The world's leading intellectuals are recognizable. They study very particular subjects that are ultimately deemed as the most valuable to progressive society. Here is a list that I think illustrates the general characteristics of world discipline. Remember this is just an individual opinion.
Humanities: Linguistics, History, Philosophy
Social Sciences: Economics, Political Science, Law, Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology
Natural Sciences: Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Environmental Studies
Formal Sciences: Mathematics, Computer Science
Humanity has many problems. Project Earth has been created to solve them. Ultimately, to solve them, we need to study those subjects that most significantly influence our world, that aim to alleviate or solve the most fundamental problems.
Through Linguistics, we should learn how to control, alter, and standardize our language for maximum effiency so that there is less miscommunication. Through History, we should learn from humanity's previous mistakes and accomplishments. Through Philosophy, we should learn to challenge our fundamental concepts of reality, knowledge, truth, belief, ethics and values, and especially logic, essentially a means of challenging religion and culture. Through law, we should learn what rights and privileges, necessary for a better world, should be enforced and show should they be enforced. Through economics we can learn how to most efficiently grow the economy and provide jobs for people and how to price different values. Through environmental studies, we can study all of the human and natural forces that effectively damage the environment from levels of the individual to the society, the ineffieciencies that cause problems, what beliefs and values need to change accordingly. Through political science we should understand social interaction and how to effectively manage and compromise a democracy of interests, by establishing policy that has long-term planning and vision. Through psychology we can learn about the individual mind and how it develops with various stimuli and how it reacts to different stimuli. Through anthropology, we can learn what defines human life and society and what past human civilizations can tell us. Through sociology, we can learn how and why we behave in a society or group. Through physics we can learn the building blocks and fundamental forces that govern material behavior through time. Through chemistry, we learn about atomic matter and reactions that prevail in the universe. Through biology, we learn about the anture in its complexities and roots, how humans are related to other forms of life. Through mathematics, we can logically deduce theorems that govern the abstract world in a way to accurately apply to our own world. Through computer science, we can better understand how information should be organized, characterized and computed and transformed with algorithms and models.
We have many problems and we need as many people as we can gather to understand these concepts. We should teach people from a young age of these concepts and let them ask fundamental questions.
People with the highest combination of IQ and performance should be given the greatest incentives and resources including remunerative ($) to study in these fields. The world has rarely treated intellectuals with respect and that needs to cange. We need to listen to the intellectuals to grow as a world. The status quo and applied fields that predominate are very important to society, yet have less influence on solving the problems of humanity and less influence on inventive ideas and products, therefore are less deserving of incentives. Too often the money goes to the less important players of society, those that keep things the way they are. Ulimately, its difficult to measure the value of information, creating one of the biggest externalities of humanity.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Our Earth
On December 7, 1972, a famous photograph of the Earth was taken by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft, which was one of the first few to show a fully illuminated Earth. To the astronauts, Earth had the appearance of a blue glass marble. It has become one the most widely distributed photographs in existence.Then, in 1990 another photograph of planet Earth was taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft from a "distant vantage point," at the request of the late Carl Sagan. This is an excerpt of Sagan's eloquent interpretation of the image.
"From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill on another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in a great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that hlep will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever know."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pfwY2TNehw
To me, both pictures of the Earth represent how precious life is, how insignificant we actually are in comparison to the full expanse of the cosmos. With that in mind, we should cherish what we do have in life and don't waste the lives that we are provided. Assuming that we only have one life to live is a daunting realization. However, a balance can and should be struck between our moral responsibilities and our exercises of entertainment and freedom. To be emotionally, physically, and mentally healthy is an importance to all of us. It makes life better and more vibrant and lets us live longer.
Whenever and wherever we are born, raise, and live, it is our responsibility to continually revisit our moral framework. We need to ask from a fundamental level how we should live our lives. Through intellectual pondering of freethought and education we can independently create a moral guidebook for ourselves. We create meaning by developing ourselves as individuals, bettering the relationship we have with others, creating art and game, developing technology and science, and ensuring certain societal needs. Through science and reason we can communicate to others just about anything that we ponder. We need to live to extend our hearts to other forms of life and to our future generations so that we feel that we have done the best on Earth.
"The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard." - Gaylord Nelson, founder of Earth Day
"Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed." - Mohandas Gandi in EF Schumacher's famous book: Small is Beautiful
"From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill on another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in a great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that hlep will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever know."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pfwY2TNehw
To me, both pictures of the Earth represent how precious life is, how insignificant we actually are in comparison to the full expanse of the cosmos. With that in mind, we should cherish what we do have in life and don't waste the lives that we are provided. Assuming that we only have one life to live is a daunting realization. However, a balance can and should be struck between our moral responsibilities and our exercises of entertainment and freedom. To be emotionally, physically, and mentally healthy is an importance to all of us. It makes life better and more vibrant and lets us live longer.
