The future of humanity

[Vigilante]

I hope we can have great discussion here. First, allow me to share some portions of an article I read recently.

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Lett also suggests that the only way to reduce the pervasiveness of paranormal beliefs is to reduce personal anxiety, revamp the media, reform education and revise the culture's worldview. It is highly unlikely that we can succeed with any one of these-much less all four.

Yes, the enormity of the task is paralyzing. As long as the human race is plagued by war, fear, religion, and religious intolerance, greed, hatred, cruelty, ignorance, and despair, we have no victories to proclaim and nothing to celebrate. As a species our history is apalling: it is a long sorry record of bloodshed, savagery, and stupidity and raises serious questions about the message our species would be able to deliver to other intelligent beings we may encounter if we are ever to leave this planet and venture to the stars. What have we to be proud of as a race of intelligent beings? What is the "best face" that human beings have to show an intelligent alien race? What do we have and what have we done that would instill in them admiration, respect, or (at the greatest imagination) love?

To have a better society we must have better people; to get better people we must educate and train them to value and respect human life and human welfare and to work for these aims and goals on a worldwide basis. The stated goal of every government and the aim of every political party should be: To pacify, protect, preserve, and humanize the planet Earth.

Should we, as a sane and civilized species, ask for anything less? Utopian? Idealistic? Unattainable? While this is not presently possible, should we hope and strive for anything less than the humanization of the planet and the implementation and actualization of the newest Humanist Manifesto 2000 (http://www.secularhumanism.org/manifesto/)? The total defeat of the forces of fear, superstition, unreason, as well as political and social oppresion should be in my judgement be - even if it now is not - our long-goal. (Baker, Robert)

An extraterrestrial being, newly arrived on Earth - scrutinizing what we mainly present to our children in television, radio, movies, newspaper, magazines, the comics, and many books - might easily conclude that we are intent on teaching them murder, rape, cruelty, superstition, credulity, and consumerism. We keep at it, and through constant repetition many of them finally get it. What kind of society could we create if, instead, we drummed into them science and a sense of hope? - Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

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[Vigilante]

The stated goal of every government and the aim of every political party should be: To pacify, protect, preserve, and humanize the planet Earth.

1) Is there any nation is this world that is working towards that goal? Is Malaysia playing its role to promote worldwide humanism? Yes, we strive to make ourselves better and become a developed nation by 2020. But as every nation compete to make themselves more powerful, socially and economically, and gain influence in the world arena, do humanity in general benefit anything? Countries make nuclear weapons to gain influence or to avoid being pushed around by other more powerful countries. They make economic policies that benefit themselves the best, and disregard the consequences to other nations. Lately in the war against terrorism, countries became more suspicious about almost every other country. For most, "Our country is our main priority." Is Nationalism breaking the common species apart?

2) Hypothetically, If the world is unified and a central 'Earth Government' is established, will this unity destroy world diversity, especially in traditions and culture?

3) Does Malaysian Vision 2020 play a role in promoting humanity? I read the 9 challenges but I fail to notice anything about the environment. Isn't preserving our environment one of our primary goals? If I'm not mistaken, Malaysia aim to have 70 million population in order to sustain a local market for businesses. Can our country really accomodate that size? Our cities are overcrowded - having huge problems on housing and transportations. We have a very poor record in urban planning. How about our dumpyards and landfills? We can hardly accomodate anymore rubbish and waste. Triple our current population means we need to consume more energy, resources and generate more waste. That would be a great disaster for the environent.

4) Can education and science help to solve today's problems? "Is a humanistically grounded, science-centered, public education sufficient to turn the tide, given a hundred years or so?" (Baker)

5) Is 'world peace' too idealistic? A Utopia - unreachable world?

6) Given current world issues and politics, what would be the future of humanity? Where are we heading to?

7) What can we do to improve the conditions of humanity?

[littlebigone]

i think there should be a none of the above in the poll.

[__earth]

There are several cases regarding future society. I must warn that this is not exhaustive nor it is official. It's merely my opinion based on my past reading on sci-fi genre and other classical utopia/dystopia fiction.

1- Space. Our only hope is to expand. The European realized this though their motivation was certainly not population boom.
So far, the population of the world is somewhere above 6 billions. but,There were 2.5 billion people in 1950; there will be 6 billion by mid-1999, and between 7.7 billion and 11.1 billion by 2050 according to UN projections ? 9.4 billion is considered most likely. That means population may grow as much or more in the next 50 years than in the past 50. That was taken from http://www.unfpa.org/swp/1998/newsfeature3.htm. That is a growth rate is staggering. If that continue to go on, Earth carrying capacity will be reached faster than you could say uncle. A good read on space exploration is Kim Robinson's Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars. It's about the colonization of Mars.

