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| TO BOLDLY GO... |
Before the adorable, understanding Miss Tom-Tom entered my life, I rarely used maps to detail routes. I have or had an unerring sense of direction; so, by car, I would simply look at the map, for example from London to Rome (cities in Europe, which is a continent east of America), note the south-south-west direction, list the main towns - and start driving. It worked well before traffic planners installed by-passes, ring-roads, multiple-mini-roundabouts and spaghetti-junctions at freeway and motorway cross-overs. Even then, spun around the compass, as long as the sun (or moon) was visible I could re-orient myself and speed away in the right direction.
That was then; now most of our friends and colleagues, even our enemies, agree that the human world, the world of politics and power, has lost its sense of direction. I often hear from diverse regions that we are being led by chaotic, vision-less, career politicians; intent only on being re-elected, or better still, on abolishing elections and becoming dictators for life. Leaders who offer no realistic better future or any sense of direction. Without a sense of direction, we are all lost.
Here are my directions, my aims. Here are the things we must do to advance the human race to the next level and create a truly wonderful world for all:
1) World Government. The greatest human anxieties (the planet will survive with or without us) have no boundaries. Overpopulation, water, food, energy, plagues, pollution, poisonous air, oceans of plastic, collapse of the global economy, global-warming, too little sex, galloping extinctions, to name but a few, are transborder issues. All transborder issues need global rules (which adapt with circumstances). We need to select the best democratic rules and structures from around the world and from history (constantly revised) and use them to form World Government, with sufficient persuasive and police powers to ensure the agreed policies are operated fairly, with justice. Build on the UN, The United States of America, Ancient Greece, and The United States of Europe. Go and do it!
Local politics (e.g. Home Rule for Brookside - the street where I live) is also vital. The electronic revolution enables "A patchwork of diverse communities with diverse lifestyles, under a global umbrella." Large, medium and small groups can create their own socio-economic environments and live as they wish - (without harm to others). Get to it!
2) Fair Shares - Birthright. The source of all conflicts, even or particularly those masquerading as religious conflicts, are about money. Who owns what. Who should own what. And how can we steal what them, those heretics, heathens and traitors over there, have got. Follow the Money. It is inevitable that The Electronic Revolution will replace all traditional work. "We have worked hard to abolish work - and have succeeded - Telework Explained 1992". The Electronic Revolution is about 10% advanced. Does any idiot imagine that it will not replace our sweated labour/labor? It is equally inevitable that we MUST share out wealth, capital and income to all. If not, 0.5% will own the world; 99.5% will have nothing. Markets will collapse. All commerce will collapse and we will be reduced to stone-age bartering. Birthright gives all new-borns a full protected share - a trust-fund. It is vital that we do this. Read the paper - and then Go and Do It! Start in your local community - it is scalable and good economics.
3) Clean, Green, Lean Energy: There is no limit in our solar system to renewable energy; solar, wind, water, geothermal etc. We do not need to restrict clean energy. This is already about 10% completed. We need limitless energy - free to all (see Birthright above). Just 90% to go. Get on with it!
4) Feuds: All feuds are actually about money/property. Even feuds that purport to have arisen millennia ago and be in the name of god, or gods or another damned Master-Race. (They all actually date to within the warped memories of the lunatics alive today who continue the hatred and violence - 100 years at the most). They could all be resolved by rapidly developing huge undeveloped regions such as the Qattara desert basin, with high-tech industries - then attracting the disgruntled "withouts and have-nots" to live in and develop such regions. Provided they get educated and learn to think instead of kill. We need World Government or the European Union or another large economy, to set these up - and people who can read & write to occupy them and grow rich. This ties back to 2) Birthright above. Just stop squabbling and go and do it.
5) Sin and Religion: All definitions of "sin" (sin means separation from community) are simply crowd control. Does God really care about us "spilling our seed on the ground" or being a "Scarlet Harlot" or stealing a loaf of bread or skipping prayers, or digging the garden on the Sabbath? She/He/It has His/Her/Its hands full keeping the universe on course, which is at least 13.75 billion years old and 5.5 followed by 23 zeros miles across (5, 500, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 miles) with billions of inhabitable planets. The analogy would be Donald J Trump ordering and controlling all the zillions of spermatozoa released by all the coral-reefs at the full moon.
