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.