Renaissance 2.0: Governance with Overview Effect.

 

Technology is on the cusp of the next major revolution. This will involve a convergence of artificial intelligence, Big Data, the Internet of Things, advanced robotics, nanotechnology, 5G and other cutting-edge innovations that promise to radically transform the very way we live. But at the same time, a seeming relic of the past, nationalism, is vigorously reasserting itself. Indeed, the world appears to be sliding from globalism into techno-nationalism. The signpost of a decaying order is the defection of one or more of the great powers who decide that their ambitions can no longer be satisfied within the existing order the US-China debate today kind of distills a lot of aspects of that. American leadership of a rules-based international order, upheld by key global institutions, and a convergence toward liberal democracies and open markets has become unstable. Sheer demography, in particular the youth bulge in parts of Asia, means we have embarked on a post-Western era. The sense of a unipolar or bipolar world is not there anymore, private sector who embraced this multipolar world scaled the technologies at exponential rates and so the resurgence of geo-economic competition and techno-nationalism in areas such as 5G, AI and the internet of things impedes R&D; cooperation, risks market fragmentation, and could trigger incompatible standards and norms. The US, China and the EU must work together to find common rules and standards for this Brave New World in order to reap the benefits, avoid conflicts and encourage other nations to be part of the same.

Current geopolitical standpoint led us to a very perilous time and post 1945 order is something fundamentally different from those earlier ones, nuclear weapons deter war, the level of integration is so much greater that the response to the 2008 financial crisis was radically different than the 1930s and shows the country's appreciate the need to keep the system going. 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 was 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.

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 pre-pandemic 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. 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. World leaders and governments expressed shock and outrage at the storming of the US Capitol in Washington by supporters of President Donald Trump. As we know that many Americans today are no longer certain that the rules-based international order of which USA was the principal architect and for which it did write the biggest checks still benefits America. President Trump brought a new model to town and his model was that trade is a zero-sum game.

Its Team America against team China or Team America against Team Europe and it's that the pie is constant so you have to win and multilateralism is not the approach, it's taking a more unilateral approach, so that the United States can carve out what it wants for itself seems to be the motive driving the president's trade policy. Certainly world is quite wiser now and not an age of imperialism which was characterized by a burst of activity in carving up as yet independent areas: taking over almost all Africa, a good part of Asia, and many Pacific islands. Back then in the history; multilateralism 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 to the modern world’s wars among well-established nations.

Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, and within a decade popularizers had applied—or misapplied—his theories of natural selection and survival of the fittest to contemporary politics and economics. This pseudoscientific social Darwinism appealed to educated Europeans already demoralized by a century of higher criticism of religious scripture and conscious of the competitiveness of their own daily lives in that age of freewheeling industrial capitalism. By the 1870s books appeared explaining the outcome of the Franco-German War, for instance, with reference to the “vitality” of the Germanic peoples by comparison to the “exhausted” Latins. Pan-Slavic literature extolled the youthful vigour of that race, of whom Russia was seen as the natural leader. A belief in the natural affinity and superiority of Nordic peoples sustained Joseph Chamberlain’s conviction that an Anglo-American–German alliance should govern the world in the 20^th century. Vulgar anthropology explained the relative merits of human races on the basis of physiognomy and brain size, a “scientific” approach to world politics occasioned by the increasing contact of Europeans with Asians and Africans. Racialist rhetoric became common currency, as when the kaiser referred to Asia’s growing population as “the yellow peril” and spoke of the next war as a “death struggle between the Teutons and Slavs.” Poets and philosophers idealized combat as the process by which nature weeds out the weak and improves the human race. By 1914, therefore, the political and moral restraints on war that had arisen after 1789–1815 were significantly weakened. The old conservative notion that established governments had heavy stake in peace lest revolution engulf them, and the old liberal notion that national unity, democracy, and free trade would spread harmony, were all but dead. The historian cannot judge how much social Darwinism influenced specific policy decisions, but a mood of fatalism and bellicosity surely eroded the collective will to peace.

 

And so in 1914, when the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist, and the established series of alliances and counter-alliances plunged Europe into World War One. Some historians prefer to divide 19th-century history into relatively small chunks. Thus, 1789–1815 is defined by the French Revolution and Napoleon; 1815–48 forms a period of reaction and adjustment; 1848–71 is dominated by a new round of revolution and the unifications of the German and Italian nations; and 1871– 1914, an age of imperialism, is shaped by new kinds of political debate and the pressures that culminated in war. The new imperialism was characterized by a burst of activity in carving up as yet independent areas: taking over almost all Africa, a good part of Asia, and many Pacific islands. This new vigor in the pursuit of colonies is reflected in the fact that the rate of new territorial acquisitions of the new imperialism was almost three times that of the earlier period. By the beginning of that World War one, the new territory claimed was for the most part fully conquered, and the main military resistance of the indigenous populations had been suppressed. Hence, in 1914, as a consequence of this new expansion and conquest on top of that of preceding centuries, the colonial powers, their colonies, and their former colonies extended over approximately 85 percent of the Earth’s surface. Economic and political control by leading powers reached almost the entire globe, for, in addition to colonial rule, other means of domination were exercised in the form of spheres of influence, special commercial treaties, and the subordination that lenders often impose on debtor nations.

 

A political assassination in Sarajevo set off a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I. In August 1914 President Woodrow Wilson implored the American people to be “neutral in thought as well as deed” with respect to the European war. In so doing he was not only honoring tradition but also applying his own religious principles to foreign policy. His agenda upon entering the White House in 1913 had been domestic reform, and he had written that it would be an irony of fate should foreign policy come to dominate in his administration. Yet when fate so decreed, Wilson preferred to trust his own motives and methods rather than the advice of his secretaries of state or his other advisers. Wilson deplored the war and earnestly wished to bring about a just and lasting peace through U.S. mediation, for what greater mission could Providence assign to that “city on a hill,” the United States of America? As more and more young men were sent down into the trenches, influential voices in the United States and Britain began calling for the establishment of a permanent international body to maintain peace in the postwar world. President Woodrow Wilson became a vocal advocate of this concept, and in 1918 he included a sketch of the international body in his 14-point proposal to end the war. Two months later, the Allies met with Germany and Austria-Hungary at Versailles to hammer out formal peace terms. Wilson wanted peace, but the United Kingdom and France disagreed, forcing harsh war reparations on their former enemies. The war-guilt clause was particularly damaging, since any historical evidence suggesting that Germany did not bear sole guilt for the war would tend to undermine the treaty’s legitimacy. Post World War I, every governments found it easier to try to shift the burden of reconstruction on to foreign powers, through reparations, loans, or inflation, than to impose taxes and austerity on quarreling social groups at home. It soon became clear that the effects of the war would continue to politicize economic relations within and between countries; that the needs of internal stability conflicted with the needs of international stability; that old dreams clashed with new realities, and new dreams with old realities.

The French were skeptical of the idealistic basis of the League but hoped that it might be turned into an instrument of security committing the British and Americans to the defense of the new European order. In this they were disillusioned, for the British viewed the League less as a means for mobilizing force against an aggressor than as a means of preventing future conflicts in the first place. The Covenant of the proposed League provided for a plenary assembly of all members and a council of the Great Powers and outlined a system of sanctions against aggressor states. But the British chose to focus on moral sanctions (not unlike Wilson’s belief in the “court of world opinion”), or at most economic sanctions, and participation in military sanctions was made voluntary. The Covenant also contained machinery for declaring boundary changes, implying that the League’s primary function was to secure peace, not to secure the status quo. Upon final rejection in April of a Franco-Italian plan for tougher collective security and an international force adequate to enforce peace, French newspapers scorned the League as a toothless debating society. And since Clemenceau had succeeded in having Germany barred from the League pending good behavior, the German press denounced it as a “League of Victors.” In mid-February Wilson returned to the United States to attend to presidential duties, and in his absence committees went to work on the details of the German treaty. Foremost in the minds of the French was security against future German attack. As early as November 1918 Marshal Ferdinand Foch drafted a memo identifying the Rhine as “the frontier of democracy” and arguing for the separation of the Rhineland from Germany and its occupation in perpetuity by Allied troops. This plan echoed earlier French war aims: The victory of 1871 had created a unified Germany; the defeat of 1918 should undo it.

 

After four years of World War one Germany's emperor Kaiser Wilhelm had been forced to abdicate. His armies were being ground down by a remorseless offensive by British, French and US troops. At 11:00 in the morning on 11th November 1918, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month World War one came to end. The following month President Woodrow Wilson of the United States arrived in Europe promising to create a new world order. He persuaded the world's leaders to sign up to a new league of nations. At the Treaty of Versailles they agreed that from now on disputes between countries would be resolved not by fighting in war but by debate in the league. The people of Europe were set free. Germany's Ally the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dismembered, out of which new nations were created Austria, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Germany itself was greatly reduced in size, but this process contained a time bomb not everyone celebrated the birth of countries like Czechoslovakia. Several of them contain substantial German minorities, one day the desire to reunite the German people would come to haunt you. The war-torn German people also had one final indignity inflicted on. They were forced to pay massive reparations to France and Britain, something they could ill afford. When Wilson returned to America, his new world order immediately fell apart as the US Congress decided that they could not risk being sucked into another war in Europe. They refused to join Wilson’s proposed League of Nations and the USA withdrew into isolationism.

 

The Versailles treaty, signed on June 28, 1919, met most of these demands. It stripped Germany of its colonies and imposed severe restrictions on the rebuilding of its army and fleet. In these ways, the peace settlement could be seen as punishing the defeated enemy, as well as reducing its status and strength. Not unnaturally, this caused resentment among the Germans and helped to stimulate the quest for revenge. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George to resolve the major economic and political issues facing Europe and to deal with the pariah states of Germany and Russia planned an economic conference in Genoa. The Genoa Conference held in Genoa, Italy was the largest of the many post-World War I intergovernmental conclaves and the first to which Germany and Russia were invited as both countries had been excluded from the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.

When I was in Genoa for my studies, I used to walk around the city center usually after dinner and during weekends. And often passed by this Palazzo di San Giorgio, one of the oldest palaces in the city where Genoa Conference took place on 10^th April 1922. Here is the photo of San Giorgio Palace which is also the first photo I took in Genoa during my first weekend in Genoa on 6^th November 2016, Sunday. British historian Kenneth O. Morgan concludes: Genoa conference was a watershed in international diplomacy.... Never again would such a large, rambling assembly, on the lines of Paris in 1919, be convened, until San Francisco in 1945.... There was too little detailed preparation, too much generalized optimism, too many disparate issues muddled up with one another. In many ways, it was a parody of summit diplomacy at its worst.

 

Julius Caesar to the men that ruled parts of the globe, there is some similarities as when the chaos was so bad and the situation deteriorating, a lot of the population felt if anyone grabs power and puts an end to this. It doesn’t matter who they are, whether it’s an extreme right-wing general or whether it’s a mad Bolshevik, but as long as someone imposes their will. Many countries after the First World War were torn by political unrest, mass unemployment and waves of strikes. In October 1929 the US stock market crushed billions of dollars were lost and an economic depression swept across the world and given the imperialistic culture only extremist politician seemed to offer a solution. French general Ferdinand Foch’s word on treaty of Versailles “This is not peace, but a truce for 20 years”, proved prophetic as after twenty year later on Germany’s triumphant victory over the French during the World War II. Germany's ambition to acquire a colonial empire for itself in Eastern Europe was just a rerun of European empires in Africa or Asia. The victory of 1871 had created a unified Germany; the defeat of 1918 did undo it. Hitler wanted to redo the victory of 1871 and why not that’s what cycle of history been in Europe, war after war. Hitler ordered the very same railway carriage out of the museum and to put on the very same place at Compiegne where it was used, in a repeat of the November 1918 Armistice symbolizing German victory not just in second World War but also in first one; as this time the French leadership has to sign the armistice. World War I was a significant turning point in the political, cultural, economic, and social climate of the world. The war and its immediate aftermath sparked numerous revolutions and uprisings. The Big Four (Britain, France, the United States, and Italy) imposed their terms on the defeated powers in a series of treaties agreed at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, the most well-known being the German peace treaty: the Treaty of Versailles. Ultimately, as a result of the war, the Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, and Russian Empires ceased to exist, and numerous new states were created from their remains. However, despite the conclusive Allied victory (and the creation of the League of Nations during the Peace Conference, intended to prevent future wars), a second world war followed just over twenty years later.

The world with League of Nations was same like reality perceived by blind men in the parable of the blind men and an elephant with each blind man feels a different part of a the elephant body and describing elephant based on their partial experience, hence as I mentioned in my blog ‘Science Philosophy Singularity’ that for blind men with their limited knowledge about elephant, their perception supersedes reality and relativism is true but incomplete out of big fat elephant which is absolute truth.

 

In the early part of the second World War in 1939 to 1943, the grand area was defined as the western hemisphere routinely the former British Empire which the US would take over and the Far East that would be the grand area they assumed at the time that there would be a German led world, the rest so would be a non-German world. As the Russians gradually a ground down the Nazi armies, after 1942 it became pretty clear that there wouldn't be a German world. So the grand area was expanded to be as much of the world as could be controlled the limitless that's simply pursuing the old position that expansion is the path to security for the nascent Empire of 1776 the these policies were laid down during the war. 19th century the initial run at an effort at an international order in the modern era the Vienna system, the concert of powers when the great powers of the year a band together like Russia, German Empire, Britain, France, Austria in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars to have to coordinate their ambitions and activities to avoid future wars, yet later many wars happened. Vienna system, to fashion a peace repudiating the nationalist and democratic principles of the French Revolution. Now, democratic statesmen would convene in the capital of liberty, Paris, to remake a Europe that had overthrown monarchical imperialism once and for all in this “war to end war.” The League of Nations after World War One when you have a similar lesson learned becomes the idea of an order to make World War one the war that ends all wars. The 1930s were a decade of unmitigated crisis culminating in the outbreak of a second total war. The treaties and settlements of the first postwar era collapsed with shocking suddenness under the impact of the Great Depression and the aggressive revisionism of Japan, Italy, and Germany. In fact, the immense destruction done to the political and economic landmarks of the prewar world would have made the task of peacemaking daunting even if the victors had shared a united vision, which they did not. Germany seemed to be moving less toward democracy than toward anarchy. By 1933 hardly one stone stood on another of the economic structures raised in the 1920s. By 1935 Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime had torn up the Treaty of Versailles and by 1936 the Locarno treaties as well. Armed conflict began in Manchuria in 1931 and spread to Abyssinia in 1935, Spain in 1936, China in 1937, Europe in 1939, and the United States and U.S.S.R. in 1941.

