A Call for Academia to Act Now

earth

We need to find a way Homo sapiens can live in a symbiotic relationship with Nature that allows both our species and all other organic and inorganic matter on this planet to recycle and renew.

Academia throughout the world can make the difference by collective global action forcing those in government country by country to understand what it will take for humanity to live in that symbiotic relationship.

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Our Problem

Recent scientific observations are warning us that we have become a threat to our continued existence on this planet. Violent weather aberrations and record global temperatures are now occurring. Ice in the Arctic and Antarctic is melting. A deadly Arctic Methane Hydrate Feedback Loop has already begun. By the end of this century oceans will be inundating coastal areas inhabited by as much as a quarter of human civilization.

Yet governments throughout the world and the general public continue to operate on an Optimism bias perception of a perception of a perception platform. It is a platform of naivety. Ecological reality is obscured. Any form ecological adjustment is pushed into the future. But the future will arrive. There is inevitability to all corrections. The imaginary world of those who refuse to face reality is then exposed to the light of day. The dream becomes no more than what it ever was; a dream. Then follows the nightmare.

Could it be that there are inherent evolutionary cranial/neurological deficiencies in our DNA makeup; so deeply embedded that we as a species now in this industrial age are unable to comprehend ourselves as a threat to our future existence? Could it be that this is the reason our response to our desecration of the planet and its biosphere is so muted? Could it be that this cranial/neurological DNA side of us will lead to our painful end?

Yet, there is hope. A predominant group in our society has the power to bring on change. It is called Academia. But then it too has to change. It has to become far more active than it has been.

Here are some suggestions:

Academia – A Call to Act Now

Academia must focus attention on our eukaryotic neurotic psychotic thinking imperfection

In my Blog 75 I discuss the eukaryotic neurotic psychotic thinking imperfection we brought with us out of Africa into this New Age. It is an imperfection that has haunted us from that movement. It is driving the irrational human behavior we find in the world today.

To quote from the Blog:

“That “Demonic” power is defined as a eukaryotic neurotic psychotic thinking imperfection we brought with us into this Age. Its power was understood early on in Egyptian times. The weighing of the Heart (soul) and entry into paradise would take place when the dead were judged by Anubis; using a feather on one side of a scale representing Ma’at the goddess of truth and justice responsible for maintaining order in the universe. On the other side of the scale was placed the life of the dead person measured by those criteria.”

Academia – A Call to Act Now

Academia must make us understand who we are

We humans are not like honeybees and grasshoppers.

We are each of us different. Our brains are embedded with thought patterns of behavior that separate us one from the other. Some of these patterns of behavior are beneficial to us and to others. Some are harmful to us and to others.

Now in our high tech society these thought patterns can do far reaching harm. So here is the question academia should be exploring: Can we separate from our society those individuals with thought patters that will harm our society? Can we find a way to remove them not after the crime as we do now under our laws and our democratic legal systems, but before? Can we remove the Al Capone’s and the Hitler’s and the others like them before they inflict their horror?

This question takes on broad international significance. The West is now eliminating Islamic terrorist cells on a global scale. Will the next step be individuals such as the Hutu leaders of the Rwanda Genocide? In 1994 in just 100 days about 800,000 people were slaughtered by ethnic Hutu extremists. The Hutu were targeting members of the minority Tutsi community, as well as political opponents. Western forces did not intervene. The next time should they?

This question is now being addressed in China. (population 1.4 billion) Muslims in China’s Xinjiang Province are being detained and placed in reeducation camps. The camps are one part of a selective national crackdown by way of facial recognition and other means to identify those in Chinese society prone to criminal and other antisocial forms of behavior. In the case of the Muslims in the Xinjiang Province that behavior is the potential of Islamic terrorism.

The Chinese experiment outlined here appears far too excessive for the Western mind to accept. However, viewing it in a broader context, the approach may be acceptable in the West (and throughout the East) to achieve specific purposes. An example would be to close down dishonest and societally harmful internet activity. Also – and this would be a big step – by way of incarceration and re-education to stop deviant behavior resulting in criminal and terrorist activity before it takes place.

