“Understanding the vastness of
this universe with space exploration can be that positive shared vision with
which next generations will not be idiots but wiser than todays because once
the vastness of this universe becomes accessible, starting from Mars as just a
waypoint to go towards stars. New societies, cultures and human values will
arise that we can’t imagine yet.” Context from my previous blog Friendly nature of Mars for the
question “are we getting wiser?”
But we certainly need to or at
least try to imagine it, because we are on that mind-numbing point arriving at
a very perilous juncture in the history where we should consider both our past
and future altogether to act wisely today, rethinking about where we are now
and where we are going as with current pace of the world which needs historians
and philosophers to engage with engineers, scientist, corporations as well as
governments seeking answers to a lot of questions about what we ought to be
doing right now for the better future of humanity.
Holo Past:
The everlasting quest for
exploration is in our DNA since the origin of humans in Africa two hundred thousand years ago and we all descended from that small handful group of people with
explorer’s gene who made their way out of Africa and spread human race by
colonizing the rest of the world in spite of geographic problems and lack of
technology back then. And with technological advancement so many brave
explorers traveled the globe in order to bridge the gap and set connections
which we can realize today with our fingertips on current internet social
platforms.
But also back then global culture
was quite weak with an anarchic series of world
domination, act by various individuals or regimes who tried to achieve
hypothetical power which is repeated over the history since the ancient
medieval period with mass destruction’s of entire indigenous tribes in various
parts of world during colonialism era to the modern world’s civil wars among
well-established nations.
American historian Robert Kagan
used jungle and garden metaphor to describe world, he says the liberal world
order and democracy are artificial creation like garden and it is not what
nature would naturally produce in the international system, nature produces
jungle as anarchy, chaos and conflict that was what we saw evolving before the
end of World War two, there's was no natural equilibrium in the international
system and certainly no natural desire for peace among nations in human
history. But since World War two there is an explosion of democratic governments
in many parts of the world before it mostly human beings lived in various forms
of tyranny throughout history.
As with time global culture started developing positively after painful lessons of two world wars with establishment of global governance framework, the Bretton woods system was the first example which later evolved into institutions like IMF, WTO and World Bank underpinned by United Nations tasked with maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations, achieving international economic co-operation. And being a center for harmonizing the actions of nations and ideologies for humanitarian benefits making sure people have better lives with rule based global governance. Globalization in last two decades indeed helped countries to carry dispute free trading, increase in productivity and efficiency boosting technological development. As the current world order is backed by multilateral institutions like UN, WTO, IMF, World Bank, international aid system and hence it delivered worldwide huge gain in prosperity for humanity. But it also was quite unsustainable ecologically, socially and also zero-sum in nature creating winners and losers among countries and people within because of great pace of continuous change due to globalization which was not backed by right domestic policies. Resulting in large swathes of population left behind not only in developing countries but also in developed nations due to lack of skills to catch the pace of globalization and serious income inequality due to corruption or worst national domestic income distribution policies which failed to share the benefits of globalization and as these displaced people feel threatened they became tribal again resulting in rise of populism who for their political benefits tailoring the anger which is not caused by anti-globalist movement but by failure of local governance, preferring nationalism and protectionism as a solution with short term political agendas ignoring its long-term detrimental impacts on future generations enhancing the discontent further. Developing countries have such political and social dynamics where populist demagogue sweeps to power tapping into deep social resentments is now becoming political picture of some developed countries too.
Increase in inequality makes
growth precarious creating monopoly which uses wealth to undermine liberal democracy
considering liberty as a privilege, fracturing societies and corrupting the
system for their self-interest which is quite unsustainable and only results in
collapse of moral basis of system as history already taught us through French
revolution and fascism in Italy, speaking of which during my study in Genoa, I
stayed in hostel Casa dello Studente di Genova, Gastaldi for around half a year
which once upon a time during World War II used to be headquarters for Nazi
Gestapo police, a place of torture for political prisoners and anti-fascists.
The underground rooms of the
hostel are now used as a resistance museum which can be visited and specially
opens for tours to school children on the occasion of the April 25th anniversary
which is national Italian holiday commemorating the end of occupation of the
country during World War II and the victory of the Resistance.
