How Should Humanity Steer the Future? -- Sideways! by Thomas Howard Ray

"Capitalism seems to give lip-service to individualism but the model tends to work toward subjugation of the individual for the purpose of control and profit. The self-interest at the top and its control of government oppresses all else. Certainly your reference to 85 controlling half the world's wealth indications the distortions of the current systems - I cite the same example."

We need to distinguish between capitalism as a system of regulated entrepreneurialism (the social democratic model) and capitalism as a system that permits accelerating accumulation of individual wealth resulting in increased inequality and denial of opportunity. The latter is political and social, the former economic. Command economies didn't work and not simply because many of the people in charge weren't too bright. A lot of them were pretty bright (look at Gorbachev). Those economies didn't work because stuff was manufactured that people didn't want to buy and there was no feedback system to explain this to the apparatchiki.

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for writing this essay. Your ideas are interesting and writing is very good, but like others have commented the essay takes a while to get going. In particular I felt like the first four pages at least were essentially a political manifesto which is not a bad thing, but felt a tiny bit out of place for me (I realise it gave context to your ideas). Of course 'steering' is a partly political task (my entry has a tiny bit of politics here and there) but I would have loved the 'future' part to be a larger part of the essay. None-the-less thanks for your essay and your creative ideas!

Ross

Tom

Your essay is wide in scope and creative in its proposals. It reflects your justified pride and concern with what I like to think of as the good side of the global phenomena that comprised the American Century. You propose your country somehow steer the world into an ideal future. Alas your love of country may have blinded you to the 'bad side': the amount of havoc US policies and those of its partners, Israel for example, have wreaked in key portions of the globe, disqualifying it in most ways as a global role model. Do not get me wrong I recognise the wonderful achievements of individual Americans, universities and other institutions working within the democratic system, but that has not translated at all well beyond its borders when it came to squashing the natives who stood in the way of U.S. 'interests'.

I am not sure how the theoretical recommendations of your report "Applying Complex Adaptive Systems Research to Countering Terrorism, Insurgency, Regional and Ethnic Violence" will translate into policies on the ground. But if the history of the Middle East with its history of oil-hungry US state terrorism in Iraq, for example, or the ongoing U.S. sponsored Israeli State terrorism and ethnic cleansing of Palestine, is any measure, I for one would say, thanks but no thanks.

As to US leadership in resource management, have you seriously considered what the American Association for the Advancement of Science has reported about America, with its small fraction of the world population:

"For many resources, the United States of America is the world's largest consumer in absolute terms. For a list of 20 major traded commodities, it takes the greatest share of 11 of them: corn, coffee, copper, lead, zinc, tin, aluminum, rubber, oil seeds, oil and natural gas. For many more it is the largest per-capita consumer"

Of course, considering its technical prowess, creativity and willingness to 'do something', I hope that policy leaders in the U.S. and also others in Israel and the Arab World etc.learn from the tragic mistakes of the past that have led to the present mess.

Sincere best wishes

Vladimir

Thank you, Vladimir. No question, I love my country -- I am an idealist, though, and not of the "my country, right or wrong" stripe. I spent so much time in the essay setting up the American ideal -- which admittedly the population and the government have never done a great job of fulfilling -- to make the point that a government of "laws, not men" is the only rational way to assure fairness and freedom. The job of the Enlightenment is not finished.

I accept all the criticism you can hurl at 21st century American foreign policy. As the saying goes, we can choose our friends but not our family -- it applies to some extent to the 'family' of a sovereign nation.

The Israel-Palestine conflict is not so simple as you make it out to be, and I think you know that. "Ethnic cleansing" is a particularly ugly term to Jews, for obvious historical reasons; one has to remember that Jewish immigration to Palestine did not occur in a vacuum -- Jews have continuously inhabited the land for thousands of years, subjugated to the rule of Greek, Roman and Muslim authorities, having minimal rights and few liberties. And even today, I don't know of a single Jew who serves in the legislature or cabinet of an Islamic government, while dozens of Arab Israelis do serve in the Israeli Parliament. One can hardly defend a charge of ethnic cleansing against that fact.