League of Nations after World War one with the idea of an order to make World War one the war that ends all wars and was focused on the issue of peace and post-war order. But mostly was an effort by individual nation states to create the sort of international governance in an increasingly integrated system to fulfill their own interests. Two big historical obvious lessons come out of this one is that orders tend to emerge in the aftermath of a major war that is the time when the major powers are justified in making the kind of painful sacrifices of sovereignty compromises necessary to create an order but then the other lesson is they tend to decay over time and in the first two cases of international governing bodies i.e. Vienna System and League of Nations the decay of the existing order produced a new war. Vienna system was quite conservative where you have monarchies banding together for peace but also stifled the rising sense of democracy in Europe and beyond. The League of Nations was also weak as there was an effort to avoid future wars but it couldn’t really resolve problems of colonial ambitions, democratization and other kind of disputes. The United States was off the bandwagon almost from the beginning as it was not part of Vienna system and even though US president Wilson got noble prize for his contribution for establishing the League of Nations, US Congress chose not to be part of the same. But when US joined the post-war order which was by far the most well-established and universal of these narratives one based on economic and political liberalization, democratization to a certain degree on global economic integration and sovereignty which certainly prevented world war and flourished globalized world, flourishing humanity as never before.

American planners envisioned postwar reconstruction in terms of Wilsonian internationalism but were determined to avoid the mistakes that resulted after 1918 in inflation, tariffs, debts, and reparations. In 1943 the United States sponsored the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration to distribute food and medicine to the stricken peoples in the war zones. At the Bretton Woods Conference (summer of 1944) the United States presided over the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The dollar was returned to gold convertibility at $35 per ounce and would serve as the world’s reserve currency, while the pound, the franc, and other currencies were pegged to the dollar. Such stability would permit the recovery of world trade, while a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (ratified in 1948) would ensure low tariffs and prevent a return to policies of economic nationalism. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau tried to entice the Soviets to join the Bretton Woods system, but the U.S.S.R. opted out of the new economic order. The American Universalist program seemingly had more luck in the political realm.

Roosevelt was convinced that the League of Nations had been doomed by the absence of the United States and the Soviet Union and thus was anxious to win Soviet participation in the compromises at Yalta. The Big Four powers accordingly drafted the Charter of the United Nations at the San Francisco Conference in April 1945. Roosevelt wisely appointed several leading Republicans to the U.S. delegation, avoiding Wilson’s fatal error and securing the Senate ratification of the UN Charter on July 28, 1945, by a vote of 89–2. Like Wilson, Roosevelt and Truman hoped that future quarrels could be settled peacefully in the international body.

But out of the nuclear ashes of World War two, rise two superpowers with two opposing systems: capitalist America and communist Soviet Union. Each was sure that the other is out to conquer the world and rising tensions soon draw the two nations into a ‘Cold War’. Paranoia mounts as Soviet Union shuts its door on its former allies. The superpowers need a way to deliver their nukes quickly and without warning. It’s a long distance rivalry as Moscow and Washington are thousands of miles apart. And as of the late 1940’s, rockets can only reach targets up to a few hundred miles away. The best way to cover the shortfall is by launching rockets through space. The race to space is born out of fear after the end of World War two with atomic bombing of Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 in the face of new catastrophic threat, an atomic one. In 1955 both the United States and the Soviet Union announced programs to launch artificial Earth satellites during the upcoming International Geophysical Year (IGY). The Eisenhower administration, concerned that the satellite program not interferes with military missile programs or prejudice the legality of spy satellites to come, entrusted its IGY proposal to the small, nonmilitary Vanguard rocket. While Vanguard development crept ahead, the Soviet program won the first space race with Sputnik 1 on Oct. 4, 1957. The Soviet achievement shocked the Western world, challenged the strategic assumptions of every power, and thus inaugurated a new phase in the continuing Cold War.

 

Eisenhower conceded to this mood in 1958 by sponsoring creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and passage of the National Defense Education Act, accelerating weapons programs, and deploying intermediate-range missiles in England, Italy, and Turkey. He also acknowledged the expanded Soviet threat in his State of the Union address in 1958: “Trade, economic development, military power, arts, science, education, the whole world of ideas—all are harnessed to this same chariot of expansion. The Soviets are, in short, waging total cold war.” A similarly total American response to this challenge, requiring virtually wartime levels of national mobilization to outdo a totalitarian system in whatever field of endeavor it chose to emphasize, would, in Eisenhower’s mind, however, have undermined the free market and fiscal soundness that were the foundation of American strength in the first place. Liberal economists argued in response that a sharply expanded role for the federal government was a matter of survival in the “space age” and would even stimulate economic growth, military prowess, and social progress.

The inauguration of John F. Kennedy as president of the United States infused American foreign policy with new style and vigor. He had promised to “get America moving again,” and he appointed a Cabinet and staff who shared his belief that the United States could be doing far more to prove its technological and moral superiority over the U.S.S.R., win the “hearts and minds” of Third World peoples, and accelerate social progress at home.

 

When Yuri Gagarin had become the first man to orbit the Earth on 12^th April 1961, Kennedy underscored the impact of the Soviet space program on world opinion and asked that Congress commit the United States to a program to land a man on the Moon by 1970. It will become the largest commitment of resources ever made by any nation. President Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963. The American civil rights movement came to a head under the Johnson administration. In 1964, US dispatched 184000 troops to Vietnam in the name of halting the Communism. Meanwhile to make the matters worse for USA, the Soviets were racking up a string of space firsts, as the first man in space, first object to hit the moon, first woman in space and first spacewalk. Apollo Program encountered a major setback in 1967 when an Apollo 1 cabin fire killed the entire crew during the prelaunch test. But America has invested too much to quit now. With 400,000 people on the payroll, NASA was more determined than ever to leave their footprints on the moon. Meanwhile, 1968 was turbulent year for both superpowers. As for USA with assassinations and riots threaten to tear America apart. Just two months after King’s assassination in April 1968, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, was assassinated. Also thousands of Americans soldiers were returning from Vietnam in body bags. In the Soviet Union, space hero Yuri Gagarin was killed in a plane crash. Czechoslovakia’s revolt against Soviet control was brutally suppressed. Both sides needed a victory in space to boost morale at home and distract from more earthly problems. In August of 1968, NASA announced they will take their first shot at the moon by the end of the year. Apollo 8’s mission was not to land and so at the end of the year by going around the moon on Christmas Eve, it all just fell into place.

Apollo 8 went to the moon they didn’t land but that they did circle the moon. Many watching on television and at a certain point one of the astronauts casually said we’re going to turn the camera around and show you the earth and when he did and that was the first time people on Earth had ever seen the planet hanging in space like that and it was profound. Quite unexpected but that gave us such a different perspective.

What if the elephant is small?

If its baby elephant then one blind man certainly can predict the truth that it’s an elephant and hence no further scope for argument among them as all blind men will now has same information which is an absolute truth and not just relative perception.

After this photo was taken, something unexpected happened as we went to the moon to explore the moon and we discovered earth for the first time, no one had seen this before spaceship earth. Earth as nature intends you to view it, not with color-coded countries as in your school room but with just oceans and land and clouds. This was the beginning of the modern environmental movement what happens between 1968 and 1973. In 1970 Earth Day was established why didn’t we establish that in 1960 or 1950 and when Earth Day was established DDT was banned in 1973 leaded gasoline was banned in the United States many other countries followed soon thereafter. World made Comprehensive Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, the organizations like ‘Doctors without Borders’ was founded in Switzerland. They probably would have formed anyway but would they have called themselves without borders, may be not and so where they even get that state of mind unless they saw Earth from space. Apollo 8 was an unprecedented success.

Not all astronaut were thinkers or philosophers, but once got the experience of overall effect they felt enlightened and many of them expressed the same feeling with world, in fact some with tears in their eyes as words were not enough to express the beauty and fragility they experienced in the space; when they saw the earth from space. As if the blind men now gets the full picture and aware that his previous conclusion based on incomplete knowledge wasn’t an absolute truth but now for the first time they could understand the whole picture, an ‘Overview effect’ able to perceive an elephant for the first time. They could see the absolute truth that nationalism is the relative perception and so big fat elephant which is today climate change. Space Tourism can be helpful to give that profound experience to the people, but with current technology it is quite unsustainable and the accessibility to space tourism remains limited to the richest of the rich. And now today we really don’t have to go to the space to get that awareness; as today’s world is quite connected to each other digitally and the physical boundaries between the nations doesn’t matter much relative to our past. The millennials are shining example of what we can achieve when we set aside our differences and focus on a common good which is also stepping us up towards planting the seeds of peace and collaboration in a fractured world. On the Valentine’s day of 1990, when voyager-I space probe captured earth as a pale blue dot which inspired Carl Sagan with its deeper meaning.

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.” – Carl Sagan.

 

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.

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. If we ask ourselves a very fundamental question what is the big message that our planet’s singular threats like climate change or global pandemic sending to humanity which is the past 7.7 billion people when they live in 193 separates boats now became 193 cabinets on the same boat and the problem with our global boat is that we have captains and crews taking care of each cabin and no captain approved taking care of the global boat as a whole so what worlds need now are stronger institutions of global governance like United Nations.

As global governing bodies are already existing, we don’t need to reinvent the vehicle but it’s time to replace the engine and use these global multilateral institutions for what they are developed for 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. 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, global pandemic, climate change and shifting global order. We have one planet and we don’t have planet B to go to yet and so we have to find a way of steering our futures together using metaphor of the captain of a boat. Hence we must support the United Nations to evolve into a more agile, effective and accountable organization.

For the past 70 years and more America has been the leader of the free world and many democracies have been proud to stand by USA’s side to have its support as a closest ally. No one can be benefited from beggar-thy-neighbor dispute, the price paid in part by American consumers, businesses and by those who believe that a rules-based system is worth preserving. Since the end of the Second World War USA and allies have a have built a system that promoted prosperity and prevented smaller and regional conflicts from turning into total war, built a system that championed freedom and democracy over authoritarianism. Many USA allies stood up in defense of that system remembering a time when the United States believed great international projects like the Marshall Plan or the reconstruction of Japan were the path to lasting peace. America believed its security and prosperity were bolstered by the Security and Prosperity of other nations.

 

Let me remind you of the city on the hill, Ronald Reagan evoked in his farewell speech in 1989. It was a tall proud City built on rocks stronger than oceans windswept God blessed and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace a city with free ports that hummed with Commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get there. This city opened to trade, open to immigrants. Indeed these are the values of liberal democracy. These values were attacked not from outside their walls but most corrosively even inside the shining city. Those USA’s allies who believes in these values like Canada ready to defend them and the rules-based international order that unites all of the world's cities on the hill. What President Reagan meant by the shiny city on the hill that was America and what he meant by that light as a freedom, liberty. And that light went beyond America and even went beyond main when President Reagan spoke and he talked to the exceptionalism they'd protest them in Europe but on the other side of the Berlin Wall they celebrated them. Those words inspired shipyard workers in Poland to rise up, those are the words that inspired many to believe that shiny city on the hill is America but we also agree that light has been dimmed a little. World used to say other countries are places, United States is an idea. That’s what makes it strong, but it seems like Americans took that for granted. American poet at the inauguration of current US President Biden delivered her poem “The Hill we climb” based on the tensions created by the multiple and conflicting meanings of America; the hopeful and sinful alike. Gorman’s “city on a hill” further stands in stark contrast to the January 6 uprising “on the hill” of US Capitol, the sacred temple of USA’s democracy.

 

Ronald Reagan’s successor George Bush’s apparent triumphs in foreign policy failed to ensure his reelection in 1992, however. Instead, Americans turned their attention to domestic issues and seemed to hunger for change. Bush lost in a three-way race to Bill Clinton, a self-styled “New Democrat” with little experience or interest in world affairs. His campaign staff’s reminder to themselves, “It’s the economy, stupid!” epitomized their candidate’s desire to take advantage of the U.S. public’s discontent over economic issues. Like Woodrow Wilson, however, who had the same desire, Clinton was harassed by overseas crises from the start. Clinton’s foreign policy team, led by Secretary of State Warren Christopher and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, included veterans of the Carter administration, which had emphasized human rights. They, in turn, were influenced by academic theories holding that military power was now less important than economic power and that the end of the Cold War would finally permit the United Nations to provide a workable system of global collective security. Clinton symbolized this neo-Wilsonian bent when he elevated UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright to cabinet rank. She defined American policy as “assertive multilateralism” and supported Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s call for a more ambitious UN agenda.

China is considered as one of the major beneficiaries of the last run of globalization. China became world’s largest economy by Purchasing Power Parity PPP according to IMF's calculation few years ago. There were some major frictions especially with China some of these issues have been brought to the attention of Obama administrations. The president Trump decided to do something about it; the problem was he went on doing things unilaterally. Since President Donald Trump took office in and started his campaign of a unilateralism and his tack with respect to trade policy is major departure from the way things have been done in the United States for about 85 years going back to 1934. As most of the last 13 USA presidents saw trade as a win-win proposition and a way to foster good relations among nations with understanding that having multilateral rules was the best way to encourage countries to behave within the international system. We have rules that have worked extremely well and if not then could be improved with multilateral initiatives. There was bipartisan support for president Trump's rigid approach to China but there was not bipartisan support for unilateralism. United States undermined the very institutions it authored and it erected to allow the world to move from the ruins of World War two to this modern situation in which we have eradicated a large chunk of poverty.