Whenever and wherever we are born, raise, and live, it is our responsibility to continually revisit our moral framework. We need to ask from a fundamental level how we should live our lives. Through intellectual pondering of freethought and education we can independently create a moral guidebook for ourselves. We create meaning by developing ourselves as individuals, bettering the relationship we have with others, creating art and game, developing technology and science, and ensuring certain societal needs. Through science and reason we can communicate to others just about anything that we ponder. We need to live to extend our hearts to other forms of life and to our future generations so that we feel that we have done the best on Earth.
"The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard." - Gaylord Nelson, founder of Earth Day
"Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed." - Mohandas Gandi in EF Schumacher's famous book: Small is Beautiful
Amendment 1 to the North Carolina Constitution: A Major Setback for Equality
North Carolina has been getting national coverage on its latest major debacle of intolerance and discrimination--the state legislaturers have a recent proposal to ban same-sex marriage and other rights into the North Carolina constitution. This will be enacted through Senate Bill 514 that states that "marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State. This section does not prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party; nor does this section prohibit courts from adjudicating the rights of private parties pursuant to such contracts." A common misconception in the public is that the bill will only ban same-sex marriage.
However, it bars the state from sanctioning civil unions. Maxine Eicher (UNC-Chapel Hill law professor) says that "many more rights would be limited or eliminated including rights to family hosptial visitation, to make medical decisions for an incapacitated partner, to make funeral and burial arrangements, to inherit from one another and to be named guardian or conservator if one partner becomes incapacitated." Rights of heterosexual contracts are restricted as well, including the denial of domestic violence protection for unmarried couples and the denial of the current child custody rights for domestic partners. Many people have also claimed that this provision will hurt the state's business climate because of the unwelcoming atmosphere that would ensue. Constrastingly, many companies in North Carolina such as Bank of America, Duke Energy, and BB&T have policies that support same-sex couples.
Currently, gay marriage is banned only in a state statute which is essentially not as strong and permanent as an amendment to a constitution. Thirty states in the US already have gay marriage bans in their constitution. The leader in pushing this proposal is Senator Jim Forrester (Replican from Gaston) who has been filing amendment bills for several years without success. In the past this push has been blocked by Democrats, but because Republicans unfortunately take control of the General Assembly (the first since 1870) there is much potential for damaging policies like this. Sadly enough, the bill was won after just an hour of intense debate in the Senate. Forrester, a Baptist to his core, wants to campaign at our state's churches for the passage of the bill. Forrestor says the bill was not designed to single out gays and lesbians, but because a strong traditional family structure is such an important issue to him and his party such moves are bound to affect everyone of nontraditional family structures.
People need to really condemn this act as immoral and illegal because of its harmful consequences and because the definitions of social contracts by government or religion are generally plagued with discrimination--we only have to look at North Carolina's ban on interracial marriage and discouragement of the desegregation of public schools in the state. Despite people's opinions, values, and religious beliefs, there should be no justification if we want to live in a good world to enact policy that have direct harmful consequences. Despite what the politicians and even citizens believe, the rule of law is set to protect the rights of the minority of any characteristic. Fortunately, there have ben 250 liberal clergy and faith leaders, 75 business leaders, and 50,000 citizens that have messaged their disapproval to the government.
Oddly enough, the majority of North Carolinians are not favor of limiting these rights. In fact, the majority of NC citizens support same-sex marriages or civil unions. But because of the confusing language of the bill, the comfortable majority are saying they would vote for the amendment. This means that the public and the legislators both don't understand what this amendment entails. North Carolina citizens need to be better educated about it through equality organizations, the media, activists, and especially the government from which this bill was proposed. At the same token, we need our citizens to register to vote for the May 2012 primary to remove the possibility of this bill being passed because it will have lasting consequences. It is truly frustrating that politicians push their policies for their political ambitions and their deeply held religious beliefs that are misguided and outdated. If the Bible and its Translators could only evolve to changes in society--that is my dream that will never be fulfilled.
However, it bars the state from sanctioning civil unions. Maxine Eicher (UNC-Chapel Hill law professor) says that "many more rights would be limited or eliminated including rights to family hosptial visitation, to make medical decisions for an incapacitated partner, to make funeral and burial arrangements, to inherit from one another and to be named guardian or conservator if one partner becomes incapacitated." Rights of heterosexual contracts are restricted as well, including the denial of domestic violence protection for unmarried couples and the denial of the current child custody rights for domestic partners. Many people have also claimed that this provision will hurt the state's business climate because of the unwelcoming atmosphere that would ensue. Constrastingly, many companies in North Carolina such as Bank of America, Duke Energy, and BB&T have policies that support same-sex couples.
Currently, gay marriage is banned only in a state statute which is essentially not as strong and permanent as an amendment to a constitution. Thirty states in the US already have gay marriage bans in their constitution. The leader in pushing this proposal is Senator Jim Forrester (Replican from Gaston) who has been filing amendment bills for several years without success. In the past this push has been blocked by Democrats, but because Republicans unfortunately take control of the General Assembly (the first since 1870) there is much potential for damaging policies like this. Sadly enough, the bill was won after just an hour of intense debate in the Senate. Forrester, a Baptist to his core, wants to campaign at our state's churches for the passage of the bill. Forrestor says the bill was not designed to single out gays and lesbians, but because a strong traditional family structure is such an important issue to him and his party such moves are bound to affect everyone of nontraditional family structures.
