Paradox
Paradox is defined as a situation which is contrary to received opinion or expectation. One of the major powers of time-binding is the ability to predict. When time-binders make a prediction and the result is different, they are surprised. Paradox is when things are not as we would expect them to be.
The idea that best describes our present human condition is paradox.
The major product of time-binding is knowledge. When humans act with knowledge they create the best of times. When humans act in ignorance, they create the worst of times. Paradox exists when humans act with knowledge and in ignorance — when they create the best of times and the worst of times.
It is the best of times
Today in the “free” world, we can teach infants to read, to do mathematics, and to play musical instruments. Our technical quality of life has never been higher. Television, Radios, Stereos, CDs, Personal Computers, Cellular Phones, Clothes Washers and Dryers, Dishwashers, Microwave Ovens — all are common place. Most families have one or more automobiles. We can heal most injuries. Replace damaged and aging organs. Cure most infections. Cure many cancers. We have put humans in Space and on the Moon. We can circle the Earth in hours. We can go anywhere under the sea. Our knowledge and technology have never been greater. Our science, our human scope and abilities have never been more powerful.
It is the worst of times
Today, the United States of America the primary beneficiary of Institutional Neutrality and Time-binding is bankrupt. Neutrality was a welcome reprieve from the adversary world, but to work it requires unlimited resources. We have reached the end of unlimited resources and that means the return to world of scarcity. This change brings increased Indifference and Conflict.
Paradox is current human condition. This morning at Future Positive read Ray Kurzweil's discription of the best of times. And, at CommUnity of Minds read Robert D. Kaplan's description of the worst of times.
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Robert D. Kaplan writing in 1994: West Africa is becoming the symbol of worldwide demographic, environmental, and societal stress, in which criminal anarchy emerges as the real "strategic" danger. Disease, overpopulation, unprovoked crime, scarcity of resources, refugee migrations, the increasing erosion of nation-states and international borders, and the empowerment of private armies, security firms, and international drug cartels are now most tellingly demonstrated through a West African prism. West Africa provides an appropriate introduction to the issues, often extremely unpleasant to discuss, that will soon confront our civilization. To remap the political earth the way it will be a few decades hence--as I intend to do in this article--I find I must begin with West Africa. (06/08/02) | |
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Ray Kurzweil writes: We are entering a new era. I call it "the Singularity." It's a merger between human intelligence and machine intelligence is going to create something bigger than itself. It's the cutting edge of evolution on our planet. One can make a strong case that it's actually the cutting edge of the evolution of intelligence in general, because there's no indication that it's occurred anywhere else. To me that is what human civilization is all about. It is part of our destiny and part of the destiny of evolution to continue to progress ever faster, and to grow the power of intelligence exponentially.To contemplate stopping that — to think human beings are fine the way they are — is a misplaced fond remembrance of what human beings used to be. What human beings are is a species that has undergone a cultural and technological evolution, and it's the nature of evolution that it accelerates, and that its powers grow exponentially, and that's what we're talking about. The next stage of this will be to amplify our own intellectual powers with the results of our technology. (06/08/02) | |
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Associated Press -- BANGALORE, India (June 6, 2002 10:32 p.m. EDT) - With India and Pakistan poised on the verge of war, the leaders of India's booming high-tech sector worry that a current spate of canceled business trips will extend into a slowdown in foreign investment or sales. U.S. companies with Indian operations, such as Hewlett-Packard, Sun and Intel, have banned nonessential travel to India or raised security alerts - or both. HP has told its 2,600 employees, mainly Indian nationals, that they can leave the country if they feel at risk. "We are beginning to see some customers and prospects canceling their business visits to India," said Kiran Karnik, president of India's National Association of Software and Service Companies. "If the tension prolongs, it could hit business opportunities abroad for our software companies." India's powerhouse software sector - worth 370 billion rupees ($7.7 billion) in the year ending in March - has two-thirds of its customers in the United States. As tensions worsened between India and Pakistan, the State Department last week urged the 60,000 U.S. citizens in India to consider leaving. (06/08/02) | |
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The Times of India -- The death estimates - last heard 12 million - if, God forbid, a nuclear bomb is used are no more than numbers. The idea of wiping out cities is conceptual. The no-first-use principle is unquestionably understood to be morally acceptable. Two countries and their people are talking big-time death and devastation, and are talking lightly. ... It's our turn now to stop and think: What will 12 million dead look like? Let's rethink revenge. (06/08/02) | |
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GENEVA (Reuters) - A glacier from which Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay set out to conquer Mount Everest nearly 50 years ago has retreated three miles up the mountain due to global warming, a U.N. body says. A team of climbers, backed by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), reported after their two-week visit last month that the impact of rising temperatures was everywhere to be seen. UNEP recently warned that more than 40 Himalayan glacial lakes were dangerously close to bursting, threatening the lives of thousands of people, because of ice melt caused by global warming. According to scientists, the average global temperature could rise by 1.4-5.8 degrees Celsius over the next 100 years unless governments take action to cut emissions of so-called greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide. (06/08/02) | |
