RSS for Marketers
3.23.2008
This site is now optimized to display nicely using iPhone's smartRSS newsreader. Here's a direct link to my newsfeed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/WhatsEatingJdavies
Most websites with voluminous content need an RSS newsfeed to effectively give subscribers a quick snapshot or digest of the latest headlines or topics. RSS is not a new technology, but is recently gaining popularity among geekier users, top companies & organizations. From a marketing standpoint, the use of RSS is more a technological move than a branding strategy. Unless the brand is tech-centric and positioned to tap the online, tech-savvy market, I would presume most marketers will not mark it urgent to implement.
Generally however, marketers who dismiss will cite that the total user base may not reach a significant tipping point where non-use would be detrimental to the brand. Most often than not, this view of late adaptation of certain technology makes the brand a reactionary product - something I support only if the brand from the very beginning is positioned as a profitable number 2 and not gunning for market leadership as a matter of strategy.
It is my view, being reactionary to technology and justifying it because it "doesn't immediately pose a significant gain" doesn't mean some things don't have to be done. Too much reviewing of past data is not always a good thing: We have to be forward-lookers sometimes.
Labels: Brand Management, Musings, Online Strategy
posted by Jdavies @ 3/23/2008,
,
If Noah was a Filipino
4.27.2006
Got an email which tells a what-if biblical story. It poses the question: what if Noah is a Filipino in today's time? Interesting how emails of this sort spread like wildfire. it begs the question - who wrote it, and for whom, for what? I have my concerns for emails of this sort:
My questions:
- Who writes these things? Is he paid, is it a hobby, is it passion?
- Or is it a genuine sentiment, all of the above?
- Is it propaganda? If so, from which side?
- Could this be taken as a sentiment of some sector?
- What is the intention of the sender?
- Does this guy have a blog? It would be cool to read his points of view.
- Does he advocate anything - will he follow-up with another email proposing something?
I ask the same questions when I watch late-night news. Who do we trust? Read the whole story here.
A funny way of presenting the sad state of affairs in the Phils.
Kung Pinoy si Noah....Ganito ang mangyayari sa arko. Read along.
Taong 2005 at isang ordinaryong middle class pinoy si Noah. Nagpakita sa kanya ang Diyos at sinabing "Pagkatapos ng isang taon ay bubuhos ang ulan at babahain ang buong kapuluan ng Pilipinas. Gusto kong gumawa ka ng isang malaking arko at isakay mo rito ang pares-pares na mga hayop at mgamag-asawang pilipino sa iba't-ibang kapuluan." Ibinigay kay Noah ang specs ng Arko at taos puso nitong tinanggap ang responsibilidad na sagipin ang sambayanang Pilipino sa napipintong pagbaha.
Lumipas ang isang taon, muling nagpakita ang Diyos kay Noah. Walang arkong nagawa si Noah at galit na galit siyang tinanong ng Diyos, "Nasaan ang arko na ipinagawa ko sa iyo?"
Tumugon si Noah, "Patawarin po ninyo ako kung di po natupad ang utos ninyo! Nagkaroon po ng malaking problema sa plano po ninyo."
At inilahad ni Noah ang mga sagabal na nakaharap niya sa pag-gawa ng arko.
Humingi siya ng Mayor's permit pero papayag lang daw si Mayor kung ang gagawa ng arko ay ang construction firm ng kanyang pamangkin. Tumungo siya sa Congressman pero papayag lang daw si Congressman kung may matatanggap siyang 30% commission.
Nagtayo ng unyon ang mga kinuha niyang manggagawa at nag-strike.
Natunugan ng mga left-leaning groups ang kanyang balak at ang mga ito ay nag-rally dahil daw sa hindi makatarungang pagpili ng mga taong sasakay sa arko (mga taong naniniwala lang sa Diyos ang pwedeng sumakay). Nakisali sa rally ang mga bakla at tomboy dahil bias daw na normal na mag-asawa lang ang pwedeng sumakay.
Ang civil society group ay nakisali na rin sa gulo dahil napag-alaman daw nila na ang pondong gagamitin sa paggawa ng arko ay galing sa donasyon ng mga gambling lords at katas ng weteng.
Sa kaguluhang ito ay napilitang magpatawag ng hearing ang senado "in aid of legislation". Sinubukan ni Noah na gamitin ang EO 464 para makaiwas sa hearing pero dahil hindi sya executive official, napilitan siyang tumistigo.
Nang malaman ng senado na utos ng Diyos ang pagpapagawa ng arko, dineklara nila itong unconstitutional dahil hindi raw nito iginalang ang separation ng church at state.
Nakialam na rin ang NBI at PNP at sinabi nilang meron silang impormasyon na
ang arko raw na ito ay gagamitin ni Erap sa kanyang pagtakas.
Sinabi naman ng ISAFP at DOJ na ito raw ay gagamitin ng grupong Magdalo sa
binabalak nilang coup laban kay Arroyo.
Nilapitan ni Noah si Mike Defensor para makipag-usap kay GMA. Payag daw si GMA na ituloy ang arko kung ipapaskil daw sa arko ang malaking mukha ni Arroyo na may slogan "Towards a Strong Republic".
"Hindi po ako pumayag kaya hanggang ngayon po ay may TRO ang pag-gawa ng arko. Sa palagay ko po kailangan ko pa ng 10 taon para matapos ang inyong proyekto." Ang huling wika ni Noah.
Napa-iling ang Diyos at sinabing, "Di ko na kailangang wasakin pa ang bansang ito. Hayaan ko na lang kayong sumira nito.
Labels: Musings, Philippines
posted by Jdavies @ 4/27/2006,
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Judas: Traitor or Pawn in God’s Plan?
4.12.2006
From the same discussions on the Gospel of Judas, I got this article from Svelte I would like to share without permission
from the author, (who is said to be a Jesuit). I am posting this because I believe an article on issues of faith
deserves exposure.
Related post: "A Question of Faith".
The publication of the text of the recently discovered Gospel of Judas is seen by some as a sensation. Supposedly this text offers new insights into the life and especially the circumstances of the death of Jesus Christ. According to this "gospel" Judas is the true and privileged disciple of Jesus. Jesus teaches him separately from the other disciples the secrets which no one has ever seen. He predicts that Judas will rule over the generations and that the star of Judas will lead the way. Why is Judas praised so much?
In the Gospel of Judas Jesus himself gives the answer to this question: "But you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me" (the quotes of the Gospel of Judas are taken from the English text available on the internet). In a first reaction to the Gospel of Judas some claim that Judas is presented here as acting as a pawn in God's plan of salvation and that Jesus tells Judas to hand him over to his opponents. Thus Judas is no longer the traitor, but someone who did what Jesus himself asked him to do, someone who in so doing became an instrument in God's plan. What is going on here? This may well be a way of saving Judas from his age-old reputation as an evil person. But does this explanation do justice to the core of the Christian message?
We need to be careful not to be deceived. The so-called Gospel of Judas is neither a gospel nor by Judas. The specialists have no doubt that the historical Judas could not have written this text. This "gospel" rather originated in the second century; for it is a Gnostic text, another point on which the scholars seem to agree. And Gnosticism is a movement which really only came of the ground in the second century. The text is not a gospel in the strict sense of the word; for it does not deal with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The time frame is rather during a week three days before Jesus celebrated Passover. Jesus is described as revealing secrets to his disciples and particularly to Judas. At the end of the "gospel" Judas hands Jesus over to the scribes for some money.
The text of the Gospel of Judas is characterized by tensions and inconsistencies. The first sentence presents the "gospel" as "The secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot". The first part of the "gospel" is focused on the disciples, not on Judas. While the narrative is framed three days before Passover, at the end the narrative time suddenly switches to the time of the arrest of Jesus, i.e., shortly after the Passover meal. Despite this time frame, in the gospel itself, Jesus is frequently said to be appearing and departing and thus suggest a post-Easter perspective. This is rather confusing for the reader. Even these appearances are curious. The "gospel" tells us: "Often he did not appear to his disciples as himself, but he was found among them as a child".
It is frustrating for the reader that at the crucial places in the Gospel of Judas words and lines are missing in the original, i.e., the parts which are missing in the original or which were so badly damaged that it was impossible to reconstruct the text. The statement where Jesus predicts that Judas will hand him over to his enemies is preceded by a passage most of which is missing. Thus is it impossible to understand this statement in its literary context and it becomes for us an isolated saying. How does the Gospel of Judas understand what has long been called the betrayal of Judas? The Jesus of the Gospel of Judas does not speak of betrayal. Judas is not presented as a traitor. Jesus rather uses the verb "sacrifice", thus giving Judas' deed a positive theological interpretation. Judas did not hand Jesus over to his enemies for money, but he had a deeper religious motivation when he did this. For in the description of the sacrificing, a typically Gnostic distinction is made between the body as clothing and the soul. Judas did not sacrifice Jesus, but only his body, the part of the human person which Gnosticism despised as evil matter. Obviously the Gospel of Judas considered Judas as a hero for sacrificing the body of Jesus, as he liberated Jesus' soul from the prison of the body.