In the USA we saw democracy stress tested to the limit. But it passed the test and handover of power to new President who aims to restore US global leadership, reinvigorates American alliances, and unite the world’s democracies. The stage is set for the incoming USA president and his second in command. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, this duo will steer the fate of the USA for the next four years. Listening to Biden’s inaugural address, President elect Biden spoke to the same American ideals, ‘better angels of our nature’ instead of tribal instincts. President Joe Biden is very much different in his personal experience with support for multilateral approaches and it will be a switch from focus on unilateralism to one on multilateralism albeit constrained by public opinion in the United States. And Public opinion though will be a very important factor given the strong base of president Trump during the previous election. Multilateralism used to be perceived as an advanced and natural progression of society however as globalization has deepened over the years. We are seeing some countries reconsidering whether it is the right way for revitalization and picking up unilateralism tools in their policies. The big question is why multilateralism losing its Charm, what exactly is the soil nurturing the rise of unilateralism and the populism and what will be the way ahead of all this world. The problem of de-globalization or balkanization at the present time and has not exhausted itself as President Trump goes the pressures for that sort of de-globalization will  take a different form in the US, but they will be there because of Americans are looking at home and if you find in many European political settings elsewhere in the world the construction of the global internet is sort of pacemaker in this area and we are seeing more nationalization efforts globally which has to reverse its course before it takes us back to the dark ages.

 

The European experiment is very important, the United States and China’s rivalry at the present time, emphasizing their unilateralism during Trump administration and failure of European Union to persuade President Trump for Multilateralism. The European Union is the most successful regional organization in the world in terms of integration, trade and economic terms. ASEAN is the second most successful regional organization in the world. And good thing about these organizations is that they have multilateralism built into their genes, they are quite programmed to be open and cooperative to each other. So ASEAN offers a platform where various leaders of the countries with disputes to come together to resolve their issues and that’s ASEAN’s contribution to making the world better place.

 

China is the world's most populous country; it's on the trajectory to surpass the United States in terms of economic heft that shouldn't be something that should not makes world to throw world order that flourish entire world. China produces nearly 20% of the world's GDP and in our lifetimes its economy is set to become the world’s largest economy, now that's not necessarily a bad thing. There is an opportunity here for reform. There is profound interdependence between the US, the Chinese economy and the rest of the world. The rise of the rest has been a chapter in the story of their own increased prosperity and it's only natural that the 85 percent of people who live outside the industrialized West should over time account for a greater and growing share of the world's wealth, but that shift leads the Western liberal democracies with a dilemma how shall we behave in a world we no longer dominate. It’s not the answer to give up on the rules-based international order and to seek to survive in a Metternich’s world defined not by common values mutually agreed-upon rules and shared prosperity but rather by a ruthless struggle between the great powers governed solely by the narrow short term and mercantilist pursuit of self-interest. Many are much richer and healthier and live longer than their grandparents did. So we do have an obligation really to the world to make sure that there isn't this decoupling and but if there is I think what will happen is you will see China and the United States competing for the hearts and minds of the developing world. China's already miles ahead with the BRI initiative with investment in Africa but the problem there is if the world bifurcates breaks up into two spheres, the scope for economies of scale will cut in half. We need to recognize that our interdependence is a good thing to do things more sustainably and that we need to overcome these frictions with credible agreements.

 

After the devastation of the Second World War the United States was the unquestioned Colossus accounting alone for half of the world's economy. Today the US economy stands at just a quarter of the world together. Indeed that America could only be truly safe and prosperous when its allies were to the greatest generation’s vision was crucially dependent on the rules-based international order and the post-war institutions built to maintain it. It was based upon the willingness of all especially the strongest to play by the rules and be bound by them. The rules-based international order that United Nations have built together and requires that all states whether democratic or not play by these common rules. This is the difficult truth as the West's relative declined, now is the time when more than ever that developed nations must play by the rule of law, so that the rising powers are induced to play by these rules too.

 

Techno-nationalism is a new strain of mercantilist thinking that links technological innovation and capabilities directly to a nation’s national security, economic prosperity and social stability. Democracies and dictatorships are looking to implement technology-enabled mechanisms that enforce and empower vastly different standards around data privacy, surveillance, censorship, transparency, digital money and intellectual property. The competing ideologies of Techno-nationalism, therefore, could fracture the international system in ways not seen since the rivalry between the U.S. and Russia during the Cold War. Historically, proponents of free markets have argued that industrial policies are largely ineffective. Bureaucrats do not allocate capital efficiently and centrally planned economies, by definition, suffer from corruption, rent seeking behavior and poor governance. Moreover, centrally planned markets create market distortions and lead to over-capacity issues. The global governing institutions as United Nations must be capable to intervene and guard against opportunistic or hostile state and non-state actors. Techno-nationalism seeks to attain competitive advantage for its stakeholders, both locally and globally, and leverage these advantages for geopolitical gain.

 

For some countries globalization mostly means the inter-linkage between countries in terms of economic activities, supply chains, technological cooperation and technological transfers. For USA during the Trump administration, the feeling was USA has taken too much responsibility without a proper paying back, hence might be expecting the globalization that very much in the interest of United States expecting the global order unilaterally to USA. The President Trump had a profound skepticism about these multilateral institutions. There was this narrative that underpins the president's view that the United States was this benevolent giant and after the second world war helped to rebuild Europe with the Marshall Plan and helped Japan rebuild provided a nuclear umbrella under which our trading partners were able to flourish. And what did they do? did they pay tribute to the United States? no they rebuilt their industries and they competed with USA and they built social welfare systems. This narrative I think is fairly prominent among nationalists in America this is a grievance based sort of view of the world. And as a global leader there was no constructive and widely discussed plan about replacing existing system by Trump administration, but just tearing down current multilateral institutions without building up putting unilateralism forward very strongly which was responding to a feeling especially in the American public of having carried too much of the weight of the world for too long and hence got a lot of political support in the USA. Time will be needed to reset their course on an understanding that you have to cooperate collectively for sustainable future of humankind on this planet.

 

We need to think a sustainable ideology that could underwrite globalization 4.0 that marries the US-China differences, that does not abandon the value of the free market approach that's been part of the current order and gives voice to positive nationalist sentiment before the thing tumbles downhill setting any powers in a cold war. But before offering any technocratic tweaks to specific institutions or clever policy solutions to individual problems, we mostly need a fundamental narrative to preserve good things of current order and improvise further, certainly we don’t have exact historic precedent for the situations we are in, but there is lot to learn and seek the fundamental narrative we need from the history if we refer to right pages of it in right way.  

Speaking of that fundamental narrative, as I explained it in my previous blog ‘Classical Antiquity in 2021’ that by setting the stage with combination of a historical component, a global component and contemporary elements, that every World leaders must have sense of ‘Overview Effect’ perspective and they are not the rulers of individual states but the humble servants of this fragile planet in the vastness of dark universe and their responsibility is to take care of the same. And so the countries need to be able to share more of their strategies, their objectives and their responsibilities in order to be able to address these huge facilities and challenges that we face. My hope is that everywhere people will progressively understand this and recognize that this is the time for international organizations to be supported and this is a time for multilateral cooperation to be strengthened.

 

And there are also 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 liberal democratic regimes, illiberal democracies and bad authoritarian regimes, 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. The principles that America articulated at its best, about rule of law, human rights, freedom of speech, democracy, are not exclusively American. Today, I really cannot imagine a more realistic scenario for the future shape of the world not inevitable but plausible that is more frightening than having an unreconstructed and increasingly neo-totalitarian, Orwellian Single Party state being the dominant and hegemonic superpower in the world. The alternative to that has got to be a comprehensive strategy lead by the world's democracies to project our own values of freedom, democracy, personal autonomy and innovation, freedom of ideas and information.

Rather than solving issues countries which lack strong governing institutions and stuck in the quagmire of kleptomaniac corrupted practices prefer to suppress the domestic issues. The judges don't make the law Parliament makes the law, the politicians, the legislature make the law and it's up to the judges to straightforward apply the law and to see that it is maintained, whether you like it or not that's the basis upon which these tribunals were set up. Nobody bother to change the laws or policies in such corrupt systems as long as it serves their selfish deceptive agenda. Governments in such countries who care more about silencing their critics than helping victims, must change or be changed. Multilateral international governing bodies need to focus on resolving the issues globally and also perform checks that local governments interpreting the law correctly as world continuously evolving and hence nothing is important than the reasons for that interpretation of law, which also should constantly evolve towards greater justice while making the new mark in the sand if necessary to establish a precedent for better and just future. Places where people lack a civilized government and a decent way of life must be taken into consideration by multilateral international governing bodies; as with the today’s technological advancement ushering the plausible scenario of neo-totalitarian, Orwellian Single Party state. We certainly don’t want world leaders who want to overthrow the republic and rule as a prince. Or the leading party with patsy leader encouraging the national government to squander natural resources without adequate regard for the sustainable future and granting of lavish benefits to certain classes within a general framework of capitalism. 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. 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. And when the chaos was so bad and the situation deteriorating, a lot of the population felt if anyone grabs power and puts an end to this. It doesn’t matter who they are, whether it’s an extreme right-wing general or whether it’s a mad Bolshevik, but as long as someone imposes their will. Because given the history without international law, there will be madmen hungry for power will keep plunging not only their own people but also rest of the world into misery. And the best example is Napoleon who waged aggressive war, even though he was wiped out by fierce Russian military tactics and his enemies chose not to execute him but exiled him to Elba. This leniency allowed him to escape and return to power causing many more deaths in Waterloo, after which he exile again as there was no law against waging aggressive war. But that was the time where neither international governance was matured enough nor many individual states domestic governments.

 

We experienced agricultural civilization, industrial civilization and now we're experiencing information civilization. It's a qualitative different and we certainly should not look at this information civilization with the eyes of industrial civilization as a result everything goes wrong.  For problems of surveillance state, privacy issues, we must have solution. New technology must find solution like blockchain can find solutions with new ethics. 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.

 

Today techno sovereignty as digital entities which gained economic capacity, increased markets and more capacity of investment which made them almost state-like entities given the amount of population they can influence in the world at any moment to their digital citizens as many of those feel more aligned to these digital entities rather than their local sovereign government who just preys on their local citizens. The global governing institutions as United Nations must be capable to intervene and guard against opportunistic or hostile state and non-state actors. Techno-nationalism seeks to attain competitive advantage for its stakeholders, both locally and globally, and leverage these advantages for geopolitical gain. The alternative to that has got to be a comprehensive strategy lead by the world's democracies to project our own values of freedom, democracy, personal autonomy and innovation, freedom of ideas and information. And if national sovereignty is a fundamental pillar of the chartered United Nations and nobody wants a global government, but we need to improve our global governance and the countries need to be able to share more of their strategies and their objectives to create just world with sustainable future. Their responsibilities in order to be able to address these huge facilities and challenges that we face and we hope that everywhere in the U.S., Europe, and Asia everywhere people will progressively understand this and recognize that this is the time for international organizations to be supported and multilateral cooperation to be strengthened. Because we can only solve the bigger issues of this planet together, an acknowledgement that if the global issues don’t respect borders, then why should we. Nationalism doesn’t work and not going to help us but internationalism does.

The confluence of the big technologies profoundly changing 21^st century and it is critical, the reflection of the fact that the technology is outstripping our ability to manage it effectively as the decision cycle has become so short for making it very challenging to take the important decisions as technology taking off with exponential rate with capacity for overall good if we harness it properly and for bad if not carefully watched, but the systems of liberal democracy are basically moves with linear pace while authoritarian regimes and illiberal democracies or oligarchies in developing nations or ‘banana republics’ are quite fast to adopt and get support of strong digital infrastructure like enormous surveillance as one of them. One of the most important stories in the world right now is the battle to own the future by investing in technology, in which non-democratic states are becoming more assertive, strategically effective and - unencumbered by voters' preferences - able to think in epochal rather than electoral cycles. Since the world has entered a new era of systemic competition between the West’s increasingly short-sighted laissez faire model and China’s state-centric capitalism making us to question that is the current setup of technology incompatible to democracy? Because in the US digitalization often means privatization, hence power seats with private sector but in china its digital authoritarianism as mass surveillance by government itself. Hence the emergence of the digital entities in the context of the private sector seem to create a tension with the tradition of liberal democracy while advantaging to other governing models around the world. Hence need to think differently which doesn’t mean to throw democratic principles or the values they stand for but have to embrace those values somehow with these new changing worlds, the digital world in the context of traditional system of liberal democracy. It is 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. So even though authoritarian, oligarchies or illiberal democracies looks like getting ahead of liberal democracies but when liberal democracies makes effort and catches up they will be irresistible.

 

When we look at international trade and what happened post 1945; in particularly since 1980 is that the biggest decline in global Poverty. Alongside this there was increase in integration in trade in the world and that's something that has to be recognized, there's been an improvement in livelihoods of many people. There has been an increase in productivity and increase in efficiency so there were many benefits of it. But yes the system doesn't work perfectly, at the end we have to improvise if necessary or update with changing time to create the perfect order; the best possible and the most fair system. It is inherently a system that creates winners and losers. The reason why is that it's the same as technology whenever there is new technology as we have to worry about in terms of artificial intelligence there are people who win and there are people who lose. It's creative destruction so even the best possible order in terms of internationally set order is going to have its limitations. And so what it will need is that it will have to be supplemented with domestic policies that address the fact that there are some who lose in this process of globalization. A problem of domestic economic policies and if a number of states start to get those a bit more right, then the rebellion calms down and no one will be talking about the collapse of the order anymore so that's a very real possibility.

