500 Year Young Unborn Superchild Salli

She's four years old, 15.4 kg (34 lbs), has dark brown hair, and dark olive green eyes. Her skin is mocha, the product generations of shuffled melatonin across generations of slapjack diaspora who spent generations falling from and rising to power over five centuries of globalism. Globalism is a word in history books - not that there are books - taken for granted by children of earth. The year is 2521.

 Let's call her Salli. 

Had Sally been conceived 504 years in the past, reaching this age in AD 1521, it's unlikely she'd have been aware of what we now call the Renaissance. The great artists, Raphael, da Vinci, and others would not have been recognized by the average European, let alone a child, or anyone in Asia, Africa, or the Americas. Even if she had the fortune to be born in a European city - Athens, Florence, Berlin, London, Paris, Barcelona, Copenhagen - she would statistically have been extremely poor. Over 12% of children born died in their first year. 

Five hundred years later, in present day 2021, it's easy for us to recall (or google, or Wikipedia) the great philosophers and artists of 500 years ago. The Renaissance or "Rebirth" period of history centers on humans who re-discovered ancient wisdom, re-appreciated Greek and Roman philosophy, and set the stage for founding fathers of democratic constitutions. Those constitutions eventually led to generations of oppressed, indentured, enslaved genders and races to aspire, and achieve promises of equality. Whether that equality status has been "achieved" as of today might be perilous to debate before the woke. But from the position of Salli in 2521 AD, a lot of progress was made by women and the colonized nations (absurdly referred to as "minorities" so often in western-centric writings) between 1521 and 2021.

The question today is what about her?

Religion of Retrospect

Hey I just got up out of bed, in the middle of the night, to write this down.

I consider myself religious, yet attend no church.  I believe that all the things I have to be most thankful for are the result of some really "great books".  Bhagavad Gita. Tao tse Ching. Plato. The New Testament of the Christian Bible. Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism.  Aristotle.  And others.

Here's how I judged whether something was inspirational, how it became great.

Retrospect.

Game Theory 2: Sorting Gods and Bullies (WWMD?)

Second of X Part blog on decision making, and how to deal with Boko Haram and other self-righteous bullies. Can understanding faith and belief help us understand the fanatic's game?   This essay was written over 2-3 hours in the middle of the night, and contains some big ideas that are going to have to be tamed and homogenized for public consumption.

Sorting Gods from Bullies

“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power. If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich.”  ― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Jesus spoke in cool parables and analogies, and got into these Platonic debates (Pharisees trying to "test him").  He'd ask questions with "Does not...?" as the prefix.  It was nurture-logic.  Jesus used integrity, virtue, and nurture to elicit mercy towards people at the bottom of the pecking order.

The philosophy of mercy and charity went viral.  A mere thousand years or so later, that power was harnessed to build cathedrals, burn witches, and wage wars.   Today, Christianity has been made safe for the pecking order of the wealthy.

And we all know that that's what Boko Haram is about, it's about an under-performing group in a rapidly-developing nation.  It's about pecking order, and keeping women at the bottom.   It has about as much to do with Islam's teachings as the Ku Klux Klan, for all its crosses and robes, has to do with Christianity.  There's a perceived threat that a subjugated minority - women in the Sahel or African Americans in reform period Georgia - is left to ripen into mob justice.

Any pure religion can be harnessed to achieve bullboys ends.  Environmentalism, as it becomes a Taoist or Shinto expression of western ethics, must not consider itself immune.   Rural areas are not immune from heroin, small governments are not immune from embezzlement, and recycling non-profits are not immune from profit motives.

Televisions and computers are giving a voice to people - such as women in Nigeria - who were never allowed to even enter the mosques of power (any more than they can enter Catholic priesthood).  A group in power hundreds of years ago set up rules that limited access to expression of sermons and fatwahs, and affordable electronics are undermining the monarchies of communication.

Your continent here x

That's right.  Boko haram is a reaction to digital communication, grown from networks of surplus/replaced analog cell phone towers (replaced a decade ago on the US and Europe) and the used cell phones that communicate through them.   As Frederic Somda told the Fair Trade Recycling summit a year ago, in Burkina Faso, internet and cell phones are far more important than running water and paved streets.

