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.