2- The environment. Currently, though the data are sketchy, scientists generally accept the existence of global warming and climate change. if the business-as-usual cycle prediction came true, point 1 (above) will be a greater problem and sea level will rise and thus less land. Desertification will be more severe and various phenomena like La Nina and El Nino will be worse and more natural disaster.
The insurance industry is certainly going down due to more than usual natural disaster. There's more to the environmental problem but i dont wanna sound like a pessimist deep green.

3- Resource. Directly related to point 1 and point 2, the dearth of resources will no doubt leads to war. One less serious case is Msia-Spore. One potential explosive confrontation is the Spratly. We also saw this happened in history. WWII erupted partly due to lack of resources. (Japan)

4- Social. This is pretty much hard to say because nobody could extrapolate the society behavior. However, it's only easy to see that human moral is deteriorating with each passing moment. This is one reason why religions still hold a firm root in most society coz in religion, the common pattern is a downward sloping graph with salvation at end of days. And religion claims to make the graph refrain from going further down. but if you like some sci-fi reading on this, a lite one that is, there's Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. I find that particular work is rather entertaining.

I would like to comment further but exam is pulling me out.

on the side note, i agree that nationalism is bad for human unity but i would say that is some other point to be argued at some other day.

also, littlebigone is right. None of above should be there.

and answer your questions:-

i believe question 1 and 2 is the same thing. IMO, there should be a dynamic relationship between a strong centralized government and sufficiently strong but "drugged" states. We need a federated political system.
Also, I believe, unfortunately, "world stability' lies in the expansion of Pax-Americana or Pax-Europa or both.
It's like the Roman Empire. One entity has to assert power on a environment for peace to prosper. Of course, the one entity should not be detrimental to society.
The United Nations provides an option but given the current situation, we could see how the case of League of Nations is repeating itself.

question 3. you need to realize that a developing country interest is becoming an industrialized nation. All other issues are secondary. i share you concern on the environment but it is a fact that developing countries put economics development up front. and i found this suit my argument:For the developed countries, their economies have already been developed and thus, they could turn their attention to other issues such as the environment. For them, their ?basic needs of survival? have already been guaranteed. The developing countries priority on the other hand is the improvement of their socio-economy (4 ? 5, Dodds). As example, in the industrialized nations, they are fighting for trade liberalization and human rights while the least-developed countries such in Africa, famine, disease and political instability are still the overriding problems.i wrote that for my paper on Kyoto Protocol. This is a reason why Malaysia should be a developed countries as fast as we could so that we could turn on other important issues such as the environment.
Furthermore, a PhD student in Michigan's School of Natural Resources and the Environment told me that Malaysia former PM, Dr. Mahathir almost didn't come to the Earth Summit. The grad student was a UN official at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. This shows how international environmental issues are not Malaysia and other tigers economies main concerns.

question 4. education does help.

question 5. world peace is subjective. I believe we sort of tasted some of it after the fall of the berlin wall. however, the situation seems to deteriorate but i think its like a business cycle, you get prosperity at one time, you get war on the other.

q 6 & 7 - no comment because its too general a question.


my God, i should be studying for my statistics exam.

[screw3d]

i think there should be a none of the above in the poll.
Agreed. I would also add "I don't know/I don't care". :P

Human conflict would never cease for sure. People are just blinded by $/power/sex or just plain stupid :D.

[masterof_none]

I found that this discussion is very interesting. And hopefully everyone can give opinion on this.

I would like to extend __earth's argument.

First, regarding __earth's answer on Space, Environment, and Resource.
After a little thinking, I would agree that the solution here lies in the studies on Economics. ALthough this may looks like a simple-minded Acedemician approach, I strongly believed that What are we learning in the classroom can be extended to the real world.

1.Resources : This is the problem that humanity faced thousand of years ago. People fight for resources to survive, and eventually, the study of how we can allocate resources efficiently evolves,that's know now to be economics. Economics is a very powerful tool. For Malaysians to be well known, its citizens should at least know how the basic demand and supply works, and how the constraint applies. especially, things that involves politics.

2.Environment. - another classic study in Economics, on how to solve the environment problems. Environment never beCAme a problem (or at least, IMO), before the Industrial Revolution. But, with new invention coming along, machineries, locomotives, chemicals stuff, that suppose to increase our standard of living, it generates side effects.. kinda like when you take medicine that suppose to cure your skin, it generates another problem, say allergy..
I believe that as a developing country, Malaysia needs to develop itself as soon as possible, but , of course, with our proper planning on how to solve the matter pertinent to the environment.
Some lesson to be learnt:
I took a course called Human and Environment. That class was very easy. It just educate you to "Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle".
All we did was just watch movies about the stuff that endanger environment.. I don't even have to take notes for the last half of the semester. But that class had given a profound impact to me.
They also brought us to the Los Angeles water treatment plant,
a very huge one, and they elaborate in details how the whole process works.. even why they chose the location.. it's really cool.
Then they brought us to the different sections (with our 'hard hat' on) .
where they clean the water.

