NOT THE END, NOT A BEGINNING

Signature image of the 2000s: our world collapsing at the strike of terrorism
(part of a collage titled "Modern History" by Josh Poehlein)


The first ten years 2000 - 2009: a personal review


The first ten years of the 20th century today are known as the fin de siècle: the end period of an entire era. In 1905 US President Theodore Roosevelt had called the old European world of Kings and Emperors “a bygone civilization”. He was right of course, but it would still take another ten years for this old world to finally collapse and thus for history to ultimately appreciate the significance of those first ten years of the century. The same applies to the ten years that have passed in this new century. What will be their significance? As yet, we can not say.


The other signature image: a world connected by the internet

The Great War of 1914 – 1918 and its aftermath triggered an immense turning point in Western Civilization. It was the birth time of our current modern world of democracy, technology and of the supremacy of popular culture. In its initial phase the outcome was far from certain as new absolutist claims to the human society were made both by the fascist regimes in Western Europe and subsequently by communism in Eastern Europe. Their massive impact was twofold: both – highly – destructive and highly stimulating. The Second World War and the Cold War have greatly accelerated the modernization of our world in the second half of the century in every field: technology, culture, markets, governance.

Largely as a result of ongoing adversity and conflict, both old and new, it has taken the entire century to develop concepts and institutions capable of exercising shared – regional and world wide – responsibilities in the interest of lasting peace and security. This is still an ongoing process, for instance in Europe - with some countries still waiting in the wings to become EU Member State – and at international level: with the UN and NATO remaining subject of ongoing scrutiny in terms of their effectiveness and longer term viability.

Still, setting aside the institutional struggles, globalization is one of the most prominent forces affecting our lives today, not merely in the Western world. And it does so in almost all dimensions: economically, politically, in our popular culture, our social and professional networks, our language and so on. What started in the early 1900s with telephone, radio, gramophone and the automobile has continued by virtue of an unprecedented and unstoppable surge in human inventiveness, creating mass mobility on the road, airlifting the masses in planes, taking people to the Moon, and offering us a means to communicate through mobile phones and the internet in a way that was almost unimaginable even some twenty years ago.



Will the hybride car secure our longer term mobility?

From my own perspective as a Dutchman I would say that being Dutch and being a citizen of The Netherlands is of much less significance in my life than it must have been for the people of my country hundred years ago. In this context, although there is no “end of history”, as has been suggested no too long ago, I would certainly speak of an end of the history of individual nations, in Europe in particular, but also outside. No country is on its own any longer, not even the United States, or Russia. What will count is our world’s history – and our world’s future. We have become much more aware of our existence as one single humanity on a fragile and very lonely Planet Earth and of the challenges we face collectively to keep this planet afloat as a habitable place for the human masses.

We nonetheless continue to wrestle with our sense of identity, the impact of our nationality and national character both in the face of an increasingly global culture but also of increased diversity – and adversity – in our own immediate backyards. Large scale immigration throughout Europe especially from the Arab Muslim world had created manifold tensions, not in the least because of the world wide assertion out of the same world against the very foundations of our Western civilization. It is impossible at this point to predict the ultimate significance of this conflict for our – future – history.


Diversity and - the need for - mutual adjustment

All we can say now, I believe, is that out of all these various challenges – planetary issues, and cultural (and religious) conflicts – will somehow emerge the watershed event that will divide our era from the next.

In the mean time the ebb and flow of our economies, the successive periods of high growth and recession, leave us largely unaffected in the greater scheme of things. The current generations in the Western world have enjoyed an unprecedented long period of peace and prosperity. In our own minds we live in an everlasting world of material comfort and consumer happiness, however much we may have to adjust in certain aspects.


Consumerism depicted as modern day mass slavery

But in our private lives our liberation from ancient social and cultural conventions continues. We have come a long way from the fixtures of a society of families and segmented, regulated networks to our present day much more loosely connected world, in which national or cultural background, social status, past and future are rather fluid and amenable to who we are to whom at any given point in time.


The networks where we meet

We create or joint our own personal contexts, networks and intimate circles largely beyond our traditional social confines or at least we have many more means to do so. The world that we leave to the younger generations will turn out to be quite a different one from the world they will eventually make of it.

EARTH'S STANCE IN THE UNIVERSE

Do we say ‘hello’ to intelligent life elsewhere in our Milky Way?

Ever since the sounds of our planet became radio waves our world has made itself noticeable beyond the frontiers of our atmosphere. We might speculate whether Earth in fact had already been spotted long before as a viable and interesting place in the Universe by some distant alien intelligence and whether, regardless of our own efforts, we are already object of its close scrutiny. But however this may be, we have grown increasingly noisy for any technologically advanced world in outer space if any such world exists within the reach of the signals that we have sent out thus far.

Most likely, the rest of the intelligent Universe is just as ignorant of our existence as we are of theirs. Indeed, none of this to this day surpasses the borders of speculation and we can not even say whether we will ever know better. We would have to reach beyond many thousands of light years by whatever means and even that may not be enough.


Far out in Space - who's there and how many?

Besides speculation there is calculation. By virtue of the so-called Drake equation scientists have calculated that in our own Galaxy there could be a few hundred, perhaps even a few thousand habitable planets harboring advanced intelligent life. The equation and more specifically all the assumptions that go into it have been subject of intense debate and this will go on without end up to the moment when hard evidence reaches our telescopes (*).

We do know that the process which we call life is a highly resilient process on our own planet and the more we know about its origins the more we tend to think that it is bound to arise whenever and wherever the right conditions are present. But again, this still remains mere speculation, most of all because we have just one sample – our DNA based life – to justify it.

Still, let’s look ahead. I am assuming that indeed one day there will be credible evidence of intelligent life on another planet, and I am assuming that the evidence originates from some stellar system within our own Milky Way. How do we – how does the planet Earth – respond to this?

Scientists have already stated that perhaps our planet should not be so keen as we currently seem to be, to propagate its existence – and its marvels – too far beyond our own solar system. Why should we wish to become noticeable in the first place? And what should we actually wish to do with another planet somewhere many hundreds of light years away from us?