That being said, minority Palestinian Arabs under the majority Israeli government who choose to reject Israel's right to exist can and perhaps already have forced a 2-state solution to the conflict. One can only hope that the pangs of birth are worth the outcome of a liberal and secular rule of law over the region to follow -- because unless that outcome does guarantee full enfranchisement of all its citizens, with freedom of religion along with all the other benefits of citizenship -- I see no end to the turmoil. To your other point:

I don't understand the fascination of some economists with statistics on American consumerism. We consume for only one reason -- because we can. The main reason that we can, is that we have had until recently, a huge middle class able to afford the luxuries, and a birthrate low enough to enjoy them. I believe that all rational people, not just Americans, wish the same thing -- the model I have explored in my essay aims to make a start at it. Wealth creation by rational distribution of resources, low birthrate, suppression of violence -- who would argue and why?

I am looking forward to reading your essay, not for the least reason to enjoy your wonderful art!

All best,

Tom

Thank you Tom

I am relieved that you took my remarks as well as you could, although you may not have agreed with everything. I grew up in Palestine in the 1940's till the 1960's when all my generation simply loved Americans for their enthusiasm, creativity and cheerful pop culture, and we still do. This was tainted of course by knowing the role of the US government in the creation of Israel and hence the dispossession of the Palestinians. After the 1967 war US policy vetoed every single UN resolution that the rest of the nations of the world approved of, that were meant as a way to support a just and peaceful resolution to the conflict.

The Palestinians had no role whatsoever in what the Jews suffered in Europe, but we had to pay the price. What makes it worse is that the victim has now become the persecutor. I myself cannot return to my homeland and Jerusalem, the city of my birth, while any Jew anywhere, even one who had converted yesterday has the 'Right of Ruturn' backed by US policy and military nuclear might shared between the US and Israel. This is not the place to go into detail to answer each of the points you raised about Arabs and Jews. Too many complicated interlocking facts have to be separated from the overwhelming Zionist-dominated propaganda in the mass media that has made the situation difficult to discuss. Watch some videos of MIT's Naom Chomsky (who is Jewish) explaining the conflict on YouTube.

Anyway we have vented our feelings on the subject and hope to continue our friendly discussions on physics.

With best wishes

Vladimir

Nick made good points but I disagrre with some. "We need to distinguish between capitalism as a system of regulated entrepreneurialism (the social democratic model) and capitalism as a system that permits accelerating accumulation of individual wealth resulting in increased inequality and denial of opportunity. The latter is political and social, the former economic. Command economies"

I disagree with Nick regarding the social democratic model being "economic". Both, I believe are social and political in operation but perhaps economic in intent. Regulation is obviously vital for shared opportunity but for the US seems to be confined to the period after WWII, cut short by a resurgence of conservative forces which with relentless focus took control of government, media, and the economy. Most other periods of our history have seen capitalism mostly unrestrained.

Certainly the individual is the most creative asset, especially in contrast to the exploitive sterility of those in control: the financial sector is especially sterile and executive leadership (CEOs) obscenely rewarded due to power over boards not productivity.

The implementation of your system, Tom, will be a herculean task.

Jim

Hi Vladimir,

quote: In a world threatened by its own head-on clashes

of self-destructive tendencies, lateral distribution

of communications technology and resources - a

globally linked supply chain controlled by high

tech information systems in a robust network -

helps dampen inequality and maximally

enfranchise individuals for an exponential

growth in creativity and wealth generation.

Sideways is the only rational trajectory.

We currently have such a system related to fossil fuels. Coalitions create wars in countries with oil, to steal their natural resources. The people of Iraq get effectively nothing from the export of their resources. This is repeated over and over.

Without systems of broad ethical consideration being built into a global logistics system, a few will benefit while the majority will suffer.

For any major decision, the masses must have sufficient time to reflect upon the broad complexities of ethical consideration before being approved by the masses for implementation. Additionally, the masses need education related to assess broad ethical consideration.

Potentially all corruption can be largely eliminated. Basically, state elected doctors of science and philosophy guided by their state's constitution, helps build the NSA monitoring and analysis systems and manages how the information collected is used.

eliminate-all-corruption.pbworks.com

Imagine the tremendous resources that would be used to take control of a centralized global logistics system. Thousands of people selected to support corrupting influence.

