one from Mother Earth’s human descendants to ever write about what happened to our civilization or about anything.

Exploring these two scenarios is the purpose of this essay.

Over a million year, human race came a long way. I am not going to recount the struggle, the achievements, the losses, believes, emotions and destruction and survival of our specie so far. You know more or less.

Where we are now and where are we going from here:

This is not even a crossroad. For the first time in our long history we arrived at the end of the road.
We have to build from here or fall into the end of a cycle of a million years of humanity.
Planet earth has another four billion years to go. It just entered the age of maturity One million year from four billion can easily be dismissed like a fluke or a hurricane but, we as humans are far from being mature. Despite popular believe faith of the earth and faith of humanity are not tied together. We haven't even started our history. We are still ruled by mythology and prejudices. We still use fossil fuel as main source of energy. We use microwave but we don't know how it works. We don't know what strings are, or whatever else the building part of our visible universe is. Or what is it that makes it work. We talk about parallel universe but we don't know what 96 present of our own universe is made of and we simply call it dark matter and dark energy. And from that four percent that we claim that are covered by our physical laws, we just discovered a billionth of it.
The story of life is even more complicated. We seem or pretend to know evolution but we still don’t know how it all started. If life is the only source of oxygen in our planet and at the same time condition for life to evolve required oxygen in atmosphere so what was the first source of life. So we still don’t know where we came from.

Despite that, we are faced with the greatest challenge ever time posed upon humanity. Even we don't know what “time” is and what separates what we call the past and the future. We seem to put too much emphasizes on those two terms. In reality as far as our science explains time does not exist as separate entity and its part of space-time fabric. But our universe (yes our not all) is mainly made of dark matter, dark energy, vacuum and the other four percent is matter and energy that we know exist but haven’t discovered a small fraction of it yet. And yet we can think of nothing and our brain is not capable of thinking anything that is not embedded with a time stamp. Ever think that one second to us could be eternity in the middle of a black hole?

We are in a classroom, taking finals.
The time we have for taking the test is tremendously condensed. We have less than a century to turn our papers in and leave the test room. That is ours and our immediate children’s lifetime. The more we keep ignoring the fact the more condensed our time for resolution gets. We may even turn the papers blank. In that case we say goodbye. Last human civilization ever existed. Ignoring the problems is volunteering for failure in the greatest test human ever had and that is the greatest sin, greater than anything we have ever imagined. Ignorance is not a blessing. Not anymore. I wish we were that lucky like our predecessors.
A Little about current socio-economic conditions:
Communism got defeated. Because behind the beautiful words and good intentions, when it came to action and implementation turned to another mass enslavement of population, and because it tried to emphasize on matter and totally ignore spirituality and things that are not material.
Is capitalism a better system? Are we going to call the battle over and declare capitalism the winner? I don’t think capitalism has the moral authority to make such an assumption.
Capitalism is every bit immoral, exploiting and enslaving as communism, if not much worse. What is free market? It is people entering a voluntary contract for distribution of goods without or with minimally possible intervention from governments, sounds pretty and humane in words. But does it really work that way? Of course it does not. Masses and millions are forced to this contract. Voluntarism works this way in reality. The ones with power and money force you to voluntary sign the contract. Do you have choice to not open a bank account, sign up for credit card, refuse a phone or cable or power company or insurance? Can you refuse to sign a rent contract? In principle you can but you don’t have choice? Between two cables companies that charge the same, ten insurance companies that charge the same, credit cards companies that lend you 1000 and take five thousand back. Apartment that is charging you from 900 to 1500 actually don't leave you much choice, you need some place to sleep. You have to have insurance. Etc. You are forced and tricked to choose one over another exploiter. You have to insure your car and house, find a way to exchange money, pay taxes, get an education and get information, In return they take every penny you make and more with force. They sell you natural free airwaves. They only haven’t figured out how to get between you and the air you breathing, even though they polluted that to max.
Capitalism is a sick system, just like communism was before its fall. Recent deep crisis of international monetary system opened the eyes of even hardcore skeptics.
Don’t get me wrong, capitalism and free market had its usefulness. Even communism was useful in one point; otherwise the exploitation and enslavement of people by money and materials would have been much worse now. But that does no t mean free market is a fair, sustainable and moral system.
One last thing about morality: Please keep in mind when I say morals it has nothing to do with religion, even spirituality. I use the term very loosely and in line with fairness most of the time.



