h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hello Mr Case,

Your hompage entry is very well thought out and well written, and makes me want to rewrite my own. It's great to know that there are decent people all over the world who just want to live a good life and make things better. I really believe that we can have a better world; that the vast majority of the humans on this planet want AND CAN CREATE a better world. The only thing holding us down is the sense of impotence subtly imposed on all of us by that tiny collective of persons and institutions weilding real, economic power.

I also believe that we can destroy thier bogus institutions (IMF, WTO, TNCs and so on*) and return freedom and decency to the planet. Repairing the environmental, health and educational catastrophes is well within human capabilities, if we could only focus humanities effors on the pursuit of positive development, rather than the ugly dollar.

I firmly believe that good will conquer evil, and that if we connect to each other and take action to solve these problems - and remove the barriers to their resolution - then we all truly can enjoy a great future.

Best of luck to you,

Jenny

*IMF - International Monetary Fund.
WTO - World Trade Organisation
TNCs - Transnational Corporations.

Know your enemy.

Hi, Jenny, glad to meet you! Yes, you are right: we can change the world, and what's more, we will. Let's talk a bit about those big institutions and powerful people. It is true that the policies of the IMF and the WTO are preposterously destructive and short-sighted and we must hold them accountable; I think we must pressure them to change, because if they only change their policies radically, they can be a positive force. But if they don't change their policies they will be cutting their own throats. I don't consider these organisations to be the biggest obstacles; they are temporary, they are not for all time, in fact their lifespans are likely to be quite short. The big problems were there before these organisations, and will still be there after them. Their time is running out. Human society is going to change beyond recognition within the next decade, and probably even more in the decade after that. It may be premature to talk about destroying the IMF, the WTO and so on ... those organisations just might completely disappear from the picture merely due to the way things are flowing right now. Far better to take stock of what's happening in a way that will allow us to instantly respond to any of a million different fast-changing scenarios (see, I can fake intellectualism!) that we're gonna be encountering.

The internet will take over the planet and mankind will develop a global consciousness. Countries will no longer be able to exploit other countries because everybody will know about it, it will no longer be the case of citizens of a "country" all living within its borders, people are going to be able to live anywhere and work anywhere and place their political allegiances anywhere. Pettiness and shortsightedness will no longer work. The rules of business, of economy, of government, of industry will change. Politics as we know it will become irrelevant. The old fashioned people will go down without anybody lifting a finger. Big countries, big companies will no longer be able to sweep their mistakes under the carpet. There will be no place to hide anymore.

If we just encourage ordinary people to think differently, have different values and priorities, different attitudes and different responses to life, then the foundation will crumble even faster from beneath these big corporations and organizations. They are monoliths. They can't respond to the monster changes we are about to face the way ordinary, flesh and blood, adaptable people can. We can improve the situation by empowering people to make them even more adaptable.

That is what's going to happen unless a global catastrophe hits us first - and so far our luck has held way, way beyond expectation. In that case we'll have to fly blind; we'll have to come up with on-the-spot instant solutions. But I think we have a little bit of time left. I think that what we need most now is to start working on new ways of thinking, new ways of coping, totally new, ultra-flexible, ultra-adaptable institutions.

The first order of business as I see it is establishing communications links that stretch across old political borders. It's happening already - here we are communicating between Africa and Britain! I believe a big priority is to get more Africans connected to other countries. Then people can hear the news "from the horse's mouth". And Africans can get much-needed support and information; we need better communication inside the continent because Africans themselves are ignorant of what's going on here - where the environmental and political crises are, where the opportunities are, what we need to do and what we can do about it.

And we in turn can give Europeans and Americans some different perspectives - for instance, we are not as hurried and as competitive as "you" are, and that is an attitude that I think is needed in some of the economically prosperous countries; at the same time we Africans perhaps need to be a little more innovative. But communication will destroy stereotypes, that's for sure. And it will be easier to care for people that you know something about. What do people in Britain know about PEOPLE in Africa? Our lifestyles are totally different, when you look at it from the outside, but dig a little deeper and you will find similarities that might surprise you.

And we also need to hook up to Asia, Australia, South America, find out what we've been missing.

What I want to emphasize is that the problems we are going to have will be mostly unexpected, and the ways we will need to deal with them will not be straightforward. Know your enemy, allright ... the biggest enemies are ignorance (not knowing what is REALLY going on) and complacency (not caring, or thinking the solutions are going to be easy). We don't just need to destroy big companies, we need to teach people new values, we need to tell them things they did not know before. We need to develop NEW agricultural techniques, new land use strategies ... we must DISCOVER a way that people can grow enough food to eat and still leave enough for wild animals, ways to farm land for eternity without degrading the soils, safe and permanent sources of energy ... those things are not going to fall out of the sky into our laps. We need people with brains to be working on solar energy, nuclear fusion energy, safer forms of nuclear fission energy, cleaner industrial processes ... we need to think in terms of "final" solutions and also "intermediate" solutions that will carry us over until we can get to the final solutions. We need priorities, flexible strategies, we need back-up strategies for when our first attempt fail (as they most probably will). We need to develop totally new kinds of industry, we need to develop techniques to manage global ecosystems for maximum biodiversity and stability, we need to find different foundations for stable, productive, peaceful human communities.