No doubt we would wish to obtain as much information about it as we possibly can. It would help us in our understanding of our own place in the Universe and of life’s processes (or comparable processes) etcetera. It would be a science bonanza for eons to come and so on. But otherwise?

Should we wish to get in touch with other ‘intelligent planets’ at any time in our future? Those who consider our science fiction of interstellar – and even intergalactic – travel and combat as a true projection of the future would have no hesitation to say yes – and prepare for any friendly or hostile interaction that may ensue.


Hi there?

But I am not sure whether our science fiction should necessarily come true by any measure. Rather, I feel, we should aim for the contrary. As a planet we have no foreseeable interest in investing huge material and human resources in any interstellar conflict or love affair since both scenarios would only end up making us more vulnerable to outside factors than we already are by virtue of the Universe’s known perils. But there may be a need to actively invest in avoiding that scenario other than by remaining passive or invisible. Do we expect other intelligent planets to have a peaceful attitude towards their intelligent neighbors or don’t we. We have no foundation for any answer to this question whatsoever.

It leads me to a viable – perhaps the only viable – option as and when it becomes opportune to initiate any policy. It is the option in which the planet Earth sets the example – perhaps mounting to “Galactic Law” – of peace and non-interference between all intelligent planets, and this could possibly include some kind of protocol for communication as a means to secure this ‘law’.

We can not say at this point whether all of this will become relevant any time in the future: in hundred years time, thousands of years, longer? We have no clue. It might as well lurk around the corner.


Unlikely prospect: combat in Space

We should hope, however, that whenever a planetary policy in respect of other intelligent planets becomes a relevant issue, we have effectively solved the painful issues to which we are still hostage on our own mother Earth. It is difficult to think of any leading role in interstellar peacekeeping as long as lasting peace on our own planet is still a far away dream. What example do we set in the first place?

Just the same, the context in which interstellar matters become relevant for Earth’s humanity may well be entirely different from the one assumed here. The moment may still be many eons away, for instance when Earth is finally suffocating to the point of collapse and the remaining inhabitants do their utmost to find refuge elsewhere in our Galaxy. What peace can you keep under such circumstances?

If my own estimate of the number of habitable, or intelligent, planets in our Milky Way turns out to be correct – somewhere between a hundred and four hundred planets – then we are still many tens of thousands years away from the point when this subject becomes a point of interest at all. This is a time scale in which speculation from our current viewpoint turns into nothing better than a fairy tale. But what a wonderful fairy tale to keep pondering about.

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(*) Using the Drake equation and based on my own assumptions the number of communicating intelligent planets within our Milky Way would be some 100 – 400 out of 200 billion. You can try it on your own: http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Topics/SETI/drake_equation.html

ADJUSTING OURSELVES TO THE COMMON GOOD

Siqueiros - The March of Humanity


A global perspective to help secure life on Earth – and a continued well being of humanity


Humanity has taken the interest in the survival of individual humans a great distance. Both our collective morality and our individual drive for survival (reaching to individual supremacy) surpass any precedent in the wider world of animals and plants in which group logic has largely retained its predominance. At the same time this evolution towards individualism brings us to the brink of utter disaster. The individual claims to a decent life of potentially more than 10 billion people in our near future are devastating for our planet and everything that needs space and resources to survive on it. Something’s got to give.


An overcrowded world - will we manage?

I have always looked at our world and the potential for ongoing improvement of our lives from a distinctly liberal perspective. Although I am not a proponent of Ayn Rand, I do believe that egotism to a large extent is the fountainhead of progress (*) and that our morality and social behavior can largely be based on rationality and facts rather than on myths and mere belief. Secondly, without individuals out to move our frontiers, we would still be dwelling in conditions not dissimilar from those of the apes. But it is the social fabric of humanity which ultimately decides its sustainability. We have to be individualists and highly social animals at the same time.

For me this has always been a debate about the right kind of liberalism, not about the choice between liberalism and socialism – the individual versus the collective. It is always both, but in what mix, in what context and by which mechanisms?



They deserve to be nourished

I believe the issue of individualism versus our social responsibility remains a pertinent one in the face of the choice ahead which affect the very fundaments of our world if not our civilization. One could also say that it is about the same concept that was articulated long ago by Adam Smith: that our individual interests are best served if we focus our energies on serving the group to which we belong, our community or society or whatever other interest group largely determines the conditions of our life. Still, this doesn’t preclude fundamental dilemma’s even to the point where we have to make sacrifices beyond our current imagination in order for our group or community to survive.

How far will we be prepared to go ourselves, to truly sacrifice for the common good? I believe this will largely depend on our trust in its consequences. Focused leadership will be the key to any fundamental adjustment. And this is exactly what is being tested in our present day, not simply the leadership itself but our preparedness to follow it. On both sides we have grown substantially weak in the past decades.

Secondly, in our age of information and communication, there is a greater need than ever to well inform the public about the true nature and extent of the challenges we face. This includes the questions as much as the answers. We are currently debating CO2 emissions but the actual scope of the international debate is to establish a common global framework that will lead us to effectively manage (and control) the basic conditions of our planet. Shared knowledge and shared resources to achieve this across the traditional boundaries of nations and (corporate) institutions are essential prerequisites.


An image of the past - hopefully soon

Still, this leaves many questions in respect of our individual lives unanswered. Most of us are probably willing to adjust, to reduce waste where possible, limit senseless consumption, to buy more economic cars or economize on our mobility in general etcetera. But it is unlikely that this will suffice in the end. Any next step will have to be one in which new opportunities and new limitations go hand in hand.

But perhaps it is not the material adjustment that will be our greatest challenge. The pain we feel should as much be a moral one: collectively we should take more care for all. Much of our lifestyle and the daily priorities we make will hang in the balance. This is a longer term process, no doubt, but one in which all factors come to play: leadership, technology and new opportunity, corporate governance, our social institutions, education etcetera

Again, we are far from the end of our time. In many ways, it is just beginning.