 

As back in 15^th century Florence, oligarchy family like Albizzi always preferred war as it was means to create wealth for them and maintain their power. While Cosimo de’ Medici was the man of new generation who preferred to enrich the people of city by creating jobs and flourishing artists rather than wages of destructions. The people were grateful, not to Albizzi for waging war, but to the Medici for feeding their families. But while these lovely jobs drain Medici accounts, their taxes fund Albizzi war and Medici knew as long as that continues they are all doomed. Just like today’s techno sovereignty as digital entities which gained economic capacity, increased markets and more capacity of investment which made them almost state-like entities given the amount of population they can influence in the world at any moment to their digital citizens as many of those feel more aligned to these digital entities rather than their local sovereign governments who just preys on their local citizens.

 

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. And Beggar-thy-neighbor policy, in international trade, an economic policy that benefits the country that implements it while harming that country’s neighbors or trading partners. It usually takes the form of some kind of trade barrier imposed on the neighbors or trading partners or a devaluation of the domestic currency to gain competitive advantage over them. The idea behind beggar-thy-neighbor policies is the protection of the domestic economy by reducing imports and increasing exports. That is usually achieved by encouraging consumption of domestic goods over imports using protectionist policies such as import tariffs or quotas to limit the amount of imports. Often the domestic currency is devaluated as well, which makes domestic goods cheaper for foreigners to buy, resulting in more exports of domestic goods abroad. The most important thing which never concerned us and our earth system had to subsidize previous industrial revolutions and such toxic policies by allowing us to over-exploit natural resources and undermining bio diversity.

 

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 slowed global growth due to protectionism threatening multilateral world order, trade wars, inequality, AI and climate change challenges. 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.

Antiquity Light luogo Link

When world growing darker around you, great men reached out to ancient knowledge which became refuge to them, a private freedom to feel and candle to see new world unfold. The chapters of history can offer some ancient wisdom like a ray of light from a distant star because it comes and shine on us showing the way in the darkness even though the source of that like, the star from it came long gone and doesn’t exist anymore. So let’s go back in history to fetch some light to see if can find some relevant fundamental narrative which can inspire us to resolve our todays some of challenges and guide us towards sustainable developing future. We are going back in the Florence, Italy to the time after Petrarch and before Machiavelli. Florence at the dawn of the 15th century was extremely unusual, major trading center at the heart of Tuscany and as a scaled down version of the 20th century globalized world. With no king, prince or duke, the city was an independent republic, run by the people, for the people. It was not a perfect democracy but it worked and was responsible for creating a group of powerful families, dynasties who vied with each other for political control of this thriving city. The Florentine system did encourage an oligarchy of rival families to attain positions of power, proving critical to the development of an enterprising, peace-loving city, and fueling the competition which lay behind much of the Renaissance.

If I see our world with this renaissance era in mind and try to contextualize the 20^th century world from the Florentine historical point of view I find many similarities between the our modern world and 15^th century Florence. As we have world certainly not unipolar but kind of Florentine oligarchy with multipolar world in which powerful nations are influencing the world as those Florentine families were to the 15^th century Florence, world is quite peace-loving too relative to our history, fueling competitions of course as space race between USA and USSR is best example of it and I do believe we are in the second renaissance phase as in less than a single lifespan, we went from first manned flight to first man on the moon. Medici family’s Rise and contribution in 15^th century Florence city and the same of USA in 20^th century world has some parallel implications.

 

The Albizzi were once of the oldest families in Florence and led the republican government for two generations. By 1427, they were the most powerful family in the city, and far richer than the Medici. Rinaldo was striving to restore the old order to gain the position once his father held but not with progress sustaining commercial viability but by waging wars just like his father but that was old era when the feudal nobility, whose property surrounded the city, had been always at war with the burghers and the hasty recourse to brute force in all matters of dispute, the possession of land was still the one mark of social status, political theory and diplomacy were yet in their infancy. Rinaldo rallied some of jealous nobles to his cause offering them positions of power in a new Signoria, which he meant to control after Cosimo execution with the flawed justice system of weak Florentine democracy. He brought the republic to the brink of ruin overthrowing democratic rule to be the prince of Florence. The Albizzis enfeebled themselves by decades of easy privilege and city was stagnating under their influence. The victory of 1871, the Unification of Germany into German Empire, a Prussia-dominated state with federal states was officially proclaimed and a conservative German statesman who masterminded it was Otto von Bismarck. The defeat of 1918 after World War One did undo it.

Hitler wanted to achieve the same unification again. Both Albizzi and Hitler embraced war to accomplish their goal and both were outdated unable to adopt the changing world with time to dissociate politics from force because force then had no utility. The Florence city wanted new leadership which exactly Medici provided it. Cosimo himself contributed to what had already been acquired the theory of the Balance of Power among states, and, with some help from Francesco Sforza, invented and elaborated those methods of diplomatic intrigue by which the balance of power was maintained, and which were to lasted for 40 years giving Florence the peace that nurtured and flourished renaissance which shaped the world with progress.

The US joining the post-war order has by far the most well-established and in particular after 1989 Universal of these narratives one based on economic and political liberalization on democratization to a certain degree on global economic integration sovereignty a whole range of the norms that underwrite this post-war order. 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. And USA played very important role in building these global institutions.

 

Progress neither possible by being stuck in quagmire of wars nor expected from warmongering mentalities. In terms of foreign policy, Cosimo worked to create peace in northern Italy through the creation of a balance of power between Florence, Naples, Venice and Milan. The resultant balance of power with Milan and Florence on the one side and Venice and the Kingdom of Naples on the other created nearly half a century of peace that enabled the development of the Renaissance in Italy. Similarly, as post 1945 order is something fundamentally different from those earlier ones, nuclear weapons deter war, the level of integration is so much greater the response to the 2008 financial crisis was radically different than the 1930s and shows the country's appreciate the need to keep the system going. And we are in the phase of Renaissance 2.0 resulted during peaceful last half a century.

Wherever mankind continues to explore throughout the great unknown of outer space, it will all be made possible by the work of hundreds of thousands who collectively made one giant leap a half century ago. As fifty years ago, after Apollo 8 seven months later, Neil Armstrong takes that unforgettable giant leap for mankind. From the time of its launch on July 16, 1969, until the return splashdown on July 24 (which is my birthday date as well 24 July 1988), the spectacular feat was watched by more than 500 million people, one-fifth of the global population. And it inspired generations of astronauts and engineers. Apollo 11, U.S. spaceflight during which commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin, Jr., on July 20, 1969, became the first people to land on the Moon and walk the lunar surface. Apollo 11 was the culmination of the Apollo program and a massive national commitment by the United States to beat the Soviet Union in putting people on the Moon. It was only the first stage of NASA’s moon domination. In the three year that followed, ten more Americans land on the moon. As for the Soviets, they abandon any ambitions of getting there, instead started focusing a different space dream, launching an orbital space station called Mir meaning “Peace”.

 

The Medici of Florence in the fifteenth century with their love for art, science and culture did much to influence the Renaissance and to enable the great artists, humanists, and writers, to produce their works that have been so influential down the centuries. The revival of learning, rationality and the arts patronized by the Medici made household names of the greatest artists and thinkers of their age Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, Botticelli, and Galileo catalyzing the Renaissance that began in the early 14th century in Italy spread throughout Europe, sped along by the invention of the printing press, and forever transformed the Western world. The Medici family not just brought stability and peace to the city of Florence but bankrolled the cultural movement that dragged Europe out of the Dark Ages and into modernity. The Renaissance in art, science and literature that Cosimo de’ Medici and his grandson Lorenzo de’ Medici helped to bring about has never been equaled.

For over a hundred years a great unfinished Cathedral had loomed on the Florence. The original planners had been overly ambitious they had meant to build the largest dome in the world and they had failed. The cathedral more than any other building of any nature in a medieval and renaissance city represents the symbol of the identity of the community and having the project not completed was a sort of mutilation. All contemporary building knowledge had been exhausted now the city looked for fresh ideas from a new generation. Cosimo de Medici had grown up in the shadow of the Cathedral, now he and his father stood on the threshold of city power perhaps they could apply the enterprising spirit to the greatest problem of the age and in the process win glory and power for the Medici family. Brunelleschi's intricate design would stand up, the city of Florence was nervous and no one more anxious than Cosimo himself. His patronage of Brunelleschi was well known nothing could please Cosimo's enemies more than to see Brunelleschi fail. As Cosimo's wealth and power increased so did the resentment of the ruling Albizzi family they were losing their grip on the government of Florence. Cosimo’s rivals the old Albizzi family had governed Florence for generations they were wary of any challenge to the power. If the Medici and their followers have more authority then the Albizzi and their followers have less Authority, both parties can't win one party has to go. A battle between rival families would endanger not just the future of the Medici dynasty but it would threaten to drag Florence back into the world of the middle Ages.

As NASA’s Apollo missions were being planned, there was concern that the lunar module might sink right into the surface or become stuck in it. When Kennedy announced to go to the moon, they didn't have a clue how the hell they were going to do it but they just said we got to get to the moon before the Russians. and look what happened not only are they the only country to land people on the moon and get them back and they did it in less than a decade. Thanks in part to the massive, 400,000-person effort that put astronauts on the Moon seven years later; our knowledge of the solar system has increased dramatically in the decades since. Many immigrants on green card contributed too, many with work Visa got sponsored for their talent. But all of the unexpected results from that every year NASA publishes a magazine called spin-off and it's loaded with dozens of innovations that have resulted just from the commitment to get to the moon. Dozens of products that have come out of it just because Americans said we're going to get to the moon first and even now 50 years later. When Nobel prizes in science are announced, more than half of them there are scientists working in America. So this is what a very profound lesson that the important thing to try to achieve anything is make the commitment that this is what we've got to do. The many challenges NASA overcame forced the agency and its partners to devise new inventions and techniques that spread into public life, many of which are taken for granted today. NASA’s Spinoff highlights NASA technologies that benefit life on Earth in the form of commercial products. We’ve profiled more than 2,000 spinoffs since 1976 — As Apollo technologies have made their way into everyday life, there’s more space in your life than you think!

SMART’s METL tire is based on NASA rover tech, startup working with NASA’s Glenn Research Center, revealed its first product: An airless bicycle tire based on technology so called “shape memory alloy” (SMA), NASA engineers created to make future lunar and Martian rovers even more resilient. SMA allows for a tire constructed entirely of interconnected springs, which requires no inflation and is therefore immune to punctures, but which can still provide equivalent or better traction compared to inflatable rubber tires, and even some built-in shock absorbing capabilities. A rover on the Moon has metal wheels that can flex around rocky obstacles, then reshape back to their original form. On Earth, surgeons install tiny mesh tubes that can dilate a heart patient’s blood vessels all in their own, without mechanical inputs or any wires to help. These shape-shifting capabilities are all thanks to a bizarre kind of metal called ‘nitinol’, a so-called shape-memory alloy that can be trained to remember its own shape. The decades-old material has become increasingly common in a wide range of everyday applications. The metal will face its most challenging application yet: a sample return mission on Mars.

So just a reflection on the value of even saying that you want to go into Space, the projects are not expensive or you're not colonizing yet because by doing that can have an effect on culture. As space is a gateway subject into the sciences, all of these physics, planetary geology, biology, chemistry, medicine and all of this matters when you go into space. So it is the ideal driver of STEM fields. Science technology engineering and math, STEM fields are the engines of tomorrow's economy so if you have to ask what's your budget for space exploration? and as Moneys are established by a tax base funded by an electorate, research with unknown returns on investments in fields not yet fully understood by the public. This is really hard to get money for, but innovations in today's technology drive tomorrow's economies. If the world economy and population is to keep expanding space is the only way to go.

 

Similarly Brunelleschi too wasn’t sure about his solution of flying buttress imbedded in the dome itself by building two domes, the inner dome to serve as support for the outer dome because no one had ever attempted to build a structure of that scale before him neither he was having any simulation tools to test his proposed solutions. So if Medici funds him that would be an act of faith and he did fund him as he made commitment to complete the dome for cathedral. Cosimo had broadened his circle of radical friends amongst his favorites was a notorious sculptor, Donatello. Donatello’s David was one of the most revolutionary works hard in the 15^th century because it was the first time since the ancient Romans that anyone had tried to make a free-standing bronze sculpture of a nude man. Cosimo gives a space to artists and writers to develop new ideas that are outside the orthodoxy of the Catholic Church, art is really where it's happening. Art, sculpture and architecture are pushing forward the boundaries of what it's possible to actually do; No one in Florence was taking more risks than Brunelleschi.

 

Cosimo developed a strategy in spending money in such a way that wealth would be transformed into prestige and power. Cosimo de Medici became the most sought-after patron in Florence. Cosimo spent six hundred thousand golden floorings in patronage which is six times the total state entry for one year. Patronage is great for the production of art but totally rational from an economic point of view patronage is a political strategy this in my opinion is one of the keys to understand the Renaissance this high political competition expressed through patronage in a city with those art potentialities gave birth to an art market that has no equivalent elsewhere in Italy at the time. why the artist needs the patron is very simple there are no public art markets in the Renaissance as we have today you didn't make art and then put it in the shop window and wait for someone to buy it you only made art what somebody commissioned it from you and paid you for it, more or less in advance. The man working on the best project in Florence was Filippo Brunelleschi and he continued to break boundaries of conventional understanding. He simply saw the world as no other man ever had; in 1434 Brunelleschi unveiled a new technique that radically changed Western art. He invented perspective Brunelleschi developed linear perspective which allowed pictures to create the convincing illusion of a three-dimensional space where gothic art is primarily flat to represent objects as three-dimensional rounded solid forms imitating the appearance of the natural world. Perspective revolutionizes everything. It revolutionizes art but then of course it revolutionizes how we see completely. Something small may seem enormous, depending from where you view it and vice versa. Something Cosimo might learned from Brunelleschi’s Perspective theory which might helped him to recognized a true artists even among maverick person such as Filippo Lippi. Cosimo discovered payment alone didn't guarantee results. he had particular problems with the wayward monk and artist Filippo Lippi. Lippi was put into the monastery because he was an orphan not because he asked to go into the monastery and he really wasn't suited for that kind of life. His life included many tales of lawsuits, complaints, broken promises, and scandal. Cosimo tolerated his temperamental artists because of their talent; he understood that you get better work out of people when people are happy. So rather than yelling at them and being imperious and demanding and holding them to the letter of every little contract, you might get better work and more reliable work if you treated them like human beings who have other needs and have another life. That perspective created a modern way of looking. It began in the 15th century and it very much begins under Cosimo with Brunelleschi.