People need to really condemn this act as immoral and illegal because of its harmful consequences and because the definitions of social contracts by government or religion are generally plagued with discrimination--we only have to look at North Carolina's ban on interracial marriage and discouragement of the desegregation of public schools in the state. Despite people's opinions, values, and religious beliefs, there should be no justification if we want to live in a good world to enact policy that have direct harmful consequences. Despite what the politicians and even citizens believe, the rule of law is set to protect the rights of the minority of any characteristic. Fortunately, there have ben 250 liberal clergy and faith leaders, 75 business leaders, and 50,000 citizens that have messaged their disapproval to the government.
Oddly enough, the majority of North Carolinians are not favor of limiting these rights. In fact, the majority of NC citizens support same-sex marriages or civil unions. But because of the confusing language of the bill, the comfortable majority are saying they would vote for the amendment. This means that the public and the legislators both don't understand what this amendment entails. North Carolina citizens need to be better educated about it through equality organizations, the media, activists, and especially the government from which this bill was proposed. At the same token, we need our citizens to register to vote for the May 2012 primary to remove the possibility of this bill being passed because it will have lasting consequences. It is truly frustrating that politicians push their policies for their political ambitions and their deeply held religious beliefs that are misguided and outdated. If the Bible and its Translators could only evolve to changes in society--that is my dream that will never be fulfilled.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
The Palikot's Movement: Pushing for Separation of Church and State
In the 2011 Polish parliamentary election, on October 9th, a newly formed anti-clerical and socially libertarian party called the Palikot's Movement received 10 percent of the vote and won 40 out of 460 seats in the Sejm, Poland's lower house. While the majority of the Polish are Catholic, the party favors legalizing gay marriage and more liberal abortion laws. What is most interesting about this party is that it has a strong commitment to church-state separation and that two of its running candidates will become the first openly gay and first openly transsexual lawmakers in Poland.
The party leader, Janusz Palikot, is an activist and former businessman producing vodka and wine. Palikot will seek the removal of a Christian cross that hangs in the assembly hall of the Sejm. He recognizes that "it's only an illusion that Poland is so extremely Catholic, that the church is absolutely too powerful, and wants the party to remove religion from the public spaces." He hopes to end laws that make it a crime to insult a person's religion. He says the time has come for his brand of liberalization as the country grows more secular. Some of his views are radical by the standards of Poland a country where abortion remains illegal in most cases, where there is no legal recognition of gay partnerships and where the Catholic Church still enjoys great influence in public life.
On a quirky note, Palikot has a reputation for flamboyancy. "He has used eccentric antics to make his points, including appearing at a press conference holding a pistol in one hand and a plastic penis in the other in 2007 to protest a case of sexula harassment by police." Palikot defended that performance, saying that it successfully drew attention to the case of an officer who put a gun to a women's head and his penis in her mouth during interrogation. Palikot said the attention he brought to the case lead to the policeman being imprisoned, the police chief fired, and reforms being implemented to fight police abuse, including the installation of video cameras in interrogation rooms.
On another note, Palikot's aim "center on bringing greater liberalization to both social and economic spheres." He said he wants to trim state regulations that stifle businesses and delegalize a range of things -- including marijauna -- that he believes erodes at individual freedoms. He sounds like a true American Libertarian to me.
The party leader, Janusz Palikot, is an activist and former businessman producing vodka and wine. Palikot will seek the removal of a Christian cross that hangs in the assembly hall of the Sejm. He recognizes that "it's only an illusion that Poland is so extremely Catholic, that the church is absolutely too powerful, and wants the party to remove religion from the public spaces." He hopes to end laws that make it a crime to insult a person's religion. He says the time has come for his brand of liberalization as the country grows more secular. Some of his views are radical by the standards of Poland a country where abortion remains illegal in most cases, where there is no legal recognition of gay partnerships and where the Catholic Church still enjoys great influence in public life.
On a quirky note, Palikot has a reputation for flamboyancy. "He has used eccentric antics to make his points, including appearing at a press conference holding a pistol in one hand and a plastic penis in the other in 2007 to protest a case of sexula harassment by police." Palikot defended that performance, saying that it successfully drew attention to the case of an officer who put a gun to a women's head and his penis in her mouth during interrogation. Palikot said the attention he brought to the case lead to the policeman being imprisoned, the police chief fired, and reforms being implemented to fight police abuse, including the installation of video cameras in interrogation rooms.
On another note, Palikot's aim "center on bringing greater liberalization to both social and economic spheres." He said he wants to trim state regulations that stifle businesses and delegalize a range of things -- including marijauna -- that he believes erodes at individual freedoms. He sounds like a true American Libertarian to me.
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