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(*) “The Fountainhead” written by the famous novelist Ayn Rand in the late 1930’s drives the ego to its self-destructive extreme, yet the key message still remains.

WHO WANTS TO KILL HIS BABY GRANDFATHER?

No going back in time


One of my very favorite movies is “The Twelve Monkeys” (1995). The story is that in 1996 two thirds of all humanity perish from a virus and the rest of humanity goes underground. By 2030 they have developed a time machine which allows people to be sent back and investigate the origin and the nature of the virus. The key figure is a man in 2030 who is sent back to 1996 only to actually ignite the events that lead to the killer virus in the first place. It is wonderful fiction and anyone who will watch the movie ends up in a turmoil of paradoxes and challenges to his or her sense of logic. What is ‘past’ and what is ‘present’?


The world in 2030

The whole idea of time travel – i.e. traveling to “the past” or to “the future” is as nonsensical as is – for instance – the idea that we could un-birth ourselves or revert our lives to the stage of our youth. I am not saying that rejuvenation is out of the question nor am I saying that one day we could not travel so fast that in relative terms we will experience a “time difference” compared with those who we have left behind. Certainly not. But actually going out and visit Napoleon Bonaparte in 1810 or George Bush IV in 2130 from where we are today is a fairy tale unworthy of scientific thought.

Still, people who profess to be a scientist get serious attention when they babble about the subject and they are all over the place in documentaries saying that time is a river and we only need power and speed to master it. Well, a huge amount of power, admittedly – the power that explodes an entire star. But even so, it remains – great - fiction.


This is the kind of serious stuff presented to make time travel credible

Time is an experience only known to humans (as much as we know): that each event is preceded by another and so on, and that this succession of events can be measured in terms of the clicks of a clock: in seconds, minutes, years, eons. We have a sense of the past (and the future) and in our minds we are capable of reliving it almost as if we can take it from a shelve and touch it. But the reality that once determined “the past” can not be touched nor can it be visited. Where to go? Left or right, up or down? The past is nowhere and the future is nowhere. We might just as well say that the past and the future are everywhere and still we have nowhere to go.

So what about traveling to nowhere – or everywhere? What machine and what concept of physics and astronomy could ever help us making any move that could resemble this idea of “time travel”? The best time machine we have so far constructed is the archive, the documents we keep, the records we hold, the pictures we take – and the movies we make. Our mind can travel into them and indeed in this sense our possibilities for time travel are boundless.

But actually moving in a sphere called ‘time’ and go to places and moments long gone is hypothetical at best. We can advance our own movements and we can slow them down, possibly. We could freeze ourselves, at least in theory, and reawaken at some time ten, hundred or even thousands of years in the future if we like ( I wouldn’t ) but none of this constitutes ‘time travel’.

And however seemingly credible some scientists have pictured the rivers or warps in space and time through which they lay their claims on the possibility of traveling time, none of them have solved in convincing terms the evident paradox that accompanies any such idea.


If time travel were possible, people of the future would have descended on Berlin in 1933 and sniff the life out of Adolf Hitler. But they didn't.

Essentially an event – any event – can not at the same instant be both past and future. Any intelligent being would say: but of course not! Still, this is the fundamental requirement for any journey through time, back and forth. The present, that is: every instant we call “now” is a unique event. We can link the present to the past and to any conceivable future, but in reality no chain exists. Whatever happens, passes into oblivion the moment it has occurred.
Human beings can reflect (‘look back’) and anticipate but we can not physically escape this reality.

But the most fundamental paradox that we can not solve, of course, is the reversal of cause and effect. Many examples have been given and they are generally referred to as the grandfather paradox: what if you go back in time and kill your grandfather before he had the opportunity to sire your own father? By the same token we can not think of giving our young father a watch that subsequently we inherit … to pass on to our young father. How do we solve the actual origin of the watch? It can only be solved if the past constitutes multiple young fathers, one of whom has actually bought the watch. Alternatively the young father ends up with two watches and so on.

But all of this is water under the bridge. And if anyone would still wish to argue that perhaps you can’t travel into the future - because yes, the future does not “exist’ - but one can still go to the past, all of the above still applies. How could anyone go to the past and thus come from the future if actually from any given moment “in time”, there is no future to come from in the first place? Even so, we would have to think in terms of multiple dimensions – infinite universes – to solve all the riddles and this is indeed one of the solutions that our so-called scientists offer. Their prophecies take the world upside down – and science upside down: there is no thread of evidence or any phenomenon that could only be explained by the existence of such multiplicity but it comes in handy because we need it to “prove” the possibility of time travel.


Image of past, present and future

The famous physicist Stephen Hawkins once raised the question why we haven’t been flooded by visitors from the future and why there is no viable record of any such visit throughout the history of human civilization. Many people still hesitate to answer that question in unambiguous terms. This is because we do not wish to irrevocably relinquish our belief in the concept, not because we have any evidence to support it.

The idea of time travel indeed is like religion. We need it. We need it to project and nourish our hopes, even our hopes for a better past. We do not want to acknowledge that at any point in our own ‘time’ we are confined by here and now, from one moment to the other. The present is inescapable and we can’t skip any of it however fast or however slow we re going, wherever in the Universe.

I believe that is a good thing.

LET’S ASSUME THERE WILL BE NO KILLER-ASTEROID

Copenhagen and the prospect of global agreement on the future of our Planet


If negotiators reach an accord at the climate talks in Copenhagen it will entail profound shifts in energy production, dislocations in how and where people live, sweeping changes in agriculture and forestry and the creation of complex new markets in global warming pollution credits. This will cost trillions of dollars over the next few decades. It is a significant sum but a relatively small fraction of the world’s total economic output. In energy infrastructure alone, the transformational ambitions that delegates to the United Nations climate change conference are expected to set in the coming days will cost more than $10 trillion in additional investment from 2010 to 2030, according to a new estimate from the International Energy Agency.

