Tag Archives: poverty

Not a question of first or rare or distant

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When thinking about whether we are alone in the universe or not, it seems to me that it isn’t a question of whether we (intelligent life) are rare? Or are we first/early compared to other intelligent life? Or are we simply too far away? But rather a question of enduring. Are intelligent civilizations enduring enough to travel beyond their solar system or galaxy?

The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence. Scientists today are looking for life in our very own solar system. It’s possible, in our vast universe, that our quest for life beyond earth may be as close as Saturn’s moon, Enceladus. It would probably b\e microbes, too small to see without a microscope, but that would still suggest that life is way more abundant than even most scientists would have imagined just a few years ago.

But I’m more a believer that the reason we don’t see alien life is for two reasons, the first being distance. Quite simply, even the nearest galaxy to our Milky way is astronomically far away.  “The closest known galaxy to us is the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy, at 236,000,000,000,000,000 km (25,000 light years) from the Sun. The Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy is the next closest , at 662,000,000,000,000,000 km (70,000 light years) from the Sun.” If intelligent life started sending messages to us from the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy 10,000 years ago, it would still take 15,000 years to reach us if they could do the unlikely task of sending that message at the speed of light… and the crazy thing is, why would they send a message our way? 10,000 years ago there was no evidence coming from earth that we are a worthy planet to send a message to!

And the second reason we don’t see any intelligent life ‘out there’ in the universe is The Great Filter. Either it is extremely rare and difficult to get beyond simple, unintelligent multicellular life, or civilizations themselves getting to multi solar system travel capabilities are extremely rare. This second point is my belief. Civilizations are not enduring enough. It took Homo sapiens 300,000 years to become a scientifically intelligent life form that attempted to leave our planet and explore our solar system. During this time, we’ve been brutal to each other. We’ve created weapons of mass destruction and quite literally drawn lines in the sand to keep us separate from our brothers and sisters.

We’ve created religions that don’t like each other and think all other Gods are unworthy of following. We’ve created borders that keep ‘others’ out. We’ve created governments that are more interested in power than in caring for fellow humans. We’ve created corporations that worry more about profit than about caring for our planet. All the while we also create technologies that threaten the longevity of humanity. As technological innovations occur, it becomes easier for individuals and small groups to terrorize larger groups. It becomes easier for a single unstable person to threaten larger and larger populations around our planet.

What happens 50 years from now when a kid can create a devastating bomb or virus in their basement with readily available resources? Is that a world where we continue to advance technologically? Albert Einstein is often quoted as having said: “I don’t know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones“. In other words, we will destroy ourselves and become far more primitive, much less advanced. Imagine our world with no power grid, and no internet. How long would it take to get back to where we are now? What if the next pandemic is far more deadly and has us living like subsistence farmers, keeping ourselves in tiny communities, afraid of outsiders. How many hundreds of years would we be set back, and would we be trying to explore the cosmos when survival is our greatest concern?

I tend to be an optimist, and I’m excited about the future ahead of us. I think my kids have the potential to live healthy, productive, and cognitively sound lives past 100 years of age. I think there will be universal basic income for every human alive, and that things like childhood starvation and extreme poverty could come to an end. Technological advances could make us live healthier, longer, more fulfilling and creative lives. But I also fear that greed, power, and beliefs in bad ideas could corrupt us, and undermine our potential. Are we 50, 100, or 1,000 years away from ravaging our planet or at least the human race? Or are we a species that will populate other parts of our galaxy?

If I was an alien who came to explore earth today, I’m not sure I’d report back to my planet the the inhabitants are intelligent? I’m not sure I’d consider humans technologically advanced enough to seek contact? I’d be conveying that earthlings are as likely to destroy themselves as they are to send someone out of their own solar system. I’d send a message home and say, ‘Let’s leave them alone for now and see what they can do in another couple hundred of their earth years?‘

‘Let’s see if this race of humans will endure?‘

Unsustainable and increasing inequality

Here is page 7 of an OXFAM report, Inequity Kills:

What’s not necessarily well known is that the Forbes and Bloomberg ‘Top 10 Richest’ lists never includes some of the richest and wealthiest families which have accumulated wealth above and beyond anyone on these lists… there is a lot more extreme wealth than these lists suggest.

Add to this the first two sentences in the report’s summary:

“A new billionaire has been created every 26 hours since the pandemic began. 6 The world’s 10 richest men have doubled their fortunes, while over 160 million people are projected to have been pushed into poverty.”