Academia – A Call to Act Now

Academia must broaden the meaning of Religion

Religions as they now exist throughout the world in their varied permutations are a powerful force. Leaders of the religious belief systems must come together and reach consensus as to commonality in religious thought. Religious academia can play a leading role.

(Link above for Essay The Crisis of Planetary Health: Reflections from the World Religions: Mary Evelyn Tucker John Grim  Yale Forum Religion and Ecology)

Religions need to abandon their belief in exclusivity and recognize religious commonality. That commonality can be found if they focus their attention away from the superficial and toward the universal moral ethical.

They also need to recognize those universally societally destructive elements in the depths of their traditions.

Many seemingly different religious assertions that at first appear contradictory commonly express a “reason for valuing human life.” All religious leaders need to explore this commonality. They need to determine how their religious belief can be energized so as to find a way for reverence every human toward the other as well as all other life and nonlife on Planet earth.

This is not a call for debilitating relativistic religious debate. It is a call for definition of commonality. People can strongly affirm the primary doctrines of their faith while determining commonalities. Given the interreligious conflict evident throughout the world today, the need for this has become obvious to all except those religious fundamentalists who have become the cause of so many of the world’s problems.

An understanding of the implications of our actions and inactions today religiously has now become a 21st century world-wide necessity. It is also a call for global religious hegemony. The global issues at hand have a far reaching moral ethical implication. The 1994 Rwanda Genocide of 800,000 will be seen as miniscule compared to the death and suffering of a billion or more around the planet when the seas rise six to twelve feet.

Academia – A Call to Act Now

Academia must revisit the objectives of the Physical Sciences

Physical scientists need to come together and acknowledge a Modern Age reality: There are planetary and cosmic truths within which a deeper understanding of the continuation of human life can be found. Those truths center on the need for its continuance. A scholar who identified such “planetary and cosmic truths” was a late confidant of Albert Einstein: David Bohm. Bohm was optimistic. He believed that collectively we as a species on Planet earth have reached the point where our universal consciousness is close to, as he phrased it: entering into a stage of cosmic transformation. He saw some of us breaking through to an understanding of transformative cosmic existential reality. He expressed it as our now being at the stage of “putting out the fire.”

Academia – A Call to Act Now

Academia must revisit the definition of the Social Sciences

It is time for the Social Sciences to further examine human thought in all of its societal complexity and resultant societal influence. It needs to focus attention on “putting out the fire” by examining the underlying eukaryotic neurotic psychotic thinking imperfection that we brought with us in our move out of Africa into this New Age. With advanced weaponry and biosphere degradation, that “fire” now could “literally” burn up most of today’s life on this planet, as occurred during the Permian Triassic extinction. Social Scientists with their understanding of our thought processes as they affect societal response need to make recommendations for removal of those harmful societal Demonic human behaviors that are now leading us down the path of ruin. And these recommendations must have universal application.

To quote the physicist V. V. Raman 11 May 2020:

“Rationality must be respected for intelligent living, transrationality must be cherished for meaningful life, and irrationality must be scrupulously avoided for the sake of society’s well-being and one’s own mental health.”

Academia – A Call to Act Now

Academia must revisit the definition of the Economic Sciences

My Blog 77 Planet Earth Reality Check – Survival Homo sapiens outlined our carbon problem and offered an economic solution.

Those in the profession of Economists world-wide need to focus on this planetary problem and be heard. They need to demand economic solutions.

My Paper ended with:

“It must be understood: CO2 elimination as our energy source is just the first step toward human planetary resource control – and human survival. Pricing in of other negative externalities harmful to humanity and all other life on the planet must come next.”

Moving in the eco-planetary direction cannot occur without the strong voices of economists. Their profession is in structural control of the economic relationship between humans and Planet earth. They all need to understand that their influence is not just economic, also it is social – and not just for this year or the next but for the future of society. They can bring the public to an awareness of our ecological problems from an economic viewpoint by demanding that negative external costs be priced into all goods and services.