Inequality also impacts the
environment as super rich contributing to climate change with extreme
consumption and super poor cutting down the trees for their survival, the best
example is Fast Fashion which not only exploiting workers with terrible working
conditions in factories but also leading to more greenhouse gases with textile
production destroying the planet and stealing the future of next generation.
Hence the need to urgently end of the inequality’s Matthew Effect, in which
them that’s got shall get and them that’s not shall lose.
So from the political science
perspective the advancement in industrial democracies which benefited from promoting
globalism have failed a lot of their own citizens in their borders and we see
lot of structured inequality consequences of that citizens prefer to completely
check out of the political system or vote to break things. Resulting that many
countries are being seduced by the siren sound of devising nationalism with “X
first” weakening the rule based international order challenging the
multilateral system that arose from the chaos and rubble of two world wars.
Hence it is also necessary that
international rule based order has to be supplemented with proper domestic
policies taking place within the borders of countries. Hence not to discount
the concerns of people who voted into populism, wealthy educated people who
have benefited from the globalization should think and act responsibly to
continue the celebration of cultural diversity, free exchange of goods and
ideas, retaining the beauty of true liberal democracy fixing the breakdown of
trust and erosion of social capital among the people who are less well off or
displaced in the wave of globalization. A shared commitment to pluralism, human
rights, rule of law and collective pursuit of better, safe and prosperous world
has to be celebrated.
In 2015 the 17 UN Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) were ratified by UN General Assembly setting ambitious
targets to address worldwide issues of sustainable development, such as social
inequality, responsible and inclusive economic development and environmental
protection. It’s a wise act but quite late as waited so long till lot of
discontent built up. In particular, social inequalities and climate change are
posing a major existential threat to our future. Millions of people/refugees
have been displaced worldwide because of conflict, violence or human rights
violations and climate refugees might boost that number in future. The rate of
increase in our wise actions could not match with the period of Great Acceleration and nature has to
pay for its momentum. As we had so many social, cultural and industrial
revolutions that accelerated our dependence on modern technology but with the
expense of right relationship with our planet. Which never concerned us and our
earth system had to subsidize previous industrial revolutions by allowing us to
over-exploit natural resources and undermining bio diversity.
So far it looks like we human and
nature served technology, but instead technology should serve nature of which we
humans are part of. We certainly should not move forward with same agenda
instead we have to consider nature as a first priority and fit our agenda.
Unprecedented Future : Alien planet
Future not necessarily but mostly
shows up consisting of 99% of the past, but then sometime that remaining 1% can
have enormous difference that changes everything. For example, internal
combustion engine replacing horses or an advent of the internet and we are
living on the verge of many possibilities of such experiences. But as in the
1800’s cars created lots new jobs by eliminating lots of jobs of horse and
buggy drivers, according to statistics from world economic forum report 65% of
children entering primary school today will graduate into jobs that do not yet
exist.
The previous revolutions were so
exponential that science today invites whole humanity on new ecology epoch.
Today we are in the middle of fourth industrial revolution which will certainly
be another exponential journey as technology is changing everything disrupting
the way we work, live and even how we relate to one another at a pace and scale
unprecedentedly in the human history. World is becoming multi-polar,
multi-conceptual with lot of new players that are asserting themselves to get
accommodated in the current world order. We have many trends in one altogether
as first rising power versus status quo power, new industrial revolution, climate
change and shifting global order.
We don’t need to reinvent the
vehicle but it’s time to replace the engine as we are seeing unprecedented
level of governance challenge of building an rule based international order in
a globalization era and the geopolitical components of that. History not only shows
that decay of existing order produces conflict of interest and war like
situations, but also tell us that confrontation whether in form of cold war,
hot war or trade war will produce no winner and no one nation’s pre-eminence is
eternal, globalization comes in waves and those waves repeat and they happen
again as change is a constant in our world and nothing lasts forever. Hence we
have the key question is to figure out how to navigate this new world and what
to expect from the global order shift and coming architecture of new world
order. And there are more new concerns that with new way of globalization in
the era of fourth industrial revolution technological advances like artificial
intelligence may bring more unknown challenges.