IHT, December 8 2009


Mankind is prone to think in terms of great disasters. We have an age old fascination with the End of Time, the Apocalypse or Armageddon. It is as if we have the firm conviction that something of the kind is inevitable and we rally to any seemingly credible speculation that it is bound to happen soon, such as the “2012” speculation.

I don’t believe that killer asteroids, massive volcano eruptions or any other similar epic disaster will visit our planet in the foreseeable future. On the other hand, the best way to face such eventualities, particularly when they are triggered by humanity’s exponential exploitation of the planet’s resources, is to be prepared

We still have a chance to allow something to envelope our planet, not the debris of an Asteroid, not the tsunami of a climate disaster, not mass starvation on many of our continents, but something far more appealing. We can still opt for a world full of life, love and human well-being if we so wish. We have the opportunity – and many would say: the responsibility - to opt for a future in which we can effectively cope with sizeable global challenges – including climate, clean water and secure land - and at the same time mobilize our energy to build for a better future in all other dimensions.

Similarly I believe the world is too much focusing on all kinds of measures to be taken, especially those associated with reducing the CO2 emissions. There is very little discussion among the nations now participating in the Copenhagen process about the world that we actually want to live in. It is highly doubtful that the people of our world, especially those who already live in adverse conditions, will be motivated by the mere wish to avoid disaster. It will only add fuel to their existing fatalism.


Do we want our planet to look like this?

We need to get a clearer picture of quality of life we want to achieve. We are too much on the defensive and to little on the offensive in our international efforts to contain climatic and related developments as they now seem to present themselves.

At the same we have to recognize that there is still too much adversity among the peoples of the planet and vast resources are wasted to contain the hotspots, the vicious conflicts directly and indirectly affecting the lives and livelihood of too many people on our planet.


Or like this?

Realistically we can’t expect countries such as the United States or the UK simply move their massive military budgets to ‘quality of life’ budgets any time soon, including C02 containment, but I do not see why these and other countries could not express their longer term intention to do so.

Future creation, that is: offering substantive perspectives to the peoples of conflict ridden countries, must be preferred to mere problem solving, just as much as a credible and appealing vision of our future planet could assist in current and future “Copenhagen processes”.

Indeed, the scope of Copenhagen is not simply CO2 or climate control. It is just a step, and hopefully a successful one, in a process which one day should bring all the nations of our world to a comprehensive agreement on the future of our planet; the management of its resources, the rules of industry, adjusted consumer behavior and so on. It should be the kind of world we all want to live in. That would make it so much easier to adjust and refocus our own lives and priorities.

2012 - THE SEQUEL

Planet Earth, 27 days after "2012" - a highly unrealistic depiction


A movie no one will care to make


At the end of the “end of the world as we know it” movie 2012 we are led to believe that a collection of humanity could survive the meltdown and break-up our Planet’s continents and after a mere 27 days could look out to a bright sky, breathe fresh air and walk onto habitable land. Given the nature and extent of the disaster that this movie depicts, whatever its true merits, it is a highly unlikely prospect that any life except bacterial would survive it.


"2012" - Plate tectonics gone wild

But let’s assume that 2012 in fact is a plausible scenario and that just a handful of people – a few hundred thousand – from across the globe would indeed start anew – on the January 1, 0001 - in a world of which the geology has reshuffled overnight, dwarfing the Himalayas and raising Africa to new prowess.

It is a neat touch of course, that such a story indeed would begin in Africa, with the same gene pool of all races put together as the gene pool of just a few hundred humans that once, some 75.000 years ago, was the base of humanity as it evolved to our present day.

But then the real struggle of our species begins. How would this new beginning, in unknown land and unknown true circumstances, actually be? Humanity’s survivors would have to leave behind every thought of civilization as they had known it. They have no choice but to relinquish every thought of public and private institutions servicing their physical and mental human needs ranging from prefab food to daily doses of pop music and televised news, working schools and hospitals, computer services; really everything.



"2012" - an airplane finding its way out of total destruction

How in fact could humanity prepare for ‘the end’ and still have any idea at all about one or the other new beginning. The scenario of “2012” does not contain the slightest hint of post-disaster planning. One could just as well consider this movie a story about prolonged dying.

If I were one of the happy few seeing the light of day after the 2012 Global Destruction, I would not waste my time in any discussion among fellow survivors about the world’s future, the organization of society or anything of the kind. My expectation would be that such discussion would have no end and that nothing substantial at any scale would be established for a long time. I would go my own way, far far away

In short, I would have a very pessimistic view of anything positive coming out of the last remains of humanity. I would reduce myself and my perspective to the wildest possible kind of animal, highly driven by my own survival instinct and perhaps by my drive to help my own genes survive. So, let’s hope there is a fertile woman around with the same beastly mentality.

Essentially, as we stand today, our humanity is helpless in such a world unless we accept the guidance of our very basic instincts. I believe that any intelligent and realistic human being would arrive at the same conclusion. Whatever remains of humanity is bound to dissolve in wilderness. There may be a tight circle of people still hanging on to the idea that something beautiful can or should come out of it. They will either perpetuate some religion or create a new one offering seeming security but at high cost, especially by being highly restrictive in most of the liberties that we have come to consider self-evident. At least some of them may attempt to create Utopia and probably, through this, help their way to a rather rapid self-destruction.

Who would wish to fantasize about this apparent ugliness and construct a sequel to 2012 out of it? If anyone would do it, it would attract an entirely different and probably much smaller audience of rather more philosophic people than of those who crave for immediate, consumable sensation.

Our species can sustain a substantial level of sophistication both in material and cultural or spiritual sense only if some very basic conditions (basic in our own mind) are met, such as the provision of food, energy, shelter, building materials etc. all of which would become highly uncertain in any “post 2012” world. What animals would still be around to provide us with meat? What trees, grasses and plants would grow to sustain the livelihood of any remaining populations of humans and animals alike?