Jim Lovell one of real heroes on Apollo 8 while he was circling around the moon, he did something amazing that he put his thumb out and he realized with his thumb at arm's length. He could cover the whole earth everything he'd ever known, and he said something amazing the old saying I hope I go to heaven when I die, he said I realized at that moment you go to heaven when you're born. For a brief moment, a fractured world was brought together in awe. At the time, expanding on Apollo wasn’t so far-fetched. The country’s Cold War competition and desire to be first rapidly expanded the potential of space exploration. Two years after NASA began operations, the U.S. government allocated 500 million dollars of the federal budget to the agency. In just five years, the budget grew to 5.2 billion dollars which represented 5.3 percent of all government spending. NASA expanded facilities across the country: the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, the Launch Operations Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida and the Mississippi Test Facility. With the massive expansion came hundreds of thousands of jobs. NASA’s labor force peaked in the mid 60’s with a reported 400,000 staffers and contractors. The majority of NASA’s resources went to the Apollo Program. Between 1959 and 1973, the agency spent just over 23 billion dollars on human spaceflight of which nearly 20 billion dollars was for Apollo. That amount of money today would equate to over 130 billion dollars spent on one program alone. That's roughly equivalent to spending NASA's current annual budget on a single project and sustaining that effort for more than a decade.

His magnificent dome was rising even higher but with each new brick the angle of the dome increased, this was the critical phase of Brunelleschi's design. One of the major problems for Brunelleschi faced when he was building the dome and particularly when he got to the upper reaches of it and so was how he could prevent the bricks from falling inward. So resolve this Brunelleschi did was to insert bands of vertical brickwork to tie the horizontal courses to these vertical ones which were keyed to courses five six rows beneath that where the mortar. Brunelleschi's herringbone design was untried and untested; the slightest miscalculation could result in catastrophic failure. It would have been a disaster but contemporaries might say not as much a disaster in terms of not completing an architectural project, but a disaster in failing in producing the most grandiose symbol of Florentine pride ever. From his patrons to his workers all looked on in disbelief, Brunelleschi had to prove that he was right. Brunelleschi was a very hands-on person not only did he inspect many of the bricks that were used and sent consignments back if they weren't quite up to snuff. He also actually laid some of the bricks himself. The workers weren't certain at all that this was a viable proposition to lay these on an inward curving vault and so he himself went up and practiced what he preached.

The 1960s every next mission from Mercury to Gemini to Apollo went from one astronaut to two to three. Every next mission was more ambitious than the previous one. It went a little farther, it stayed a little longer, they brought more cargo, they did more things this kept an interest level of the press and of the public, they could talk about new things each time. It was a daring challenge that would ignite American momentum. With new urgency, NASA's fledgling Mercury and Gemini projects scored quick success. John Glenn's solo orbit and for the first time, space walks. NASA astronauts, engineers, and American industries spent the decade working round the clock. And by 1967, it was time for Apollo's first manned flight.

As I said that I do believe we are in the second renaissance phase as in less than a single lifespan, we went from first manned flight to first man on the moon. Medici family’s Rise and contribution in 15^th century Florence city and the same of USA in 20^th century world has some parallel implications. The genius of Brunelleschi had defied all doubt and danger in 1436 Brunelleschi who has been keeping the faith all this time that he could build that dome without aid of scaffolding or any other visible support has brought in reality, in a little poem he wrote this miracle to pass, this great achievement had mirrored the rise of the city's most powerful family and it hovered majestically over the city of Florence. Similarly Wright brothers too defied all doubts and danger with their successful first flight in 1903. And now as I am writing this blog in the ‘month of ingenuity’, April 2021 NASA Mars Helicopter Ingenuity hovered majestically over the Martian surface successfully. With NASA’s Ingenuity, Wright Brothers dreams of flying got accomplished again but this time on Mars as Ingenuity helicopter did carried a small swatch of muslin material from the lower-left wing of the Wright Brothers Flyer 1. It is located on the underside of the helicopter’s solar panel.

If Cosimo could have looked into the future, he would have seen the story of the Renaissance unfold on the ceiling of the dome itself, weighing 37,000 tons and using more than four million bricks. Brunelleschi's dome was proof that man could conquer the seemingly impossible. A friend of Cosimo's wrote of its impact, it touches the skies and casts its shadow on the whole of Tuscany. When we saw the first image from Ingenuity helicopter which showed its shadow on the surface of Mars during its flight, that moment was so profound for all of us. And Ingenuity weighing just four pounds not just touched the skies, in fact it went beyond limits of sky and now casts its shadow on entire planet Earth from planet Mars. So just keep on reading, we will come to the point that we are indeed living in Renaissance 2.0 era.

With Apollo mission journey of 240,000 miles was not to just discover magnificent desolation on the moon, but to get a whole bunch of new questions to ask that we could ask ourselves. This enormous event regardless of race, sex, or religious belief uniquely united the entire world in this singular human achievement. After this journey on the Earth is never the same as this new perspective seeing the Earth from space, in all our unity and cohesion brought us an unprecedented shift in our thinking. That was a powerful reminder of our capacity for greatness as a species. Not simply represented the engineering triumph, but the triumph of human ambition, the desire to reach quite literally for the stars.

The end of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia also brought to a close 15 years of astounding change in world politics that featured the arrival of the space and missile age, the climax of decolonization, the assertions of Maoist China and Gaullist France, the shattering of the myth (fostered by Washington and Moscow alike) of a monolithic Communist world, and the relative decline of American power. In 1969, the very moment when astronauts were setting foot on the Moon to fulfill Kennedy’s pledge to prove American superiority, Nixon and Kissinger were struggling to adjust to the new realities and manage a limited American retreat. They succeeded brilliantly in establishing a triangular relationship with Moscow and Peking and appeared to have replaced Cold War with détente. After the success of Apollo 11 mission the astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were sent around the world on a victory tour.

In the Medici, Brunelleschi had found patrons willing to gamble on his judgment. Brunelleschi's vision with resurrect forgotten concepts of the past. Brunelleschi was using the classical orders of architecture, something that hadn't been used in over a thousand years and the people of Florence were so amazed by this that. It said that they gathered on the building site much to the inconvenience of the workmen and actually watched this happening because it simply hadn't seen anyone build in that style before. Out of Brunelleschi's turbulent mind had come a vision of classical simplicity. He would spark an architectural revolution across Europe. Innovation and ambition went hand in hand and for the Medici this was only the beginning.

The Renaissance began during Cosimo's de facto rule of Florence, the seeds of which had arguably been laid before the Black Death tore through Europe. Niccolo Niccoli was the leading Florence humanist scholar of the time. He appointed the first Professor of Greek, Manuel Chrysoloras (the founder of Hellenic studies in Italy), at the University of Florence in 1397. Niccoli was a keen collector of ancient manuscripts, which he bequeathed to Cosimo upon his death in 1437. Poggio Bracciolini succeeded Niccoli as the principal humanist of Florence. Bracciolini was born Arezzo in 1380. He toured Europe, searching for more ancient Greco-Roman manuscripts for Niccoli. Unlike his employer, Bracciolini also authored his own works. He was made the Chancellor of Florence shortly before his death, by Cosimo, who was his best friend. Cosimo had grown up with only three books, but by the time he was thirty, his collection had grown to 70 volumes. After being introduced to humanism by a group of literati who had asked for his help in preserving books, he grew to love the movement and gladly sponsored the effort to renew Greek and Roman civilization through literature, for which book collecting was a central activity. "Heartened by the romantic wanderlust of a true bibliophile, the austere banker even embarked on several journeys in the hunt for books, while guaranteeing just about any undertaking that involved books. He financed trips to nearly every European town as well as to Syria, Egypt, and Greece organized by Poggio Bracciolini, his chief book scout." He engaged 45 copyists under the bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci to transcribe manuscripts and paid off the debts of Niccolo de' Niccoli after his death in exchange for control over his collection of some 800 manuscripts valued at around 6,000 florins. He employed Donatello, Brunelleschi, and Michelozzo. All these artistic commissions cost Cosimo over 600,000 florins. Cosimo's fervent patronage transformed Florence into the epitome of a Renaissance city.

Cosimo was quick to capitalize on the triumph. He planned a dazzling international spectacle, the Council of Florence. It would be a global showcase for the magnificent new dome in the celebration of Florentine art and culture which had blossomed under Cosimo de Medici. The council brought together the greatest mix of thinkers, artists, merchants and churchmen that the world had ever seen. News quickly spread of the birth of a new Rome on the banks of the river Arno. In the streets and in the piazzas the cultures of east and west were brought together and bankrolling it all was Cosimo de Medici. The most interesting thing he did that paid all the travel expenses of all people from exotic places like India and Ethiopia. Messengers were sent out to call people from these far distant lands which are literally mythic to the Florentines. Cosimo's guests gazed in wonder at an explosion of art and culture in the shadow of Brunelleschi's dome. Cosimo was thrilled, he set up public lectures on Plato. It was just the best thing possible and of course it also gave him this great political cachet. It was the culmination of everything he'd ever wanted. Cosimo and now the great intercessor for the Florentine people he truly was their patron, their godfather of the Renaissance.

With the Soviet Union’s fall, the cold war was over, and competition in space gives way to a new era of cooperation between the US and a new, friendlier Russia. In 1998, a new chapter in space exploration began as construction starts on the first International Space Station. It’s the largest man-made object in space, bigger than an NFL football field. Five different agencies collaborated in on its assembly. The ISS becomes a feel good symbol of international collaboration. For the last 20 years lots of our efforts have been around the International Space Station that has been a marvel of international cooperation. A hundred and three countries have been involved in that program. We have been living and working side-by-side in space for 18 years, and so ISS is the most powerful example of international cooperation in the history of mankind that's something to be really proud. If you go to the space station there has been nothing but peaceful cooperation for last 20 years, so we could all learn something about each other and how to deal with each other in space but in terms of where we're going.

USA and China are playing an important role in today’s space exploration as both successfully sent rovers recently into the Mars orbit, but there was not much cooperation between the two countries. While I am writing this blog, China just launched the first module of its new space station. The Tianhe module meaning “Heavenly Harmony”, containing living quarters for three crew, a milestone in Beijing’s ambitious plan to place a permanent human presence in space. Hao Chun, director of the China Manned Space Engineering office, said there will be foreign astronauts working and living in the Chinese Space Station in the future. The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and China have already signed a cooperation agreement for the utilization of the space station under the framework of the UNOOSA’s Access to Space for All initiatives with an innovative and future-focused programme to open up space exploration activities to all Nations and to create a new paradigm in building capabilities in space science and technology. Through this programme, UNOOSA intends to capitalize on the technological and innovative skills of the Government of China to benefit Member States of the United Nations, in particular developing countries, thereby contributing to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through increasing access to space.

The programme is jointly implemented by UNOOSA and CMSA providing scientists from around the world with an opportunity to conduct their own experiments on board China’s Space Station. NASA has talked openly about hoping that there will be more than one space station up there, so it seems like they're welcoming to China's participation and many of the partners that work with china on their space station. So usually you find out that there may be an issue between one country and another, but in the broader scheme of things everybody does work together. Fifty years after the moon landing, NASA announced the plans to return as part of their most ambitious mission yet. The investments announced to be made will empower the people of NASA preparing to send astronauts to Mars in the 2030s. NASA decided to have a lunar orbiter first that is a space station around the moon and then build the rocket around the moon, so that it can then go to mars in a two-jump process. There is a debate whether or not we should go to mars in one jump or whether we should go to mars in two jumps. As China announced some technology development for some time, the super heavy launch vehicles which are potential for the use of the future main mission to the moon and so in the future china will also have much kind of international corporations. For instance this time china has already cooperated with France, Argentina and Austria for Tianwen1 mission and in the future missions we can see more this kind of cooperation. China's space station also will act as an international platform for cooperation and not only as a national space laboratory.

With Artemis Program with goal of landing “the first woman and the next man” on the moon, NASA has led a group of nations expecting international partnerships to play a key role in advancing Artemis as the next step towards the long-term goal of establishing expedition team and a sustainable presence on the moon, laying the foundation for private companies to build a lunar economy, and eventually sending humans to Mars. The Artemis Accords are an international agreement between governments of participating nations in the Artemis Program on the principles for cooperation in the civil exploration and use of the Moon, Mars, comets and asteroids for peaceful purposes, and is grounded in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.  Artemis Accords which is a set of agreements of nations and how they're going to work together, so we're inevitably going to be seeing this not just with the moon but with mars and other planets because no one country can do the best job by themselves and there's a strength in collaboration which is exactly what is going on at Mars.

But Mars is 160 times further away than the moon. It will take eight months to get there. Why go to the expense and risk of going all that way? Well, the race to space began through fear, as a reaction to the threat of an enemy. But while reaching to the moon, we gained new perspective on our home planet. Today, new threats are re-focusing our gaze back on our little blue marble. In order preserve it, the nations of the world will need to work together. The next space race may not be nation against nation, but humanity against the clock. So if climate change is real that means terraforming is possible too, we are changing the planet's climate here meaning. We are terraforming the earth right now, human activities changing the weather of an entire planet. Some people say why not to do the same on mars, the dinosaurs did not have a space program and that's why they're not here today. There are no dinosaurs running around today because they didn't have a space program and they were helpless when an asteroid or meteor hit Mexico 66 million years ago. But we do have a space program and perhaps one day we will be able to do terraforming of Mars.

