Tag: diversity

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The Poison That Will Destroy Humanity… & What We Need to Do About It

From the Merriam Webster Dictionary:

definition of poison

1 a : a substance that through its chemical action usually kills, injures, or impairs an organism
b (1) : something destructive or harmful
(2) : an object of aversion or abhorrence
2 : a substance that inhibits the activity of another substance or the course of a reaction or process
a catalyst poison

It eats away at our hearts
It erodes our minds
It clouds our vision
It destroys our relationships
It poisons the depth of our humanity
And, it poisons everything and everyone we touch.

The more we indulge, the more addictive it becomes
The more we indulge, the stronger we rationalize
The stronger it becomes, the more isolated we become.

It crushes the essence of our humanity
It’s the master of disconnection
It eliminates our conscience.
This poison spreads like the plague
We can no longer love or be loved
And, as social contagion, it can extinguish all human life.

This poison is hate… hatred. It’s being promoted by our leaders, notably Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Vladimir Putin, Jair Bolsonaro, Giuseppe Conte, and far too many more. They are barely human. And, the poisonous hatred they spread will do no more than destroy our societies and undermine any hope of surviving the impending disastrous convergence of over-population, ecosystem collapse, collapsing biogeochemical cycles, disappearing resources, water shortages, food shortages, rising sea levels, desertification, massive immigrations to and from all corners of Earth, and probably extinction-level human deaths.

If we really want to start dealing with our survival, we have to start working together. Hatred will tear us apart and prevent any kind of meaningful action. We must work despite our differences. In fact, an appreciation of the variation and diversity among us can and should be the very antidote to the poison that permeating all parts of the world.

Hatred has taken over societies in the past. And, they did poison societies. But, the stakes are much higher now. The issues listed in a previous paragraph are going to reach a peak, while the hatred grows. We have no time to bicker and waste.

When a forest faces a crisis, competing species of trees and other plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria work together to help the survival of the ecosystem. There’s no individual survival. They all must survive to maintain the system. But, people seem dead set on individual survival. And, that is not possible.

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How Tech’s Richest Plan to Save Themselves after the Apocalypse

How Tech’s Richest Plan to Save Themselves after the Apocalypse

Silicon Valley’s elite are hatching plans to escape disaster – and when it comes, they’ll leave the rest of us behind.

by Douglas Rushkoff for Medium — Published in the Guardian.

Tue 24 Jul 2018 02.00 EDT
Last modified on Wed 25 Jul 2018 11.25 EDT
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My Reaction

This is the worldwide agenda.

Why spend money or do anything to help the poor?

The idea in this article is that “survival of the fittest” is where the “fittest” are the extremely wealthy. Of course, they have zero understanding of what “survival of the fittest” means. In biology, fitness is primarily concerned with reproduction. Fit species are those that can produce enough viable offspring that can survive long enough to perpetuate the species. They are necessarily the strongest, fiercest, or smartest. Some species are fit because they produce hundreds of offspring at a time. This is the gambler’s strategy of playing the odds. Others produce fewer offspring, but spend more time and energy caring for the young until they can take care of themselves. This is the nurturer’s strategy. But, there also the key ingredient of variation or diversity. Species that are not diverse enough to have variation in their gene pools are not likely to survive, especially under intensely challenging changes in environmental conditions, such as those looming on the horizon.

The wealthy, no matter how much money they have, may be the least likely to survive. Their gene pool is too small. They really aren’t good at nurturing, because they’ve always paid someone to do it for them. They might be good at the money end of the gambler’s strategy, but in terms of offspring, they’ll fail miserably. And, they lack the knowledge and skills to survive as individuals, let alone as a specie, in conditions that will be unlike anything they have ever encountered.

The big switcheroo may be that the world’s poorest will inherit the human lineage. They are knowledgeable and skilled at surviving with very little. They know how to nurture. And, there are enough of them to have a highly varied gene pool. Maybe there was some wisdom and foresight to the phrase, “The meek shall inherit the Earth.”

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Media, Learning, Schooling, and What We Should Do

Children are deeply in touch with what is happening in the world… much more than we might expect. Around 1990, I did a study that asked grade 5 children to describe life on Earth and the major issues we faced. Most of the children had a fairly extensive understanding of the issues we were facing at the time. And, some understood the complexities at much deeper levels, including how money was behind almost all of the issues. I suspect that with the Internet and the prevalence of technology in most children’s lives, their exposure to and knowledge of issues is even more extensive than in the 1990’s. But, the big difference between 1990 and now is that the news media seems to have been co-opted by the entertainment industry and by the corporate entities that control most of what happens in this country either through organizations, such as ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), or through lobbying and other relationships to governing individuals or groups. General Electric is part owner of NBC news. GE is involved in the nuclear power industry with its primary funding sources coming from military contracts. Microsoft (the “MS” is MSNBC) is also part owner. Microsoft also has a specific right-wing political agenda to which it has been making large donations. So, just how “liberal” is MSNBC with such ownership controlling what they air?

But, from Fox at one end to MSNBC at another end (which isn’t really at an end), with all kinds of misinformation on Facebook and other Internet sites, this is the news to which children are exposed. It’s a cartoon version of news on speed with no substance, no depth, no criticality, no values, no ethical framework. It’s awful for adults, and it’s even worse for children.

Then, children go to school, where they receive instruction that is fundamentally the same thing without the extreme violence and hatred (but, that violence and hatred is just toned down and hidden). They are subjected to a predetermined curriculum with no substance, no depth, no criticality, no values, no ethical framework. Children are growing up with no guidance on how to deal with all of the craziness that surrounds them and which seems to be getting increasingly crazy all of the time.

We desperately need teachers and schools that provide a sane environment and an environment that provides them with opportunities to grow and develop as decent, caring human beings who are capable of thinking critically about the issues that arise. We can do this. A few schools do this, but this is not part of the agenda of public schooling (or private or charter schools, for that matter). We need to provide an alternative to the speed and superficiality, to the hate and distrust of everyday life. We need to revive a love of learning. We need to revive a love of human diversity.

And, we need to boycott media triviality, speed, superficiality, indulgence, lack of intelligence, and lack of integrity.

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Variation, Diversity, and Survival

What far too many people seem to forget (or they never knew in the first place) is that variation is key to the survival of living things. From an evolutionary perspective, genetic diversity is necessary for the survival of species. If there is too much similarity or too little variation, species have very little to draw upon for adaptation. In fact, we know what happens when too much in-breeding occurs among animals we raise and among human beings. We need genetic variation just to stay reasonably healthy, not to mention adapt to changing circumstances.

In sociocultural contexts, the same idea applies. Variation and diversity is healthy. New and different ideas can breathe life into situations that can become quite stale or stuck. Creativity and problem solving need variation. Democracies need diversity. Businesses and institutions of all kinds need diversity.

We need diversity and variation in people and ideas, because they help us grow. They help us expand our horizons, our understandings, and our appreciations. They help us develop empathy and compassion. They help us develop wisdom.