As someone said technology change
without social change is curse as AI revolution might bring global inequality
by concentration of immense wealth in some part of the world and the complete
bankruptcy in other parts. As we know when some countries industrialized, those
few industrial powers went on to conquer, dominate and exploit all others. We
certainly neither want colonialism by wealthy power nor violent extremism from
those who less well off. In fact World War II came through a period of intense
economic and social disruption after the Industrial Revolution. But it’s not
the technology that is good or bad but it’s what we do with it that matters for
example, as on one hand it is helping people to come together to become more
unified and other hand it’s the tool to make world more fragmented with fake
news. Radio did broadcasted music and so Hitler’s speech to people, we have
good democratic countries and bad authoritarian countries, and the question is,
"What would they do with the technology?”. After the fall of the berlin
wall American political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote a book The End of History proposing ascendancy
of western liberal democracy as final form of government for all nations as half-century
long competition between liberalism and authoritarianism had been settled with
win of liberal democracy putting forward a seductive argument that there can be
no progression from liberal democracy to an alternative system. But the
technology itself could change the balance of power between democratic and
totalitarian systems as Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari has been worrying
out loud that technology may favor tyranny.
“We tend to think about the
conflict between democracy and dictatorship as a conflict between two different
ethical systems, but it’s actually a conflict between two different data
processing systems. Democracy distributes the power to process information and
make decisions among many people and institutions, whereas dictatorship
concentrates information and power in one place. Artificial Intelligence may
swing the advantage towards the latter.” - Yuval
Noah Harari
Given that access to such tools,
it will make very easy for countries that don't have open values, and that are
much more authoritarian, and want the data not to protect their citizens, but
to be able to surveil them to find dissidents and lock them up. So here we go
again “History repeats itself” which is loose proposition and I think that the
historical precedent would say that we should not repeat the same mistakes from
the history specially when we are at the tipping point and there are bigger
problem to address which are threat to entire humankind such as climate change.
Although progress is happening in some areas as United Nations with SDG’s, the
world is not on track to meet these 17 global goals by 2030 and we have slowing
global growth due to protectionism threatening multilateral world order, trade
wars, inequality, AI, cyber security and climate change challenges. Hence we
certainly not in position to guide young generation for the kind of world they
will be living because each of these challenges is daunting task. But surely
they need continuous reskilling or ability to reinvent themselves repeatedly to
keep up with changing world and things like emotional intelligence, mental
stability, curiosity need to be emphasized in education rather than just rigid
technical syllabus.
The world we're living in is an
aberration which is not where history was headed before it was created and it's
not where history will go after it dissolves and that's sort of the crisis that
we are confronting right now. So certainly we don’t have exact historic
precedent for the situations we are in and the future on our own planet seems quite
alien to us and hence we need global cooperation like never before, to be ready
for this unprecedented future.
Universe is Conspiring : Revelation
As Carl Sagan once poetically
explained deeper meaning of “Pale Blue Dot” to grasp the unimportance of
humanity in the great context of the vast universe and the importance of our
role in it to address the big issues like climate change which are opposite to
war needing global cooperation with multilateralism as a key and the sense of
we all as part of this pale blue dot which many astronauts described through
their overview effect experience. As I mentioned in one of my previous blog Mars Rover Quote since we are
passionate to explore the Mars, all universe is conspiring in helping us to
achieve it or an exploration is an attempt by universe to understand itself,
the same way as physicist Michio Kaku’s quote “A physicist is an attempt by an
atom to understand itself”, as physicists are made of atoms. And as space
exploration is also one way to move towards sustainable future which not only
unites us for single cause but also only possible with global cooperative
efforts.
So if Carl Sagan’s poetic
narration is not inspiring enough then at least prisoners dilemma should
because we often forget the simple notion of we in the same boat deeply
embedded in nature and utterly dependent on this “Pale Blue Dot”, the mother
earth for our well-being.
“Protecting the biosphere should
be our highest priority or else we sicken and die. Other things like
capitalism, free enterprise, the economy, currency, the market, are not forces
of nature, we invented them. They are not immutable and we can change them. Yet
we drawn boundaries around fragmenting the world and fighting to protect the
same, instead we should focus on clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean
energy and biodiversity as these are real forces of nature and our job is to
protect it because our biological nature requires it for our health and
well-being. It makes no sense to elevate economics above the biosphere.” - David Suzuki.