Climate change is a global threat to our planet it is probably the defining issue of our time and it's absolutely essential to mobilize the whole world to defeat it. 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. 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 I mentioned in my previous blog ‘Classical Antiquity in 2021’ perspective matters as with technological advancement before moon landing and overview effect; Dresden was one of the Europe’s most beautiful city was called as ‘Florence on the Elbe’ turned into a pile of rubble during World War two, instead with international collaboration and the sense of overview effect we can create O'Neill colonies replicating earth cities in space, we might pick historical cities and mimic them in some way that there'd be whole new kinds of architecture, let’s say ‘Florence in the Space’.

Heavy industry and all the polluting industry, all the things that are damaging our planet those can be done off earth. We get to have both that preserve this unique gem of a planet which is completely irreplaceable there is no planet B and terraforming of the Mars in the process. But this work is for future generations to sustain humankind in the process. They are going to build whole industries; thousands of future companies doing this work. The whole ecosystem, entrepreneurial activity, unleashed creative people coming up with new ideas about how to use space.

Martian waves on Planet Earth

Next generation will be going to build those little colonies in space for that purpose which is only possible if we do our job today which it to build the infrastructure, a sustainable road to space and comprehensive understanding of possible space for future generation’s human settlement like Mars. This is what happening now as space agencies making efforts to know Mars better as we have seen this year with three successful missions from different agencies and private industries are racing with goal of making reusable spacecraft with its main goal to fly to the moon and back without wasting any boosters and maybe in future to take humans to Mars. Globalization in last two decades indeed helped countries to carry dispute free trading, increase in productivity and efficiency boosting technological development. In the age of globalization and digital capitalism, the private industries as digital entities which gained economic capacity, increased markets and more capacity of investment which made them almost state-like entities given the amount of population they can influence in the world at any moment. Hence when government agencies are developing spacecraft it takes way longer relative to the private industries which can afford failures during initial prototype testing. The pace at which SpaceX is developing is truly astounding. In less than three years they have built and flown eight different prototypes of Starship SN series with every flight progress is made. On 3^rd March 2021, quite important day not only because it’s my brother’s birthday but SpaceX successfully conducted a soft landing for starship prototype SN10 during test flight. The flight marked the first time a Starship prototype successfully landed after attempting the bellyflop maneuver. On 16^th April 2021 SpaceX was awarded a contract to develop the Starship HLS (Human Landing System) lander for Artemis missions, but as I am writing and got news that NASA suspended the SpaceX Starship HLS contract, so I guess there is hope for other private companies to be part of the mission by proving their technology or get runner up as a backup system. This shows that balancing government and private initiatives is somehow moving the space exploration forward.

 

Space exploration makes us child again with childlike curiosity for autocatalytic positive goal, so more we explore more we will search to go into new world and universe is indeed that vast enough with full of resources for our sustainable future and to keep us busy both objectively and subjectively in unraveling the unknown things than wasting our efforts and resources on relative mess among each other. So why not get busy with , as if we're out in the solar system, we can have a trillion humans in the solar system which means we'd have a thousand Mozart's and a thousand Einsteins. This would be an incredible civilization with space for trillion humans in space with the O'Neill’s idea of manufactured worlds, large rotating cylindrical structure creating artificial gravity with centrifugal force.

What if humanity gets bigger?

9^th January 2018: Exactly three years ago on, I mentioned in my blog ‘Friendly nature of Mars’ that with the current technological advances, we are enhancing our intelligence with increased capability to understand the things within no time, but are we getting wiser? The famous quote from Einstein that, “I fear the day when the technology overlaps with our humanity. The world will only have a generation of idiots”. Which I consider he meant regarding morality and today neither scientific understanding nor religious beliefs are enough to bind us morally. Hence there is need to change the paradigm from objective dumbness with delusional high intelligence to the subjective curiosity for absolute wisdom and wasteful relative competition to the absolute positive goal.  And 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 today's because once the vastness of this universe becomes accessible starting from Mars as just a way-point to go towards stars, new societies, cultures and human values will arise that we can’t imagine yet. So let’s imagine if we advanced in space successfully with colonization of Mars, O'Neill’s manufactured worlds. In that case Carl Sagan’s poetic that blue dot that's where everyone you know and everyone you ever heard of and every human being who ever lived out their lives a very small stage in a great cosmic arena for all of human history will not be the case anymore and new perspective will emerge that the earth is no longer big, but humanity is. TV series ‘The Expanse’ set in the 23rd century where humans have colonized the solar system and the three largest powers are the United Nations of Earth and Luna governed by our current United Nations (UN), the Martian Congressional Republic on Mars as independent military power, and the Outer Planets Alliance (OPA), a loose configuration of the asteroid belt and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Portraying Martians as dreamers with an entire culture dedicated to a common goal, working together as one to turn a lifeless rock into a garden where everybody is ambitious and contributing for not only terraforming Mars but also developing advanced technology and Earthers as short sighted who took their life sustaining planet for granted and only care about government handouts living the aimless lives while in the Belt, air and water are more precious than gold which makes Belters life quite a struggle. Over the course of the show, the writers hammer home a key point. Although humans unified on Earth and left to colonize the Solar System, they took with them many of its problems: wealth inequality, racism, techno-nationalism and political turmoil and so rising tensions between Earth, Mars and the Belt have put them on the brink of war reflecting a Hobbesian view of the world or in this case solar system, a “war of all against all”. Overview effect has to be re-understood as in this case humanity is not just limited to Earth and as our perspective might have evolved by this time.

 

All war can result is destruction and pity for those generations both who suffered by it and who inspired to cause it. And that was the world for centuries as one will find the ultimate goal to conquer over others and that their ultimate mind could think of, certainly not wise or civilized, “the barbarians”. And that was story of Florence city too as in 1304, the war between the Ghibellines and the Guelphs led to a great fire which destroyed much of the city.

In 70 BC, Rome was republic, home to nearly four million people, from wealthy politicians to lowly slaves. Instead of an emperor or king, Romans were governed by an elected senate. But ruling over them were two consuls, the chief executives of the republic, an officials who wields more power than any other man in Rome. For decades, Caesar watched an inefficient Senate grow increasingly powerful. Caesar had a keen sense of what was working in the Republic, and what was not working. Economic inequality, the senate was filled with corruption. The calendar had completely fallen out of whack; their ability to keep time had even fallen into a deplorable state. Caesar could see all of it; he could see what needed to be done. So Caesar sought to reform this. He assuming dictatorial power allowed him to make reforms that had not been able to be carried forth. He wanted support of the Roman people and wanted to be seen as a legitimate ruler. So when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, he resurrected an office that had really fallen into disuse and appointed himself dictator of Rome for 10 years, giving him authority to pass any law he sees fit. This is one man for a limited amount of time, holds absolute sole authority. The dictator was started off life as an emergency office only to be held for six months. It was almost a primeval feature of the Roman republican constitution. Caesar held this office not for a military emergency, but for reconstituting the Roman state. To put it back together in such a way that he would have an unassailable position at the very top, and this was extremely un-Roman. It was a real slap in the face not just to the Senate, but to the entire idea of the Republic. And so by appointing himself dictator for ten years, Caesar ignores the rules of the constitution, allowing him more time to fix the Republic. He didn’t want to be seen as a simple military tyrant. He began a massive construction program building temples, libraries, and a new harbor, providing jobs for thousands of Romans. He introduced a new calendar as Roman government had become so corrupt, so inept, that they had literally lost track of the days, the months, the seasons. Caesar bases the new calendar on a solar year, putting the entire Republic on a universal timetable, one that is still used today. The month of July is named in his honor, just to tell you that I was born in July month too [:D].

Caesar was a paradox as a politician. On one hand his priority was always Caesar, but on the other hand he would try to extend more benefits to ordinary people instead of supporting side of wealth and power. He wanted to acquire all the power that he can, but he was also trying to create a bigger, more impressive system of Roman government that is fit for purpose when it comes to ruling what was by then a global empire stretching across the whole Mediterranean world. So he could push through his own legislative agenda, do whatever he wants, without having to worry about getting the Senate’s support, stripping it’s of all authority. So for many of them, it was hard to tolerate a situation where republic had been defeated by an individual man. Inside Rome, there was fear that was beginning to set in that Caesar going to do is making himself king of Rome. The idea that there would be a king of Rome was anathema to Roman political psychology. Incite the Senate, conspiracy begun to get rid of Caesar. On the 14^th March, 44 B.C., Julius Caesar was assassinated by a fraction of senators. By assassinating Caesar, the Roman senators believed they were saving the Republic. But opposite occurred, as after that in Rome years of violence and upheaval took place and the only way to restore peace was through the leadership of one man. His name was Octavian, the nephew of Julius Caesar. And on the 27^th January B.C., he became Rome’s first emperor, ruling for the next 40 years. Caesar did take steps to curb corruption, to eliminate debt, to make life a bit better for the poorer citizens and they loved him for it. But he, in the end destroyed the Republic. The example that he set, the wheels that he set in motion caused the transformation of the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire which later faded away into the darkness of ‘dark ages’. As the madmen hungry for power as an emperor enfeebled themselves by decades of easy privilege and city was stagnating under their influence plunging not only their own people but also rest of the empire into misery.

 

Classical antiquity’s light from distant star needed time to time; no matter how big humanity gets into the vast universe. So we don’t repeat the mistakes, we don’t want to go back into the dark ages but continue the today’s Renaissance 2.0 era. As I mentioned in ‘Classical Antiquity in2021’ that, Cicero attempted to popularize Greek philosophy in Ancient Rome with his book series ‘Tusculanae Disputationes’. Comparing Greek thinkers like Archimedes to tyrants, Cicero declared that lives of the former were preferable to those of the latter as his fifth Disputation concludes that virtue is sufficient for living a happy life. Teaching us importance of thinkers, philosophers or poets to guide the world as they have the overview effect with their knowledge trying to reach god’s view but crawling up from ant view, the similar journey of an astronauts to reach certain height opening their mind with an ‘overview effect’ perspective giving them awareness of Carl Sagan’s poetic pale blue dot.

We can see those thinkers who changed the world were actually consciously or subconsciously aware of this overview effect as they didn’t bound themselves with their contemporary local saturated believes or mindset imbued with traditional rigid thinking instead looked to the ancients for guidance as their writings provided an overview of all of Greek and Roman learning which offered them fresh new ideas and perspectives when they combined those ancient thoughts with their own interpretations of those ancient thoughts which helped them in ending the dark ages and beginning of Renaissance era. So these philosophers/poets/thinkers/historians as if bending space-time with their hypothetical warping device as not limited by contemporary time and local space achieved overview effect and the enlightened generations.

As I mentioned in my another blog ‘Science-Philosophy Singularity’, 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. Which is quite aligned with the Cicero highlighted here that lives of the thinkers or philosophers were preferable to those of the tyrants as there has to be touch of subjective thinking or philosophy as well, attaching it to our human values and morality because else history keeps on repeating with madmen just hungry of power waging destruction as we know “sadly it’s much easier to create desert than forest”. Making us to rethink on our moral values and there are much better things to do than wasting our intelligence, energy and resource on unnecessary things like starting from manipulating individual’s insecurity for deceptive self-benefits to the thought of starting nuclear war. Because when 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 in the contemporary time, 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 for the better future of humanity. And hence to save the humanity from going back to the dark ages, history can act as an error correcting code. And if anyone thinks that ancient knowledge is nothing but to fall back on? Yes but the perspective is new to look at it. So when we look back the history with new 21^st century perspective, the merge of two different philosophies at the same time where ancient thoughts meets the today’s scientific mindset inspiring new interpretation, ideas and thoughts by connecting the dots which can be the addition of something new to the contemporary world in the current moment and soon will be the history and reference to next generation and cycle continues.

We as sentient beings learn from the experience updating our perspective as we get to know more and more things as a journey from relative perception to the absolute wisdom, the same way as a child on its every new experience shifts its referential approach to the universe in a world. That’s what happened to the astronauts in Apollo 8 when they saw the Earthrise for the first time giving the whole world a new perspective of ‘Overview Effect’. As our voyage to the Stars began 500 years ago in renaissance era as without Copernicus there would be no spaceflight, we must appreciate the men who sparked the that intellectual era whose butterfly effect made the todays scientific progress. So as I mentioned in my blog ‘Classical Antiquity in 2021: A ray of light from a distant star’, Petrarch, first person to coin the term ‘Dark Ages’, as a time of intellectual darkness between the fall of Rome and Renaissance. And as we know discovery of Cicero’s letter to Petrarch initiated the 14^th century Renaissance. Petrarch fetched a light of classical antiquity into the Dark Age giving rebirth to an intellectual era, on the basis of the same Petrarch’s contributions made him worth for title of “Father of Renaissance” and then many men in that generations sparked it further set the course that benefited humankind. And hence when humanity gets bigger certainly we will not have exact historic precedent for the situations we are in, but there is still lot to learn and seek the fundamental narrative we need from the history, if we refer to the right pages of it in right way. So let’s go back in history again to fetch some light to see if we can find some relevant fundamental narrative which can inspire us to resolve challenges and guide us towards sustainable developing future for greater evolved humanity.