Humanity, January 0001

Of course, on the long run, all options are open. But by all accounts it took the “post Dinosaur” world, as it emerged out of the great Meteorite impact 65 million years ago, at least many thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years to recuperate and create a new equilibrium of plant and animal life, widely different from the one that was blown away. There is no way humanity can plan for any development over such long time spans and thus, any survival scenario would as much be a jump into darkness as being killed in the disaster itself.

All of this leads me to conclude that there is no plausible way into a sequel to 2012 unless a large part of this movie is re-written altogether.

THE DUTY OF OUR OWN OPINION

Freedom of expression in civil society


In our present time of crowded masses and sophisticated government we tend to be especially concerned about the room for maneuver we have as an individual, about the protection of our privacy and most of all about the freedom to express ourselves the way we wish. These are particularly the concerns of the western human mind. People for instance from Asia or the Middle East would not quite put it this way, but in our world we would (*).

Obviously there are differences between people in our own world. We are not equally expressive nor are we equally individualistic or assertive about ourselves. We harbor many divergent interests. This is just as much part and parcel of our freedom. Nobody can force us to become fanatic about sports or about music or history. We are happy to make our own choices in this respect.

At the same time our freedoms are not just for us to take or to protect at will. They are not just optional; at times it matters how we make use of them and this in particular applies to the freedom which today is subject of much dispute, our freedom of expression. What is the essence of this freedom and where do we draw the line, if all, between our freedom and other people’s personal integrity? My personal view is that the law should never intervene in anything we say (in public), however atrocious our words may be, simply because time and again the public is taken hostage by certain groups or individuals with sensitivities, especially religious sensitivities, which should not concern the law in the first place.

Much less debated is the fact that our freedom of expression – in Dutch we say: the freedom to express our opinion - is a fundamental prerequisite too of the rights – and duties – we have as citizens of our country. For without this freedom democracy is impossible. Most of our public institutions would then turn into dictatorships. But having said that, it is equally clear that our democracies would fail not simply if we cannot express our opinions, but also if – first of all – we do not form our opinions.



Thus, it seems to me, our freedom of expression equals the responsibility we have to indeed express ourselves, each of us individually, when it is our civic call to do so. Not so long ago – in many countries – this was mandatory: our failure to turn up at national or local elections was punishable by law. I do not believe (m)any of us would wish to return to this situation. Yet, by abandoning the obligation to vote, we also have thrown away our societal expectation that people participate in elections and allow our democracies to function fully.

Most certainly the educated among us should be expected to have and express an opinion of their own and effect it. I believe this is paramount in any society or any country – that wishes to sustain – or attain - a reasonable level of sophistication, both in its government and in its infrastructure and public services. No dictatorship, whether left or right, will ever be able to achieve this.

Therefore we should encourage our schools and universities, which are the breading place of civilization, to feed their students’ drive to have their own views and articulate them as clearly as possible. We should encourage them to develop their students’ questioning mind as opposed to their ability to merely produce answers according to the whims of their teachers.



Indeed, every sound opinion stems from sound questions. And perhaps this is most fundamental to everything related to the topic of this essay and most ignored. Our questions and our self-assertion in raising them are our key weapon against any dogma, any absolutist belief, any bag of nonsense which others may wish to enforce upon us. Sadly so many people, young people especially, are confronted with this in our world. There may be a good case therefore to supplement the inventory of our human rights expressis verbis with the right to question, unconditionally, without reservation, every story that is presented to us by anybody.

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(*) Just by coincidence I published this blog almost to the minute at the time when US President Obama paid a visit to China. He gave a speech to Chinese students in which he emphasized exactly my point but also went beyond it: freedom of expression should - in his view - be seen as a universal human right. I can not agree more. Yet I believe we have to recognize that - for instance - students in China will interpret this in a different manner than students in the US.

ARE WE HEADED FOR INFINITY UNTIL THE VERY END?

The End of History revisited

Some twenty years ago Francis Fukuyama published his claim that the victory of liberal democracy over communism and similar totalitarian ideologies marked the end of history. Most of all his book marked the end of a particular phase in history – the dominance of East (communism) versus West (liberal capitalism) and forty years of fierce technological and military competition, bringing us – on balance – accelerated advancement in all fields. In the twenty years that have since passed many new developments emerged on the world scene: the new thrust of our information and communication age, globalization and its adversities, especially on the axis between the Arab and Western countries and so on. As a result, the idea of a finite history has lost much of its credibility. Major challenges lie ahead if we wish to avoid massive political but also natural disasters – the possibility of one feeding the possibility of the other.

Thus, however we define ‘history’, the human story is very likely to continue without any prospect of an end but the very end itself. We could say this almost by definition, assuming we retain our ability to record and store our life’s accounts until such final moment one day in a probably very distant future (*).

With this prospect in mind I am not necessarily looking at the course of history as we generally know it: the rise and fall of civilizations, the tales of peoples, nations and great ideologies, the faits et gestes of kings, emperors and presidents or of war, conquest and expansion. In these classical dimensions many histories have already passed or “ended”. We no longer live in a world dictated by the whims of absolute monarchs or by grave mass superstition and religious ceremony such as the world of the Pharaohs or the Aztecs. I am rather more looking at the story of humanity in a broader sense, its general advancement in many different fields, such as science, arts and culture at many different levels and in many different expressions.



However, it is obvious that we cannot dissociate one from the other. The advancement of our space technology and everything derived from it would have been unthinkable without the pressure of the Cold War – the competition between the US and the Soviet Union – in this critical period. We could expand this observation to most other fields no doubt. The broader social, political and economic drama of humanity is an essential inspiration for the arts, for scientific developments and so on.