So reframing everything to
economics as a primary source of legitimacy undermining humanism and letting
states to fail rather than banks, moral hazard has effectively been liquidated
in the contemporary economy. Hence old concepts of economy and politics failed
to measure our well-being as terms like GDP is becoming tools of politics which
used and manipulated by politicians to gain the political benefits. As the
business landscape reinvents itself, demographics shift, rise in inequality,
climate change gets worse and technology in fourth industrial revolution era continues
to advance at breakneck speed, hence GDP invented in analog time is struggling
to stay relevant in this digital world and also quite dangerous to fuel up for such
unsustainable GDP based delusional growth. As some countries are listed as a fastest
growing economy showing growth but in reality there are so many local issues
not considered in these indicators and benefits of globalization is not being
distributed by ruling kleptocrat government parties which is dominated by small
minority group and using it to buy elections, media, impunity from justice and there
is all this resentment.
There is no single number that
can measure wellbeing of people or country’s welfare, even leading economists
and academics are suggesting for new reliable metrics to know to how we are
performing on the yardsticks of economy, sustainability and social harmony. And
how can we render the financial sector for more productive fueling real growth
aligned with SDG’s, as the United Nations Statistical Commission’s Interagency
and Expert Group on SDG Indicators (IAEG-SDGs) agreed on
230 individual indicators to monitor the 17 goals and 169 targets of the SDGs
on which progress can be measured and can produce elements for the politicians
to take decisions linking the SDG’s with national development planning to
realize agenda 2030 and to bring positivity into politics and hence into policy
making, as we know along with international how domestic policies are important
specially in the countries with weak democracy and corrupt governance.
In fact with any objective
methodology there has to be touch of subjective thinking or philosophy as well,
attaching it to our human values and morality because it is quite nonsensical
to indicate our well-being by some number as I mentioned in my blog Science-Philosophy Singularity: Magic ofAbsolutism, without human values we may think we all have answer we need
but reality will be meaningless like our ancestors but with delusional super
intelligence lacking subjective experience living in the fancy caves.
“GDP does not allow for the
health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their
play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our
marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public
officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor
our learning, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life
worthwhile” - Robert F. Kennedy
And hence embracing only economic
liberalization and not a political one in delusional assumption of
authoritarianism as more efficient way of getting things done is not good for
sustainable future and we must uphold liberal democracy and international rule
based order that’s support it as great words by Abraham Lincoln that “Government of the people by the people for
the people, shall not perish from the earth”.
If we borrow a concept of entropy
from thermodynamics here that in closed system without input energy things fall
apart and disorder increases, likewise democracy needs the collaborative effort
to keep things in order or in Robert Kagan’s word democracy is a garden and to
preserve it we have to constantly weed, fight against the pests and wild animal
of forest. So dealing with these natural phenomena is a constant struggle to
keep garden intact from turning it into jungle again, likewise it's certainly
not an easy thing to do in the international system as natural forces are constantly
working against democracy, peace, prosperity and all the co-operative elements
that make prosperity possible. There is evidence that we are in a somewhat
different world but the lessons of history shouldn't be ignored as the great
powers whether they be empires or city-states or nation states have been almost
in constantly at war with one another and they suggest that if we are at the
beginning of the fragmentation of this world with new world order then that
could be extremely dangerous indeed.
As president Lincoln used the
phrase “better angels of our nature”
in his inaugural address in 1861 with its deep poetic meaning as appeal to
people to come together inclining towards peace and cooperation so they can go
beyond what comes easily or naturally and evolve further more towards path of
enlightenment and an absolute wisdom (truth) pushing back relative mess
(perception). To focus on global peace and go beyond with the world order of
peace and overall growth to flourish the humanity sustainably international governance
structures should have more authority than was ever contemplated to prevent
efforts by individual nation states to create the sort of unilateral international
governance in an increasingly integrated system to fulfill their own interests
by forced economic or military threat or not allowing multilateral bodies like
WTO to deliver as they were designed undermining the rule based order or
interested in cherry-picking the few part it. As Professor Steven Pinker says
United Nations is unlikely to morph into a world government that anyone would
want to be governed by as there will be no alternatives from which it could
learn better governance, or to which its disgruntled citizens could emigrate,
and hence it would have no natural checks against stagnation and arrogance. The
Security Council is hamstrung by the veto power that the great powers insisted
on before ceding it any authority, and the General Assembly is more of a
soapbox for despots than a parliament of the world’s people.
