The Military Industrial Complex (MIC), the powerful conglomerate that includes the Pentagon and the Defense Contractors is a term coined by President Eisenhower in his last speech warning Americans of its potential harm. Eisenhower correctly advised the US public to be aware of the increasing power that this complex had over many decisions in the US government, which could only be curbed with accountability demanded by the people.
His advice was not heeded by politicians and even less by the people, who have been kept in the dark about the reality of this war-mongering complex. Eisenhower’s predictions were too conservative, the power grab has been more extensive than he could have imagined; we are now in a situation in which defense contractors and their satellite corporations have more power than the politicians and the Pentagon itself. Corporation’s main priority is profit maximization and this reduction in priorities implies endless senseless wars with little unbiased intelligence, a concurrent push for more and more unneeded weapons and bases, coupled with a band-aid solution approach to the reality of our environmental and climate change disaster. …
As the top social species on the evolutionary scale, we share with all social animals a tendency towards heavily relying on group consensus for our information. This information, just like for all the other species, is essential for the future survival of the group, so its accuracy is paramount for the thriving of the species.
Consensus building is ubiquitous in nature, beginning at the cellular level; information sharing among the different parts produces an emerging behavior that doesn’t depend on any particular top directive but on the interaction of all the parts. As we move up the social species ladder, we find plenty of examples for the emerging of consensus in a group; a flock of birds or a school of fish rely on almost imperceptible transfers of information among the group that translate into the smooth formations of migratory birds, and coordinated movements of fish. …
Homo sapiens seems to be the culmination of the long development that transformed matter into life. Once life started, information was essential for the evolution of species, especially through the encoding that improves the organism’s chances of survival. The appearance of RNA and DNA was critical for this evolutionary jump in which a simple combination of elements could code and then build an organisms’ characteristics.
The long evolution that culminated in Homo sapiens allowed for the development of civilization, technology, and progress. Technological advances have led the species into a belief that trans-humanism is quite possible. Trans-humanism is a belief or theory about the possibility of the human race to evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations through science and technology. This notion is complemented by the theory of evolutionary humanism, a belief in the right of the most civilized humans to direct human evolution. …
The Great Reset sounds like an ad for a magical button that can reset everything back to normal, similar to the owner of an old car who wants maximum profit so he resets the mileage to 0, repaints the car, and installs a few bells and whistles to better fool a naïve potential buyer. In reality, the engine is about to fall and the breaks don’t work.
Joking aside, the World Economic Forum recently met on June 3rd, 2020 to announce their new plan for the Great Reset that will start on January 2021. …
Leonardo da Vinci once said: “There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, and those who do not see.” In our current world we tend to rely on the news media to give us all the necessary information to help us ‘see’, and we rarely question whether their ‘seeing’ is accurate. This questioning is essential for accountability; what is the point of trusting someone’s information if we just rely on it blindly? …
Do you remember the pandemic of 2003, Coronavirus SARS COV-1? 2003 seems far away, but I think it would be very clear in our minds if our lives and economies had been disrupted and our brains filled with fear like it is happening now. Instead of a pandemic, the event that was salient in 2003 was the Iraq war that started in March. I was in New York and I remember going to the anti-Iraq war march in Manhattan; according to the WHO and CDC, we were in the middle of a novel Coronavirus SARS COV-1 or COVID 03 pandemic, but nobody was wearing a mask or observing social distancing. The police couldn’t have cared less; they were more interested in crowd control. What about the US military? Troops were deployed to Iraq and the media never reported anything about how the Pentagon’s generals were worried about the toll COVID 03 would have on the troops. …
Our current lifestyle is based on mass consumerism that fills our houses, basements, and storage spaces. When we go into a store we are amazed by the variety of products, plastic at every turn, all to make our life more convenient and fun. We take for granted our technological gadgets and we feel they should be replaced each time a new version comes out. We use these products without ever thinking about the waste they produce when we throw them away. Neither do we think about the energy required for their manufacturing, transportation, and functioning.
In one word, we are completely unaware that we live in a thermodynamic system that we can’t escape. This means that the more energy we use to do work, i.e. the more we increase our industrial and electronic production, the more waste we will have. Every living thing on Earth lives under thermodynamic rules; we take energy from the sun that has been transformed by the plants to feed up the food chain. In this exchange there are many waste products; for plants, it happens to be oxygen that is beneficial to us. Our solid natural waste created problems once we became sedentary and we have been struggling with its disposal ever since. Still, when compared to the waste of our industrial output and consumerism, it becomes an easy waste to deal with, biodegradable, and even useful in the case of animal manure. …
According to Greek mythology, Zeus assigned the task of making sentient beings to the Titans: Epimetheus (afterthought) and his brother Prometheus (foresight). Epimetheus gave animals the essentials for their survival, claws, fangs, fur, and strength. Prometheus pitied humans, the naked ape with no advantageous attributes, so he stole fire from King Hephaestus and mechanics from Athena, the goddess of wisdom, to balance the prospects of Homo sapiens.
Prometheus brought energy and technology to humans, which allowed them to start civilizations, multiply, and rise to become the top predator on Earth. The god Zeus didn’t like what Prometheus had done, he saw that these gifts could bring trouble to humanity through unregulated progress that would lead to war, destruction, arrogance, and hubris. Prometheus was severely punished for his misjudgment; Zeus tied him to a rock and sent an eagle to eat at his liver eternally. Having punished the offender, Zeus tried to remedy the problem by ordering the god Hermes to give humans justice (dike) and respect (aidos) to be shared among all people. …
The current SARS COVID-2 pandemic has prompted most world governments to implement very drastic measures to curb the spread of the virus and surprisingly, most of the population of the world has quietly accepted a reduction in their liberties without much questioning. The outbreak is deemed a crisis by the world authorities, and the media has been very prompt at helping governments in their quest for acquiescence to the new rules. …
The recent Coronavirus outbreak that started in China and spread all around the world is breaking havoc with the globalized order of intense trade and travel. But even with this break in business-as-usual, it is still evident that in our current world order, America and China are the two top power contenders. America has been at the top of the world pyramid since WWII, while China started the post-WWII era in a struggle to emerge from the deep humiliation and disturbance caused by the European interventions in the 19th century and the invasion by Japan in the 20th century.
China has managed to deal with the pandemic crisis in an efficient fashion thanks to its well-structured health system and civil bureaucracy. The US and the West are having trouble being as efficient and their health and governmental entities are showing their inability to cope. …