Thus, if it were true that “history” would end – as Fukuyama once contended – all other endeavors of humanity would come to a grinding halt. There would be no more inspiration for advancement or innovation – or the retention of certain beliefs and practices - in any field. We would return to an existence of no more interest than for instance the existence of the Neanderthal or the baboons. Human kind being the way it is, I believe this is a highly unlikely prospect, however our existence may be disrupted by unforeseen disasters or – alternatively – however new species may still evolve out of mankind (intelligent beings evolving from other species, though theoretically plausible, being a very, very remote prospect). There is much history still ahead of us in yet unthinkable dimensions and of a scope beyond our current imagination. We believe we can foresee everything, but it is obvious we can not. We may speculate about certain aspects – technology, biology, space travel and so on – but there is no way that our future can be foretold in a remotely credible way. Why, if we look back at our own lives, how much of it was foreseeable when we were young? Very little, I would say. I have had many visions even in my early youth of the future, let’s say: the year 2000. But the actual turn of the Millennium was vastly different, in dimensions which could not remotely be foreseen back in the sixties or even in the seventies. In the mean time our own life’s story is ongoing until the very end.

The metaphor of our individual lives is a pertinent one. In our own mind we live forever, until the reality of our mortality – finally - overtakes us. And many of us invest as much in the present as in our (personal) legacy. We want to be remembered and, if possible, leave a lasting footprint for the world after us. We do not readily accept that, one day sooner or later, there will no longer be a single trace of our existence. This, I believe, is true for mankind as a whole. So let’s think of humanity as a story unfolding in infinite space and time, indeed until the very end – one day sooner or – hugely - later.

All of this for me is a starting point, not a final argument, in considering this challenging phenomenon called “the (distant) future”, the scope and potential of humanity’s story. It liberates my mind from today’s prevailing paradigms. I am not particularly interested in liberalism or capitalism per se. I am interested in every dimension on which humanity can put its mind and skills. If mass air transportation was inconceivable up to the early days of the twentieth century, how much that is inconceivable today can still be achieved in the future? We can not draw any definitive line, perhaps even including the speed of light.


13,5 Billion years in a nutshell: a mere prelude to what is to come: infinite darkness

Some ninety percent of our Universe – today called “dark matter” – is still little understood. We are crawling towards some understanding of it, but much is still to be uncovered. We are touching quantum mechanics but haven’t yet reached the revolution it will no doubt trigger once we’re there (wherever and whatever “there” is). Solving the issues of climate, ecological balance, future energy sources, mass population and so on can be seen as major challenges for this century but over time they will just seem mere steps in between from the primitive technologies and institutions of the industrial revolution to the advancements of future human civilizations if not the entire future global community. This will hold true even if along the way the process of advancement is disrupted either my major natural disasters or by war and conflict. The actual scenario is irrelevant (we can speculate as much as we want, but we will essentially remain ignorant). Of course, disruptions may matter if they get us close to total extinction and a total loss of knowledge, perhaps even of history itself.

The future therefore is vastly more interesting – in every dimension – than was pictured in Fukuyama’s book picturing something close to the end of it or close to some kind of equilibrium freezing our ideas and concepts of a truthfully happy human society. For indeed, the pursuit of happiness, even in our own lives, is a journey without end. Also, I believe that our contemporary Science Fiction is producing tales of a highly repetitive nature, without much advancement and without enhancing its scope beyond – essentially very boring - battles between entire galaxies.



A neverending dream: human flight

Finally, I would say it is equally interesting – and pertinent – to dwell in the past as it is to travel through space and time and visualize the various potential futures – generally but especially in particular fields or dimensions. Will religion disappear or will it recapture its hold on the known world? If so, how would this be, or what could trigger it? At what time, if any, will nation states disappear behind the curtain or will they reassert – re-group – themselves? How will our private and collective mobility evolve, including our mobility beyond the confines of the planet Earth.


How long will the House of Orange reign in The Netherlands?

On average Earth’s (animal) species have a lifetime of some four million years. Humanity – homo sapiens – has just started, covering a mere two hundred thousand years, or – if we want to include its predecessor homo erectus – not more than a million and a half. Hence, we are not even finished with the groundwork. All of our past history is a succession of primitive experiments (each with their own greatness of course). We live in the prologue of human history, not in its epilogue.

I hope this essay serves as an inspiration especially for young people. Nothing is finished. Much remains to be done. Humanity requires our greatest ambitions without restriction here and now or any time in the future.

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(*) I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the future, mankind will make sure that - whatever the fate of planet Earth and its inhabitants - the memory of their existence will not be lost in the Universe. In fact, we already sent a probe - Voyager I, launched in 1977 - with exactly this purpose, and no doubt many will follow.

EDUCATION: SHARING THE INTEREST(S) OF OUR STUDENTS

Let our students assert themselves

All my life I have been involved in education but I have also spent ample time in the real world to make my own assessment of the actual connections between one and the other.

I have seen much improvement over the decades. Let’s first make that observation. The old academic ivory towers are items of the past. Schools, colleges and universities have become much more – generally - responsive to the needs of society and our information and communication capabilities have revolutionized many learning processes. However, we continue to largely project our own interpretation of the world on our children, which we do in the disguise of knowledge transfer. We fail to systematically engage them into the real world. We do not sufficiently get our students to develop their own views of it as a basis for their ventures in the future and or help them to lay a proper foundation for their own career.

Many senseless, irrelevant programs are offered in our colleges and universities. We tend to overemphasize knowledge and invest much less in the actual development of the students’ capabilities. It may seem a paradoxical statement, but many fashionable curricula which allegedly connect knowledge with its (real life) application, offer yesterday’s solutions at best and do not actually challenge the capabilities of students to identify relevant issues themselves and mobilize the required expertise. In fact, the expertise which the students end up with is very thin or shallow; they know very little about almost everything.

Secondly we have steered the notion of competence driven education into much too narrow alleys. Whilst the concept offers useful parameters to design a curriculum at the appropriate level and to help create its focus, the actual investment in our students should be much broader. It is vital we get away from too much standardization and allow more room in our program to cater for the students’ individual qualities .



I believe most of all that the current generation of students has a great challenge to face. Not simply to make sense of the myriad of options, this bombardment of opportunities, almost in every aspect of their lives: education, culture, consumer markets, entertainment etc. Not simply this, but also to take command of their own path, their own education and development, based primarily on their own needs and interests.