But does Judas according to this "gospel" really act according to a commissioning by Jesus or the plan of God? This might be suggested by the positive presentation of Judas and the prediction of Jesus concerning Judas role in his arrest. But there are no explicit statements to that effect in this "gospel." The idea of Judas as a pawn in God's plan is rather projected onto the Gospel of Judas by contemporary readers as a result of a centuries-old theological tradition. This theology of the cross assumes that according to God's plan the world could only be saved if someone died. According to one strand by Jesus' dying on the cross the ransom was paid (to the devil) in order to liberate humanity that was enslaved to sin. According to others the offense against God which sin entailed demanded capital punishment for the sinner. Jesus is seen as undergoing capital punishment on the cross in place of human persons in order to save them from having to be punished. Moreover there is another interpretation which claims that Jesus had to die to prove to human persons how strong God's love for them was. This understanding assumes that people will come to faith if they realize how much God loves them. It is driven by the hope that love will bring forth love in return.
Throughout the centuries the Catholic Church did not canonize any of these interpretations of why Jesus died on the cross. But the idea that God is the ultimate reason why Jesus had to die on the cross, i.e., that according to God's plan Jesus was sent to the world to die on the cross is still on many peoples minds. Recently it has been reinforced by the rise of Christian fundamentalism which considers the "doctrine of substitutionary atonement" as one of the five fundamentals of the Christian faith. For some contemporaries this theology of the cross is still a source of hope, others have turned their backs on the Christian faith precisely because of this teaching.
However, the death of Jesus should not simplistically be presented as being demanded by God. The Christian God is a God of life and love, goodness and joy. God's plan was to save the world through Jesus' life and not through his death. Jesus' crucifixion was a criminal act which human persons executed against God's will. Humans thwarted God's plan to save the world, but the resurrection shows that God did not allow them to destroy his plan to save us. Jesus death on the cross was an execution for which humans, not God were responsible. Human persons have a tendency to run away from this responsibility and to look for scapegoats. They found scapegoats in (the Jew) Judas and then in the Jewish people. Interpreting Jesus' death on the cross as God's will, is a way of completely shunning human responsibility. Even a strictly historical interpretation runs the risk of passing on the responsibility to the Jewish authorities or the Roman leaders of 2,000 years ago. Jesus' life ended on the cross because he undermined the privileges of the powerful by his way of speaking and acting, by his care for the marginalized, by calling into question traditional religious and social practices which were hurting people. If Jesus were to live again in this way among us, he would certainly not die on a cross. But our society would also find ways of eliminate him in one way or another. In fact, this is already happening to people in our midst who try to live as Jesus did.
It does not make sense to present as will of God a criminal act orchestrated by human persons. It is also dangerous. One of the most effective ways of perpetuating human suffering in the world is to interpret it as willed by God. Only when we unreservedly dare to accept that suffering always goes against God unconditional and complete commitment against human suffering becomes necessary and possible for Christians. We need not look for explanations, legitimations or scapegoats for suffering. All that is needed is to fight against suffering and to alleviate the existing suffering.
Reimund Bieringer,
Professor of New Testament Exegesis,
Faculty of Theology, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.
Related post: "A question of Faith".
posted by Jdavies @ 4/12/2006,
,
A Question of Faith
Below is an excerpt of a discussion I am having with my blogkada on the "Gospel of Judas" after it was aired on National Geographic.
The gospel according to Judas, having been authenticated* as an ancient document merely confirms the reality of a division among us. Our church forefathers then thought it to be to the best interest of the then emerging church to limit the books and combine them to a bible (to homogenize the faith and clarify the message = a.k.a. create a sociopolitical bloc to combat persecution and "dissent /aka heresy". There is politics there mixed with a spiritual purpose, we must not deny that.
Over the centuries however, fact got muddled in the arbitrariness of interpretation, ritual, and tradition. Under the dark shroud of history, we become slaves to what we know to be "true".
Shall we christians repeat the mistakes of the Pharisees then by denying even the posibility of a revelation of a clearer message? The jews did not do anything wrong by denying Christ; according to christ's teaching "they do not know what they are doing". Philosophically, the intention of their action was good (St. Thomas) - they want to protect their Church.
I do not suppose the 'gospel' itself to be factual history (which separates me from our fundamentalist brothers) however, I cannot discount the posibility of philosophical truth in the message of Judas' gospel. This philosophical truth I speak of is about the heretics then --- do they not think of themselves christians during that time? In the same way, are there not non-christians living more christian lives than us? How could a concept of mercy for the Gentiles not extend to even the worst kind of men? Is not the nature of mercy that of eternity?
The Church cannot impose on these truths, it could merely be guardian of the law of men and God and how we interpret it. Interpretation of the gospels (small g vs. synoptics, i.e., Big G), while reserved to them must not be taken as Gospel. Even the churches (at least among the humble ones) must acknowlede that ultimately, even the Church, which is of men, cannot claim truth, methinks.
How far is the church now from the ministry that Christ wanted to establish then? I could not claim to know.
What's interesting here is what remains consistent: then and now, christians all over will NOT argue about christ=messiah that the jews didnt believe; that's what seperates christians from our jewish brothers. The devil that separates us is always in the details of his ministry and purpose. Then till now, we are divided by doctrine and by-laws of our own making.
What I couldn't be certain is whether these laws are according to God's will. That said, it seems to me an interesting point: our faith in God, is ultimately also a question of faith in Man.
*The Gospel of Judas as the Codex was authenticated by the National Geographic Society as the same ancient document cited by Bishop Iranaeus in 180AD, in deciding which gospels are to be considered inthe Christian bible. The TV feature says, the 4 Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke & John can very well be the most popular during those times.
Related post: "Judas: Traitor or Pawn in God’s Plan?".
Labels: Musings
posted by Jdavies @ 4/12/2006,
,
On Pope John Paul II
4.09.2005
I have never seen the the late Pope John Paul II upfront.
In fact, I have not seem in person at all. If not for the TV, pictures from newspapers and magazines, or the Internet, I would not have seen the man at all.
Such is the irony of his passing that I feel. I withheld this post up to his burial precisely because of that. His impact on world affairs and morality issues changed history. His presence lingers even after his death. His contributions to humanism, despite the conservative stance is undeniable. His liberalism on the role of the Church and the Papal office on modern society is unquestionable.
I have been most affected, and yet, I have not seen him at all. If he becomes a saint my generation will venerate him. In fact even non-catholics and non-believers cannot discount his contributions to humanity.
My philosophical self had this to say: He may not be the complete humanist in the philosophical essence of the word, but he is the best humanist that ever lived.
He is to me, the best poem I have experienced even if I have not seen him at all.
posted by Jdavies @ 4/09/2005,
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Is Hell Exothermic or Endothermic?
2.26.2005
I got this email and I just had to say something about it! Warning: you must be a geek or a total nerd to appreciate this post.
Here goes:
The following is supposedly an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.
Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.
One student, however, wrote the following:
============================
First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at Which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.
As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell.
With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.
This gives two possibilities:
1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls Enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.
So which is it?
If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, "It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you," and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over.
The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore extinct ....leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which Explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God."
THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY "A"
====== MY REBUTTAL ======
Since I am a geek...forgive me for saying But I think there is something wrong with the guy's proof. Let me point out where he is wrong and in effect, let me lay out my answer on the same question about hell...even if the kid is undeniaby witty I really think he is wrong...If there is anything wrong in my proof please let me know...
He assumed souls have mass and Hell exists :-) that means his explanation is valid only with a 25% probability. If souls were without mass, then Hell will not be affected by Boyle's Law no matter how many souls enter or at whatever rate it comes in.
Combined Gas Law should be used instead of Boyle's Law since it is not certain whether Hell is expanding, constant in volume or shrinking...additionaly, if a soul does not have mass then it must be energy, or anti-matter. (since it follows that without mass then it is not matter, under what we know in physics at the moment. )
If it is energy then by E=mc2, it gains mass exponentially as souls enter Hell. It wil become more saturated and will exhibit the opposite of entropy, by increasing energy. If the Hell space is finite, or rate of entry of souls is higher and this continues for all eternity , Hell will behave like a star and then progress like a black hole and will collapse on itself due to the ever-increasing gravity that additional souls generate (assuming there is either infinite supply of souls or a
critical point is reached).
Therefore hell will exist only for a finite amount of time, until a new hell is created out of Heaven (because souls will have energy too and Heaven will be as filled as Hell is).
This means Heaven and Hell are interchangeable, depending on what time of the Universe your soul is accepted. Unless of course both implode at
the same time.
Additionally, during the time that Hell or Heaven exists and it will absorb souls and yet it will produce energy by itself too ---- thereby proving Reincarnation and recycling of souls = since energy can neither be created nor destroyed.
Interestingly, if souls are anti-matter, then the mystery is if souls are in the body - a matter, why do we exist and not explode? There must be a reason why not ( a quantum physics definition of God as an observer and definer of sets in which we exists, mathematically of course).
The assumption too is that change in one form of energy to another is never a 1-1 relationship, and entropy is that, heat energy is always a by-product. If souls entry into hell does not result in heat enrgy then it cannot be inferred if hell will produce an excess of heat energy to be exothermic, neither can it be inferred to be endothermic if changing from one soul to another is a perfect change without
entropic problems.
