Every other day hundreds of children die in East Ghouta because of the terrible war that has been raging in Syria for years now. Meanwhile, Erdogan is structurally keeping his voter’s number artificially high by simply occupying parts of northern Syria, and adding every still-functioning human to his government army.
At the same time we see an island in the Pacific slowly but surely disappearing due to rising sea levels, the violence on the West Bank continues unabated and the U.S.A meanwhile is a secretive third world country.
All of this sounds pretty depressing. But. However bad it may be, at the end of the night everyone goes to sleep with the thought “as long as it does not happen to me.”
That might all be true. And perhaps the world will perish within our generation. Maybe robots take over. Actually what one of the first AI machines told us was – “what would you do if you would take over mankind” [..] “I would put them in a human zoo” …
Who knows right? And in times of contemplation of what really matters (the NOW) we all observe, “we’ll see”.
But. Let’s be realistic. You can surf the internet in almost all of Africa. In theory, third world countries do not exist anymore. Even the poorest countries statistically are part of the second world. Under the influence of globalization, basic resources and knowledge are easier to transport and are more accessible than ever before.
Wake up everyone !! An event is only newsworthy when it IS an EXCEPTION.
You’re right. News is negative. We only hear about misery. What bleads, leads – as journalists will tell you.
But look at it this from the positive side, it is news and therefore the exception! Would positive news be exceptional than that would fill the newspaper. Nobody is astounded by John who could drink a cup of coffee in the morning.
Or, to use the words of Rob Wijnberg, a dutch philosopher who founded the Correspondent:
‘On a daily basis, millions of Dutch people go to work, without any problem’
In general, the well-being of people is increasing, and the message that prosperity needs to be better divided reaches the masses more and more. Even without my individual effort, politics are increasingly focusing on a green future.
No fuel, no gain.
Technology has made our lives a thousand times easier, still we are complaining. And that makes sense.
“Every advantage has it’s disadvantage” (cf Johan Cruyff). Ah well, progression is survival of the fittest!
The main challenge (for the next 50 years) is to retain human empiricism. We take evolution more and more into our own hands where we slowed it down by domestication. Chances are that robots are indeed the next step in evolution. We play God. But what about art? What about you losing yourself in music? Dancing to rhythms where no thought is involved. Do something, impulsively, without a premeditated process of input/output.
Science is just a byproduct of our existence. Just as love is only one factor in a love relationship.
Let’s see ourselves as beings, subject to environment.
But. Even without consciousness of your existence, you exist. We dream!
Let’s discuss thoughts. What we think is often manipulated. At random moments our phone tells us that it ‘ has not properly understood what we have said’ . The Siris and OK Google’s have a large share in day to day life. But that applies to everyone, and that connects us even more. Us against the machines.
As has often been pointed out in history, the consciousness of our consciousness separates us from the animals. It defines us as a species, it allows us to assign a value to our senseless existence.
We depend on machines that we have built ourselves. We do not fully understand the implications of our technological progressions – yet we continue to develop them.
But how we experience this progress, what we think of it, our interpretation, how we all experience this emotionally, that is still happening within our subjective self …
Underpinned without a client, not a machine but of flesh and blood,
Really, things aren’t so bad.