In this regard economists today are failing us.

Here I quote from the email I am sending to economic professors at colleges and universities in the Unites States:

Email [email protected] to ask for paper

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A MESSAGE TO ECONOMISTS

From David Anderson former executive with several major corporations

Will The Economics Profession Come To The Rescue?

The time has come for the economics profession in and outside the colleges and universities to demand that markets domestically and internationally price in the negative externality costs of all fossil fuels.

 

My Paper Planet Earth Reality Check – Survival Homo sapiens outlines how coordinated action by the profession can be taken.

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Academia – A Call to Act Now

Academia must revisit its definition of the Political Sciences

The following words of John Scales Avery speak to the American political crisis and Donald Trump, a President who would roll back all regulation and give full release to irrational human behavior. As we read this we must keep in mind that it is not just a Donald Trump American problem, it is a world problem calling for action internationally.

Trump Must Be Defeated!

by John Scales Avery ( Nobel Laureate )

https://countercurrents.org/2020/05/trump-must-be-defeated

“There is so much wrong with Donald Trump that one hardly knows where to start. He is a bully, braggart, narcissist, racist, misogynist, habitual liar, and tax evader, in addition to being demonstrably ignorant. He has contempt for both domestic and international law, as well as for the US Constitution. However, it is Trump’s climate change denial, withdrawal from the Paris agreement, and sponsorship of fossil fuels that pose the greatest threats to the future of human society and the biosphere. The general support of the Republican Party for the fossil fuel industry is the reason why Prof. Noam Chomsky has called the party ‘the most dangerous organization in history’ ”

Conclusion

We need to find a way Homo sapiens can live in a symbiotic relationship with Nature that allows both our species and all other organic and inorganic matter on this planet to recycle and renew.

Academia throughout the world can make the difference by collective global action forcing those in government country by country to understand what it will take for humanity to live in that symbiotic relationship.

XXX

 

REFERENCES

 

“I think the odds are no better than 50/50 that our civilization will survive to the end of the present century. Our actions today may make the difference between a near eternity filled with ever more complex and subtle forms of life and one filled with nothing but base matter.”

 

Sir Martin Rees, Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics and Master of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. Honorary title of Astronomer Royal, Gold Medal of the Royal, 2008

 

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“Due to the power/interest structures of global capitalism and the juggernaut-like momentum of the global economy, it is most unlikely that any of the radical changes to society and the economy proposed by environmentalists-especially changes in philosophies and worldviews, will be adopted in time. Consequently human civilization-primarily Western techno-industrial urban society, will selfdestruct, producing massive environmental damage, social chaos and mega death.”

 

Craig Dilworth, Uppsala University, Sweden, Too Smart For Our Own Good. The Ecological Predicament of Humankind. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

 

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“Without quick action to curb CO2 emissions, global warming is likely to increase by 4 degrees Centigrade (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above today’s normal during the 21st century and that is dangerously close to the temperature of 6 degrees Centigrade above normal that initiated the Permian-Triassic extinction event 252 million years ago when 96%* of all marine species and 70% of all terrestrial vertebrates were wiped out. *(current estimate 81%)”

 

World Bank report 2012

 

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“The urgency of ‘looming extinction’ cannot be overlooked. It should be a constant focus of programs of education, organization, and activism, and in the background of engagement in all other struggles.”

 

Noam Chomsky

 

Internationalism or Extinction By Noam Chomsky, Paul Shannon, Charles Derber, Suren Moodliar, originally published by Open Democracy   February 27, 2020

 

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David Anderson brings together a wide range of interests in his writings, namely; theology, history, evolutionary anthropology, philosophy, geopolitics, and economics. He has written four books. The fourth is about a necessary geo political, social, religious, economic paradigm shift for human survival,

http://inquiryabraham.com/new-book.html 


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