Or more realistically, souls may not be anti-matter. If souls as energy cannot be detected, then this means that it must be somthing else and everything we have for foundations is false. Or simply put, souls do not exist, nor heaven nor hell. :-)
Therefore the question of endothermic or exothermic is irrelevant, and the teacher just wants a cool question for an exam. I'll get an "F" and I can tell the teacher "go to hell". By then, I would have proved Hell's existence metaphysically and I can say I will be as exothermic in as much as the teacher will be.
Hehehehe.
=== Addendum, posted 27-Feb-2005 ===
Such I am such a geek, last night I was thinking about my theory just before I sleep. yes it did pre-occupy me that I used it to get myself drowsy!
My proposal that souls do not have mass comes from the assumption that there is no detectable disparity between the mass of a dead person and a living person, and the definition of soul to be that which leaves the body after death.
I realized that I should clarify that my concept of soul as energy is in the assumption that it is pure energy (something which the current state of physics cannot yet produce artificially.)
If energy is contained in any matter or within atoms or even sub-atomic particles, it will possess a slight mass and my proof will crumble because Hell will have mass, and will tend to become exothermic at first but then progress toward the black hole concept... once it nears implosion (I think ...), it will start to cool down. When it does, it can behave endothermically, unless the system is not stable that it will collapse... creating a big bang of another universe on the other side of the the current universe (This is the Bubble Universes theory wherein our universe is just on of the bubbles created from the "Big Bang" which is just a black hole sucking in space from a bigger universe and creating a universe within it in effect.
In this sense, Hell, if it is a physical plane, can exist on multiple universes or in multiple planes... Hence the several versions of Hell... Interestingly, if space can be folded, according to Einsteins theory, you can now have one Hell existing in a different Time and Space and multiple Hells (or Heavens) in different spaces and times, or worsed, Hells interconnecting like a network but spanning Time. That makes Hell exist outside of the dimensions of our space-time...
Hehehe.
Interestingly, if Hell is a blackhole, the experience within a blackhole may resemble literary sources about Hell. The circular motion of sucking in space stabilizes the walls of the black hole and this may create a certain view of space plastered along these spinning walls of space-time... it could contain images of perhaps one's past among other images of life - stretched and morphing, ala Dali... (if souls can "see" without using light). The souls experience is that of being twisted and stretched and mashed and with so intense a pressure perhaps gazillions of pascal per square nanometer even more...
Interesting huh? Well, everything is arbitrary at best here...
posted by Jdavies @ 2/26/2005,
,
On Love
2.11.2005
Forgive me for the valentine blues, but there have been much talk about this on email threads - let me voice out some about it based on my limited experience of it.
This arises from the question of titserbryan, one of my pals in an egroup on poetry.
His question: may hihigit pa ba sa pag-ibig? (Is there anything greater than Love?)
Though there would be many answers, say, religiosity etc. This is what I have to say:
On Love
This is my take on love:
It is Immanuel Kant I think, who said Morality is above God. So much so that even if there was a god - he had to adhere to what is "morality" defined either by him in the first place, or perhaps the universal idea. I could b misquoting him. But this is my basis for my answer to the question "may hihigit pa ba sa pag-ibig".
Considering this context, I believe then, that Morality is above Love. It maybe and possibly the reason why Love crumbles on statures that press morality above it. For instance, Having affairs, as with my poem 'let us craft you and I" , the persona's struggled to define their act as that ancient word "LOVE" - apparently considering themselves above what is moral and acceptable in their society. They have to follow
their truths - and that is to LOVE - YET They had to resort to keeping it secret!?
Let Us craft, you and i
This Ancient Veil
of faith called Love!
Let Us thread slowly
in these stolen threads
that we knit from our lovers
laceries
that in the end
we create this:
our dirtiest
but most beautiful
Secret
Why is that? Is it becuase society's morality - or the various Church's or the God's definition of Morality is there? A friend of mine asks, "morality is above love? hindi nga eh. love is above morality because even though it's against our morals or principles, we still fall in love."
COnsider this:
Ultimately, If they succeed in their incursion, then they may have proven than love is reater than morality of their time. Yet by that time that they are accepted - Morality would have been redefined to suit their purposes. If they succeed and hate that morality concept of their society --- their love is now DEFINED UNDER their definition of "MORALITY".
Therefore, Love or not, God or none, Morality remains. Is there anything else above morality? Now that, is what you call Meron, or Being. ;-)
Jardine Davies
addtional notes:
Status quo vs 'my' morality (subjective) vs Morality (absolute) is based on the assumption that truth and falsity exists (because post-humanists will claim it doesn't)
Labels: Musings
posted by Jdavies @ 2/11/2005,
,
Hail Doctors Without Borders!
1.07.2005
In a surprising news - a fund-raising humanitarian organization asked it's sponsors to STOP donating to the Asia Tsunami cause. Doctors Without Borders stopped their donors from contributing anymore, saying they have more than what they need to do the best they can in the region. Having raised 50M (dollars or pounds)? they expressed that it is their ETHICAL duty to advise their patrons to recognize other humanitarian emergencies other than the Asian Tsunami Disaster.
I hail their organization and have to say I admire them all the more for doing this. Having raised enough money - in fact bigger than some states have contributed, I am certain they would be able to do what they can. See, as I have previously posted, the bandwagon effect of being charitable is a pissing contest between governments. Do we honestly need Media Mileage all the time to start believing we need to help other people needing the most urgent humanitarian assistance?
back in July 2004 I have posted about stories the world needs to hear more about. It's a list of the forgotten wars and neglected humanitarian emergencies that the media has not been able to cover more. Let me repost this:
- Uganda: Child soldiers at centre of mounting humanitarian crisis
- Central African Republic: a silent crisis crying out for help
- AIDS orphans in sub-Saharan Africa: a looming threat to future generations
- The peacekeeping paradox: as peace spreads, surge in demand strains UN resources
- Tajikistan: rising from the ashes of civil war
- Women as peacemakers: from victims to re-builders of society
- Persons with disabilities: a treaty seeks to break new ground in ensuring equality
- Bakassi Peninsula: Recourse to the law to prevent conflict
- Overfishing: a threat to marine biodiversity
- Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation
My point again is, here is a good and respectable organization, refutable and have won the Nobel prize for their efforts seeing this same point I made in my previous post. The pissing contest has to be stopped - let somebody out there who can pull more strings than I can say: Hey prosperous countries! Can you please duplicate the same intention to help those in Aceh and Sri Lanka, etc. to those in Africa? Raise $4B too for the orphaned kids, the AIDS problem, the hunger in Sudan, in other war-torn places!
If altruism is the end goal and indeed humanity's goal is to further humanity, then help those without being called for it, sans the need to do something only when there is media milaege. And helping people is not just helping by dole out for god sakes. So to the MSF - RESPECT to your organization. You got it from me. RESPECT.
Labels: Musings
posted by Jdavies @ 1/07/2005,
,
On Dan Brown, The Philippines
and my Theology
11.23.2004
I sent this email to a good friend:
I'm posting this reply to my blog coz I thought I made it long enough and its a good way to mark myself in time (re: when I bought the illustraded edition of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code)... My friends posts that there are just too many questions out there that challenge the faith and she doubts if they can be answered. Dan Brown has been such a phenomenon in the Philippine reading public that I thought it best to share this thought I have --- owning to the unique background I had with my 16 units of Theology, and being school with the Jesuits and yet reading Gnostic Christinity details which is the main holdage of info that Dan Brown drew upon his fiction.
Read on 'cause here's my take on the issue:
My First Email: When The Celestine Prophecy and the tenth insight was such a phenomenon in early 1997 because it encourage new age thinking and mysticism... (even as its devoid of any literary substance it was onthe NY bestseller list for 98 weeks!) It also ellicited reaction from the conservative religious side who are closed minded about their faith. Dan Brown's fiction --- remember --- it's historical fiction --- similar to the manner Michener etc. writes... in fact Dan Brown wasn't the first to write this way --- i think he was just at the right time since the new age phenomenon reached its peak and spirituality was at the center of media talk re: Gibson's the passion, etc... PLUS the mythos that was lacking in our generation (as joseph campbell laments to be missing in contemporary soceity --- had a ressurgence) that is to say zeitgeist
is that yearning for more detail about spirituality that the church
has kept unexplained.
For instance, much as the concept of mystery has been explained in Canon Law, not every catholic knows what it means, or why the heck they go to communion? Not everyone appreciates the sacraments and rituals and other Church things because most are too metaphysical to be discussed in catechism... thats where the church has faults --- not every Catholic or perhaps christians for that mattter know about it. .. I needed 16 units of theology to finally understand many question I had about the church --- and still I have questions ! This makes my spiritual journey most wonderful thus, because I am not lost, instead I am finding truth slowly revealed in many ways. I had that education so I am able to ask the right uestions perhaps, or know where to find some anwers and yet I still have questions...