I think it's really good to introduce that kind of class to Malaysia kids, so that we appreciate our environment..Because I believe that it is the people who can change Malaysian environment.

3. Social - a great start is to introduce the Malaysian the
subject called Sociology. I think we lack of this subject being discussed.
It's really important subject. I can't really elaborate further , since I never take a Sociology class. But I know that Sociology is the study of demographics, population, etc. Very interesting actually.


I really think that , besides training Malaysians to be engineers,doctors, lawyers, business,
we need more people for Economics, Environmentalist and Sociologists.
also, Scientist....

Also, this may be out of topics, but , let the people choose what they want to be.. while having a clear goal to develop the country.

[topdog]

Have you guys read the Robotic Nation (http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm) essays by marshall brain? Very thought-provoking read.

[Ishveir]

Yo guys!

highly intelectual stuff la you guys trying to say.
I admire how vigilante earth and masterofnone, makes their points. I read with an open mind therefore, i agree with all three of you.
Globalisation once hyped, is imminent.
I say this because not many understand the possibilities of having a shared earth while being patriotic via each and every country coexisting
It might be the solution to differences when we treat this earth as one big corporation with its only profit projection used to the "corporations "advantage

My question is do you guys think this idea might serve as a savior for the citizens of the world?

[wwhong]

just my 2 sen about the options in the poll.

i think with current situation continuing , world peace is just a dream. why?

take north korea. they are threatening to fire their nuclear weapon if no financial aid given to them. can US give them aids? yes, they can if they want to. but the thing is US is trying to push north korea around and play with them instead of seriously wanna solve the crisis. they have made agreement many times but US always break their promise. i dun think it's because of financial reason, they can spend billions bombing iraq, why not spend some of that on north korea if they really want peace.

taiwan is really trying to get itself into trouble. if they really go for independence, i won't be surprise china will launch their missile anytime and u know what will happen. this might ignite a chain reaction. for eg, india will bomb pakistan, israel will bomd palestine and so on.

terrorsits are continue working. we never know when or where the next attack will be.

u want world peace? sorry, if those continue, world peace is not possible.


every where there's human beings, war will not end. i m not pessimistic but all the world histories is built on war be it eastern or western. there's really no need to worry ET will come and attack and destory us, if human cannot control themselves, they will destroy themselves.

of course i hope for world peace and better humanity but with the current situation going on, there's slim hope.

[PeiWen]

i think there should be a none of the above in the poll.

Then what's in oyur mind when the topic 'how would be the future humanity like' strike you?

Mmm, due to the advanced technology now, I think the progress of Information technology will gain more momentum and continue to prosper that we have to update ourselves every now and then. In fact, my lecturer did mention some latest technology (I'm not sure if this technology still considered as the latest technology), that's: in the future, people will have interactive communication and contact with our surroundings. Meaning that, there would be microchips embedded in every object such as pen, cup, wall, chair, table.....just every object, and with the microchips installed, these objects will be able to 'sense' our moods, emotions and feelings at that particular time, hence the objects will change according to our moods. FOr example, if that day we feel quite blue, and moody, maybe the wall or cup will portray a dimmer color. That sound interesting. My lecturer said, the concept already there, people are actually developing the theories, concepts now; yet being developed as more researches are going on.

[PeiWen]

i think there should be a none of the above in the poll.

Then what's in oyur mind when the topic 'how would be the future humanity like' strike you?

Mmm, due to the advanced technology now, I think the progress of Information technology will gain more momentum and continue to prosper that we have to update ourselves every now and then. In fact, my lecturer did mention some latest technology (I'm not sure if this technology still considered as the latest technology), that's: in the future, people will have interactive communication and contact with our surroundings. Meaning that, there would be microchips embedded in every object such as pen, cup, wall, chair, table.....just every object, and with the microchips installed, these objects will be able to 'sense' our moods, emotions and feelings at that particular time, hence the objects will change according to our moods. FOr example, if that day we feel quite blue, and moody, maybe the wall or cup will portray a dimmer color. That sound interesting. My lecturer said, the concept already there, people are actually developing the theories, concepts now; yet being developed as more researches are going on.

