>> There seems to be two threads here. One is the specialization of study the
>> other is selling one's knowledge. Interesting to be sure. Why are such
>> things being framed inside of 'good vs evil' and sudden enemies? There is
>> nothing sudden here. As for good and evil you seem to be getting into some
>> dogmatic something that might be best to clearly come out with.
>> I think the gist of your concern is correct, however. Hyper Specialization
>> should go into decline for a few generations. It has reached a point of
>> doing more harm than good. Commercialization of the sciences is another
>> element that has outlived it's usefulness for a while. Modern humans have
>> too long viewed it's prime achievements as being synonymous with it's
>> blinking gadgetry all of which are nothing more than different forms of
>> electrified numbers. We live and learn. This is all we have done, can or
>> will ever do.
Replygmail
Thank you for your in-depth response.
First, at the outset, I ask your pardon for my inability to give you
an in-depth reply, for I am here, at my village, without an internet
facility and I have to come to the town to avail it on hire. However I
will respond to the general gist of remarks and observations -10
replies in three groups-- on my article.
On the whole, I am happy that most of the replies are disagreeing with
my views, especially on my growing concerns of the imminent impending
doom because of the present going of in human society. For I sincerely
want my apprehensions to be proved wrong as it is a question of the
security concerns of my children and my near and dear ones.
Secondly, I am happy to see that many are there who are very
optimistic of the present going and are ready to prove me wrong. May
be it is the presence of people like them that keeps the world from
going to more wrong and faulty. And I don't want to fail their will.
Earlier I had occasions in extensively trying to analyze my data that
convinced most of my friends, but only to leave them pessimistic in
the end. One has to be strong enough to hold truths and realities.
The fact is that I am not convinced of your arguments on the positives
of the present going, that the human society, as a whole, is not on
the verge of collapse, and
that " this idea of the doom and extinction of humankind has been
around since the beginning of humankind",
that "we need not feel that "bad" or we need not be so disappointed
about human "degeneration" since any reading of history - for one
who is open minded - give the information that what is happening
today - has been happening - from time "immemorial" - else"
that " blah blah blah. Yeah, humanity is always about to get
battered."..............etc.
Yet, I can't help my analyze proving right and continue apprehending
me. Any theory may be proved right if it's predictions come true.
When Stephen Hawking published, in 1988, the global best seller A
Brief History of Time, which contained none of the above kind of
dangers, this author had written and published Story of Man--Layman, in
New Delhi in 1990 (released by then Indian Prime Minister, Chandra
Shekhar) which not only contained most of the above observations--
literally--but also brought out the basic reason behind these imminent
catastrophic developments. "Humanity is at the crossroads; turning to
every direction, it shudders",. And, the basic reason for this
imminent catastrophic development, which I advanced then was
PROFESSIONALISM, which however was not only considered a boon and
something positive at that time. But today professionalism has come
under attack by many meaningful intellectuals and scientists, as one
of the basic causes behind the catastrophic problems . And these
revelations are being made by an author whose book Story of Man -
Layman( 1990) cleared predicted almost all global events that have
taken place from 1990 to 2007.
And my concern is not without sufficient and authoritative grounds.
"The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new
homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk
that a disaster will destroy the Earth, and that humans should have a
permanent base on the moon in 20 years and a colony on Mars in the
next 40 years.", said Stephen Hawking, the greatest scientist of our
time and the author of the global best seller A Brief History of
Time. One of the best-known theoretical physicists of his generation,
Hawking, who was on a lecture tour in Hong Kong, was speaking to the
press on June05, 2006, according to an Associated Press report.
Earlier, 1,300 leading scientists from 95 countries who published a
detailed assessment of the state of the world at the start of the new
millennium had concluded:
"Earth's life support system is disintegrating; the modern society is
literally undoing the work of organic evolution; the institutions we
have created are destroying the livability of the whole world. Planet
Earth stands on the cusp of disaster and people should no longer take
it for granted that their children and grandchildren will survive in
the environmentally degraded world of the 21st century."