More substantially this is what the current younger generation should take on board:

- to be responsible for themselves and for the development their own capacities/capabilities

- to assert themselves in the face of everything that is presented to them, in education, culture, politics, markets etc

- to create their own themes and signature irrespective of the commands of the curriculum, and shape their own identity accordingly

- to be highly cooperative among each other (most of what students can learn, they can learn from their fellow students)

- to pro-actively make their own inquiries – and develop their own approaches – (in)to the outside world

- and finally, to make sure that what schools teach them is indeed what they should learn



The current board of the Dutch National Student Association ISO

More than ever schools and universities are the extended arm both of their students’ parents and of society at large. We should provide for an education system which takes the interests, talents and perspectives of the students as the starting point. Curricula should guide this process but not rigidly determine, let alone confine it. Obviously, for most true professions such as the medical, legal and engineering professions entry qualifications should prevail, but students should be allowed to choose their own path to getting there, at least more than is the case at present.



I am a strong proponent of an approach to education that treats the process of knowledge transfer as a supporting process. The key process is not teaching, but is the actual learning of the students themselves, in all their variety and different learning styles and learning capabilities. Educators, not simply teachers, should be there to guide and coach the students, independent from those responsible for the education program.

Secondly education is to cater for the future and not to enforce the past on our younger generation. Every educational environment should be particularly inviting on that score: in the way it draws its students to the real world and not simply to the books and theories at school.

My third and last point is that we have treated students mistakenly as "clients", almost as objects. The reality is that they are the main producer themselves of "our output". We should view ourselves as their partners, most certainly not as their adversaries or as adults who always know better. We don't.

Why isn’t this evident already. Why do we so strongly adhere to telling rather than showing? We should push our students to experience the world themselves and liberate them from school buildings with too many teachers around them who have no clue of the real world, let alone of the competences required to properly survive and thrive in it.

HERCULES, SUPERMAN AND JESUS CHRIST

Our human craving for the supernatural

When watching the animated Disney version of the Greek story of Hercules (Greek: Heracles), which contains many digressions from the original myth, one would almost believe that the creators of Superman did nothing but copy Hercules in a modern age version. A baby from outer space (or the mountain Olympus), taken up by foster parents, growing into a human of extreme power and ability, saving the world in which he lives.

They are both just stories to begin with. We might even be similarly inclined to believe the story of Superman as the Greeks did in respect of their Gods and superheroes. For them they were nothing less than the key characters of their national religion. Superman in our time has not come that far. However much he is our modern day myth of a son of the stars and his powers are derived from our own yellow sun, the Christian superhero, Jesus Christ, Son of God, is still a stronger myth, stronger than any myth attempted or created ever since the first century AD.



In all three stories there is a child who is raised by foster parents of our own Earthly world. Even Maria could to some extent be considered s foster mother, for her child was conceived for a destiny far beyond the grasp of mortal parents. All three enjoyed a childhood of humble proportions. Nothing in their earthly surroundings, whether the simple nomadic existence of Maria and Joseph or the rural life of Martha and Jonathan Kent. It seems to me that indeed the creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, knew their classics when almost eighty years ago they concocted the myth of Kal-El, son of Krypton, who became the greatest superhero ever imagined on the planet Earth.

Of course, Superman was never conceived as a claim to our fundamental beliefs. Still, he is an important icon of our Americanized world. American concepts and myths pervade our western world ever since Woodrow Wilson first dictated his (ill fated) Pax Americana in the closing days of a world dominated by European imperial concepts and myths. The story of Superman is part and parcel of this – essentially twentieth century – reality. It will be difficult to conceive the total oblivion of this story, even though – no doubt – Superman will ‘die’ many more episodes to come (it happened twice so far, by my recollection).



And we do want to believe to some extent. At least we want to believe in this ultimate fantasy of the supernatural, the superhuman, whether sired by divinity or by living beings on distant stars. Hercules, Jesus Christ, Superman and many other similar myths or stories have served humanity for most of its existence to satisfy this universal need. Both our experiences and our hopes are infested with the notion that our world, including our personal existence, is influenced if not governed by agents outside our normal powers of observation. Some believe in an actual, existing God, others cannot escape a sense of fate or pre-determination, and I believe in guardian angels.

Most of all, ever since I first came eye to eye with him at the age of eleven, I believe in Superman. Obviously there is nothing in me that believes he ever really existed, but the comics that have come out of Schuster’s and Siegel’s first inspiration all serve as a reminder of our human limitations, our weakness and even our potential for malice. And aren’t these the universal themes of all myths and legends, isn’t this in fact the key message of almost all religions? You don’t have to believe in anything and still accept these ‘truths’ as a beacon in your life.

But otherwise, Hercules, Superman and Jesus Christ simply offer us the kind of fairy tales that of necessity accompany our earthly path, wonderful fiction which is the essence of our humanity.

JACKSON IS THE MOZART OF OUR TIME

In the recent days many comparisons have been made between the deceased Michael Jackson and other icons of our time, most notably Elvis Presley.

One other comparison has been drawn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Michael Jackson too was a child prodigy who was pushed onto the stage by an ambitious father. Like Mozart Michael Jackson was crowned a King of his art and public performance. They both inspired an entire culture, for many decades, whether in classical music or pop.



So indeed, Michael Jackson will stand on a high pedestal, almost in the way he had already depicted this in the pictures of his album “History”.

To some extent Michael Jackson isn’t history yet, nor for that matter can we call Mozart ‘history’. Most likely Michael’s voice will be heard for ages to come in the same way as the sounds and tunes of Mozart’s sonatas and concertos.

And what about the culture itself? Our popular music already has passed Michael Jackson’s heydays. Yet his legacy continues to resound in many new albums of a wide range of artists, his dance routines re-emerge time and again in video clips, and Michael’s own music will of course continue to be played for quite some years to come.



Still our popular culture may be up for some sizeable innovation, the way Michael Jackson single handedly ignited the innovation of the late seventies, right after Elvis Presley’s death. It will be interesting to see what it takes to be star with revolutionary potential in our time. We can not sit and wait. We just have to recognize it when it arrives.

