Things to think about
1) History is full of people who, out of greed, fear, ignorance or lust for power have destroyed treasures of measurable value who truly belong to all of humanity. We must not let it happen again.
2) An extraterrestrial being who visited Earth, will find the differences between societies/races trivial compared to the similarities.
- Carl Sagan -
I just "resaw" the last episode of Cosmos by Carl Sagan, and you know, it is the kind of show that will leave you hopeful, leave you motivated, leave you optimistic. You see the comments on the video, and you will think that this world has hope (unlike when you read politicians' blogs' comments or portals like malaysianinsider of theonlinecitizen/stomp where you will wonder how we can progress with such myopic views......)
then I saw this comment which really hit the nail on the head: the combined views of all the episodes of cosmos is not more than the views of a video titled:"guy stick his head up a woman's ass". LOL
In his Foundation series Novel, Isaac Asimov wrote that humanity as we know it is unsustainable. Our species is too individualistic. We depend too much on randomness, on luck, on mob consciousness to drive our societies' progress. It is thus inevitable that we will go through cycles of strong civilization and dark ages.
In his book, the withering of civilization is characterized by the disuse of nuclear power and the reversion back to chemical energy. As society grows more barbaric, knowledge becomes scarce, people become afraid of the unknown/afraid of knowledge....and a vicious cycle is started.....and it takes centuries before a great civilization will notice its demise. But by then it will be already too late.
Because for humans, it seems like we programmed to be cyclical. Sustaining something seems to be the hardest for us humans....every idea seems to start out well, but as things get more and more complicated, we will just follow with the flow, and because of all the "reptilian nature" of humans: "selfishness", "greed", "fear of the unknown/ppl who are different from us, all good ideas will end up becoming not so good, and the society will start to lose it's edge as well.....until another great idea comes out from the ashes. No degeneration, no innovation, no progress.
has this vicious cycle started already for us?
The novel's solution was a collective consciousness, a collective brain, a collective memory to guide us humans....but with a collective consciousness, there will be more exceptional beings, there will be no chaos, and no chaos means no deviants, no genius, no breakthrough. Breakthroughs and chaos goes hand in hand. Chaos means you risk survival for progress. Stability means you live, but progress will be limited.
Which one do you want?
2) An extraterrestrial being who visited Earth, will find the differences between societies/races trivial compared to the similarities.
- Carl Sagan -
I just "resaw" the last episode of Cosmos by Carl Sagan, and you know, it is the kind of show that will leave you hopeful, leave you motivated, leave you optimistic. You see the comments on the video, and you will think that this world has hope (unlike when you read politicians' blogs' comments or portals like malaysianinsider of theonlinecitizen/stomp where you will wonder how we can progress with such myopic views......)
then I saw this comment which really hit the nail on the head: the combined views of all the episodes of cosmos is not more than the views of a video titled:"guy stick his head up a woman's ass". LOL
In his Foundation series Novel, Isaac Asimov wrote that humanity as we know it is unsustainable. Our species is too individualistic. We depend too much on randomness, on luck, on mob consciousness to drive our societies' progress. It is thus inevitable that we will go through cycles of strong civilization and dark ages.
In his book, the withering of civilization is characterized by the disuse of nuclear power and the reversion back to chemical energy. As society grows more barbaric, knowledge becomes scarce, people become afraid of the unknown/afraid of knowledge....and a vicious cycle is started.....and it takes centuries before a great civilization will notice its demise. But by then it will be already too late.
Because for humans, it seems like we programmed to be cyclical. Sustaining something seems to be the hardest for us humans....every idea seems to start out well, but as things get more and more complicated, we will just follow with the flow, and because of all the "reptilian nature" of humans: "selfishness", "greed", "fear of the unknown/ppl who are different from us, all good ideas will end up becoming not so good, and the society will start to lose it's edge as well.....until another great idea comes out from the ashes. No degeneration, no innovation, no progress.
has this vicious cycle started already for us?
The novel's solution was a collective consciousness, a collective brain, a collective memory to guide us humans....but with a collective consciousness, there will be more exceptional beings, there will be no chaos, and no chaos means no deviants, no genius, no breakthrough. Breakthroughs and chaos goes hand in hand. Chaos means you risk survival for progress. Stability means you live, but progress will be limited.
Which one do you want?
posted by Li Hong at 9:40 PM
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