As is evident, the above central observations are not the doom-laden
talk of green activists. Until recently, the talk of any possible
humanity's collapse or the Big Crunch was the preserve of lunatics and
cults. In the past few years, however, an increasing number of
intelligent and credible people have been warning that global collapse
is a genuine possibility. And many of them are great, sober
scientists, including Lord May, David King and Jared Diamond -- people
not usually given to exaggeration or drama.
Again, the tale of the Titanic comes uncomfortably close to describing
the perceptual gap we now face: our inability to comprehend the scale
of the ongoing degradation of the life process on the big spaceship,
called, Earth. Few understand the magnitude of the potential tragedy;
fewer still have a good idea of what to do about it. And still more
shocking is another new reality. For the survivors of Titanic, help
came from the nearest shore and from other passing ships. For the
trapped earthlings--if at all there would be any survivors--it has to
come from only other planets! And the most pitiable of all for the
survivors is the sordid fact that their condition would be worse than
that of the dead because, for the post- modern hightech, system-addict
(consumerist) survivors it would be like the condition of a fish out
of water. The Titanic passengers were mainly innocent victims; the
passengers of the ailing spaceship earth today are more innocent,
thanks to an ongoing high-tech ignorantism process underway on an
unprecedented massive global scale since the last couple of centuries.
Market leadership may draw a very glossy and tantalizing picture of a
very bright 21st century with America at the wheels. Technology at
breakneck speed promises the deployment of gene therapy, nanobiology
(the use of microscopically tiny devices and medicines) and organ
transplant from animals to humans, apart from the 'prospects' of
finding ways to rewire our brains to repair individual deficiencies,
they illustrate with new "informations." Cars, they say, will be so
smart that they will drive us; better and fast space vehicles, almost
all of them unmanned, will probe the depths of the solar system. With
sensors and satelliter-driven air-crafts directing the source of
future wars and the like the protagonists of this scientific
excellence and "bright future prospects" indeed have longer and longer
lists of the "look forwards" and shorter lists of "worry abouts" of
the unfolding 21st century.
Mankind on a collision course with extinction: The problem is
genetical degradation. Let the much dreaded nuclear war breaks out or
be it a highly catastrophic natural calamity capable of reducing the
present population of seven billions to just seven people or just one
people. However so far as he remains as he is--a parasite and modern--
which he is compulsorily and genetically programmed to remain, he, as
in the case of any parasite, is certain to become his own nemesis and
is thus certain to meet his premature end. Even otherwise, many modern
scientists too have found rapid degradation in body and mind due to
the accumulation without control of degenerating mutations in the gene
pool. They say that the rate of human descent is perhaps thousands of
times faster than the rate of its ascent and that, unless checked, the
modern mankind, as a species, will soon collapse. The degeneration is
already apparent.
As for the condition of man today, his position in society seems much
frightening. Human resource, the world discovers, has today become a
liability, not an asset. Sometimes it feels cruel that we are
proceeding at a breakneck speed towards more sophisticated automation
when labour is so cheap and the unemployment situation so acute. Even
after getting employed with much effort or luck, we are also seeing a
disturbing trend where one can be gainfully employed only for a very
short time. By the time one approaches the late 30's one can sense the
pink slip approaching. Career opportunities for the middle aged are
restricted. The board room is getting younger by the day with young
recruits occupying senior positions.
The future seems bleak. To keep up with the times, one has to
earn fast and earn the maximum while the going is good. All our
efforts at framing a corruption-less society may well be a dream.
Honesty and ethics are a load on the shoulder, they have to be
offloaded in order to progress in the "right direction". Honesty is no
longer the best policy; it is a millstone around the neck. It is no
surprise to realize to fast emerging fact that man everywhere today
has come to increasingly think that he has no future. Never in the
history of mankind has man faced such a pathetic state of his society
when he, along with his global leaders and even his religions have all
come to be led by such a pathetic force called the market force.
As for the new doomsayers, they all point to the same collection of
threats -- climate change, resource depletion and spreading diseases
being the most important. What makes them especially afraid is that
many of these dangers are interrelated, with one tending to exacerbate
the others. It is necessary to tackle them all at once if we are to
have any chance of avoiding global collapse, they warn.