This kind of lopsided wealth distribution simply can’t be sustained. And yet in the hardest times of the pandemic, when many low wage people couldn’t work, prices and inflation skyrocketed while corporations that produce oil, and sell groceries, reported their greatest profits in years. They also returned their largest dividends to stock holders… most of whom are already very rich and can afford to hold a significant amount of stocks. We’ve all heard the saying, ‘The rich get richer while the poor get poorer,’ and it seems that this is more true now than it ever has.

I stumbled onto this report after reading this article on NPR, “Move over, Jeff Bezos. India’s richest man is now wealthier than the Amazon founder“. The Billionaire club used to be almost exclusively a Saudi and USA thing, other than old family wealth, but now it’s a global phenomenon. Everywhere in the world there are small groups of people accumulating wealth in significant size, while there are populations in significant size that are dropping below the poverty line. This simply isn’t sustainable. That said, I don’t see anything upsetting this trend in the near future. Further, I’m at a loss to think of how this will change in the coming years?

At what point does a society with a few people owning more than half of the global wealth become unproductive for the wealthy? The abject poor can’t by the products the rich manufacture. The suffering middle class with less-than-ever disposable income, and more-than-ever accumulated debt soon won’t be able to help either. So what breaks? How does this self-correct?

I certainly don’t have any answers.

The geography lottery

You don’t pick your parents. You don’t pick your country of birth. My grandfather was born in the Ukraine. I could have been too. My other grandfather escaped Poland before the second invasion in WWII. Much of his family that didn’t escape perished. I could have never come into existence.

There are children being born today that will have little or no chance of ever going to school beyond high school. Others who will start work before their 10th birthday. Still others that will know hunger in ways we never will.

We take for granted the opportunities we are given. We complain about things that others would consider a luxury… I wish my car had heated seats. I wish I had the latest phone. I asked for onion rings but they gave me fries.

Sometimes it’s worth pausing for a moment to appreciate that through sheer luck of birth, we have been given opportunities others will never get. We won a lottery that others dream of winning. Be grateful. Be thankful. Be generous. Be kind in thoughts, words, and deeds… Especially to those that have not been as lucky.

The Bell Curve of Free Will by David Truss

The Bell Curve of Free Will

Assuming Free Will: There are some interesting and compelling arguments that we do not have free will, and according to Sam Harris, that it is only an illusion. I will address this at another time, because my thoughts on this are not fully formed. I need to read and understand more, but my general thesis on this topic is that the black box of our unconscious mind is only ever opened through bizarre dreams, deep meditation, and psychedelic drug use… all of which suggests metaphorical images and thoughts that seems to transcend logic and linear processing. If that is the case, I highly doubt that our will is somehow ordained by our past experiences in some sequential domino effect. And while our conscious minds might not grasp the true decision-making processes of our unconscious mind, that does not remove the fact that our unconscious mind acts, to some extent, freely… even if our history, our circumstances, and our virtue (among other things) might influence and restrict how much freedom of choice we have.

For now, I want to assume that we all have free will. Given this, I’d like to look at The Bell Curve of Free Will that I constructed to describe my thoughts on this topic.

My Premise:

If we have free will then I believe that how much choice we have will be influenced considerably by our circumstance and by how virtuous we are.

Background on the Graph: I should have created 2 different graphs, one for circumstance and one for virtue, but the dotted line showing how one influences the other is important. Further, I could have created charts about how our choices are increased or limited based on many different factors, like our health, our culture or religion, or our parents. I chose circumstance and virtue because they are easy to connect in my example, and highly influential to our free will, or our lack of ability to make choices.

Here is the image I created:

Circumstance and Free Will: If you are destitute or impoverished, if you are in a situation where you are unsafe or starving, your choices are very limited. You are more likely to go to extreme measures to improve your safety or well-being, at any cost including illegal, unreasonable, or unconscionable means, even if you wouldn’t want to do these things if your circumstances are different. You will act to protect or feed yourself and your family and those reasons overrule reasons you would otherwise have to not do something desperate. However, your circumstances limit you from doing things many other people could easily choose to do.

On the other hand, if you are affluent and have a lot of influence, the choices you get to make are significantly greater than if you are destitute. From living arrangements, to choice of foods, to freedom to travel, to caring for your loved ones, an affluent person can make so many choices and have so much freedom to make those choices compared to those that are only thinking of survival or their next meal. This isn’t a bell curve, this is a direct relationship where affluence and power, or lack of these, directly influence the amount of choice a person has.

Virtue and Free Will: The vast majority of people have a lot of choice and free will, while people on the extremes of the virtue scale do not. If you are a genuinely evil person who gets pleasure out of being hurtful and evil, you are probably limited in your choice and ability to do good deeds and make kind choices. When you are angry, your choices become more limited, your reactions to circumstance are less likely to provide you with more options that if you were more level-headed.