 

Photography was born in the mid-1800s, so in that era for the first time a portrait of you did not require an artist. You would hire an artist if you were wealthy to paint your picture and you’d want it to be accurate or make you possibly look a little better. Over that period from 1840 through the 1860s all of a sudden art did not have to capture reality it was no longer the obligation of the artist because we had photographs to do that and in that period. Impressionism was born where most artists decided not to paint what they see instead preferred to paint what the image feels like to them. After opening its borders to the West in 1853, Japanese woodblock prints exerted a key influence on the work of French impressionism, seen in van Gogh’s rich and joyful color. Vincent van Gogh was fascinated by Japanese art. He was influenced by the ukiyo-e woodblock prints, especially the work of Hiroshige. He based two of his paintings on Hiroshige’s work. So as I mentioned earlier Van Gogh kind of fetched overview effect by reaching out these Japanese art and reflected into his work with his own interpretations.

Neil deGrasse Tyson talked about ‘The Starry Night’ many times publicly mentioning that how much he loves that painting which is also cover for his second book. He said that, “Van Gogh is one of my favorite artists and not only is ‘The Starry Night’ beautiful, emotional, and valuable in both art and science, it’s also the first painting where the background is the main subject of the piece. It was a pivotal point where the universe began to be seen as art and entered the mainstream. So ‘The Starry Night’ is the early morning before sunrise. The van Gogh’s sky clearly not accurate, but in the case of the artist I don’t want them to represent reality because we have telescopes for that and we need the artist to take us to new places as the Van Gogh did took us once. It’s clearly not exactly what he saw because the sky doesn’t really look like that, the swirls and the turbulence but it’s no doubt what the sky felt like to him. Hence he was really seeing the sky to get some fundamentals and the rest is his interpretation. And the more of us feel the universe that way, better off we will be in this world, for me that was the universe working its way into the artist’s vocabulary”.

 

And so speaking on the language of universe as I mentioned in one of my blog ‘Mars Rover Quote’ that 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. As we fetched some inspiration from Van Gogh’s ‘The Starry Night’ which depicts his interpretation about what sky felt like to him without any telescope or rocket science. As we know almost all Mars mission so far in the history has inspirational name and China’s first Mars mission named Tianwen1 has its own beauty too and it too brings inspiration from ancient time as a ray of light from one of distant star. The Tian-wen in Chinese meaning “Questions to the Sky” is the name of a text attributed to the poet Qu Yuan, who lived between the fourth and third centuries BC, a work that takes the form of a series of questions in verse with which the author questions some fundamental, philosophical and scientific issues. In the poem, Qu Yuan raises a series of questions about the sky, the stars, and natural phenomena, showing his desire for the truth, which perfectly fits this mission. As with many Mars missions, Tianwen-1 is about learning more about the Red Planet and, through that, for scientists to learn more about our own planet. Evidently now China hopes to find the answer to some of these questions, considering that the space probe currently orbiting Mars to give the name Tianwen-1. A name that according to the Chinese Space Agency will be given to all of China’s planetary exploration missions, signifying the Chinese nation’s perseverance in pursuing truth and science and exploring nature and the universe.

Though 2020 year has been tough but it has been a very major year for space explorations and missions. A lot of major breakthroughs occurred this year. No one would have believed that a private company would send astronauts, but SpaceX did it. Countries sent their missions to explore the red planet and therefore bringing us one step closer to the dream of sending humans to the Mars.

February 2021 was a very busy time at mars. Three spacecraft get captured by the ‘red planet’ and go into orbit after travelling 495 million miles from Earth. On 9^th February UAE’s first mission to Mars entered the orbit of the planet Mars.  The very next day 10^th February, Chinese probe Tianwen-1 also arrived into orbit carrying a rover that will go down to the Martian surface in next month. When NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars on 18^th February, it was the peak of a bustling cycle of activity at the red planet. On 21^st February Tedx Torino conducted Mars themed ‘Life on Mars’ event in the spirit of ideas worth spreading with series of talk from various researchers, influencers in the region and even arrangement of the song “Life on Mars” by David Bowie, which was presented and performed for this event. Since three missions arrived Mars in a 9 day span Mars topic podcaster Jake Robins celebrated these missions and five years of his ‘WeMartians’ podcast series with the release of new mission patch highlighting these recent three missions on it. On 22^nd February NASA released rover captured videos from on board various cameras on perseverance that really mesmerized the world; the first time recorded the real moments during the critical EDL phase so called ‘seven minutes of terror’.

 

The UAE’s ‘Hope Mars Mission’ was accomplished with international collaboration. It was built in Colorado and launched from Japan. Besides purchasing the H-2A launch from Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, UAE space agency partnered with several universities in the USA, such as Arizona State University, University of California Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado. Those universities collaborated on the spacecraft and its instruments. And their collaboration came about in a very interesting way, the international teams really meshed together for this goal. China cooperated with international partners as well; it started in collaboration with Russia, and grew to build technical partnerships with France, Argentina and Austria in this Tianwen-1 mission. Meanwhile space officials from UNOOSA, IAF, ESA, the Asia-Pacific space cooperation organization, Brazil, Pakistan have expressed a desire to strengthen aerospace cooperation with China.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance team is also made up of scientists and engineers from multiple disciplines, with international participation from countries and organizations around the world. The science team includes principal investigators from the US, Spain, and Norway. The first time Norwegian companies and scientists built georadar RIMFAX will be used on Mars. The ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and Mars Express also played key role during the landing of perseverance rover. Mars Express with Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) was monitoring the local conditions of landing site of Jezero crater sending the information to NASA EDL team as having up to date knowledge of temperature, pressure, dust and ice condition in the atmosphere which is crucial for understanding its density for predicting and analyzing the trajectory of the rover’s descent to the surface of the Red Planet.

The data transmitted by Perseverance in its first hours and days on Mars will be vital to the mission. For questions like whether rover land safely? Are all of its systems functional? And so Perseverance relies on several fellow spacecraft already orbiting Mars to communicate with Earth; sending data and images back home and receiving commands from engineers. TGO’s orbit takes it over the landing site, it supported the relay data between Perseverance rover and Earth as it was flying over the rover just four hours after the landing. And will continue to do the same along with Mars orbiters of NASA as there will be so much data transfer will be happening between rover and Earth. Also the arrival of Perseverance on Mars, the data captured during the descent so called seven minutes of terror recorded by Sardinia Deep Space Antenna (SDSA), the scientific unit of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) located in the town of San Basilio (Cagliari). SDSA joined the international Deep Space Network in September 2017, to provide navigation and communication services for interplanetary and lunar robotic and human exploration missions.

As I wrote in the Mars Rover Quote blog in year 2016 that; Mars exploration is the first step to the new era of human space exploration before reaching nearby stars to explore Earth like exoplanets in future to understand fraction of many mysteries of the universe. If you read the post title again which is a very inspiring quote indeed. The fascinating thing about it is this thought is originated from the names of three successful rovers NASA sent for Mars exploration which are Spirit (MER-A), Opportunity (MER-B) and Curiosity (MSL) to investigate the habitability of Mars. For centuries Mars has held humankind of imagination and we have come closer than ever when NASA sent these rovers to unravel some of the red planet secrets and inspired us to envision the possibility of colonizing Mars.

 

So now in year 2021 with the successful landing of NASA’s another rover, I will have to update Mars Rover Quote as, “CURIOSITY with PERSEVERANCE should be in our SPIRIT to find new OPPORTUNITY for a hopeful future of mankind.”

 

Totally make sense right? And now this year which is truly international Mars exploration with three successful missions from three different space agencies within 10 days. And with names of these latest Mars missions I have new thought too; in year 2021 all I can say,

“UAE’s hope is to join the NASA’s perseverance seeking answers for China’s questions to the sky.”

Programs like Hope Mars mission do actually usually take about 10 years from a design phase and the UAE with its baby space agency have done such a great job in pulling it all together now just in the last six years. We typically see the big headlines from organizations like NASA, ESA and this mission is a really important way to show that some of the smaller players can still have a big impact. China is also a huge player today which never was in the scene before, India as well is a big player now and now of course with the UAE coming in, so it’s a huge opportunity. The Tianwen-1 mission is also a unique as it is going to orbit, land and release a rover all on the very first try, and coordinate observations with an orbiter. No other interplanetary mission has done so in the past. Even NASA has either sent Orbiters or Rovers, but China plans to do all the three together. If successful, it would signify a major technical breakthrough. UAE and China made history joining club of mission Mars as before this only USA, Russia, EU and India were the countries in the world to ever reach the red planet. And I am sure many more will join the campaign with some sort of collaboration in this globalized world. Among the eight planets in the Solar System, Mars is the most similar to Earth and is also close by. It therefore naturally becomes a high-priority target for space exploration. Mars offers a substantial and pragmatic opportunity to answer key questions concerning the existence of extraterrestrial life, and the origin and evolution of the Solar System, and to explore the possibility of human habitation. The international planetary science community looks forward to these exciting missions, which will advance our knowledge of Mars to an unprecedented level.

 

What kind of information will UAE’s hope probe be gathering and how will this help us better understand climate change back here on earth?

Hope will be gathering observations about the entire Martian atmosphere and this is a new way of looking at the Martian atmosphere. Most previous missions have looked at one single time of day, but hope will be looking at the global atmosphere in every geographic region at every time of day. And when you do something like that you can figure out how different regions are connected to each other, how the bottom of the atmosphere connects to the top of the atmosphere. You learn about how the entire atmosphere works as a system and when you get an understanding like this, it can feed back on how atmospheres work at any place in the solar system for any planet.

We haven’t found a planet like Earth yet. It is a pretty good planet. We want to use space to make sure that we monitor and protect it. Everything else as we go out and explore drives everyone to understand that this has to be multinational. It is the same, the risk of not collaborating and not working together far outweighs any nationalistic approach when it comes to space. You lose a lot if you don’t collaborate. You incur additional unnecessary costs if you don’t collaborate, so it wouldn’t make any sense for any country to build another navigation system when you have got through that exist around Earth. There are quite a lot of satellites to have a navigation network and the same thing with communications and so on. It doesn’t make any sense to do it alone. The information that UAE’s Mars Hope probe gathers will be shared with the world for free to around 200 research centers that seems quite unusual but it’s been an important part of the entire mission contributing to the international scientific effort on mars. And that’s been an incredibly deep component of the effort and quite exciting thing for scientists working on mars climate data will be looking forward to this data to integrate it with everything else we know about Mars. No one probe can answer every question but we’re sending a lot of spacecraft to Mars and that bring us a lot of data together to address some of the fundamental questions.

 

Space exploration is not driven by governors. It is driven by scientist’s curiosity, and they drive a lot of the international collaboration. Prior to becoming a national objective, the scientists have already done their job, created the necessary collaborations, knowing that they will work on, and it is those relationships that are actually necessary. It is something less likely to be nationalist. Science has always been a collaborative effort. It’s quite optimistic view to think that all the politics we have on Earth won't spread to space, but as we know how few short-sighted governments are changing and becoming much more nationalist. The space is a conflict free zone and it has to be as and the issues of geopolitical aggression ideally speaking it should not be and will not be there as it is such an unusual sector in that respect, where the aggressor then equally is a victim of his own actions. It is not normal. Space exploration is in everyone's collective interest to maintain the safety of the operating environment. I think that will be at the heart of whatever measures we take. Hence space exploration is one way to move towards sustainable future which not only unites us for single cause but also only possible with global cooperative efforts as exploration cannot be sustained by any one nation. It cannot be sustained by any one entity. At the end we are in the same game, so like game theory why not to cooperate than compete. There are lots of interesting things to do, universe kept us hungry with its mystery and curiosity as its food. Let’s play with the same together.

The Perseverance Rover equipped with a coring drill and sample tubes will store the rocks in collection tubes after extraction. Mars Sample Return Campaign is an effort to bring samples of Martian rocks and soil back to Earth, where they can be investigated in unprecedented detail, using all the capabilities of terrestrial laboratories. It's not a single mission, we call it a campaign because it need multiple launch opportunities to be able to set the infrastructure on the surface of the planet, get the samples back off of the planet and return those to Earth safely. Perseverance will be collecting samples soil samples, rock samples burrowing down and putting them in canisters and then leaving them dozens of these canisters on the surface in piles. And then in 2026 what you have is perhaps the most ambitious of all missions where they are going to be sending in conjunction with the European Space Agency. NASA fetch rover which will go to Mars and will collect the samples bring them to a rocket on the surface, bring them to orbit and then another orbiter will come and collect the samples and bring them back to earth around 2031. The hope is that within these samples that they bring back they will finally be able to answer the pivotal question that everybody wants to know. NASA and ESA have embarked on a joint program for Mars Sample Return and the driving reason behind their collaboration is to build our capabilities to return samples from Mars in this decade that's a complicated series of missions. Mars is not easy it's difficult, what we're seeing right now with the NASA’s Perseverance mission is the first part of what will be a two-part mission which stretch out over 11 years, more than a decade and there's really not a lot or no way to really speed it up because of the fact that it's every two years you're flying and every two years you're coming back, so it does make it stretch out.

 

ESA is providing the Earth Return Orbiter which is also called as ‘first interplanetary cargo ship’, Sample Fetch Rover, and the landers robotic arm to the partnership. NASA is providing the Sample Retrieval Lander, Mars Ascent Vehicle and the Capture/Containment and Return System payload on the Earth Return Orbiter. The driving goal for this broad collaboration is the ability to do that in an international context; that the science of these missions could be very paradigm changing science. And this needs to be an international collaboration due its high expectation of scientific return of investment and also because we may change paradigms around the world with what we find out from these missions. Also these missions when you go to the surface of another planet become especially challenging cost wise as well as technically. So by merging we are keeping a very vibrant program in place that will allow us to go to Mars on every opportunity. Which essentially is a planetary alignment between Mars and Earth is optimum every 26 months makes the trip much shorter makes it easier to get to and so we like to go on those opportunities. This kind of collaboration allows us to do that on essentially every opportunity and we know it’s not possible for a single space agency to do it alone and actually could not do the Mars sample return campaign by itself. As it's complicated, expensive and really need to be an international collaboration to make it a viable mission so to be able to do more sample return in a high collaborative fashion. So it's very important to get used to working with each other.