Mass Extinction and the Ignorance and Indifference of the Mass
Nature suddenly seems to place Home Sapiens among this planet's
endangered species.
Most well-meaning scientists are beginning to speak of being in the
midst of a human-caused mass-extinction! We are on the verge of
ecological collapse. However, despite massive evidence about its
imminent extinction, mankind seems to suffer from an inability to
recognize and understand what it is doing to its own environment.
One may reasonably wonder as to why the world is growing paranoiac
towards realities, as to why it fight shy of truths; why, under the
face of even the last survival instinct it does not want to touch
truth even with a barbed wire; why it can do only some lip service to
truth; why all its modern problem solving processes are limited to be
superficial and proving to be only symptom fighting and never touching
the real fundamental issues. Even more serious, toxic social
conditioning is occurring due to fear that causes selective blindness.
This results in loss of insight and foresight -- not to mention the
inability to see what's right in front of your nose --is often called
"Not-Seeism", that has been draining our lifeblood for decades, and
has been linked to the current epidemic of passivity.
Unwillingness or inability to feel and sense the clear suicidal state
of mankind by almost 99%% of the population is the number one problem
that human society faces today. The inability of the majority of the
people to register the problem in their mind is a deeper and more
systemic problem. This is largely because of the mechanization of
modern man who has become more a product of the market and the
mechanical systems and no longer a product of nature. In the largely
urban oriented modern human society, "biological life" has become
foreign and irrelevant for most of us today.
Almost everyone seems to feel that ideas that were not articulated as
collective are not much effective or relevant to them. And in a market
force-led world, which virtually monopolizes the mass media, what is
articulated as collective weighs more on the spring of the market than
on the real problems of man.
Abraham Lincoln (American president, 1861-1865) said, "Corporations
have been enthroned .... An era of corruption in high places will
follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by
working on the prejudices of the people... until wealth is aggregated
in a few hands ... and the Republic is destroyed". Today, in the much
globalized and corporations controlled world, existing, for all intent
and purpose, as a single mega nation, we are bound to mean that the
global 'republic' too is to be fast destroyed. We are doomed to self
extinction because we have inherited some self destructive traits like
our growing dependence on experts-- the market propped-up species--who
ridicule public fears and distract attention from genuine concerns.
The fast growth of a synthetic type of intelligence--intelligence
without conscience or mechanical intelligence--has indeed heightened
our dependence on experts who 'know many things about something and
nothing about anything else'.
From early days, experts of various persuasions have demonstrated
their prejudices and incompetence. A non-expert should not feel
obliged to accept an expert's opinion, nor feel inhibited about
trespassing on the experts' demesne. Our future indeed depends upon
confronting the experts. (see chapter on PROFESSIONALISM)
We all know that truth is our ultimate savior. And for millions of
years, truth was as open and as free as NATURE that nurtured man to
evolve him as the 'crown and pride of all creations'. Corruption means
untruth and untruth is injurious to both the victim and the culprit.
In all sorts of corruption, we not only hide truth and tell lie to
others but also, in the long process, fabricate ourselves as a bundle
of fictions. There is nothing suicidal as lying to oneself. Here we
deny truth or rescue to self as well as to others.
Somewhere down the line in modern history, we chose corrupt means to
attain our goals, only to become corrupted by our own methods, and to
get trapped by a brutal despotism of our corrupt means which grew to
giant mechanical systems.
In our inclination to remain undisturbed and risk-free, we became
chronic consumers of sophisticated convenience and comforts, and thus
our growing distrust of man in holding bare natural truths and the
ground realities led us to hand over our leadership to the
sophisticated and highly mechanized market forces on a platter. Market
force thus began to shape the collective human intelligence and to
exploit their shared vulnerability by installing the work force of a
species called the experts and specialists.
Today, this leader system has grown to such super human monstrous
level and, being completely mechanical, cannot understand the human
sentiments and feelings other than the mechanical laws and equations
so much that the present leader of the world, namely , the United
States of America, has practically become a 'nation of lawyers'. That
is, the leader of human society is just a giant sophisticated
mechanical system which can little understand any human sentiments
other than only laws and equations or their expert versions.