A GLOBAL TREATY TO SAVE OUR PLANET

God does not mingle with the odds

God does not temper with destiny, this is my conviction. Whether or not he plays dice.

Or should we say: life is one big game of dice. The only thing a God can do is show us the consequences of our own actions. But it is the human society that determines those consequences. Nothing actually is “an act of God”.

And because there is no God who actually sets enforceable rules, we have created the institution of law to rule us. Law is a fundamentally human logic. A necessary or inevitable effort towards logic, if we want to maintain the equilibrium of hour human societies. And perhaps by virtue of that its mother is the logic of God, or Nature.

I had a conversation, recently, with a colleague. I don’t remember how we got there, but he said: “Natural law was a great philosophy before Darwin. We never again looked at natural law after Darwin, did we?” I mumbled in agreement and immediately started to reflect on it.

Although I do not believe in legally relevant natural law, I do believe that there is much that law can learn from nature.

For instance: that we may fight crime better by bringing home the consequences rather than by mere punishment or retribution.

Or: that we must have some tolerance, however difficult emotionally, for accidents to happen, unless we want a rigidly policed and tightly secured society. Such society can only be sustained on the basis of human enslavement not human freedom.

That we must emphasize our individual duty to find the niche in which we can survive and sustain ourselves. One could indeed say, this is our natural duty as it is our natural opportunity. To go and find our own, individual niche and work towards our own sustainability in the first place.

The essence of human evolution is the ability and drive to quickly adapt to new niches, new circumstances, and yes, entirely new environments from very warm to very cold. We have reached the stage – as a species – at which we are a serious force with an impact of unknown consequences on the environment itself. To a large extent we have created, and engineered our entire human existence, and our potential peril.




We have been on the road of submitting nature to the human wishes and now we have reached the point of reversal. Shouldn’t our responsibility in respect of nature of itself not be the key principle of natural law to be imposed on all humans living now and in the future?

And if this is not self-evident, then perhaps we should ourselves articulate our responsibilities regarding nature in a global treaty of all humanity, strictly reinforceable, by force if necessary.

Let’s newly address the question of ‘natural law’: not simply as a source of guiding (or inspiring) principles for the human society, but as the prime expression of humanity’s responsibility in respect of its true mother Nature. And whoever wants to believe in God will most likely wholeheartedly agree. Even the Pope in Rome should be in total agreement. Nearly fifty years ago an American President spirited the Western world to the Moon. Perhaps in our time we need an American President who inspires us to reach a global agreement regarding our own planet Earth.

HOW HISTORY WAS INTRODUCED IN MY YOUTH

And how it inspires me to help pass it on to future generations

I still have the record of my first lessons of history at school when I was nine years old. It is something we would today call a notebook. Most of it was written exactly according to the instructions of our teacher. But some things were not. One could say that they contained my first personal interpretation of history, by way of my illustrations.


Charlemagme at his court in the early 800's (TKA 1961)

These drawings are a reflection too of that time. The man with the firm stride closely resembles a popular comic figure, Captain Haddock of Tintin, whom I was frantically copying in all my drawings and scribbles. Of course, history obtains its meaning very much because we can project ourselves into it. Experience it.


Captain Haddock (Herge)

I have to say that the largest share of my history lessons did not come from school, but from my father, and from many other people, family and friends, teachers, with whom I shared the years of my youth.

At school our teacher picked this notion up by starting her lessons right there, with the experience of family: young people, old people, stories from the past, long ago, a chain – a chain of people and a chain of ‘time, endlessly going back in the past.

The first page of my notebook, the first lessons, dealt with this concept of time, and the timeline you can divide in parts, in dates. All of it was quite clear for me from the onset.


The first page of my history notebook, fourth grade (age 9)

I believe that in order to understand this space of time in the past’ and people long gone, the idea of a finite life, and thus the notion of death, must be clear by that time too, in any child of nine years old. I certainly understood it because I had no difficulty to grasp the implication of old aunts and uncles, even a grandfather, already having ‘died’.

The notebook is not simply a annotation of dates. It contains many references to the way of life of the people, their circumstances, their technologies and livelihood, next to the significant facts of history and the kings, queens, presidents and Popes involved in them.



The professions, the crafts and the arts also were given their proper attention, even in ‘experience’ terms. One example is the letter ‘P’ that I designed for the cover of an imaginary Medieval book, dedicated to a person named Philip.

Why not? It is a good way to experience the dedication of a 10th Century Monk who is working on his masterpiece. That monk would have loved the availability of Photoshop or 3D design, or even mass produced tubes of paint. But in his time they didn’t have any of it.


Viking ship

But I believe it was the key lesson of my father that stirred my passion for history indefinitely. He was always very quick to relate events of our time to examples in the past. And once that happens, you get interested to hear the whole story, and not just the fragments. It comes naturally if you have the basic curiosity of a child.

It has to be fed, this curiosity. It is the curiosity that does not develop just on its own steam. I believe that our current youngest generation is one which shows a good deal of curiosity, and I believe it is critical that we help them answer it in the right way.

For me, the lessons of history have most of all been part of an expedition of my own. I was given ample opportunity to actively absorb it, in our travels, in movies, in books, in family history. It continues to be such expedition to this day. Every day when I travel to certain periods or aspects of history, I largely see facts which I already ‘know’, but I see them in different lights and contexts. And this includes the events of which I had been witness myself, such as the revolution of the sixties.

The active exercise of history is a highly useful effort especially on behalf of our present and future. Not by way of prediction, but by way of projection and interpretation. Every day we absorb these lessons.

My perceptions of Charlemagne and the Vikings, and many other figures of the past have since evolved, of course. Most of all I have many more questions about Charlemagne than ‘knowledge’. And it is unlikely that today I would paint a Viking ship so colorful. But otherwise, the picture is very constant too. The order of history as I grasp it today is founded on these very basic lessons, back almost fifty years ago.