The questions, the challenges and the monsters:

The most difficult questions are the puzzles we have to solve. They are so complicated that will take great skills, full attention and using all the time we have, every second of it. Think of one puzzle like a huge explosive device containing millions of pieces, small or big that you have to dismantle and disassemble. Every little mistake and out of order act can make it go off. I am sorry that is a very grim picture but we and our predecessors brought it up upon ourselves. And we are the ones who are destined to solve. Like I said with great possibilities comes great responsibilities. It is not our destiny to sleep and eat and enjoy. Wasn’t when we were cavemen and it is not when we have microwave and IPods and cell phones and cruise ships.
The monsters that we have to conquer are too many. Some of them can still be out of our reach, like an asteroid or a comet hitting the Earth, big volcano eruptions, a super Tsunami caused by super earthquake etc.
But there are a lot of man made monsters that we created and now we have to put them back in the boxes. It is way overdue. We cannot still be fighting because of primitive and old religious beliefs of dozens of centuries or thousands of years ago.
Depleting the energy resources without finding any new ones that fits our needs is another humongous problem. And yes Global warming, we have to find a way to tame that monster.
Two hundred twenty years of capitalism is in the brink of falling apart. Everyone is fighting for new markets to sell. New forces visibly emerging and redistribution of wealth is in agenda. How are the conflict between countries that swallow a lion share of it and countries who want to control the wealth and think it’s their turn now is going to resolve their differences, still unknown, can change to disaster every minute. No one is voluntary going to hand over their grasp on wealth. Or are they?
New players like China and Russia and India are more actively and increasingly in conflict with United States and European Union, and smaller players like UAE, Iran Israel, Middle East and third world countries are in between.
Territorial disputes and religious wars are threatening peace, human dignity and freedom. Dark minded forces trying to force their will over the will of the people and individual and want to be in charge of telling others what to do and even how to think.
If humanity is going to survive, the new generations have to think as one. Bringing oneness to humanity is the greatest challenge we face. If we solve all the problems above, this one is the most challenging. I strongly believe this one is going to be a requirement for generation to come. That’s why I call our society from the point of view of those that will come after us if we let them to come and if humanity survives a pre-historic society. Because the difference is going to be like nothing we have seen or heard before.

One last comment about China: Even though China is posed to get control of world economy and since socio-politics just follow economy, will be undisputed leader of the world. But how China is going to resolve the big shortcomings and conflicts which makes it unhealthy and sick and put a big doubt on its moral authority? A combination of communism and capitalism, actually it is an unnatural matrix. China is killing its own people and minorities just while it’s heading to hegemony. Even now at 2009 we saw two very disturbing violent crushing of human rights of its own people. So you cannot claim you are an angel than act like a devil. That is a big conflict to resolve before you can claim to be the super power that rules the world. I don’t think anybody is going to hand them the power they want with the condition they are. But they would still want it and that is a big problem.
One thing is for sure, China is going to crush the rest of the world economically and there is nothing anybody can do about it. But their reputation is economy grows very fast but the way they are thinking and their human right records stay centuries behind. It will probably take a revolution of unprecedented proportion to change that, and like with any revolution, we are going to see a lot of destruction before reconstruction.

Shared destiny and oneness:

Like I said before, this is going to be one of the most difficult challenges. It may not be a requirement for our society, but it is for the society who we pass torch to. How are we going to do that? I really don’t know if we can, I may have ideas to how but are we going to be that smart?
We cannot even bring Unity inside countries, tribes fighting tribes, villages fight villages and sects inside the same religion fight each other. In big game of defeating communism, we created the monster of terrorism and now we don’t know how to control it.
But first let me tell you why that is a requirement.
Like I said, we have arrived at our shelf life, our expiration date. A million year of hardship, trial and errors, wars and destruction, fighting with nature and each other brought us to this point. We made great achievements, scientific discoveries etc. We made life easier for ourselves but still majority of us live in poverty and hardship and disease and conflicts. Conflicts that are getting so big now that threatens our existence, all that and we destroyed out own environment and the health of planet Earth. New generations of next two centuries will need to create common economy and one big human society, one big global order, an order that is based on respect, freedom, and voluntarism. Everybody is going to need to think about everybody else, take care of each other. It is not going to be a star trek dictatorship. We are at the brink of passing the torch. We already see signs of it.
Vast improvement in communication and Internet keeps you in touch with someone in a remote village in Africa. National currency in Europe disappeared and much more.
So what some scientist are calling transition from type zero to type one civilization is already beginning to take place. That’s why these two hundred years or maybe less than that is so important. Less than a century remains for us to successfully pass this torch and a second phase to continue, a century or more for them to make it work. Because the most critical time of the emerging new civilization is going to be its infancy. It is still possible we pass it to them and they still don’t make it. But that is their responsibility. All we can do is to create condition for them when we pass the torch they would have a good chance of survival. For that condition the oneness of humanity takes center stage.

How to get there?