What more those who are not as interested in religiosities like these? This is what I suggest to Filipinos reading Dan Brown for now:
Gnosticism is an interesting subject. Search this in the internet if you want to go deeper into the rabbit hole: check "Nag Hammadi Library", THE GNOSTIC SOCIETY LIBRARY ..... I encourage brave readers to check it out and try understand it objectively. If you can be interested in Theology then its best to read up on them! See, the Church is not as backward as it is, it is just slow but it is reaching out...
More things will be found soon and Science and History as a tool of the Church is quite new and ONLY more recently used by the church so expect more things about the church --- it took them 400 years to accept evolution - but now The Pope has his resident astrophysicist, historians and advisers among others... interestingly, the catholic Church by the way is prepared in any case life outside of the earth is found --- it will not affect canon law, instead the metaphysical messiah takes precedence, and the concept of a savior, re: Jesus, or by any other name will be welcomed.
Now thats why I like Joseph Campbell so much and old school speculative fiction and philosophy :) --- and the church has to change because by canon law it has to... re: Ecclesia Semper Reformanda (the church must always change) I like how dan brown excites readers into questioning --- it helps in spreading info, you see?
Catholics for one by Canon Law, should take Dan Brown positively, the Opus Dei of course will say something else but as far as my theology is concerned, I think there is no conflict here... Salvation by law, is outside the Church, and the Church, slow as it is, doesn't deny its faults. What makes controversy is when the line between truth and fiction is blurred and thats where Dan Brown is good.
Anyways sorry I had so much to say about this... but hey... its a cool subject.
On the 'too many questions issue" here is what I have to say:
I actually think most questions can be answered - we just have to ask the right people, see if we do not even attempt to ask or we just gossip around the same people with the same questions we won't learn anything. Unfortunately for the Catholic Church that is the problem in their organization - catechism is not much as a priority in as much as it is in Christian Churches. In fact, I think the far worse a problem is that the clergy is not as good as it should be - not all priests even know or can answer or explain quite well the usual theological questions --- much less give the sermon or homily justice by giving the correct exegesis of a given Sunday gospel... try to ask a priest to explain the concept of sacramentality and why tradition is put in high regard by the Catholics and I'm sure you'll hear different answers.
I should confess that when I go to any Church for mass and I dont like the way the priest addresses the people by his homily - if I feel he is not as capable as explaining the corret exegesis of the gospel --- then its worthless listening to him. It's a cofession I made to Jesuits and they are saddened by my revelation... see I was used to listeing to jesuits being able to explain the theological
siginificance of gospels... and all --- when I hear politics in the
pulpit and relating the same to say, financial concerns of the Parish? I find that distasteful...
I like books that challenge my Faith because I can ask more questions and try to find answers for them (Donations of old books will be welcomed - just email me!) - in effect enriching my own spiritual growth, not merely to justify any doubts I have about the Church. It's the existential angst being filled in with a drug for me --- unlike other people who with their idelogical disorientation is using as validation for their doubts abut their faith. (Don't get me wrong coz I also read The Celestine Prophecy ... Hehehe!)
There the line is drawn, That is the difference between some readers of Dan Brown and perhaps serious Catholic readers like me. I seriously think Da Vinci Code is a good companion reading for indoctrination and theology and it's a good appetizer for the man asking about his faith. However, reading it without reading further about say historicities of the gospels, theologies and exegesis, and philosphy of man and institution (re: sartre) would be not as an enriching experience.
The assumption is as long as the church remains a human institution,
it will exhibit human faults. This is the same with the Muslim
Community and other religions.
Before I get any detractors, please find below a list of people that
have influenced my Philosophy so that my views are expressly framed
along the right lines: (this is a mix of agnostic, philosophers,
mystics, sci-fi writers, atheists, and doctors of the church.) ====
Emmanuel Levinas, Immanuel Kant, Jean Paul Sartre, Joseph Campbell,
Soren Kierkegaard, Saint Thomas and Saint Augustine, Gabriel Marcel,
Arthur Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, James Redfield, and
readings on Gnostic Christianity + lots of infusion from the
Jesuits... good thing I wasn't UA&P re: opus dei -- although a friend of mine shares the same sentiment --- that even opus dei-schooled people should like it and appreciate how Dan Brown makes a great literary device of manipulating truth of ritual versus truth of fact... anyways......thats it for now.
posted by Jdavies @ 11/23/2004,
,
The Future of Humanity
8.23.2004
The following is an exact copy of what appears in asimovonline.com that I took liberty to post here because it explicitly says it is not under copyright. I provide a link back instead. I'm posting it as part of a series of posts on speeches that matter and do make sense but with a touch of humor - one that I am hoping to hear from a Filipino Speaker. As I have been educated in the public education system, I've heard many politicians speak - they do every year - it;s their coming out party - and more so on election years. And that is to say I've heard it all and what I've heard are not as good as I have read in history.
This one here is from Isaac Asimov. To the non-sci-fi fans, let me point out that he is the grand-daddy Picasso of sci-fi. No one in the genre has made written more than him, and his influence stays to this day - and will reach further into the future still. I should warn how long it is though - but it's worth the long read. Here goes:
The Future of Humanity
Newark College of Engineering
November 8, 1974
The following document is a transcript of a lecture given by Dr. Isaac Asimov. It is from an audio tape which I have had in my collection since 6th grade. It is not available anywhere, and please don't e-mail me requesting copies of it. I present it to the group as a tribute to a man who changed my way of thinking when I needed it the most.
I have made corrections to any misplaced words, eliminated any stutters, etc. These edits have in no way affected the intended content of the presentation. After listening to this for so many years, I thoroughly understand it.
As you read this, please keep in mind that the good doctor improvised many of his lectures. Generally, when he was asked to speak at a given function, he would ask what the topic desired was, and rarely if ever prepared anything for it. Most of what you read here is conversational English, and on paper may not look very elegant.
What you read here, though timeless, was a product of the time. 1973 saw the end of a lot of optimism carried over from the sixties, and the oil embargo was the first real inconvenience experienced by the baby-boomers of the USA on a nationwide scale. Many middle class families were now requiring two wage-earners, and the cost of living was on the rise.
Twenty-plus years have passed since the good doctor presented this, and yet the content holds as universal truth. Even if this is the only thing you ever read produced by the late Dr. Asimov, you will get a good idea as to the level of his wisdom. I sincerely doubt that this world will ever see another individual even close to his abilities ever again.
Please note that this material is NOT copyrighted, and I am placing it in the public domain.
B. Torre
June 8, 1995
INTRODUCTION: (unidentified person)
It is now my great pleasure to introduce to you a man who is probably the most prolific science fiction author in the world today. And, he's also a very learned man...and I'm not going to talk to you anymore because he's so much smarter than I am. I'm just going to...well that's not saying much, but...I'm just going to bring him right out here now. Uhhh...would you please welcome Dr. Isaac Asimov.
[applause]
Dr. Asimov's words:
Thank you, thank you. I have...can you hear me as I talk now, or do I have to lean into this? [no response]
Can you hear me when I speak like this? Anyone? [some of the group responds that they can understand him.]
OK. I had a pretty exciting time coming to Newark.
[group laughs] Because you see, my correspondence was from my office. Which is not where I live. And when I was told that I would be picked up I carefully wrote a very clear letter explaining exactly where I lived. Which made it inevitable that they send the people to my office. [group laughs slightly]
As I stood there in the street, waiting for the car, listening to the minutes tick away, realizing I had to be up here at eight o'clock...I grew desperate. Finally on the intercom, I called my wife and said: "Would you call my office and ask if there are any jerks there looking for me". [group laughs]
She did, and then she called back, and she said that's where they were, so I told them to come here. I said: "Why did you do that?" I said "It's four blocks. They'll never make it!"
[group laughs]
They almost didn't. [group laughs]
I had to wait another ten minutes. [group laughs mildly]
Then, but finally we got here with five minutes to spare. And we knocked at a locked door. [group laughs mildly]
And a security guard opened it, and said: "You can't come in".
[group laughs heartily]
And the two young men who were with me, who looked like college students...very unsavory characters...
[group laughs mildly]
...said: "Well that's allright about us", he says, "But this is the lecturer". And the guard peered at me, and he said: "that's the lecturer?" And they said yes. "I happen to know that the lecturer is upstairs"
[group laughs very heartily]
So we went through another door where there wasn't any guard.
[group laughs]
And here I am. Now this other lecturer isn't going to say a word to you, but I'll bet he collects the fee.
[group laughs]
Ahhh... But anyway, now you see why I hate to travel. My discussion on the future of man applies very, very well to what has just happened to me as you will shortly see. Let me explain. I once, when I was not quite nineteen, wrote a story called "Trends". It was the first story I ever sold to John Campbell of the old "Astounding Science Fiction". It appeared in the July 1939 issue.
And in it I dealt with the first flight around the Moon and back. I had it placed in the 1970's. The first attempt, which was a failure, was in 1973. And the second attempt, which was a success, was in 1978. The actual flight took place in 1968, so I was ten years conservative. In addition, my flight was all there was, whereas in real life the flight around the Moon was preceded by all kinds of orbital and sub-orbital flights, and dockings, and mid-course-corrections, and communication satellites, and navigation satellites...everything under the sun.
So you can see how wrong I was. In fact I was even wronger than that because when I wrote my story back in 1939...38, it was printed in 39...When I wrote that story, I had definite ideas on how the space flight was to take place.