To make your proposal practical and ethical requires a method of eliminating corruption.

Thanks heaps for the comment on my essay Tom. Don't forget to rate it if you get the chance. Good luck!

Hello Thomas

I've just started reading some of the interesting essays, and I quite enjoyed reading yours. I suppose that's because many of the basic assumptions appear to be in the same ballpark as those that underlay my essay # 2078.

You state: "Bar-Yam introduced multi-scale variety, the idea that independent subsystems allowed to organize around task coordination at different times on different scales, makes the larger system effective." Yes, or the synergy that makes the sum of the parts much greater than the whole. I suggest, however, that the existing growth drive corporate capitalism cannot be fixed, and we need a significant system reboot with new and clear definition of wealth to be used as an integral regulatory control medium of the dynamic system. Perhaps sideways with a down slope will be needed for a few years after our century of exponential growth.

I wish you well in the contest.

Don Chisholm

Tom, let me add this thought about complexity and the Israel-Palestine problem:

Before Zionism took hold, there was an indigenous Palestinian Arab Jewish community living with the Arab Muslim and Christian population, and particularly in Jerusalem. The name " Jewish Quarter" in the Old City testifies to that. The Jews of those days spoke Arabic and rubbed shoulders with Christian and Muslim Arab Palestinians. Within the crowded souks of the walled city what I like to think of a peaceful rich social ecosystem developed. There was a dense network of social, economic interaction but not perhaps religious, as each group had their own revered place of worship. There was occasional conflict as would happen in any crowded community, but none of the outright hostility that came later with mono-polar Zionism (their slogan was "A people without a land for a land without a people [sic]" .) The Judaisation of Jerusalem either by forced expulsion, destruction of whole Arab neighbourhoods, or more quietly by laws and other measures designed to make the Palestinian Arabs leave - and which have succeeded to a large measure. So much for the complexity that your Israeli co-author Bar-Yam seems to advocate.

Please pardon the bitter note here and make an effort to learn the facts about Palestine, rather than rely on what Zionist propaganda has so successfully spoon-fed the American people. Einstein's disgust with Zionist terrorism, and his advocating equal rights in Palestine for the Arabs and Jewish communities is one of the reasons why I wrote my essay around Einstein's happy persona.

Best wishes,

Vladimir

Vladimir, I expect that we have the same feelings about discussing this issue, somewhere between leaving it alone and letting it all out.

Einstein was a secularist. The founders of modern Israel were secularists. The majority of Israelis are secularists.

Can a modern secular and democratic state survive without conflict, surrounded by countries ruled by 14th century religious oligarchies who openly call for the utter destruction of Israel? I doubt it.

Zionism is not the enemy. The enemy is an Islamic collective that has used the Palestinian Arab dislocation since 1967 as an excuse to maintain its control over political power in the region.

The early Zionists (and I mean the modern, 19th and 20th century Zionists, since there have actually been three Zionist movements in Jewish history) were not advocating a Jewish-ruled state; they advocated religious freedom and safety for Jews, which with the exception of the U.S., was to be found hardly anywhere in the world. And that includes the Palestine under Islamic rule -- Jews were not fully enfranchised citizens of that region. They were barely tolerated as subjects of the caliphate. Jerusalem was not open to Jewish participation; religious Jews had no access to the Western Wall under Islamic rule until the capture of the city in 1967. Only the most naive of us could think that Jerusalem would be an open city under Islamic religious rule.

It is my perception that neither Islamic nor Christian theologists fully understand that Judaism is not a mystical religion. The former two are missionary religions with apocalyptic prophecies to fulfill; it is unfortunate that those prophecies have their origin in Hebrew history, for in the Jewish tradition the prophecies are warnings, not predictions.

At any rate, Bar-Yam does not deserve your indictment. He is a scientist, same as Einstein, seeking a rational solution to an irrational condition, not just in Israel but all over the world. If you would honor Einstein, you would honor that legacy.

There can be peace and equality in Israel. It will not come at the price of Israel's, and the Jewish peoples', right to exist.

Best,

Tom