On the other extreme, if you are extremely virtuous and benevolent, you simply could not make choices that are hurtful to others. You have more limited choice because your virtue would compel you to do ‘the right thing’ and not choose other options that are less kind, even if for example, they benefit you. Your choices become limited because you would not have the options that others would in your place. Mother Theresa probably could not choose to walk away from her charity, her virtue would not allow it.

High Virtue and High Affluence: This is shown by the dotted green line on the graph.

Affluence and influence do not necessarily result in endless choice. More virtuous people, who are also affluent, are compelled to be in the service of others and to use their means for good. Their affluence might provide more choice and means for them to do this, but if they are truly virtuous then they would be compelled towards using their affluence and influence in ways that demonstrate their virtuousness, thus reducing their will do to other things.

As a side note: I have seen many instances where people with very little means have gone out of their way to be generous and kind. And, our world is filled with many affluent and influential people who could be more virtuous and choose not to be so… even when it would mean far less sacrifice for them. Bill Gates explained this succinctly:

“My charitable giving is not impressive. What’s impressive is people who give to charities who have to sacrifice something to give it to him. In my family, we don’t even hesitate to buy yet another airplane. But there are people who have to choose, do I go out to dinner? Or do I give this $20 to my church? That’s a very different decision than I make. Those are the people that impress me.” ~ Bill Gates

An inherent flaw in putting these two graphs together is that an unintended extrapolation could be that the impoverished can not be virtuous, With this insight, here is one aspect of the two-in-one graph that is not shown, but should be noted:

High Virtue and Low Affluence: On both ends of these two scales the choice is limited, and so free will would be further diminished. As an example: A devout and benevolent monk or priest who is in the same destitute situation as someone equally as impoverished (but less virtuous) could not choose to harm or steal from someone even if it was to feed his/her own family.

Final Thoughts: I wonder if conscientious people who think about philosophy, and/or are compelled towards the sciences to do ‘good’, and make a difference in the world, are more likely to believe that there is no such thing as free will… since by nature of their virtues, they have less free will than someone that is not as concerned about the well-being of humanity? In a way, I could have titled this graph ‘The Curse of Free Will’ because either you are cursed to be evil, or you are cursed to be kind, since in both cases you are allotted less choice in life, less free will. Is it somehow more blissful and less restrictive to live a somewhat selfish life? Is our propensity towards this unenlightened life the reason religions are born? If free will does not lead us to be more virtuous, what does?

 

Having choice

There are billions of people in our world that are constrained by not having enough choice.

How many people in the world don’t have a choice of what their next meal will be? How much they will get? How nourishing it is?

How many children must work, and do not have the opportunity to go to school?

How many children do not have a choice of more than one thing to wear? Or are forced to wear something for religious reasons?

How many people pray to an unjust and cruel God, for fear of the wrath of their own family or community, (and not God), to ask questions?

How many people are not given the chance to speak out against their ruling government for fear of imprisonment or death?

Basic human and civil liberties are something that have improved over the past 50 years, and simple metrics like reductions in poverty and in deaths by malnutrition tell us this. But in an ever shrinking world brought together by the internet, inequalities are far more visible. And the sensitive nature of some of these topics are such that people speaking out can face ridicule, harassment, and might even fear for their lives.

Some people are given less choice about how they get to live their lives: The language they speak, their geography, their ethnicity, their gender, their sexual orientation, their parents, their social and economic status, all these can in some way limit or privilege the choices a person has. But for many, they are not limited in their ability to see what others have, and even show off, that they do not have. Affluence and privilege is flaunted openly and excessively. This creates an even bigger divide, because the rich and the famous so obviously have choices that others do not. Agency feels relative when comparing those who have much of it from those that do not.

How important is the right to basic survival (food and shelter)?

How important is the right to a good education?

How important are civil rights and freedoms?

These are all vitally important when they are not available, and easy to undervalue when they are readily available. When we are given the freedom and choices others are not, what is our obligation to speak up and to help the less fortunate?

What obligation should the wealthiest people of the world, those with the most choice, have towards those with less choice?

If you earned $1,300.00 a day for 2,000 years, you still wouldn’t be a billionaire. If you spent $36,000.00 a day for 75 years, you still would not have spent a billion dollars. How is it that the number of billionaires in the world are growing? What does this small group of people need this much money for?

Inequalities are so blatantly obvious in our world today. Some of these are being addressed in amazing ways, but globally inequalities are being exaggerated. Geography, wealth, culture, and history matter significantly and these all factor into the choices people have and, in many cases, the choices people don’t have. I think the most powerful choice we can make is to choose what we value, and devote time, effort, and compassion to those with less choice than us… and not valuing fortune, fame, and financial affluence. This is a choice we can all make.