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Anthropologist Robin Fox writes: As the ethologists have demonstrated in species after species, the vast majority of fighting stops at the ritual level. It has been my contention for many years that the vast majority of human violence is of this kind also. It goes on all the time but usually rumbles away at the lower levels of escalation. We waste our time asking what "causes" it: it is as much a part of the human life process as digesting or reproducing. Flirting goes on all the time also, and sometimes escalates to a higher level of sexual activity, and no one asks what causes that. We are a sexually reproducing, sexually competitive, slow-growing, large land mammal. At puberty, our males, for example, increase their testosterone levels as much as ten to thirty times. Given sexual competition, the dominance of older males, and the rise in testosterone, it is entirely predictable that violence will occur. Thus, we find in all cultures young, postpubescent males acting aggressively, and older males acting to restrain and divert them. The females, in their wisdom, pick off the winners. This is what Darwin called sexual selection. The real "causal" question here then is not why so many young males act so violently. This is digestion; it just happens as long as the appropriate stimuli (the analogs of food) are fed in (females, other males, resources). The real causal question is how so many cultures manage through initiation, intimidation, sublimation, bribery, education, work, and superstition to stop them and divert their energy elsewhere. Sending them off to war is a popular solution, as are dangerous sports and genital mutilations. This is the diarrhea. Lager louts and football hooligans are not a theoretical problem, however much of a social problem they may be. They are expectable and not in need of explanation. Quiescent conformists and career-oriented yuppies are the anomaly. They need explaining. What causes them? (06/07/02) | |
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Don Steehler writes: I noticed that you've featured Arundhati Roy. Good. The caliber of her thinking and writing reminds me of Voltaire. (06/07/02) | |
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News.Telegraph.co.uk -- India's military is seeking final authorisation to invade the Pakistani side of divided Kashmir in the middle of this month to destroy the camps of Islamic militants. An activist of the All-India Anti-terrorist Front brandishes his rifle as he denounces Pakistan The planned campaign would be similar to the American attack in Afghanistan, in which air strikes would be followed by ground assaults by special forces transported by helicopter, military sources said yesterday. Smart bombs and other advanced ordnance are reported to have been loaded on to French-made Mirage 2000H and Russian-built MiG-27 aircraft at bases in northern and western India. ... One officer said he believed there was only the "slimmest chance" of nuclear weapons being used. "We will call Pakistan's nuclear bluff," he said. It [the nuclear factor] cannot deter us any more." (06/06/02) | |
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Win Wenger writes: There are even more positive possibilities ahead of us than there are dark, negative ones. I don't care for gloom-and-doom stuff, and definitely don't want to write about some of those dark, negative ones — the brightly positive ones are much more fun to explore. But some pretty straight stuff has to be said, and has to be addressed if we are to get to those brightly positive situations. Please bear with me while I say what has to be said... (06/06/02) | |
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Arundhati Roy writes: To slow a beast, you break its limbs. To slow a nation, you break its people. You rob them of volition. You demonstrate your absolute command over their destiny. You make it clear that ultimately it falls to you to decide who lives, who dies, who prospers who doesn't. To exhibit your capability you show off all that you can do, and how easily you can do it. How easily you could press a button and annihilate the earth. How you can start a war, or sue for peace. How you can snatch a river away from one and gift it to another. How you can green a desert, or fell a forest and plant one somewhere else. You use caprice to fracture a people's faith in ancient things - earth, forest, water, air. Once that's done, what do they have left? Only you. They will turn to you, because you're all they have. They will love you even while they despise you. They will trust you even though they know you well. They will vote for you even as you squeeze the very breathe from their bodies. They will drink what you give them to drink. They will breathe what you give them to breathe. They will live where you dump their belongings. They have to. What else can they do? There's no higher court of redress. You are their mother and their father. You are the judge and the jury. You are the World. You are God. (06/06/02) | |
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Matthew R. Simmons speaks: Every time I have raised this subject, not a soul has been able to produce evidence that the depletion issue is not real, nor have I had anyone at anytime layout a credible way that the world could actually add so much added supply within such a short period of time. One of the things that most troubles me about all this is that I should not have been one of the few people around the globe raising such a crucial issue for the long-term health of the U.S. economy, let alone the rest of the world. I have also watched, with amazement, the constant whining and complaining of too many world-class energy experts who loudly dispute the excellent work being done by people like Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrere, without a scrap of factual data to support their opposing views. It would be wonderful if some of these wildly optimistic energy economists’ views were right. Sadly, there is no factual data to support their “sense” that the world will be awash in cheap oil and gas forever. I have studied the depletion issue intensely for too long now to have any remaining doubts as to the severity of the issue. But I am still amazed at the limited knowledge that exists, even in the U.S. or within our major oil and gas company’s senior management about this topic and its dire consequences. Our firm has just completed an incredibly intensive supply analysis on 53 counties in the state of Texas. These 53 counties represent 66% of Texas’ gas supply. Texas represents 31% of total U.S. daily gas supply. Based on this study, I fear that U.S. natural gas supplies could fall as much as 10% in as little as six months from now. The drop could be close to double this amount by the time it bottoms. If this happens, it will jolt the U.S. economy far worse than the 1973 Oil Embargo. And unfortunately, there is no quick fix to this supply crisis. America’s electricity grid is highly dependent on an abundant supply of natural gas that must grow by 35% over the next 8 years. (06/06/02) | |
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New York Times -- The administration's interagency report, which was compiled by the Environmental Protection Agency, notes that the warming of the U.S. is expected to be greater in the 21st century than in the 20th, and will affect nearly every region of the country. Seas are expected to rise, causing an additional loss of coastal wetlands. Storm surges will pose a greater threat to coastal communities. We'll have to endure more stifling heat waves, and the disruption of snow-fed water supplies. Some treasured ecosystems, such as the Rocky Mountain meadows and certain coral reefs and barrier islands, are likely to disappear entirely. In addition to acknowledging that the earth is already sizzling, the report made it clear that human activity — the burning of fossil fuels that release heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere — was the primary culprit. Shrieks of outrage arose among conservatives, who immediately and loudly demanded that the president turn his back on the report and bury his head even more deeply in the sand. So on Tuesday there was George W. Bush dutifully distancing himself from his own administration's handiwork. He assured one and all that he had no plans to lead any assault on global warming. He was coldly dismissive of the interagency effort. "I read the report put out by the bureaucracy," he said. (06/06/02) | |
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