Simple as this Facebook (a company bound by the laws of a company) chooses profit over people. Of course they are not the only company to do this and they won’t be the last (looking at you big tobacco, oil companies, etc). I won’t even get into the other tech companies either.
I like a lot of what Umair Haque writes but this one titled 2020 is a Warning That Our Civilization is Beginning to Fall Apart. I will be frank is pretty terrifying. I say terrifying not from a fear point of view although its pretty scary for that. Almost all the points Umair makes, I find it very difficult to counter them in any reasonable way.
While the pandemic raged,much of Asia flooded. The West didn’t take much notice — even though China’s largest dam isnow at it’s limits. And yet the megafloods Asia just experienced are just like megafires — natural phenomena that are getting worse on a seasonal, yearly cycle. Within a decade or two, these floods will also threaten habitability.
“Habitability,” by the way, is a polite, anodyne way to say: the ongoing survival of countries, cities, societies, economies.Whole gigantic chunks of our civilization are going to simply melt away like the arctic ice.
Sadly he’s very right… During the Covid19 pandemic, I have been thinking a lot about the environment as we should be. Its all very tighltly interlinked together.
Are you beginning to get what I mean by “accelerating pulsation of disaster” yet? As we head into the age of catastrophe, a new range of calamities will become our dismal new normal. They’ll recur, in cycles. Only each time the cycle spins, they’ll get worse and worse. Megafires, megafloods, pandemics, extinctions.
Take another example: Covid.Covid isn’t an anomaly— it’s part of atrend.SARS, bad, MERS, worse, and Covid, world-changing. Many virologists were expecting a respiratory Coronavirus pandemic precisely because such a thing has been on the cards for the last two or three decades now, as respiratory Coronaviruses have gotten more widespread, become wider-spreading pandemics faster.
What’s the cycle of pandemic? It’s not a seasonal cycle, like flood or fire. It’s something more like — at least if take SARS and MERS as pointers — something more like a decadal cycle: every decade or so, a new respiratory virus has emerged. A decade or so from now, it’s probably likely we’ll be hit by another pandemic. Will it be worse than this one? If recent history’s any indication, yes.
His lasting point is strong and draws lot for us to think/reflect on.
Our World War, our moonshot? It’s saving human civilization.
And the problem is that while your gut knows exactly what I’m talking about, your brain’s still disputing it, because all this is outside the current range of human experience. And yet the megafires burn, while the megafloods pour, while the pandemic rages, while the planet burns, the ice melts, the animals die off, while the lungs and limbs of life itself choke and grow feeble — and all that is only going to get worse, year by year, decade upon decade.
This is not a drill, my friends.It’s time to stop acting like it is, burying our pretty vacant little heads in Netflix-and-chill and Instagram envy and the latest gender pronoun and Fakebook friends. That’s all, history will rightly say, garbage for the human mind and spirit.This is it. We’re not going to get another chance.
I always get stick for not consuming a lot of BBC media but thats just the way I am to be honest (maybe one day I’ll go into this with more depth). However every once in a while I come across something which somebody recommends or links to.
Writer Michael Smith explores the uncertain future of masculinity.
It was can civility survive which got me interested in the series. Actually something Zoe posted on a similar vein got me thinking about the connection of doing things the modern way. Not relying on the legacy of the past. I mean for example, I mention Sarah quite a bit, shes lovely but shes an ex. Why should I be afraid to mention her? Anybody finds this weird could do with a strong reminder that its 2014 FFS! The same applies to most of the points Hello Giggles makes especially
Listening to the documentary about the uncertain future of masculinity, I felt like how I felt when blaise gave his talk. Its a little scary from a male point of view and its clear to see why some men are rebelling. They like things how they are and don’t want it to change. The change is scary but theres no excuse for ignorance and hostility! They have to get use it because its going to happen and frankly its a great thing for humankind and the diversity of the human race. I urge men to look at this all as a positive thing!
