Navigating between extinction and enslavement, brave humankind could very well avoid both to reach compelling new heights.
Neils Bohr once said that prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future. Despite the words of caution from the pioneering quantum physicist, I’d like to offer you my take on the three potential futures that we, as a species, are facing.
The first is extinction. This is where the human race is no more because we’ve wiped ourselves out in some foolish conflict or scientific mishap. Either that, or the universe conspires to eliminate us using it’s vast arsenal. There’s not a lot we can do to avoid this, apart from building peace instead of war.
The good news, despite what the mainstream media may want us to believe, is that humankind is actually the most peaceful we’ve ever been. (more…)
There’s a standard business negotiation tactic which has been brought into the realm of politics, used most effectively by right wing conservatives: ask for the stars and settle with the moon. So effective has this strategy been that the entire political spectrum has consistently shifted to the right over the past few decades.
Something wonderful is happening everywhere on earth. A people’s uprising is taking place, fueled by millions and millions of people who’ve awakened to see that a better future is entirely possible. Once it reaches fruition, this global social revolution will culminate in a redistribution of wealth and power, essentially liberating humanity from the shackles that far too many of us don’t even know exist.
The medium for this reformation is the online realm, which may soon prove to be the missing ingredient for a lasting freedom on earth.
With the threat of an upheaval looming, the stage is set for a huge struggle for dominance between the bulk of humankind seeking to be free and the system and its leaders desperately clinging to power. Our world’s tiny yet powerful minority (along with their cronies) will do everything they can to prevent their house of cards from toppling.
This means crushing internet freedom using a range of attacks, enhancing the already well-entrenched all-seeing surveillance system, and expanding the increasingly militarized police state, the end goal of which is to trap humans into perpetual servitude by eliminating all means of revolution.
But we wont let that happen now will we?
As long as we can keep our precious internet uncensored, we’ll be able to leverage massive populist sentiment into real political clout. Instantly interconnected social media is fostering what is essentially a real democracy, one that hears all voices and not just those at the top. And when the system caters more to everyone, what we get is a more just global civilization.
The whims and wants of a handful of wealthy tyrants will prove no match for tens or hundreds of millions of engaged individuals working towards a shared goal.
We are, on some level, transcending nationalities and cultures, expanding our own personal identities to include ourselves amongst the global village. One beautiful and amazing side effect of this great awakening will be the eradication of wars. Major armed conflicts will all but evaporate once enough of us see them for what it they really are us fighting ourselves.
With each passing day, what is becoming more evident is that the only enemies left for us to fight are the violent extremists seeking to hurt society and the oligarchs seeking to enslave us, both of which our species will be better positioned to confront the more united and empowered we all become.
When it comes to human organizations, be it a business, a religious institution, or the population of an entire country, what most often develops is a pyramid type structure. The leaders with the most power sit at the top, and then with each step you take down the ladder you get larger groups of people holding a decreasing amount of individual influence.
Within most of the world’s various pyramids there is a power struggle taking place between pretty much everyone involved. But the more disorganized and divided the groups at the bottom, the greater the ability for those at the top dictate what happens to the rest of the population.
These leaders, like every human on earth, are inherently selfish and will inevitably try to sway the system in their own favor, which usually means the rest of us get screwed.
Fortunately, in most places on earth, a peoples uprising has begun. The Occupy movement, the arab spring, the SOPA protests. And its not just the bottom rung getting involved. People from all parts of the pyramid have grown tired of the inherent injustice of the system.
The 99% are uniting, throwing themselves upon the levers of power. As millions upon millions of humans flip the mental switch from passive to engaged, the masses involved will be enough to force the system to function more to everyone’s benefit, and less to just those at the top.
This unification is just awesome, because once the 99% start coming together within individual pyramids, its just a few more steps to uniting the world’s 99%. And when that happens, we won’t have major armed conflicts on earth anymore. I’m talking about World peace, and it could be here within the decade!
See, war happens when leaders of one pyramid pit their own 99% against another leader’s 99%. So what ends up happening is two groups people who are pretty much the same end up fighting and killing each other when they could just as easily coexist peacefully.
Yet only with the vantage point to see war this way will we do away with it forever. And this is exactly what the Internet is giving us. Never before have we been more connected, and social cohesion around the globe will only tighten. We are awakening to see we really are one people, and that allowing our governments to wage war only worsens the world in which we all live.
Just keep uniting the world’s 99%. Together, we’ll have the power to stop the 1% who’ve been hurting the rest of us.
The Grinch is alive and well in America. Only instead of stealing presents from under the tree, modern day Scrooges have been pilfering the pockets of entire populations.
In his latest article, Les Leopold unveils 6 sneaky ways corporate elites function as reverse Robin Hoods, stealing from the poor to give to the rich:
1 in 2, have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income. 1 in 5 American children live in poverty. What’s going on here? You would think we were a poor country. But we’re not. We’re filthy rich, but the money is hidden away by the 1 percent while poverty rises all around.
Just how are the richest of the rich getting away with the greatest robbery of all time? Leopold breaks it down for us:
1. Productivity continues to rise but the 99 percent doesn’t share in the benefits. The productivity lines and wage lines have pulled apart so that trillions of dollars that once went to the average American are now going almost entirely to the super-rich.
2. Large corporations pay next to nothing in state and local taxes. A recent joint report reveals that 265 large corporations avoided $42.7 billion in taxes from 2008 to 2010.
3. Money that should go toward the common good pours into the pockets of the 1 percent. The overall tax rate for the super-rich has plummeted from 70% to less than what the average secretary pays.