First place, I had my inventor build a spaceship in his back yard.
[group laughs slightly]
In the second place, I took the attitude that any man who good enough to build a spaceship was good enough to fly the spaceship.
[group laughs slightly]
I mean the inventor was the astronaut; a great saving in time and labor.
[group laughs slightly]
Furthermore, I didn't bother establishing any computer banks anywhere...especially not in Texas. Because to this day, to be perfectly honest with you, and that's what I would like to be, perfectly honest. To be perfectly honest with you, I don't really see what the big deal is about getting to the Moon with the computers and the mid-course-corrections. I know you are a bunch of engineers, and you know better than I do, but I ask you...once you get there beyond the atmosphere, do you or do you not see the Moon?
[group laughs, and then applauds]
And if you see the moon steer for it, right?
[group laughs heartily]
In fact the only thing that bugged me...the only thing that bugged me in that story is where you launch the spaceship from. I lived in Brooklyn all my life, and I looking around Brooklyn I could see there was no place you could safely launch a spaceship...
[group laughs]
...without arousing the anger of the citizenry.
And so I thought that I had better launch it outside Brooklyn somewhere. And that sort of promptly got me into trouble because I wasn't sure, for certain, that there was any place outside Brooklyn.
[group laughs]
I mean I heard rumors to that effect, but I'm a pretty difficult fellow to fool. I like definite evidence. But I realized that I have to do something, so I launched the ship...the spaceship...from the farthest limits of the known world. To wit, in Jersey City.
[group very heartily laughs]
I'm not kidding. Really did. And yet I sold this story.
[group laughs]
Not only sold this story, but its been reprinted five times. The last time, in 1973. By which time I suspect that most people had a pretty good idea that the details in my story were wrong. [group laughs mildly]
Well why was this do you suppose? I'll tell you. The story was not printed because of any of the engineering details...you should excuse the expression. It was published because I had something in it that the editor had never seen before. I had postulated resistance to space flight. There was a whole organization of people on earth who were sore as anything at the people who were trying to get out into space. They thought people should stay on earth and mind their own business. And this had never been postulated before. Never!
Up till that moment in time, the only way in which space travel was treated was either by having the hero go out to Deneb or someplace, and fight the oyster men there,
[group laughs mildly]
...and marry the beautiful princess who lays eggs,
[group laughs mildly]
...without any reference whatsoever to earth or the people thereof. On the other hand, the other way of handling space flight was to have the hero land on the Moon, or on some other place thereto akin, and then come back and receive a ticker tape parade with everyone being very pleased at this heroic action.
It never occurred to anybody that there might actually be resistance to the whole notion; people might think it was a rotten idea and a waste of money. After I wrote the story, again, nobody had the idea. I don't think another story ever appeared in which there was any hint of opposition to space flight. I mean, on principle. Until such time as the opposition did develop. And so you are entitled to ask how is it possible that an eighteen year old boy, very unsophisticated an naive, who literally and honestly was dubious as to whether there was anyplace outside Brooklyn. How it was possible that he could see something clearly that older and thicker heads failed to see?
And it goes against the grain to have to explain this to you because I would much prefer to have you think I was very smart, and had some kind of key to the wisdom of the universe. I mean, that's a great thing to be able to impress you with. But instead I'm going to have to tell you the truth, and you're going to see how disgustingly simple the whole thing was.
I was going to Columbia University at the time, and as I don't need to tell any of you here, the tuition rates were something appalling. I mean, as I recall it was three hundred and sixty-five dollars a semester.
[mild laugh from crowd]
And I couldn't afford it. And so I looked about for all kinds of things to do in order to eke out the tuition.And one of the things I did was to join the NYA, National Youth Administration, which was a kind of relief for deserving students. They gave you little sinecure jobs, and paid you the munificent sum of fifteen dollars a month. And this enabled you to get through your tuition.
And the job I got was to serve as a kind of secretary to a sociologist who was preparing a book entitled "The Social Resistance to Technological Change". And what I was supposed to do was as follows: I had to go to the library with a list of references from him, and ask for the books. Turn to the pages where I was to find the reference, copy them out longhand...because this was the days before Xerox. Luckily too, otherwise I would have starved. Copied them out longhand, took them home, typed them up. Now, it was impossible for me to copy them out and type them up without reading them.
[mild laughter]
As a result, I read perhaps ninety percent of the book. Because you must understand how learned books are written in case you ever want to write a learned book. First thing you do is get a thousand references, chosen at random...
[group laughs]
You then put them into the book, in the order you reach them...
[group laughs mildly]
And stick two or three lines of your own between each of them to act as mortar...
[group laughs mildly]
And you're all set.
Well, when I read all of these references I discovered, to my amazement, that all through history there had been resistance...and bitter, exaggerated, last-stitch resistance...to every significant technological change that had taken place on earth. Usually the resistance came from those groups who stood to lose influence, status, money...as a result of the change. Although they never advanced this as their reason for resisting it. It was always the good of humanity that rested upon their hearts.
For instance, when the stagecoaches came into England, the canal owners objected. Not that they would lose money, although they would, but they feared for humanity. Because as the stagecoaches tore along at fifteen miles an hour, the air whipping past the nostrils of the people on board, would by Bernoulli's Principle, suck all the air out of the lungs.
[group laughs]
You know, when I tell this story to a non-engineering audience I can't mention Bernoulli's Principle, which is what gives it that real taste.
[group laughs]
Well naturally the stagecoach people laughed heartily, and all they had to do was run a stagecoach at fifteen miles an hour with people inside and show them there's no harm. But they memorized the argument...for when the railroads came in.
[group laughs mildly]
Well then, reading all this, and this was over a period of months...I read it, and read it...I said to myself: "Hey, you know I can make a syllogism out of this" because I had taken up liberal arts and the humanities, and they taught me about syllogisms.
I don't know if you guys know about syllogisms. It's... The units of a syllogism is one Aristotle. [group laughs]
Well, see, that's...to put it in engineering terms: One Aristotle per second is a fast syllogism. [group laughs mildly]
It goes this way: Major premise: All technological changes meet resistance. Minor Premise: Space travel represents a technological change. Conclusion: [group laughs]
This is the tricky one! [group laughs]
There will be resistance to space travel.
And I said "Gee!". And I wrote the story and sold it. My first story, it's Astounding, and they printed it. And here I am, a genius at having foreseen this.
But now, the question is, if it's that simple you can understand how a dumb kid of eighteen could think of it. The question now arises, how was it all that everyone else didn't see it?
And this leads us to the conclusion which you could also have gotten from my adventures in getting to Newark. Which is this: People are stupid.
[group laughs, and applauds]
We wouldn't be in the mess we're in if that weren't so. Because believe me, we're in a mess. Now, it isn't very difficult to see that we're in a mess, or even to see years ago that we were in a mess.
Let me tell you about a story I read in back in 1933. There's a gentleman here who has a copy of "Before the Golden Age" in which I tell this story. I trust that gentleman will not listen. In 1933, I read a story called "The Man Who Awoke" by Lawrence Manning. In it, did the hero wish to see what the world of the future would be like, and he was not in the kind of science-fiction story where he would have a time machine, so he had to do something else. What he did was to invent a potion, which when he drank it, put him to sleep for five thousand years, and then woke him up a little hoarse, but otherwise OK.
Now when I was young, I was only thirteen at the time, I read that and it seemed perfectly good. But now, you see, these days I apply engineering principles to something like that. I say to myself: "Gee, a potion that puts you to sleep for five thousand years and then wakes you up unharmed. How do you test it?"
[group laughs]
I figured it out how, it's allright, there is a way. You give a smaller amount to a dog...
[group laughs mildly]
..and wait five thousand years.
[group laughs mildly]
Anyway, he found himself a vault in which he would lie undisturbed for five thousand years. Gee, the Great Pyramid at Giza didn't suffice to keep Cheops undisturbed for maybe five hundred years, let alone five thousand, but that's allright. Nobody's looking for this guy. [mild chuckle from group]
And he stayed there five thousand years, and then woke up unharmed. Oh, give or take a few months; I mean, you know, you can't be too exact on a thing like this. And he somehow thought that he was going to come out and see a very futuristic world with all kinds of extremely super-modernistic devices flying through the air, and magical food pills and all that. And instead, what did he find? He found a very constricted world. A world in which everybody lived rather...rather not very lavish lives. You know, they dressed in homespun, and they walked everywhere, and they worried a lot about what the next meal would be. And so he said to them "What is this?" he says. "You guys are leading such a constricted lives. What's all this futurism I expected?" So they said "Oh well, you don't understand." He said: "We're short on energy. Very short on energy because some thousands of years ago there was a generation or two of human beings who burnt up all the coal and oil on Earth, and left nothing for us." And our hero said "Strange you should say that". He said "I happen to be from the very generation that did this for you!"
[mild chuckle from the group]
And so they tried to lynch him, naturally.