Back to our part of the bargain:
First and foremost requirement is that we tackle all the other problems before us. Everything that I explained before and many more that is not in the list but we all know that exist. If I explain every single one, books will not be enough.
If we don’t make it, It either can be one big challenge that we can not solve, but most likely will be a combination of several things going wrong. War, famine, natural disaster and disease all together for example can all together bring us down.
Only then we can proceed to building new society. But nothing is that simple, there is no lines that separate one job from the other and put numbers to them from first to last. Even when we haven’t started first one, we should be thinking and working on the one in the middle and at the end. On top of that new problems to solve always arise from vacuum, from nothing. The speed of events can make us dizzy and unconscious.
Tremendous intelligence is needed to put every brick in the right spot and tighten every single lose nut. A concerted effort of humanity as a whole is needed to tackle the widest range of issues ahead of us. Firmness and clarity will be the key.
Building confidence between nations, respecting people's believes no matter how primitive they are, not forcing our extra terrestrial, spiritual believes on others and expecting the same from them will be the hardest part. Because you can explain anything to others but it is going to be very hard to change their conscious and have them respect others. Four thousand years of organized religions made humanity so much apart from each other that finding common ground is hard but it is not impossible and shouldn't be impossible or we are doomed.
I am not going to sit here and give you recipes, because I don't have answers to all the questions and I don't know how to's but for sure I know we are at end of the road and should start building the unknown, we have to choice. Putting a million year of humanity progress doesn't seem to be a smart choice.
We have to repair the rift we created between technology and nature. Pollution, global warming and depleting the energy can not go on forever like this.
Massive hunger and disease in majority of planet earth's locations and indifference of rich nations is in part the result of so called free market economy. As I said capitalism had its usefulness but it passed its shelf life and now we are consuming the expired version of it.
I am not a socio-economist and I don't have a global socio-economic plan but I do know what we have doesn't work. I guess we need so much progress in people's intelligence level that can think of something different that all agree on and will work for benefit of society as a whole not the profit of a few blessed ones.
Like i said before, thousands and thousands of right wires should be cut, in order to diffuse the big explosion.
Are we going to be that smart? I would certainly hope to believe so, because the alternative is very bleak.
A Fuzzy look to the Future:
I always have a tendency to give the bad news first and get it over with and leave the good part to the end. Somewhere at the beginning or toward the middle of twenty second century.
So here it is:
What if we don't make it?
I have to admit I never liked or believed doomsday prophecy tellers and certainly don't want to be one of them. So I make this part short even though the chances that this happen is probably more than the opposite.
Several facts and deficiencies in our society is going to make it possible that joining negative forces and that way making the effect of each other exponentially stronger humanity ( Not planet Earth) is going to head to a rapid unstoppable demise and when people realize it is started, it is going to be to late to stop. I don't believe somehow the humanity is going to be multiplied by zero. Sorry, I have said before I leave my gut feeling apart and try not to interfere but here I just permitted myself to one little exception. So here is what is going to happen. Billions of people are going to get wiped out of the surface of the Earth, yes billions, not millions. Only pockets of humanity will survive, thousand here and there and there. WE would have lost all our advances in technology and science and human relations and respects and culture and literature etc. Humanity is going to start over and go back to what they were doing 1500 or two millinum ago. Yes they are not going to re discover the fire and metal, so thats why I have that estimate.
After that, you can imagine the rest.
What if we make it?
This is the part I like the most. Almost every human being dreamed of it before, in one form or another. Keep in mind, Eutopia still can be unachievable but it is worth dreaming about. I can not give you clear picture unfortunately, so forgive me if it is fuzzy again, but behind the fog you can still see hills and cities, noise of the children and fragrance of flowers.
Keep in mind that contrast but the upcoming type one civilization and us is so great, that I called everything before that pre historic humanity.
-Economy and society:
Self determination would mean global self determination, freedom would mean being free as global citizen. Government would mean collective rules that benefits all, and the fulfillment of the basic and not so basic needs of each and every citizen. I never wanted to be a politician, so I leave it to just those basic requirements and will noty go to details.
Good and distribution:
Advances in technology and distribution methodes idealy will create enough wealth that everybody will have enough to livea descent life, the surplus will go to create even better condition and be used in new sectors and technology.
Religion and spirituality:
Hopefully humanity will learn not to miss with each others belives and respect it no matter how primitive they are. That said the majority of humanity achieve such level of intelligence that makes the line between science and spirituality bleury. I believe science and spirituality will embrace each other. That is going to be much harder to achieve than how it sounds though.
Humans are going to recognize mythology is mythology. Myths and nothing more magical. Scriptures are metaphores not historical facts. I leave this one here too. You can expand on the idea.
Science and technology:
This is the most facinating part to talk about. The part that I don't mind to talk about some details:
1-Energy.
Eventhough we have made advances in energy use, our primitive use of the energy is going to be what paddle boats are to us. End of fossile energy era and begining of grand scale of usage of the power of our star, the sun. Don't get me wrong, I am not talking about black shiny solar panels. It sub atomic level, quantum level etc our children will discover and use unlimited source of energy. Which is not going to be in contradiction with nature and will not create pollution.
2- Astronomy, space exploration and travel.
Do I believe nothing can travel faster than the speed of light? I think jury is still out on that. Even if it is impossible, there are always ways to cheat and I think future generations will exploit those cheats to the max. Using wormholes, foldingh the space and a hundred more that we don't know about yet. So planetary travels are going tobe popular not for fun but mainly for finding even more sources of unlimited energy in order to survive and jump to the next level.
We are going to make , huge advances in knowledge iof nature of universes. String theory or whatever makes better sense than that, understanding the parallels and the dimentions beyond our todays knowledge and specialy the relation of matter, energy and spirit will begin to appear in horizons. Keep in mind the more we know, will make the unknown much bigger and maybe infinit but still we will know much more than we do now.
3-Information.
With the computers, or whatever they call it than entering quantum era, information in vast amount will travel globaly instantaniously. Information is power. Power for masses not a few.
4- Human interaction:
In this part, I would like to end the discussion with some talk about telepathy.
Before I get into human to human interaction, I would like to talk about human to machine interaction.
Remember you unlock your car without touching the lock, changing channels in tv with remote and sending pictures through bluetooth without even knowing what brand of equipment the other side has and find your way by satelite, using GPS.
There are two logical new advances that is going to change the future of interaction of human and machine. First is simpler and it is voice recognition which is already in use but it is not generalized. It is going to go way beyond touchless calling and dictation and it is going to be everywhere.
Now what is going to be more complicated but certainly next generations going to achieve it, is human to machine telepathy or making machines do stuff just by thinking of it and giving merntal command. Do not dismiss it as science fiction. There are already computers typing what you think in labs in some universities. So take my word for it, when your grand childrem climb their flying cars 200 years from now they will give the destination mentaly and leave the rest to the machine, of corse human are famous for changing their mind any second, so rapid response is a key.
That was the easy part.
Now much more complicated is human to human telepathy, yes we are going to achieve it, if we as humanity survive and if the transition goes well for a century. But it is going to be much harder toi get there? Why? It is hard enough to make another human being understand what you are saying loud or writing in plain English or your native language, let alone make them understand what you think.
With this, I would like to end this subject and leave your imagination to run wild. I hope I just started a thought not ended it.
Good luck to humanity and to you
...
©Kabuli 2009 All rights reserved
.........