Revelation : Universe is Conspiring

“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.

Poem : Sustainable Development Goal

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 :)