4. The biggest corporations are sitting on a mountain of cash, yet they refuse to invest more than $1 trillion in cash because of the lack of consumer demand.
5. Hedge funds have over $1.917 trillionin misused investment capital. Most of this speculative capital serves no broader economic or social purpose, jumping in and out of the markets in nanoseconds using high-speed automatic trading techniques that extract hidden taxes from the rest of us.
6. Many of the 1 percent cheat on their taxes. The tax revenues lost in the U.S. are estimated to be $337 billion a year according to a November report by the Tax Justice Network.
So there you have it. While the rest of us are sipping our egg nog and enjoying the company of our friends and family, behemoth businesses are tirelessly enriching the wealthy few while systematically crushing the middle and lower classes.
Santa might be tempted to give these corporate fatcats a well-deserved lump of coal in their stockings, but they’d probably just use it as a tax write off.
But there are a select few of the super-rich who tow the line for the rest of the financially fortunate. These individuals (and their cronies and paid-for politicians) are the ones responsible for a system-wide shift which has incrementally stripped entire populations of wealth and power.
It is this minority of the 1% – those with an insatiable greed – who must be reigned in. Not only do they need to be held accountable, steps must be taken to prevent others from doing the same. Whether it’s through public awareness or regulation, the processes by which today’s oligarchs have amassed their dangerous concentrations of power needs to be disrupted.
This won’t happen without a fight, which is why we have to rise up. But in the end, the majority of the super-rich will capitulate and cooperate without too much of a fight, so long as they get to remain amongst the wealthiest people on earth.
The Occupy movement is a leaderless collective demonstrating against overlapping grievances, with the majority of the people demanding some form of reform in government.
While there is no one goal or single concrete agenda for all to follow, many beautiful visions of a potential future are emerging, as evident by the following statement of principles arising from the Occupy Wall Street’s General Assembly:
We Envision:
A truly free, democratic, and just society;
where we, the people, come together and solve our problems by consensus;
where people are encouraged to take personal and collective responsibility and participate in decision making;
where we learn to live in harmony and embrace principles of toleration and respect for diversity and the differing views of others;
where we secure the civil and human rights of all from violation by tyrannical forces and unjust governments;
where political and economic institutions work to benefit all, not just the privileged few;
where we provide full and free education to everyone, not merely to get jobs but to grow and flourish as human beings;
where we value human needs over monetary gain, to ensure decent standards of living without which effective democracy is impossible;
where we work together to protect the global environment to ensure that future generations will have safe and clean air, water and food supplies, and will be able to enjoy the beauty and bounty of nature that past generations have enjoyed.
Wow. What an incredibly just global civilization we could have if every nation internalized these values into the heart of their constitutions.
Well, there’s no time like the present for seizing the day. Take action now! The better world we’re dreaming of won’t arrive without our help.
Tired of being gouged by those ridiculous transaction fees? Sick of seeing the big banks getting bailed out while you get sold out? Feel it’s time to shake up the establishment a bit?
Well, if you answered yes to these questions, then you should do what tens of thousands of others have already done and move all of your savings out of your bank and into a local credit union.
In fact, considering how today (November 5th) is Bank Transfer Day, there’s no better time than right now to be the change our world needs.
Once again, we see the real power of social media and the Internet. Here is one person with one idea who found a medium to share it with others. The idea resonated so well that it sparked a movement with billion dollar implications.
This adds further support to my belief that we are on the brink of a drastically improved planet. Now that we have proven means to coordinate the undercurrents of discontent into practical and positive real-world results, it’s only a matter of time.
Just imagine, in a few years when engaged and empowered minds answer the call to action, not in the hundreds of thousands, but in hundreds of millions – the world’s system will have no choice but to bend to the will of the people.
And what we want is a more just, more equal civilization where the powerful cannot freely exploit the powerless and people take priority over profits.
Check out this impassioned speech by poet and Irish President Michael D Higgins, lambasting income disparity and the continued debasing of the lower and middle classes. Unbelievable! He’s like a spokesperson for the 99%.
We need more leaders like this guy… elected officials who will stand up for the regular people who voted them into power.
The 99% of the world who’ve been getting the shaft by today’s system now have a definitive target on which to set their sights, thanks to a team of Swiss mathematicians.
The team found that a core of 737 companies (mostly financial services companies) control almost 80% of the global economy. See #occupy haters? The world is controlled by just a few corporations!
To get a better understanding of what this corporatist network can look like, check out the excellent visualization tools available at theyrule.net. There you can delve into the US’s ruling class and explore the inner workings of the American oligarchy.
One of the criticisms of the Occupy movement is that most of the protesters who are speaking out against corporations are clearly consumers of corporate products themselves.
But the issue shouldn’t be about whether or not we need corporations. Instead, the discussion should be what kind of relationship with corporations do we want to have?
In the not so distant future, we won’t be so dependent on corporations like we are today. We’ll have the means to produce our own energy with residential renewable solutions. We’ll be able to grow our own food in automated greenhouses. And we’ll manufacture whatever products we need with our very own 3D printers.
Yet, until this day arrives, we will need corporations around to provide us with the stuff we need to live. We can’t simply get rid of them without devastating consequences. But that doesn’t mean we have to endure the tyranny of corporatism.
Instead, we can hold these international businesses accountable to the people. Treat corporations like part of the public commons. Make these big businesses a shared resource, necessary for our world to function, but kept on a very tight leash for our security.
Now that the face of our foe has been exposed, there’s nothing left to do but declare all out war. It’s time to take the power back and usher in a more just civilization for everyone, not just the lucky ones.
