Saturday, February 28, 2004

World progress and nature Posted here Saturday, February 28, 2004 at 5:16:19 PM     Let's assume some progress in world issues. 1. world human population stabilizes at about 6b (I know!) 2. violence declines 3. greater spread of economic benefits and some saftynet 4. a more humane culture (anticipated by world reaction to Diana's landmine campaign, resistance to American incursion in Iraq). 5. new methods of accounting and taxation that shift costs and benefit analysis, hence redirecting business activity. 6. some increase in human optimism. 7. an broader acceptance of a world spiritual/scientific culture that was more humane, less technocratic and profit driven, more realistic and appreciative. What then could be the emerging design principles about how humans and other species and landscapes cohere? ********

Tasks Posted here Saturday, February 28, 2004 at 10:11:36 AM     We need 1. A history of the US that shows why it is an interesting experiment, even crucial, and why its history is to terrible in violence. Hint: the first that came were religious fundamentalists avoiding the enlightenment, and the second wave were the enlightenment types, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Adams, Washington, who carried enlightenment values. the conflict has never been resolved. 2. A view of how economic activity and political activity become enmeshed rather than as checks and balances. Democracies without restraint become tyrannies, markets without restraints become monopolies, and the two share goals. The result is fascism. 3. A view of human nature in relation to technology, with regard for how tech is itself an outgrowth of religious goals, and how mathematics reduces the spirit  of all living things to digitalized approximations that are false at the core. 4. A review of what we know, from the most physical of facts about humans, such as demographics, to the organizing around food systems, to the organizing around myths of death and resurrection, to the vie of humanity through its arts, and integrated with primate studies and anthropology and early hominid evolution.   ********