[ElansarGelmir]

in the future, people will have interactive communication and contact with our surroundings. Meaning that, there would be microchips embedded in every object such as pen, cup, wall, chair, table.....just every object, and with the microchips installed, these objects will be able to 'sense' our moods, emotions and feelings at that particular time, hence the objects will change according to our moods. FOr example, if that day we feel quite blue, and moody, maybe the wall or cup will portray a dimmer color. That sound interesting. My lecturer said, the concept already there, people are actually developing the theories, concepts now; yet being developed as more researches are going on.

Yeah, I've been thinking to make a home designed system, that will tune the atmosphere of the room to the atmosphere that u want. If it's a party celebration, then perhaps the walls will be of fancy colors with confettis, whilst when we need to be alone, the lights will be dimmer and nostalgic musics will be on air... If we want some effects while watching horror movies, then perhaps there would be an artificial thunders and lightnings and shadows ... Haha ...... wouldn't that be nice?

[ElansarGelmir]

in the future, people will have interactive communication and contact with our surroundings. Meaning that, there would be microchips embedded in every object such as pen, cup, wall, chair, table.....just every object, and with the microchips installed, these objects will be able to 'sense' our moods, emotions and feelings at that particular time, hence the objects will change according to our moods. FOr example, if that day we feel quite blue, and moody, maybe the wall or cup will portray a dimmer color. That sound interesting. My lecturer said, the concept already there, people are actually developing the theories, concepts now; yet being developed as more researches are going on.

Yeah, I've been thinking to make a home designed system, that will tune the atmosphere of the room to the atmosphere that u want. If it's a party celebration, then perhaps the walls will be of fancy colors with confettis, whilst when we need to be alone, the lights will be dimmer and nostalgic musics will be on air... If we want some effects while watching horror movies, then perhaps there would be an artificial thunders and lightnings and shadows ... Haha ...... wouldn't that be nice?

[yekban81]

Just wanna to share this story from a forwarded mail.


This is a story that I read in the Chinese papers Lianhe Zaobao on 2 Aug 1999. It is written by local Chinese traveller cum writer, Wu Wei Cai. I felt very touched and shaken by the story and I have translated it to English so that more people may read about it...


"This happened on a highway in China. 40 passengers, mostly males were on an inter-state bus. Halfway through the journey, two thugs on the bus suddenly went up to the lady bus driver and demanded that she stopped the bus and follow them to a waste grounds nearby. The lady driver refused and began to put up a fight against them. At the same time, she cried out to the other passengers in the bus to help her.


However, the other passengers not only cruelly turned a deaf ear to her cries, they even suggested that she give in to the thugs' demands so that they can carry on their journey quickly when they are done with her. One young man amongst the passengers stood out to chide the rest of the passengers and tried to help the lady driver.


However, sensing that the majority of the people do not have the guts to resist them, the thugs grew even bolder and beat up the young man. They then forcefully dragged the lady driver out of the bus.


Right on the side of the road, the two thugs took turns to rape the lady driver while the rest watched. After the thugs have satisfied their lust, they commanded the lady driver to return to the bus and resume with the journey. With tears streaming down her face, the lady driver begged that they drive the righteous young man out of the bus as she is too ashamed to face him again.


The young man felt absolutely stupefied. So much for trying to speak up for the lady and now he is thrown out and left stranded on a desolated highway! Hours later, when the lady driver passed by a mountainous cliff, she sped up and flung the whole bus with all its passengers over the cliff, right into the bottom of the valley.

This story was retold later by the only survivor of the journey - the righteous young man driven out of the bus."


Recently there have been a spate of events that reveal the ugly side of our "civilised" society. Not so long ago, a Malaysian bus driver was viciously beaten up when he tried to stop a snatch thief. He was surrounded by members of the public, watching with their arms folded.

I question myself. Have we gone from the stone age to become even more barbarious? Has the condition of the human heart degenerated to being no different from that of an animal? Did the lady bus driver commit suicide because she couldn't bear the shame of being raped or is it because she has given up on the humanity of "humans"?

[tinny]

the problem we are facing is related to our worldview. With the advancements in technology, there is no doubt that we can solve the problems in economics, environment, society etc... But the problem lies with the people's lack of morality. they are driven by lust, greed, and pleasure. There is no sense of tolerance, sacrifice, cooperation, respect....

this link is an attempt to provide a holistic approach to overcome the problems of the society and create an utopian future for mankind. it's quite long, but worth a read. it was written by an american clinical and child psychologist who has a high level background in theoretical physics. Basically, it tries to use a scientific approach with logic and reason to explain a correct, scientific and motivational worldview and how to shape individuals of highly excellent character. it is from an Islamic website, but the text is very neutral. (there's two volumes)

The Unified Theory of Existence:
http://www.islamic-world.net/khalifah-project/UTE-VOL1.htm