We tend to blame the institutions
for not delivering but it’s us and our political will which matters most, to
use these institutions to move forward dealing with problems. New ethics and
governance with blockchain methodology can act as error correcting code for the
institutions to work stable, healthy and may bring some scope for further
improvements to radically reshaping society and economy with rebuilding the
layer of trust so everyone see themselves represented in these institutions. Rules
should be formulated by the international community and should not be applied
with double standard for selfish agenda’s. Hence we don’t need new United
Nations, but need to start using it for what it has been created making it
agile enough to adopt the pace of change in technology, shift in world order
and global power relativity, as we entered into an era in which power is more
defused among states as rising developing countries and also beyond states to
techno-nations like top global corporations and issues like climate change. In
fact we need a new fundamental narrative that they can tell to national
leadership, elites and populations that
real positive change involves sacrifice of sovereignty not only from the major
powers necessary to create an order but also by loosening the grip of superrich
doing business sustainably with SDG’s to create true humane economy.
Since the fall of berlin wall,
there was a broad sense that liberal democracy fully associated with capitalism
will be the solution for societies as Steven Pinker describes democratic
government is designed to resolve conflicts among citizens by consensual rule
of law and so democracies should externalize this ethic in dealing with other
states and also every democracy knows the way every other democracy works,
since they’re all constructed on the same rational foundations rather than
growing out of a cult of personality, a messianic creed, or a chauvinistic
mission. But since distribution didn’t take place fairly resulting inequality
of which chain reaction is one of the reasons to today’s fractured world. On
one side we have technological revolution as an opportunity to reduce the
inequality gap and on other side its huge challenge of displaced people from
fourth industrial revolution enhancing the inequality. These challenges we are
facing are global in nature climate change, growing inequality, uncontrolled
migration and upcoming unknown technological disruption which no country can
solve on its own and needs cooperation greater than ever. So we are at point
where we can break everything and all hell breaks loose or we can work together
to cope with these known & unknown challenges, we should not be complacent
with ourselves and waste time but speed up with more inclusive responsible
pragmatic new way of thinking about these challenges exchanging our views, knowledge,
policies and best practices not just to determine that whether we are
predestined to salvation or damnation but to work hard to find and redefine the
best way out of it to move forward.
To adopt an era of such fast
changing world needs renaissance men and the perspective of renaissance era, an
era in which art and culture, knowledge and technology developed at near
lightning speed transitioning dark ages into modernity. The image of mankind
changed during the Renaissance not only transforming pessimistic view of middle
ages but rediscovering new perspective with quantum leap for technological
advancement and modernization which has a great influence on our time as our
voyage to the Stars began 500 years ago as without Copernicus there would be no
spaceflight or satellite communication systems, we would have reached none of
the other planets and our lives today would be very different. So we do have
option that rather than fracturing the world for short term benefits or easy
way out to bigger global issues, we can be like renaissance men to coordinate
our ambitions and our activities avoiding future wars and not only just work on
resolving the issue but look forward to move humanity next step into vast
universe with space exploration as it does have potential to flourish the
humanity sustainably and to bring renaissance like perspective with “Overview
effect” experience described by astronauts in space.
In fact if I say universe is
conspiring to unite us with cooperation and be like men during renaissance era where
so much was discussed in one big conversation breaking the monopoly on
knowledge involving such a large number of participants where things were
invented with flood of new ideas in such a quick succession, as our future is
all about the way which we will communicate to address these challenges and let’s
face it right now we have serious failure to communicate and inspire the
generations to fuel each other transcending their own horizons and achieve
things which were undone before. So for better world and for betterment of
humanity, it’s nothing harmful in a way to see it as a revelation that universe
is indeed conspiring :)