[mild laughter from the group]
And he got back to the vault just in time, slammed the door, and took another potion to see if anything new happened five thousand years later still. That was the first of five stories, but that was the one I always remembered because, you know...they always say...used to say when I was a kid that science fiction was escape literature. They sneered at us. I mean, here are a bunch of rotten kids, usually with pimples on their faces. And with big glasses; especially those big glasses. And also they were snot-nosed kids too smart for their own good. Always going around getting high marks in class.
[mild chuckle from group]
I mean in every possible way, not decent kids.
And here were a whole world of decent kids worried about the important things in life like baseball scores. And matching cards, or whatever the heck they did. And playing hooky from school. Real things. And here are these guys reading science fiction to escape from reality. To escape from this world. Literally get out there. And stupid things like the Moon, and missiles, population problems, and all sorts of things like that. And, for instance, the possibility that the coal and oil might vanish.
Heck, when I read that when I was thirteen, I started thinking. I didn't think in syllogisms then, but I now realize as I look back on it, that it amounted to a syllogism.
Major premise: The Earth's volume is finite Minor Premise: The total volume of coal and oil on the Earth is less than the total volume of the Earth Conclusion: The volume of coal and oil are finite.
You would think that this was so obvious! Now, let's start and make this conclusion the major premise of the next syllogism: Major Premise: The volume of coal and oil are finite Minor Premise: We are burning some every day Conclusion: We will use it all up eventually Well, I got that in 1933. And so you see how science fiction helps you escape. It helps you escape to the kinds of problems that'll keep you worried for forty years.
[group laughs mildly]
Before the rest of you guys!
Well, here we are. We have just come through a thirty year period of mankind's maximum prosperity, on the whole. We've done very well since World War Two. We have...the world as a whole has eaten better, has lived better, has had a higher standard of living than it has ever had before. Now, you might tell me that through this entire thirty years there have been millions...hundreds of millions of people always hungry, always starving, with very little, and I'll say yes; it's been rotten. My point is that before now, it's always been rotten-ER. And we haven't really appreciated how temporary this is.
For one thing, we've had ample supplies of food, and part of the reason for that was that we've had an extremely good spell of weather for the last thirty years. In fact, there are some people who say that this last thirty years was the best thirty year spell of weather that we have had in the last thousand years. Now you may remember cold spells, and floods, and droughts, and all the rest of this stuff. But there has been less of it the world over than usual. In addition, just as we've had this good weather, we've also been applying energy at a far greater rate than ever before to farm machinery, to irrigation machinery. In addition, we've been using insecticides and pesticides of various sorts, to sort of clobber those little beasties and those weeds who think they're going to get some of our food. And in addition to that we've also developed new strains of grain, so-called "green revolution", that grow a lot of protein very fast. And what with all these things put together, our food supply has been going up.
But now, look what happens.
The very thing that makes it possible for us to use more and more energy is our industrial technologized world. And another thing that our industry produces is dust. And the air is dustier now than its ever been before in human history. Except perhaps very temporarily after a large volcanic eruption.
This means that the Earth's albedo, the percentage of light from the sun that it reflects back into space before it hits the ground, has been going up slightly because dusty air reflects more light than clear air does. And...well, not very much more, but enough. It has been making the temperature of the Earth drop since 1940. It's been going down steadily. Again, not very much. You're probably not aware that the summers are cold, or that the winters are extraordinarily icy, they're not. The drop in temperature may be one degree. But it's enough to cut down on the growing season in the northern climates. It makes the weather a little bit worse. It sends the storm tracts further south, so that the Sahara Desert creeps southward, so that the monsoon rains in India fail a little bit. Just enough so that the harvests aren't as good as they used to be, and the Earth's reserve supply of food sinks to it's lowest in recent history.
And just as this is happening...and it's going to continue happening because the air isn't going to get un-dusty unless we stop our industrial activity. And if we stop our industrial activity, that's going to be because we've suffered some complete disaster.
So, the weather isn't going to turn better. The air is going to stay dusty, and it's going to continue getting a little colder. And at the same time, it's getting hard to get energy. Energy is much more expensive than it used to be; oil prices are up. And that means that fertilizer is more expensive than it used to be. And it turns out that the green revolution depends on strains of grain that require...yes, they do what they're supposed to do...but they require a lot of irrigation; a lot of water, and a lot of fertilizer. And the fertilizer isn't there. And the irrigation machinery is hard to run now with expensive oil. And, of course, the pesticides are produced in high-energy chemical factories; their price goes up.
Everything is combining to cut down on the food supply. And to arrange it so that in years to come, we may have trouble keeping our present level of food, let alone increasing it.
Of course you might say: "Well, heck! Mankind got along thirty years ago, before the good weather spell came, when there were droughts in the midwest, and dust bowls, and when there was comparatively much less farm machinery in use, and irrigation machinery, and there was no green revolution, and we weren't using pesticides...except Paris Green and other tasty things like that. And when we weren't worrying, we weren't worrying about all the other means of improving the food supply either, so we'll go back to what it was then, and we'll live the simple life."
There are always people who think that all we have to do, after all is abandoned, all this foolish technology that we've made ourselves slave to, and go back like our ancestors and live close to the soil with the good things of nature. That would be great if we could do it. If we could go back to the way it was before World War II, technologically, we could support all the people that lived on Earth before World War II. The catch is that in these last thirty years one billion and a half people have been added to the population of the Earth. And we have been feeding them largely because of all these things that we have done in these last thirty years, the good weather, the fertilizers, and the pesticides, and the irrigation, and the green revolution, and all the rest of it. If we abandon that, we also have to abandon a billion and a half people; and there are going to be very few volunteers for the job.
Alas, this goes in general. We are in a situation where we cannot go back. We cannot abandon technology. We can't say "Well, heck! We'll go back to the good old fireplace with wooden logs! We don't need this damned central heating!" There's two things about the fireplace with those good old natural wooden logs. In the first place, it's a rotten system for heating the house, which is why everyone switched to first the coal furnace, and then the oil furnace. They didn't do that because they hated nature. They didn't do that because they turned their backs on things that were nice, and just wanted filthy modern stuff, no.
[group quietly chuckles]
The wood fire doesn't work! That's what it doesn't!
And in the second thing, if all of us decide to have wood fires the way our pioneering ancestors did, we'd better remember that there were maybe three million of our pioneering ancestors, and there are two hundred million of us. And there ain't enough wood. And the price will go up instantly. And there will be a black market. And the forests will be destroyed.
And the same will be if you substitute for electric lights, candles. There's something very romantic about studying by candlelight unless you try it.
[group laughs mildly]
And if you think studying by candlelight is bad, wait until you try to run a television set by candlelight.
[group laughs mildly]
Well then, what are we going to do in the future? Population is still going up. Population right now is higher than it's ever been in the world's history; it stands at just under four billion. And the increase, the rate of increase is higher that it's ever been in world history; two percent a year. Never been anywhere near that high. Right now, the world's population is going up by two hundred thousand hungry mouths every day. By the year 2000, barring catastrophe, the Earth's population is going to be seven billion. Nobody thinks the Earth's food supply is going to nearly double by the year 2000. It may be that our food supply won't go up much at all. There's going to be terrific amounts of famine. What can we do about it?
Well, throughout the history of life on Earth, there have been periods where a given species has, for one reason or another, spurted it's numbers upward temporarily. There's been a surprisingly good supply of food, the weather has been just right, somehow there have been no predators...something has happened, and the numbers went up. They always went down again, and always the same way; by an increase in the death rate. The large numbers of the species starved when the food ran short. They fell victim to some disease, when as a result of being on short rations they were weaker. They made good marks for predators. It always went down. And the same thing will happen to mankind, we don't have to worry. The death rate will go up, and we will die off through violence, through disease, through famine.
The only thing is, must we have our numbers controlled in the same way that all other species have them controlled? We have something others don't; we have brains. We can foresee. We can plan. We can see solutions that are humane. And there is a solution that is humane, and that is to lower the birth rate.
No species in the history of the Earth has ever voluntarily lowered it's birth rate in order to control it's population, because they didn't know what birth rate was, how to control it, that there was a population problem. We're the only species in the history of the Earth.
There is no need to decide whether to stop the population increase or not. There is no need to decide whether the population will be lowered or not. It will, it will!
The only thing mankind has to decide is whether to let it be done in the old inhumane method that nature has always used, or to invent a new humane method of our own. That is the only choice that faces us; whether to lower the population catastrophically by a raised death rate, or to lower it humanely by a lowered birth rate. And we all make the choice. And I have a suspicion that we won't make the right choice, which is the tragedy of humanity right now.
But supposing we do? Supposing we imagine that we have entered the 21st century, and that we have survived? Then the question is: what kind of a world will we have survived into? What will the twenty-first century world be? If we survive, if there is a civilization, if there is a technology.
Well, in the first place it's going to be a low birth rate world. It'll have to be; that's the conditions of survival. It'll have to be a very low birth rate world, because the population will be too high at the beginning of the 21st century, and it may take a century to lower the population to some reasonable value.
So, that throughout the century, the birth rate will have to be lower than the death rate; and the death rate, we hope, will be low. So that babies will be comparatively rare, mothers will be never multiple mothers very much. I imagine that it will be the kind of world where every woman will be expected to have no more than two children. If she has only one child, good. And if she has no children, fine.