The solutions to political, economic, environmental and social problems will need time and effort. People often fail to appreciate how much time and effort they will need. The problems have been building up from the times of the first human civilizations 6 000 years ago; we are only now reaping what has been sown so long ago. The solutions are also going to take time. Restoring the earth's ecology might take a few thousand years. We will have to face conditions that will keep deteriorating in the foreseeable future, we will have to be able to accept severe losses, we must have the guts to go on with counter-measures even when it seems as if they are not working and things are getting worse rather than better. Because it's going to be a LONG TIME before the tide will start turning. Even working maximally, even if every man, woman and child on the planet is working together (which is very unlikely) it will still take a century or two before a GLOBAL positive change will be visible. So we need a different time perspective. We need a much broader outlook. People need to be taught patience like they could never even imagine before.

Here endeth the lecture. Keep in mind the "patience" advice. Many young people today are somewhat aware of the problems, are enthusiastic, but hotheaded, bewildered. We need a calm, strong, co-ordinated, considered response, not one that dissipates its passion in ineffective measures. So if you want to help, be cool and clear-headed. Consider a number of different alternative strategies, think in terms of long - LONG - term, find out more about the problems. Why not use the 'net and find out about Africa and other third-world countries? That, in itself, will already help. Caring alone already makes a difference.

I hope I haven't intimidated or overwhelmed you! Stay in touch!

Love, Peace, Harmony and Bliss to you.
Case.

Interesting page pillow, you thought about going into politics ?

Just though I would pop by and check if you were ok.

Happy

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hi Case,

the optimism in your post is beautiful, and I share it. I would guess that humanity has always struggled between right and wrong, creation and destruction. I like what you say about time, I think that it is essential to expand our sense of the 'now' the past and the present. You might like to find out more about 'the clock of the long now' where a group are trying to create a 10, 000 year clock, and encourage people think in terms of the far future, encouraging a deep sense of time and responsibilty.

http://www.longnow.org/about/about.htm

I like what you say about the internet developing a sense of global consciousness. It is indeed very odd to be here in London, 'talking' to someone in Africa, a place that seems so far away...

People are people, wherever they are, and I'm sure we share many of the same concerns and interests. Sometimes here I get a sense that there are billions of us out there in the world, and that if we could each be free to follow our own sense of direction with our own sense of responsibilty we could enjoy a great, global, stable and fulfilling society. That's why I posted to you in the first place.

The more we can connect directly to one another, define and perform individual and collective positive action, and learn from each other and the world, the better things will be.

Defeatism not an option, but to win we need nothing less than an outburst of global positivity. Lets get going.

I posted a reply to happy's message, and you might fancy checking out some of the links within it.

Write again soon,

Jenny

It's late but I will check out your links later, but you have realized most of the points I was trying to make -

1 Its a complex issue that needs specilized managment.
2 The members make the rules, the organization's merley enfoce.
3 That organizations such as WTO and the IMF could be a force for good.

My own stance is that reform of these orgizations is needed rarther than abolition.
I will reply in full once I have had time to check your links out and when (hopfuly) I'm more awake.

Regards

Happy

One final point before I go to bed. I noticed you didn't mention UNIDO, do you put organization such as this in the same boat as WTO & IMF ?

Hi Happy,

I've had a quick look at the Unido page, and it sounds as though they do good stuff. I'm not against everything! I still think that the IMF and World Bank need root and branch reform and democratic control at the very least, if not abolition and re-creation in a new form.

love jen

Sill got to to read your your links, should have time tommorow. Yes IMF & WTO need reform but so do the Adminestrations of many of there client nations, I don't think you can have one without another.

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Hello Case,

another lovely letter, which reminds me of my original heading. Many others do think like you, and if that seems a clumsy and un-poetic way of putting it, then that's because I am a clumsy non-poet.

A lot of what we are talking about comes down to the idea that we as humans are capable of living a great life of great beauty, free to fulfil our dreams and able to co-exist with each other and our environment. And thats just on an earth / human centred point of view. We are also beings within a universe, alive and sentient collections of energy and starstuff, with minds able to encompass the whole cosmos. You're damn right we should get out and explore space.

I can think of loads of stuff to recommend to you - for example Bill Hicks, a radical American comedian who often ended his sets with his "stop spending money on weapons, feed, clothe and educate the planet, and then explore space..." bit. As usual, I have mangled the words of an excellent speaker. Another author who springs to mind is Carl Sagan, I think you would enjow his book, "Cosmos." Chomskey's definatley worth a mention. I've been trying to find decent links, for them - but ran out of time and will try to post them later, if you like. The point is, we are not the only ones thinking vaguely along the same lines - there are loads of us around!

All we have to do is keep talking and connecting with each other and we can hopefully get to work on this very important "utopia" thing. It's staring us all in the face, somehow we just need to grasp it.