It's a colorful game.

Protein and Gold: Gore's Generation of Environmentalists Circuitous Path

"I believe in global warming"

"I don't believe in global warming"

These two statements seemed to starkly define a generation.  They become emblems of environmentalism, or environmental skepticism.   Many use one of these statements to define who they are.   The first is more popular, perhaps, because it's emblematic of compassion, and people dig compassion.

I believe extinction, the consumption of diverse species, is the simplest measure of our society's place in history of the planet.  Any other measure - carbon, or prayers, temperature, or wealth - is a distraction from what future people will care about that we did today.  What drives our impacts today?   Protein and Gold.

I dig baby elephants.  And I want baby elephants to have papas and mommies.  It's a simple faith in nurture, and it doesn't make me an environmental scientist.  But because I don't want elephants, or frogs, or tigers, walruses, or seals to be extinct, I work in recycling.  And it has nothing at all to do with landfills, or with carbon.   To save these species, we must alter our love of metals, especially expensive metals like gold.   And if you think teaching humans to consume less energy is challenging, try teaching people to let go of gold.

This is not a statement about the science of global warming.  It's a statement about human psychology, and the way media tries to educate society about need for change.  When we need society's consumption to change - and I'm convinced more than ever that we do - we need to understand our own psychology, our own cognitive dissonance, our own appetite for opinion change, and to invest in messages which opinion research indicates will make a darn difference one hundred to one thousand years from now.

For now, the loudest discussions, if not debate, are over global warming and climate change (thanks Mr. Gore).   There is no denying that there are many, many sophisticated arguments humans engage in to support either position at the top on belief in global warming.   There is also no denying that public discussion of the issue focuses primarily on the psychology and assessment of the opponent.

Merely referencing dry scholarly work on the shrinking (or not) of Mars poles, as an indicator of the average temperature on Mars, demands an apology.  From Yahoo answers discussion, links to these two papers are presented with a disclaimer... "I'm not a denier but evidence shows that they (Mars plar caps) are melting." 

http://sirius.bu.edu/withers/pppp/pdf/bo... 
http://depts.washington.edu/marsweb/pape... 

The discussion of global warming here on earth is usually hedged today with similar qualifiers.   "It's undeniable that even if the Earth is warming for other reasons (solar or celestial energy), that humans are producing more carbon, and carbon will exacerbate the rate of global warming."

Ethics of Religion: Imagine You're Jesus

(at the risk of offending absolutely everyone... this is about thinking).

Imagine You Are Jesus, and You've recently arrived back in Heaven.  You are looking down at the world, and You have some followers, some people who are genuinely enlightened by the golden rule, loving their neighbors as themselves, bearing fruit one hundred fold.

You also see about a million people who are just awful.  Just the worst.  Cruel, murdering, thieving, a million people who kill children.

Two of Your followers, named Pastor West and Pastor East, feel heartbroken by the badness.  West and East both live by Your golden rule, they both give away their possessions to help the needy, and they both try to be perfect as their Father in heaven is perfect.

Then Pastor West speaks up.  He tells the million violent and angry people that You, Jesus, spoke to him personally, and gave him a saintly prophetic vision... that You, Jesus, had told him Your plans for a place called Hell.  Agonizing, atrocious, flesh eating fire which never ends, forever and ever and ever, and that you were going to throw those million sinners into a firey doom.  And that you spoke of a place called Heaven, where all people who believe in You and change their ways will live in Joy and harmony.

Of course, You said no such thing.  Your allegories of gnashing of teeth were intended to describe a life trying to bless itself with material goods which pass.  Pastor West weeps tears of joy at the feeling of "Your" words, adding emphasis and importance to the "vision".

But... Imagine it appears to work sometimes.  Of the million sinners, imagine that half of them pause, fearing death and Hell, and that they lay down their weapons and stop killing children...  Hundreds of thousands are spared, as armies and gangs set down their weapons, and pray for salvation from the Vision of Hell.

On the day Your two followers meet You in heaven, they each plead their case...