I mean, people think of that, instantly they think of race suicide. "Oh my goodness! We're all going to vanish!" We will have billions of people on Earth, more than we have ever had prior to this century! And through all of history before, we've had lower populations. No one worried that we'd vanish from the Earth!! And besides, if it looked as though we were going to vanish from the Earth, all that has to happen is the word goes out: have babies. And you'd be surprised how fast we can make it up.
[group laughs]
Do you know that through all of the disasters in history, that only one disaster as far as we know has ever actually lowered the world's population? The Black Death in the 1300's. Which may have killed off one third of all humanity. Lowered the world population, and took it a century to make it up.
Those were the days when death rates were very high; of course it would take a century to make it up. Nowadays we can make it up in maybe twenty years.
And since then, the disasters that have come: World War I, World War II, the Influenza pandemic of 1918...haven't even made a wiggle in the rise of human population.
So we have great powers of increasing like rabbits. We needn't worry if we allow the population to drop. God, how easily we could reverse that if we had to.
But, there are other things to remember. If we do have a very low birth rate, then what are we going to do with women?
Throughout history, the purpose and function of womankind has been to have lots of children. Now, no sane woman, if she came upon this whole thing cold, would want a lot of children; they're a lot of trouble, and they're dangerous to the health...
[group laughs moderately]
Seriously! When the germ theory finally came in and people learned how to arrange it so that women could have babies in reasonable safety, the world discovered to their surprise that women had a longer life expectancy than men. This had never been understood before, because throughout history women had, on the average, lived years and years less than men had. With all the dangers men faced, the hard work in the fields, the hunting accidents, the killings in war, everything else, women died faster for one reason and one reason only: childbirth. Every woman had one baby after another until one of them killed her. Usually, it didn't take long.
Well then, why do women do this? Because they are carefully told that being a wife and mother is the most glorious thing in the world, the one thing they're fit for, the most noble activity they can possibly have, and...and this is told to them until they believe it. And if they don't believe it, there's a lot of trouble made for them.
Well, I won't go into the whole thing. I suspect that you women know all about this already, and you men would rather not listen.
[group laughs mildly]
But notice the difference: once you want women not to have children, you're going to have to give them something else to do! It is absolutely impossible to tell a woman that she can't have children, and at the same time that she can't do anything else either except maybe wash an occasional dish.
[mild laugh from a few of the women in the group]
Because if you tell a woman that, she'll figure out some way to have a baby.
[swelling mild laughter from group]
I think I know the way, too!
[mild laughter from the group]
Well then, in the world of the 21st century in order to keep the birth rate down, we're going to have to give women interesting things to do that'll make them glad to stay out of the nursery. And the interesting things that I can think of that we give women to do are essentially the same as the interesting things that we give men to do. I mean we're going to have women help in running the government, and science, and industry...whatever there is to run in the 21st century. And what it amounts to is we're going to have to pretend... when I say "we", I mean men...we're going to have to pretend that women are people.
[group laughs]
And you know, pretending is a good thing because if you pretend long enough, you'll forget you're pretending and you'll begin to believe it.
[mild laugh from group]
In short, the 21st century, if we survive, will be a kind of women's lib world. And as a matter of fact, it will be a kind of people's lib world because, you know, sexism works bad both ways. If the women have some role which they must constantly fulfill whether they like it or not, men have some role which they would have to constantly fulfill whether they like it or not. And if you fix it so that women can do what suits them best, you can fix it so that men can do what suits them best too. And we'll have a world of people. And only incidentally will they be of opposite sexes instead of in every aspect of their life.
And then, here's another thing that you will find in such a world: you'll have to find age-blindness too, in addition to sex-blindness.
You have to understand that throughout history, mankind has lived in a world of youth. You know, we talk about the youth-centeredness of our culture. There's nothing else it can be. Throughout history, the life expectancy has been somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five, depending upon the time and the place. Very few people have lived into middle-age and beyond. Very few. We've had a world of young, even today in those lands where the birth rate is higher...considerably higher...than the death rate. You have places where half the people are younger than fifteen.
Well naturally, where most of the people are young, you concentrate on the young! When there are very few old people, you don't worry about them very much. They come in handy in their small numbers. The old men were the repositories of tradition. In the days before we had written records...let alone electronic records and computers...the only people who remembered the way it used to be a long time ago...forty years ago...were old men with gray beards! So you respected them!! They represented wisdom!! And you let them rule the state and the church. The word "priest" comes from the Greek word for old, and the word senator comes from the Latin word for old...as you can tell by the relationship to senna which also comes.
[group laughs heartily]
And of course, the old women were feared. There were fewer old women than there were old men, because the only way a woman could become an old woman was to either have no children, or be extraordinarily lucky. Usually the former. And old women somehow suffered a great deal more than old men did because they lacked that magnificent sign of age: the beard.
[group laughs mildly]
Think about it! An old man had a long gray beard that covered up his entire face; it's like looking at some kind of thicket.
[group laughs heartily]
A woman, however, had a bare face so that you could see the wrinkles! Which ordinary people hardly ever saw because there were hardly ever any old people to have wrinkles. Not only that, people generally lost their teeth by the time they were forty because there was no such thing as dentistry. So that, the old women had gums that came together, and it brought the chin and the nose close together, which looked funny. In fact, if you will look at the caricature of "the Witch" as we see it now on Halloween. It's just an old woman without teeth, and with a wrinkled face. And I think a great many of the fears of witches really represented the fears of the strange appearance of old women...which of course nowadays we don't have because old women look young.
But what do you do in a society in which the number of old people increases? You have a lot of old people just when you don't need them anymore. We don't need them as repositories of tradition anymore. We've got everything in writing, and in documents. And we're getting more, and more, and more old people all the time. The life expectancy now is seventy now in the United States; people never die for goodness sakes! I mean, it's one of the reasons why there's a generation gap; all the old people hang on to the jobs until they're forcibly retired. And then they must be forcibly retired. And there's nothing else you can think of doing for them so you give them a watch, and a pat on the back, and a ticket to a park bench.
Now in the world of the 21st century, it's going to get worse and worse. There are going to be few young, and there's going to be even a more extended life span perhaps, so that old people beget more and more. What are we going to do with them?
We know what we think of old people. They're sort of drags. They're sort of dead-heads. They don't have bright thoughts the way young people do. They're not creative. They're not ingenious. They're not daring. They're sort of stick-in-the-mud. Conservative. Stodgy. I mean, they ain't with it.
[very mild chuckle from group]
Well, if we're going to have more old people, and we're going to avoid dying of over-population, we're going to die of old age! And we're not going to die with a bang; we're going to die with a whimper.
Well you know, that may not be so. Let me point out that our youth-centered culture is youth-centered particularly in one important way: education. For years, and centuries, and millennia, it has always been assumed that education is the prerogative of the very young. That there's such a thing as finishing your education.
As a matter of fact, young kids aren't stupid. Young kids go to school, and they see that old people don't. Now, going to school is a drag. And every child realizes that when he grows up, one of the rewards of growing up, of making it, is going to be...not to go to school.
School is the price of being young and helpless! Not going to school is the reward of being grown-up, and strong, and powerful. You associate school with weakness and childishness. You associate non-school with strength and adulthood. Every kid knows that he is going to be rewarded for reaching the age of sixteen, or whatever age he's allowed to get out, he's going to be rewarded by never having to go to school again, never having to open up another book, never having to learn another fact, never having to think another thought. We teach kids that to be grown up is to be able to be stupid for the rest of your life.
[group laughs]
Allright, you take a person who has quit school at sixteen. Who has been taught that he never has to think again. And he lives on for another thirty years complete with whatever he can remember that he was taught in grade school thirty years before, and nothing else. And then you say: "Well here's a guy with no new thoughts. Here's a guy without any creative ideas. Here's a guy who's just a dead-head." And that's the way old people are.
That's the way you make old people be. An then you use as an excuse for making old people like that the fact that you think that's the way they are. It's called arguing in a circle. We won't be able to do that anymore. In the 21st century, we're going to have to think of education not as a task to be completed, but as a process to be continued.
The one thing that really separates the human species from all other species of plants or animals, is that we can learn with far greater facility than any other species can. Now, whatever it is that a species can do well, it enjoys doing! There's no question but that a bird must enjoy flying. That a fish must enjoy swimming. I mean, our great philosophers say that in their songs, you know? Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly!
[group laughs mildly]
Well men have to learn the process, which is something we are adapted for, is pleasurable...unless the pleasure is beaten out of us in childhood...very carefully and very doggedly!!! Give mankind half a chance!! And learning is a delightful process that he will do all his lifelong! In fact people do do it. Even those who are most dead-set against book learning will learn things that they like; the best way to bowl, the latest baseball scores, who knows what! What they want to learn, they learn with great facility.
