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 20th 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 10th 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 6th 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 12th 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 21st
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 15th 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.
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 20th century world from the Florentine historical
point of view I find many similarities between the our modern world and 15th
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 15th 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 15th century Florence city and the
same of USA in 20th 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 15th 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 15th
century Florence city and the same of USA in 20th 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.
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 3rd
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 16th 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?
9th 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 14th
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 27th
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 21st
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 14th
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 9th
February UAE’s first mission to Mars entered the orbit of the planet Mars. The
very next day 10th 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 18th
February, it was the peak of a bustling cycle of activity at the red planet. On
21st 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 22nd 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…
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