Man versus Modern Man
Why is man the kind he is today - so sharply different a species from
the natural kind of breed he was for millions of years, a process
which had made him the crown and the envy of all other creations?
Because man is half heredity and half environment, we can answer the
above question only if can answer the question: why is the world the
way it is today?.
Looking through the history window, we see sharp changes from the past
to the present that have so abruptly taken place at the beginning of
modern age in which it is seen that the world and man today are just
the reversal of what they were in the past, say, some 500 years back.
Formerly things were largely nature-controlled; today it is machine-
controlled. Formerly, truth evolved from the general; today it is
fabricated in the laboratory - and evolves from the particular - from
the highly compartmentalized split atoms.
In looking back it is seen that modern (mechanical) man stands highly
fragile, strangely isolated, and defenselessly stranded from nature
and from other species and, also from the man of pre-modern history.
Modern society, thus, has distinct anti-human and anti-nature
characteristics that are proving to be its own nemesis.
Thus, no other species in nature, including man, except modern man,
survive by exploiting another of the same species. No other species in
nature, including man, except modern man, have their leaders so much
protected from the same species. Modern man has to guard his leader
from the attacks of people.
No other species in nature, including man, except modern man, has a
third sex (apart from the male and the female of the species) who has
middleman (businessman) apart from man and women. Thanks to modern
mechanical market economy leadership, there is no other species in
nature,except as modern man that cannot consume their own products or
fruits without a middleman or agent in between.
No other species in nature, including man, except modern man, has
become a slave of the system which it has temporarily created for its
temporary service or use. Modern man-made systems have become rather a
liability to man, which have reduced him to be not only a slave to his
own systems but also a commodity in the reigning market economy. For
example, today man must eat the highly processed food -- often
synthetic foods-- to keep the food processing industry going and its
vast employment.!
No other species in nature, including man, except modern
man, depend on synthetically (non-cyclically) grown and artificially
prepared food as totally as modern man. As the dead food and a corpse
eater (highly degenerated foods like the highly processed, tined, and
genetically split foods) modern man (mechanical man) finds enough
logic in consuming inanimate food (formula foods) for the animate
life. Agri-business (feedlots, processed food) and Bio-tech (GMO's)
have taken over our entire food supply before we could realize it. as
modern man. (See 'Middlemanism and Over-process').
No other species in nature, including man, except modern man, lives
much less than the natural six and a half times of its' age of
maturity. Thus man supposed to live up to an age of 130 if we take the
age of full maturity as 20, a life span with ancient man lived, and
the man of nature untouched by modern civilizations even lives today.
This may be contentions issue citing the examples of more deaths and
shortened human life span during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.
The written parts of histories are pure bunk
No other species in nature, including man, except modern man, erect
his dwelling place as a permanent structure to last several
generations. Modern man who has come to erect his dwelling places as
permanent structures and use them for several generations so much so
that he always live in past environment.
No other species in nature, including man, except modern man, live
just by watching a few others live and play 'games' on them. Modern
man has been reduced to be an onlooker or a passive spectator. For
example, millions of pairs of legs are rendered lazy as they watch 22
pairs of legs chasing a ball for weeks on end in the name of global
succors catapulted by global market fleeces like Coke, Pepsi, Nikke.
Market is idling and languishing the sex of millions by directing
them to a live Madonna , Mickle Jacson global events, to finally
leaving these millions of Zombies as they find fault with their
partners at home. As part of the market mechanism, modern man has to
fake his life, not live it (no wonder for the modern bizarre
evolutionary developments like the fast shrinking sperm counts for
modern man and the growing infertility and shrinking sex drive in
modern women, for they have no use these organs other than watching
their role models perform these shows). Otherwise, as the guaranteed
fodder for the market forces, modern man is all the story of
suppressed and ignored individual and the over projected 'model'--just
living mechanically.
And ,above all, no other species in nature, including
man, except modern man, depended on non-cyclical/non-sustainable mode
of development. Modern man having all his mechanical/industrial
developments fully non-cyclical, non-sustainable, live by eating up
the capital. Reportedly, the international economy will have consumed
the LAST OF THIS EARTH within THIS decade.
John Muthukat
http://truthpowerjohn.blogspot.com/