And the thing is in the 21st century, if we survive, we can imagine that our technological society will advance even further. There will be even more computerization and automation. The dull work of the world will be done by machines. Men and women themselves will be able to do the kind of work they want to do. Undoubtedly, some of them will want to be research scientists, or symphony conductors, or they will want to be great artists, or writers, who knows! There will be enough people who will want to be that, and there will be people who will want to learn how to bowl perfectly, or how to collect leaves, or how to build battleships out of toothpicks. What's the difference? Whatever it is you do that makes you happy, and adds to the joyousness of the world, is justified. And there will be room for everything. And in an extended life span, if say when you are forty, you decide to start all over again and study Greek, and become a big expert in Greek literature, who's to stop you? I foresee a 21st century in which the educational process will be organized so that every human being has a right to institutional help for education in any field he wishes, in any direction he wishes, at any age he wishes. Education and learning will be the name of the game.
And when that happens, I'm sure it will be surprising how completely useful people can be throughout their lives, until actual physical senility hits.
And I think this will be a great life. It'll be a world without racism too. It'll have to be, or it won't survive for the simple reason that the only way we're going to apply a lower birth rate, is to apply it all over the world in a fair and non-selective manner. It's the only way it will work. As it is, one of the problems we have, and perhaps the most intransigent, is there are sections of the earth, sections of the world's population, who strongly suspects that when people like myself talk strenuously about population control and lowering the birth rate, that what we really have in mind is getting some of the people that we secretly think aren't the best in the world, to lower their birth rates. Reduce their numbers. Get rid of them altogether, perhaps, then the rest of us can have a better time on this earth. Maybe even there is some people who really think this way. But as long as this feeling exists, it's going to be very difficult to get people to lower their birth rates. And I suppose if we can somehow succeed in convincing the world generally that nobody hates anybody, and that there's room on earth for all kinds of people, then it will succeed. And in a world like that, you see, everyone is going to have to pretend they're not racist. And if they pretended long enough, they may get to believe it. And the world will be much better off for that reason.
You know, we can talk sometimes about managing our own evolution. About cloning people. About deciding how with genetic engineering we're going to improve ourselves. But how do we improve ourselves? We don't know. We've improved domestic animals a great way. We've got cows that give milk by the hundreds of gallons. We've got sheep that are wool...all the way through.
[group laughs]
We've got turkeys that are all breast.
[group laughs]
And horses that can run like the wind. But you see, these things are all things that please us. We don't have to ask them what pleases them! But when it comes to human beings, when we're going to change ourselves, we have to ask what pleases us! And we don't really know.
Now I suppose lots of people are going to... Supposing you could arrange everybody so that they all have certain characteristics. What would you want them to have? So...we want everyone should be geniuses. Well, I've got some personal knowledge of geniuses, and let me tell you one in a long while is all you can stand.
[group laughs]
I mean, I personally don't want anyone around me who's a genius; I can just barely stand myself. [group heartily laughs, and then applauds]
Or we want everyone who's sort of a deep thinker, everyone who's sort of sensitive, and kind, and humane...naah! Any race, any set of human beings that are all alike are not only dull, but useless, really.
I was asked a few days ago...really was, I'm not making this up...whether I didn't think an intellectual elite ought to run the world. And I said, by an intellectual elite, you mean people like me? Because I didn't know what he meant by an intellectual elite. I thought maybe it might mean people like him, in which case no!
[group laughs]
And he said: "Yes, people like you". And I said no, that would be no good because I'm only smart in certain ways, and very stupid in other ways. And if everybody was like me, and we were running the world, we'd all be smart in the same way, and all be stupid in the same way, and it's the stupidness that's going to kill us. I said, what we need are people of all kinds running the world! Some of whom are smart in one way, and some of whom are smart in the other way, and with everyone's smartness in different directions, so that they can sort of cancel out; so that everybody's stupidity can be caught by someone else's smartness in the same direction.
[group laughs mildly]
In the same way, that's what we want. The greatest...the greatest gift that mankind has is it's vast gene pool. All the different genes it has. All the different characteristics; the smart and the stupid, the strong and the weak. Because it's the variety that makes it possible for us to meet different emergencies, and what is weak under one set of conditions might be strong under another, what is stupid at one time is smart at another, and so on. We can't throw out anything for fear that that's exactly what we'll need someday.
The way I like to put it is, naturally we all think it's much better to be a brilliant nuclear physicist, than to just be a plumber. But, who would you rather live next door to, brilliant nuclear physicist or a plumber? And unless you're married to one, think: how often would you wake up in the middle of the night badly needing a nuclear physicist?
[group laughs and lightly applauds]
Well then, I'm coming now to the end of the 21st century. We've got a world without sexism, ageism, racism. We're not going to have a world without war, but that's nothing unusual. We've got a world without war now.
[mild chuckle from group]
You don't think we have? Think about it. What kind of wars can we afford to fight? Two kinds. We can afford to fight a little war where you send bombs in envelopes, or stick some sticks of dynamite in an automobile in a busy place. There's no way of stopping that, and these days explosives are cheap. But what are you gonna win with a war like that? You can keep it up for a thousand years, and kill individuals, but you don't make any decisions that way. It's not really a war, you're just amusing yourself!
[group laughs mildly]
On the other kind of a war that we can fight is a all out nuclear war. It's cheap. It only takes half an hour.
[group laughs]
And we have all the weapons we need. The capital investment has already been made. The only thing is that after the half hour is over, there's nothing left to do, and very few generals are going to be promoted in that half hour.
[group laughs]
Which instantly kills it for the military.
[mild chuckle from group]
Well then, can we fight the old-fashioned fun war, where you and an enemy choose up sides, and you pick out a place, and you throw bombs at them, and they throw bombs at you for four or five years, and then you decide who wins and who looses, who pays the indemnity, and who does the helping...
Can't do that anymore, because nobody's got the gasoline for it.
[group laughs and then applauds]
Except the Arabs.
[group laughs]
And they can't fight a war unless somebody gives them something to put the gasoline in.
[group laughs]
So we are already in a world without war. The only thing is that what we need in the 21st century is a world that realizes it's a world without war.
And one more thing: If we have a world without racism, ageism, sexism, war...it's gonna be a pretty dull world. Here we have lived all through history with a certain amount of excitement and risk in the world, and it's sort of a shame to sort of sit around this careful cold world of the 21st century and thereafter, in which not only is everybody happy, but everyone's very cautious... Because, you know, we live by slogans. Immediately after World War II, our entire foreign policy was based on the slogan "No more Munich's". Until we got into the Vietnam war by shouting that, and now it's "No more Vietnams". And well, in the 21st century, I'll tell you the slogan right now. Those of you who will live into the 21st century, come put a wreath on my grave, because this will be the slogan: "No more 20th centuries".
[group laughs and applauds]
So, everyone is going to be cautious in scientific advances. They're going to ask: "Before we do this, will it destroy the ozone layer? Before we do that is it going to make us too dependent on this or that? What are the side effects? How much cancer will it cause?" You know, that sort of thing. So that you'll be moving very...and you figure what kind of a world is that? You're going to sort of crawl yourself to death!
Well, in the 21st century we'll have to find a new horizon that's right there; out there. We'll go back to the Moon, only not this time to just get on it and come back. We're going to establish a colony there, and we're going to have a group of people on the Moon who will then be able to make long space flights because they're used to being cooped up and enclosed in an engineering environment subjected to low gravity. And they'll work out other worlds in the solar system.
And then, you know, we can be as risky as we want. The whole thing...we've always lived with risk, and that's been the great thing about life. The trouble is we've now reached the point where risk is risking everything! And you can't afford to risk everything. Until now in world's history, whenever we've had a dark age, its been temporary and local. And other parts of the world have been doing fine. And eventually, they help you get out of the dark age. We are now facing a possible dark age which is going to be world-wide and permanent! That's not fun. That's a different thing. But once we have established many worlds, we can do whatever we want as long as we do it one world at a time.
[group laughs]
And out there beyond are the stars.
And the interesting thing is that if we can get through the next thirty years, there's no reason why we can't enter into a kind of plateau which will see the human race last, perhaps, indefinitely...till it evolves into better things...and spread out into space indefinitely. We have the choice here between nothing...and the virtually infinite. And the nice thing about it is that you guys in the audience today, when I say guys I mean it in a general term embracing gals...when you guys in the audience today will still be barely middle-aged when you will know which choice has been made. See, I've been so shrewd that I fixed it so that I was born in 1920.
[group laughs]
Which means I'll be safely dead.
Before the crunch comes!
[group laughs]
But you guys will see for yourself. I hope you see a world in which mankind has decided to be sane. But I must say in all honesty that I figure that the chances are against it.
Thank you. [end of lecture - group applauds for 24 seconds]
Labels: Culture, Musings, Philippines
posted by Jdavies @ 8/23/2004,
,
The Author
J.Davies
Jdavies lives in Quezon City, Philippines and has been blogging since 2002. A brand manager in a leading technology company and a freelance new media/web strategy consultant, he has refocused his blogging from personal, political & sociological observations, to marketing-related efforts and Internet trends that are relevant to his career and branding advocacies.
About This Blog
This blog is a depot of thoughts and observations on marketing trends which remain personally relevant to the Author as far as his marketing career is concerned. Having evolved from the personal blog of Jdavies, much of the earlier work contained herein are laced with personal speculation, political views, and similar advocacies. These posts are being kept for posterity's sake and for no other reason. No effort is being made to claim that the author will not contradict himself from his previous positions or that such advocacies are absolute.
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