I will write again soon, and please do you have a name other than 'case' that I can use??

love from Jenny

Hi, Jenny. You can call me Willem, which is my real first name. But don't tell anybody! I like my alias, but I'll give people my real name if they ask nicely. Of course, anybody who happens to tune into this conversation can find it so it's not much of a secret.

I do a great lot of reading. One of my favourite authors is Douglas Adams - gee, how about that! I consider him to be one of the wisest humans, and I believe that many of the wild, weird and wonderful situations in his stories can serve magnificently as metaphors and parables.

But there are many authors that I like. I read lots of non-fiction and also some fiction. It is interesting that just last week in the library I came across a book by Carl Sagan about Broca's Brain, and I intend to read it soon. I'm now busy reading lots of stuff about the human mind and quantum physics. There seems to be an intrigueing link between the two.

That brings me to your comment about people that think like me. There's a quantum physical angle there as well, with a little bit of chaos theory thrown in. It is as if the collective human mind is now in an unstable, far-from-equilibrium, chaotic state and about to collapse into a new, stable state. Quantum physics indicate that everything is connected to everything, and below the concrete world that we perceive there is a subtle flux of "virtual" particles, that act out different possibilities and communicate with one another all the time and are all linked together. So there are individual human minds, and on a deeper level there are local "group" minds that constitute cultures, languages, customs, and on the deepest level there is the "global" mind that encompasses all of humanity. Because of the development of science, philosophy, technology, and because of exploration and human population growth, all cultures and world-views have now come into overt collision and are now influencing each other quite intimately; we are also experiencing many crises that need resolution, fast! This is the chaotic state from which many believe a new, more complex, stable order will arise. The very fact that so many people, in different parts of the world, and seemingly independently of each other, are coming to believe this is in a way a very strong sign that the collapse into this new state is in fact already happening!

Do you know of any other "utopians" on h2g2 or on the Web in general? I will also be looking.

Love,

Willem.

Hi, Happy, thanks for checking. I've been on holiday for a few days, far away from computers and such stuff. I have been visiting and chatting with many researchers on h2g2 lately, its a bit hard to juggle all of them at the same time. I'll be visiting your page again soon. How are things with JLC?

I wish my internet server was faster! I have this awesome computer, it can do anything in a flash, but I'm at the mercy of these awfully slow phone lines! My server cuts me off up to fifteen times in a single night, sometimes it takes me fifteen minutes or more before I can even get online! All of this hampers my activity on h2g2 and may make it seem as if I'm rather unresponsive.

Anycase, at the least I'm improving my typing speed, so as to get in my messages before they're destroyed.

BCNU soon,
Case.

All is cool with JLC, re: servers keep at it will get better, the situation over there sounds like the situation over here a few year back. (or the current situation over here if usel freecall servers). Keep in touch.

Happy

That reassures me. But honestly, I don't really mind. Even with the unreliability and all, I can now do stuff that I NEVER would have been able to do a few years ago. Heck, I was into computers back in the early eighties, when the Commodore Vic and 64 and the Spectrum and those other toys were popular, and I still think they're great. I used to get fantasies and wet dreams (well, almost!) about computers with 640*400 screens and 256 colours and now I have one with 1280*1024 dots and of course 16 mill colours, and this internet stuff I would have hardly been able to imagine when it all started out. So it's worth it to be patient with the technology!

Stay happy.
Case

Tell me about it my first was a ZX81 (B/W with a hi res mode of 80x40), now those were the days.

Yes, I remember the ZX81. Here in S.A. people started mostly with the Commodores; when we got one in 1983 we belonged to a very tiny group of computer owners; we had a "Commodore club" and all. At first we had neither a tape nor a disk drive nor a monitor; we plugged it into the big TV in the living room, we typed in a game or a program from a magazine, then played it (provided it worked - first of course we had to debug it) until we got tired, then switched off the computer and it was gone! If we wanted to play again, we had to type it in again, and of course every time someone wanted to watch TV we had to disconnect the computer. And of course while we worked the computer sat smack bang in the center of the living room floor and we lay flat on our stomachs while we typed.

I believe if we had not indulged in the luxury of buying a tape deck especially for our computer, I would now have been a world-class high-speed programmer.

What do you have now, a PC or a Mac?

Sound familier, my second computer was a C64, 64KB of memory what a luxery after 16KB of the ZX81 and Colour and Sound !
These days I running a PC, its a P200 thats due to have a motherboard an processor upgrade sometime soon. I'm running a dual boot system with LINUX and Windows. I use LINUX most of the time, keeping Windows mainly for games. I'm a big LINUX fan.



http://www.h2g2.com/A311130 (If you want a basic intro to LINUX)

We started out with global idealism, and now we're talking about computers and software! But, since everything is interconnected anyway, we just as well might.

What do you use your computer for, mainly, and what does LINUX do that Windows doesn't? I can get LINUX quite easily, a friend has it on a CD.

And, not changing the subject, what are the most extreme examples of topic drift that you've so far witnessed here on h2g2?