With space field has formed this kind of tradition that's the scientific research data will be open to the whole world. After the first one of the human being landing a robotic probe to the far side of moon and China opened that data to the whole world. Although the United States congress suspend the cooperation with China but NASA has also required to consider that need of using the data by China’s relay satellite named Queqiao meaning ‘the magpie bridge’ for future mission to the far side of moon. Also the data from the perseverance and the curiosity rover will be very useful for Chinese scientists to have a better and comprehensive understanding of the Mars and the other of the future destination of Mars. All three recent successful Mars missions are very different from each other and yet very complementary. Each one doing a different part addressing a different part of the overall problem of understanding Mars and having this progress whichever country it comes from; being able to collaborate and share the information is so important. So in future it is possible to see cooperation between USA and China for space missions.

It is so huge and need the scientists to work that together to get a better understanding of this. There will be sharing of knowledge because international collaboration is really key to success, first of all in helping the trajectories and landing smoothly and then afterward sharing information, knowledge to get a much more comprehensive picture of what is going on Mars, what went on Mars in the past and what might we learn that can help her on Earth to understand our own mother planet. So as researchers keenly interested to study why Mars's atmosphere is losing hydrogen and oxygen and the reasons behind the planet’s drastic climate change. It's hoped that this will help scientists better understand and be able to answer important environmental questions about our own planet as well. Several dozen probes that have set off for mars since the 1960s many never made it that far or failed to land. 50 percent of all the spacecraft that have ever gone to mars have failed but their failure might have gave knowledge as a reference for the successful missions carried out later as India has managed to enter the planet's orbit in a first attempt and now UAE, China has also joined the club. So from the first space probes to fly by the planet in the 1960s to the planetary orbiters and rovers of today, the United States, China, Russia, Europe, Japan, India and UAE have developed Mars exploration programmes to fulfill human aspirations. Though these countries seem as competing to reach mars, they will overall help humans to understand the Red Planet, our mother planet Earth and fulfill the dream of human settlements on Mars.

Before writing further, I would like to highlight context ‘Universe is conspiring’ from my blog Revelation: Universe is conspiring.

January 2020: ‘Universe is conspiring’, Revelation: Universe is conspiring.

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 not only just working 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 global 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. J

World went into a global lockdown in the very next month as if universe really conspired to pause Earthlings to think and communicate about doing things with sustainability. Since during the global pandemic last year in 2020, the first time that the human race has had this single focused attention on one thing, just like during the Apollo program there's being a single focus on what global events but this is also interestingly the first time we've ever had a singular enemy on the planet and that's a big deal. So there was also a countervailing trend of re-globalization; since world faced global lockdown which boosted a digital world bringing them closure as best example is that people from various part of the world were meeting and coming together on online platforms like zoom having discussions. While the United States and China are drifting apart, the rest of the world was actually converging towards a consensus that actually we do live in a small imperiled planet earth. We talk a lot about United States and China in various forums and discussions, but if add up the populations of both countries that still comes to 1.7 billion people and so there still 6 billion people in the rest of the world. If we consider history in the past with world problems, our ability to actually address those problems was so weak and we now have the ability to actually use a global response to catalyze the world's knowledge, information and focus on our sustainable future together with new perspective.

And who knows this better than our astronauts who are not only experts in their respective field but also have ‘Overview Effect’ perspective. Not all astronaut were thinkers or philosophers but once got the experience of overall effect they felt enlightened and many them expressed theirs same feeling with world, in fact some with tears in their eyes as words were not enough to expressed the beauty and fragility they experienced in the space when they saw the earth from space. Also as we are looking at missions to Mars to bring back samples why there is a massive safety protocol around that before it's ever touched by human hands. So practices we following during global pandemic are quite a common things in such missions. So if we get to our Star Trek world where we will be able to scan and test for all these things very easily at the point of contact at the point of you know sort of when you encounter something would be really helpful. Like Star Trek world, you are seeing that the heroes today in the actual world are the scientists, engineers, mathematicians and the frontline workers. So perhaps if have some talents in math or science, now is a good time to realize how valuable they are in today’s world. I think the people who are going to be making the world the safer a better and more vibrant are our technologists, scientists or mathematicians. So being good at math, being good at science became a lot cooler, it's good to be great in football and soccer, but yes being good in math and science at this time is definitely an important too.

So as I said in Revelation: Universe is conspiring, we need Renaissance men to adopt in such a fast changing world with these global challenges we are facing like climate change, growing inequality, uncontrolled migration, global pandemic 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.

Today’s Renaissance 2.0 era unlike previous Renaissance not dominated by only men but also women. Space4women is a project of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) to promote women’s empowerment in space. To succeed in addressing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and work towards the 2030 Agenda ensuring that the benefits space reach women and girls and that women and girls play an active and equal role in space science, technology, innovation and exploration. Science brings people together just like music, transforming our society in a radical way. Progress is fundamental to address the societal challenge and the importance of science as a fuel of progress, science pushes back limits of knowledge as without ideas and breakthrough coming from scientific research progress stagnates and hence science must go on and innovation should not stifle which only possible by opening the gateway of curiosity with space exploration, a limitless source of unknown to dive into and convert into known wisdom.

 

So again as I said in Revelation: Universe is conspiring, 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 global 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.

And so speaking of the same, Hope Mars mission is the first interplanetary mission ever developed by an Arab state. The goals of the program are not just to learn about mars but to elevate the Arab world scientifically and to support the youth of the country to demonstrate what the United Arab Emirates can do and aims of this mission is of course to get information about mars but also really to stimulate the economy make it more of a knowledge-based economy. This combination of the science, passion, political and societal goals really set the emirates mars mission apart from most other mars missions. The UAE will lead the Arab world to new frontiers in deep space for the first time in history acting as a catalyst to further accelerate the development of the education and technology sectors. The hope of the UAE’s hope probe to Mars is to lead the path to diversify the economy easing dependence on oil and gas. The UAE is one of the most attractive destinations globally for foreign talent and investment with this important mission to the red planet, the country continues to embrace science and knowledge as we move into a new era of entrepreneurship, innovation and prosperity. UAE just partnered with Japan once again, this time to send a rover to the moon. The NASA JPL Perseverance rover’s team, in collaboration with the Navajo Nation office of the President and Vice president, has been naming features of scientific interest with words in the Navajo language. Some terms were inspired by the terrain imaged by Perseverance at its landing site. For example, one suggestion was “tsewoki bee hazhmeezh” meaning “rolling rows of pebbles, like waves”, “bidzill” meaning “strength” etc. Perseverance itself was translated to “Ha’ahoni.” Also International Astronomical Union (IAU) choses to name craters with scientific significance after small towns and villages of the world.

In 2007 IAU gave the Jezero crater its name because in many Slavic languages Jezero describes a natural depression or depression filled with water. In November 2018, 11 years after Jezero got its name, NASA designated Jezero Crater the landing site of Mars 2020. A letter from NASA was presented to the mayor of Jezero, Bosnia-Herzegovina, honoring the connection between the town and Jezero Crater, the Mars 2020 rover landing site. “It takes an international team of experts to create and support a mission with the complexity and ambition of Mars 2020. I am proud that we can now include the citizens of Jezero, Bosnia and Herzegovina, as honorary members of the Mars 2020 team. Together, we will explore one of the most scientifically captivating as well as serene locations on Mars”, Said James Watzin, NASA’s Director of Mars Exploration. The Perseverance rover landing in the Jezero crater was broadcast live at the village’s only school.

 

Motivation of single launch is much more as Apollo mission did once giving that aspiration to kids that what they can do, that is a global perspective. The pace of innovation right now is huge, this is new space age. We are launching more than ever since the beginning of the space age, thousands of spacecraft have been launched to space, with a dramatic increase in recent years. Also many actors are entered from the private sector, in the past couple of decades; the number of launches from private companies has dramatically increased. We are in the process of democratization of space, which is a domain that needs a high-intensity investment and R&D. We have been witnessing a changing paradigm wherein there is large scope for public-private partnership, private partners assume more responsibility for public projects than in traditional approaches and hence expected to improve efficiencies of the project. Large space groups have been forging alliances, leading to more interaction between upstream and downstream industries. There are lots of things that could happen to make exploration viable, and there are lots of roles and businesses that have not been created or defined, and that is the direction that a new space age could take. Today there are many international space agencies with independent launch capability and the cost is astronomical. Every year the global price tag is whopping, $62 billion.

China is considered as one of the major beneficiaries of the last run of globalization. China became world’s largest economy by Purchasing Power Parity PPP according to IMF's calculation few years ago. Globalization and political renewal led the Chinese government to make space exploration a strategic cornerstone of its international policy.  Suffice it to say that in 2020 China spent about 11 billion dollars on space, making it the second economic power in the sector after the US (22 billion dollar budget) surpassing Europe (7.5), Russia (2.5), India (1.9) and Japan (1.7). This commitment led to the first orbital flight of a taikonaut in 2003, which was followed in 2011 by the launch of a space station to which two different missions with three-man crews docked. China will not only have robotic mars missions but the sample return missions proposed in the future and have their own space station. China’s Beidou Navigation Satellite System will provide comprehensive service to the not only the Asia-pacific regions but also promises to provide global coverage for timing and navigation, offering an alternative to Russia’s GLONASS, the European Galileo positioning system and America’s GPS.

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. As I said in Revelation: Universe is conspiring that 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 illiberal democracy and corrupt governance.

 “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.

If we borrow a concept of entropy from thermodynamics here that in closed system without input energy things fall apart and disorder increases, likewise we need to make the collaborative effort to keep things in order here on Earth as well as in outer space for our sustainable future.

The difficulty will come where there are activities solely carried out for economic gain where we are talking about any kind of interference with the moon, mining of resources. But if we are doing that in the interest of all of mankind, and international collaborations like International Space Station as a stepping stone to enable further exploration activities, we will be able to find a consensus. The innovation pace and everything is way-out, in front of the regulatory environment. I think in the next few years, we will see or need a fair bit of regulatory reform and we also have to appreciate that the regulation in the space environment has been pretty effective. But the structures were conceived at a time when the space sector was vastly different. There were fewer players; risk of collision was much lower, now we have got nearly 2000 active satellites, hundreds and thousands of pieces of space junk. So we have to find a new way of operating and we have to understand how we will keep the safety of the operating environment. Some of the regulatory frameworks, what they are looking at is to adopt something similar to international waters, that we have here. That is discussions that are ongoing. I'm not sure where they went, but I think it was one of the UN platforms. Currently the basic government principle is the principle of noninterference. So if there is an activity that is going on, another party cannot move their probe and all that sort of thing which obviously creates complications.

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. 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 I said in ‘Classical Antiquity in 2021’, if national sovereignty is a fundamental pillar of the chartered united nations and nobody wants a global government, then still we need to improve our global governance with strong multilateral institutions saying, “Dear World leaders, we are watching you”, and will not allow you to set the wheels in motion causing the transformation that could take us in dark ages, but will help you to inspire the generation that continues the intellectual era which can spark the human achievements once humanity saw during the Renaissance period and its positive butterfly effect. We have to make sure we don't want to shut down the innovation, that participation, the Renaissance 2.0 party must go on.

 

The race to space began through fear as a reaction to the threat of an enemy; after the end of World War two with atomic bombing of Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 in the face of new catastrophic threat, an atomic one. But while reaching to the moon in 1969, we gained new perspective on our home planet. The post-war order has by far the most well-established and in particular after 1989 Universal of these narratives one based on economic and political liberalization on democratization to a certain degree on global economic integration sovereignty a whole range of the norms that underwrite this post-war order. Progress neither possible by being stuck in quagmire of wars nor expected from warmongering mentalities. Current geopolitical standpoint led us to a very perilous time and post 1945 order is something fundamentally different from those earlier ones, nuclear weapons deter war, the level of integration is so much greater the response to the 2008 financial crisis was radically different than the 1930s and shows the country's appreciate the need to keep the system going. Today, new threats are re-focusing our gaze back on our little blue marble. In order preserve it, the nations of the world will need to work together. The next space race may not be nation against nation, but humanity against the clock. And we know that when we face the fragilities of the world and the challenges that no country can solve it alone, we need to do it together by strengthening multilateralism with more international cooperation.

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 means if Carl Sagan's poetic narration of pale blue dot is not inspiring enough then at least prisoners dilemma philosophy should. Universe is vast and resourceful, subjectively and objectively.

“We are bathing in mystery and confusion on many subjects, and I think that will always be our destiny. The universe will always be much richer than our ability to understand it.”- Carl Sagan.

 

Today we are all relatives in the fabric of space and time that are making effort towards searching for life on Mars and perhaps if time unfolds the new opportunities in space, we may go to the Mars as we see it today as stepping stone towards the beyond unknown that Carl Sagan himself once envisioned.

In 1996, Carl Sagan recorded the audio for future astronauts who will one day walk on Mars. The landing site of the unmanned Mars Pathfinder spacecraft was renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station on July 5, 1997. Sagan's son, Nick Sagan, wrote several episodes in the Star Trek franchise. In an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise entitled "Terra Prime", a quick shot is shown of the relic rover Sojourner, part of the Mars Pathfinder mission, placed by a historical marker at Carl Sagan Memorial Station on the Martian surface.

The marker displays a quote from Sagan: “Whatever the reason you're on Mars, I'm glad you're there, and I wish I was with you.” 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.

Radical shift in our perspective after Apollo 8 made us to think about our fragile planet and need to adopt sustainable practices to protect the same, but as we tried to understand in this blog that an ‘Overview Effect’ is not just an astronaut’s awareness experiences but also the awareness experiences of philosophers/poets/thinkers/historians bending space-time with their hypothetical warping device as not limited by contemporary time and local space; applicable especially in the case when humanity is not just limited to Earth but expanded beyond the pale blue dot. And So isn’t it a wonderful thought and necessity to ‘govern with the overview effect’.

 

May The 4th Be With You…