My World of “Ought to Be”
by Timothy Wilken, MD










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Tuesday, September 03, 2002
 

Good Morning, I hope you had pleasant holiday with family and friends. My two daughters flew away yesterday. One back to New York City and the other to Los Angeles. Strange for two girls who grew up in small towns. Lots of new stuff at SynEARTH.


Tearing Toward The Spike

Damien Broderick writes: I wish I could show you the real future, in detail, just the way it's going to unfold. In fact, I wish I knew its shape myself. But the unreliability of trends is due precisely to relentless, unpredictable change, which makes the future interesting but also renders it opaque. ... Professor Vernon Vinge says: `I used the term "singularity" in the sense of a place where a model of physical reality fails. ... For Vinge, accelerating trends in computer sciences converge somewhere between 2030 and 2100 to form a wall of technological novelties blocking the future from us. However hard we try, we cannot plausibly imagine what lies beyond that wall.  ... `The acceleration of technological progress has been the central feature of this century. I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence. (09/03/02)


  b-future:

The Spirit in the Gene

I have just finished an amazing book by Australian Reg Morrison. Its subject matter is a comprehensive review of the enormous damage being done to all non-human life, and to the water, air, and top soils that sustain life on this planet. He makes a very convincing case that this damage is the result of the actions and activities of 6,000 million humans. Morrison goes on to explain that we humans are just as vulnerable to this damage as any other species of mammal. We need clean air and water, as well as a safe and adequate food supply to survive. All of which are becoming less and less available. Things might still be fixable, for a united and determined global humanity, ready to take action immediately. In Morrison's opinion, we humans are very unlikely to change our ways. So although we don't know it yet, we are probably dead already.  (09/03/02)


  b-CommUnity:

The Chalice or the Blade

Riane Eisler writes: People all over the world are today questioning matters that only a few generations ago were generally seen as "just the way things are." Everything, from politics and economics to sexual and family relations, is being re-evaluated. People are even reexamining the roles and relations of the female and male halves ofhumanity. And when people ask, "what does it mean to be a woman?" and "what does it mean to be a man?" They put at issue the most fundamental assumptions about our species and its future. ... Indeed, the struggle for our future is not between capitalism and communism or between religion and secularism. It is a struggle about what kinds of relations we have, be it in our intimate or our intemational relations. If those who still believe that domination, exploitation, and violence are "just the way things are" prevail, we face a very grim future, and ultimately no future at all. But if we recognize that a future orienting to partnership rather than domination is a viable alternative, and become conscious of the centrality of partnership gender roles and relations to the construction of such a future, there is realistic hope. (09/03/02)


  b-theInternet:

Science, Consciousness and God

Peter Russell writes: Science has explored deep space, deep time and deep structure and found neither place nor need for God. Now that it has begun to consider consciousness, it has embarked upon a course that will eventually lead to the exploration of ‘deep mind’. In doing so it may ultimately be forced to open up to God. Not the idea of God found in contemporary religions—which have inevitably suffered distortion and loss as they were passed down from one generation to another, from one culture to another, and from one language to another—but the God that the teachings spoke of originally, the essence of our own selves, the essence of consciousness. Such a possibility is anathema to the current scientific super-paradigm. It is like Galileo telling the Vatican that the Earth is not the centre of the Universe. But if there is one certainty of science, it is that all certainties change with time. The scientific models of today are, in almost every area, radically different from those of two centuries ago. Who knows what the paradigms of the next millennium will look like? A science that included deep mind would be a truly unified science. Such a science would understand the root of all our unnecessary fears, understand why we do not live life to its fullest potential, why we are not at peace inside. The consequence of such a science would be the development of inner technologies that help us quieten the mind and transcend our fears. It would be a science that helps us become masters rather than victims of our thinking, so that we can live with this accident of evolution, prosper from its benefits, but not let it so fill our minds that we lose awareness of other aspects of our reality—including our true inner nature. Now doesn’t that seem a worthwhile enterprise? (09/03/02)


  b-theInternet:

One Human Society

P.R. Sarkar writes: The apparent diversity in the human world today is the product of natural conditions. Geographically this planet of ours is divided into a few distinct zones: the snow-covered poles; the hot, sandy and dreary deserts; the roaring and ruffled seas and oceans extending up to the distant horizons; and the silent and motionless, high and intractable mountains. In some places rivers cut vast plains into two; at other places high waves break upon the banks of great lakes with a thudding sound. Human beings have always found themselves confronted with these types of conflicting natural environments. They had to fight tooth and nail against those particular adverse circumstances to preserve their existence, and that process brought about marked changes in their outward physical structures. ... Human society comprises these various branches of various races. There is no reason whatever to recognize one race as superior to another race. The external differences in constitution among these human groups cannot alter their basic human traits - love and affection, pleasure and pain, hunger and thirst. These basic biological instincts and mental propensities equally predominate in human beings of all complexions in all countries and in all ages. A mere rustic, unlettered, half-naked tribal mother of an unknown hamlet of Chotanagpur Hills (in Bihar in India) bears deep maternal affection for her young children; in the same way, a well-educated mother of a locality of New York pours out of her heart a great love for her own children. ... The outdated ideals of nationalism are crumbling to pieces today. The newly awakened humanity of today is anxious to herald the advent of one universal society under the vast blue sky. Noble persons of all countries, bound by fraternal ties, are eager to assert in one voice, with one mind, and in the same tune that human society is one and indivisible. In this voice of total unity and magnanimity lies the value and message of eternal humanism. (09/03/02)


  b-theInternet:

Living Systems in Evolution

Elisabet Sahtouris writes: As an evolution biologist, my work and passion are looking at the evolving patterns of biological living systems in order to make sense of our present human affairs in a broad evolutionary context. One might say that I’m a ‘Pastist’ looking for perspective that will help me be a good Futurist. But I have a deeper passion, which is to understand myself, my world and the entire Cosmos in which we exist locally. Within this broader mission I have long sought to undo the artificial barriers between Science and Spirit, to reveal a richer world-view or cosmo-vision. I especially like the latter term-cosmo-vision-for its breadth and depth to the farthest reaches of what we can know through experience. The word cosmos is Greek, and in Greek it means people, world or cosmos in the English sense, depending on context. ... Suppose we remind ourselves occasionally to see ourselves as the creative edge of God (a phrase I learned from a dear friend)-as God looking out through our eyes, acting through our hands, walking on our feet, in exploration of the new-and to observe how that changed things for us. I pray that all the religions will recognize the importance of the uniqueness in each story and the unity of All That Is. I pray that scientists, who have been given the role of “official” priesthood, with the mandate to tell us “how things are,” will soon officially recognize the one alive, intelligent universe in which spirit and matter are not separable and in which creation is continuous. I pray the indigenous people who never separated science and spirituality will be honored for that. It is time for the true communion which alone can save our species and all others, which alone can bring about the perfectly possible world we all dream of-a world expressing this understanding of ourselves as the creative edge of God! (09/03/02)


  b-theInternet:

Today's World Is Inter-dependent

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair says: We know the problems. A child in Africa dies every three seconds from famine, disease or conflict. We know that if climate change is not stopped, all parts of the world will suffer. Some will even be destroyed, and we know the solution - sustainable development. So the issue for this summit is the political will. We know one other thing. The key characteristic of today's world is its inter-dependence. Your problem becomes my problem. One country's war becomes another country's asylum seekers. One country's pollution becomes another country's floods. (09/02/02)


  b-CommUnity:

Warex! It Just Keeps On Killing

New York Times -- The cape, closed off to tourists, is marked with signs saying "Radioactive Danger. Trespassing Forbidden." The scientists from Montenegro are searching for war debris, specifically bullets coated with slightly radioactive depleted uranium. American warplanes fired some 480 rounds at the cape on the final day of NATO's 1999 air campaign against Yugoslavia, according to NATO records. No one was killed. But to the scientists, the attack is inexplicable. The only tokens of past life are a collapsed bunker and some ruined walls more than a century old, leftovers from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. ... The group has collected scores of bullets and fragments, some buried deep in the soil. But the main problem, they say, is that casings have broken and many uranium parts have disintegrated and turned into potentially toxic dust. "Water corrodes the uranium and it becomes powdery," said Dr. Perkovic. "It crumbles as easily as cigarette ash and spreads in the soil. People can touch it or inhale it. The wind blows it around." ... NATO has disclosed that it fired thousands of rounds of munitions with tips of depleted uranium, one of the hardest metals and therefore suitable for penetrating targets like tanks, against targets in Bosnia in 1995 and in Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro in 1999. Depleted of its most radioactive part for use in nuclear fuel, the material still emits low-level radiation. (09/02/02)


  b-theInternet:

Jobless on Labor Day

CNN MONEY -- The most obvious problem facing the work force is stagnant job growth. Since March 2001, when a recession in the broader U.S. economy began, nearly 1.7 million jobs have been lost, and more than 3.5 million people are drawing unemployment benefits.  "The impact of the recession, exacerbated by the impact of the events of September 11, has fallen heaviest on working people," the National Association of Manufacturers said in its annual Labor Day Report. And some economists have noted that this recovery is starting to look an awful lot like the recovery from the 1990-91 recession, when job growth was dead in the water for more than a year, probably costing then-President George Bush his bid for re-election in 1992. (09/02/02)


  b-theInternet:

Ben Laden Alive and Back In Command

CNN -- Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of Al-Quds, told ABC's "This Week" he has not seen bin Laden and has no physical evidence the al Qaeda leader is alive. But "sources told me that he's alive" and that "he is in command," Atwan said. In July, Atwan told CNN sources told him bin Laden was wounded in the bombing of Tora Bora and had shrapnel in his left shoulder. "He was injured and he was a subject to a surgery, and the shrapnel was removed from his left shoulder, and he is now perfectly well," Atwan said. He believes bin Laden is alive because "it is un-Islamic not to declare his death if he's dead." (09/02/02)


  b-theInternet:

Voluntary Association vs. Coercion

Larry Barnhart writes: What does it mean to be ethical? This question has been debated for centuries by many great minds. In spite of all the cogitation that has been done so far, no basic precepts have been accepted as a universal guide for conduct in our relations with one another. Nevertheless, the quality of our future, if we are to have a future at all, depends on our finding some satisfactory answers that can be accepted universally. (This is especially important for the leaders of communities around the globe.) (09/02/02)


  b-future:

Global Warming Impacting America's National Parks

New York Times -- When President Theodore Roosevelt established the world's first national park at Yellowstone, the idea was that with careful stewardship, nature's unspoiled expanses could be preserved forever. Nowadays scientists understand these ecosystems as giant circles of change, their evolution driven by the forces of nature but also by the actions of people. And as the parks' managers consider how the parks will look a generation, or seven generations, from now, they are increasingly aware that climate changes brought on by human activity are among the forces that may most alter some of the best known landscapes of the National Park System. ... The intense forest fires of the last 10 to 15 years, exacerbated by a decade of intense drought and heat, are widely considered a highly visible example of the kind of threat global warming trends could pose to parks. In recent weeks, for example, a 2,600-acre fire in Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado destroyed housing for the park's staff, its sewage treatment plant and the roof of a million-gallon water tank, and threatened the park headquarters. The park was closed for almost two weeks and all visitors evacuated. And a 33,000-acre fire in Six Rivers National Forest in Northern California near Oregon came close to Redwood National Park and the ancient trees there that are one of the park systems' leading symbols. (09/02/02)


  b-theInternet:

Caldwell Responds

Joseph Caldwell writes: My main point is that I believe that war is both necessary and inevitable, for the various reasons that I set forth.  The effects of war are also terrible and horrible.  But the economic development and peace that have placed billions in grinding poverty and disease, and have robbed many men of any means whatsoever of providing for their families, are also terrible and horrible.  I do not advocate killing people with bayonets any more than I advocate killing them with the starvation and disease that prolonged peace and economic development have brought. ... My approach at the present time is to make a strong case that large human numbers and industrialization are destroying the planet's biosphere and that a long-term sustainable human population for the planet is very small, so that when global war does occur, those who prevail will strive to work for a small human population and a sustainable biosphere.  I am not advocating a war, and I am not urging others to go to war.  I do believe that continuing the way that we are is headed for total disaster, and that war may lead to a better world.  I also believe, as you know, that war is both necessary and inevitable, and probably better sooner than later.  As you point out, the next war may well "eclipse humanity."  But it is very clear that continuing down the current path is gradually "eclipsing" the entire biosphere. (09/01/02)


  b-CommUnity:

Reaction to: Why We Need War

Alan, a reader of CommUnity of Minds, writes: I find it truly bizarre that you would go to the length of posting Caldwell's pro-war manifesto on your website, and on newsgroups. It is one thing to find yourself with "less and less argument against his logic". It is another thing to widely distribute and promote an article which does not only *predict*, but essentially *advocates* WWIII. Note that I am not taking a position on what Caldwell has said. I am only pointing out the extreme incongruity of your dissemination and promotion of it. Did you not recently strongly advocate total personal disarmament? Are you now saying that you were wrong, and that we should arm and train for the coming war? (08/31/02)


  b-CommUnity:


5:54:01 AM    



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