Aside from obvious antisocial crimes: Thou shalt not kill, steal, rape, drool over your neighbour's wife/ spouse/ partner, eat ALL the cakes, and so on, all "sins" are man-made not god-made rules imposed by the powerful on the meek - policed by the priests, Imams, clergy etc - mostly to do with Sex and Money; to reserve the best of the virgins for Droit-de-Signeur. Before man and woman kind can evolve from befuddled apes into humans - we need to forgive ourselves and each other for our so-called sins and alleged guilt. Religions divert immense amounts of human energy - better used to build a better world. Replace it with education.
6) Intelligent Cooperation: In the UK in June 2016 we had a BREXIT referendum where all voters, 99% of us utterly ignorant of the astounding complexity of our trade and political agreements with the 28 nations and 550 million souls in the EU, which we have built over 60 years, dealing with 77,000 diverse global trade and services items, were all imagined to be equipped to weigh the consequences for the next 100 years and to vote intelligently. "Do we stay - or - Do we quit?" The old, selfish, offshore-tax-free-rich, unemployed and dumb voted to QUIT. The young, optimistic and bright voted to STAY. In our majority aged population, the dying, demented, dim and diseased won out - so, we are headed for a catastrophic Brexit. It was an emotional knee-jerk vote that has split the country. Michael Bloomberg said "it is the stupidest economic decision any nation has ever taken". The deadline is March 2019. The terrible damage, seven million job loses (25% of paid jobs), is just becoming obvious to all. Can such irrational, emotional issues, in all societies, be made subject to analyses and thought? We must include all people in the benefits of the future of the Electronic Revolution; we must not leave anyone behind. We, all nations, have the tools today via mass communications to spread facts and inform The People. Education, education, education and more education.
Try to imagine how such bitterly contested issues, threatening civil-war and the break-up of The United Kingdom, might be resolved at a global scale. Say - sharing out food, water and energy supplies. We need Intelligent, well informed Cooperation.
7) Foodtubes: The world wastes about half the food that is produced. A large percentage of people go hungry - even in the USA where millions rely on food-banks and food-stamps. Doh! We need a cheap, green, clean, global distribution system. There is a prize-winning proposal for such a system, The Transport Internet and Foodtubes. It is not difficult to install, in self-sustaining, profitable, 100 km loops that interlink and make a global network. Get building it now!
8) Exploration and vision: Man and Woman Kind has always been nomadic explorers, driven by curiosity and the need for adventure. We have pretty much covered The Earth, so we now need to Boldly-Go as Star-Trek exhorts us to. Humans cannot thrive in finite boundaries and closed horizons. Governments MUST offer exploration - of the oceans, the solar-system and beyond. It is happening and we need far more of the visionaries empowered to expand our reach. Keep at it!
9) What will become of us? I have sketched out what the world will be like when all these good things are in place. We have a great future life ahead of us. When I wrote the lighthearted book, AD 2516-After Global Warming, ten years ago, none of the futuristic innovations that my heroes enjoy existed. Brian Aldiss dubbed me "That distinguished futurist". I will have to write another future-scope book to live up to his description; as much of those predictions are now history. Now, already, much of what I forecast exists. My futuristic visions of 500 years ahead were not futuristic enough. The electronic and scientific advances are racing ahead of all expectations. We do have a wonderful future. It needs visionary governments to allow the human-race to create that future in peace.
If you are gloomy, a pessimist, and shun celebrations and Pray for the Apocalypse - I have also catered for the dark side of our damned souls in my book The Wisdom of Alice Whitaker. As the ice caps melt, despite Trump's personal veto on global-warming, our coastal margins flood, five billion souls are displaced and 90% of us die. It is grimly satisfying. There is even a grisly murder among the survivors. Doom, doom, doom. It is a good read and is based on sound science. If we don't achieve Intelligent Cooperation, it could, in fact it will, happen.
