Never Ending Problem of Greed

Mankind is set on a path leaded towards the destruction of its own kind. The earth will survive, it has survived 10,000 * (all of today’s nuclear power) when the KT Event Occurred. The KT event is the same event that led to the demise of non-avian dinosaurs, it consisted of a large asteroid making direct contact with the earth approximately 65 million years ago. The root cause of the problem seems to be a never-ending greed in “advancement”. Do not confuse this “advancement” with evolution in any way. Evolution is formally defined as a change in allele frequency of a population (single species) over time. “Advancement” on the other hand is formally undefined but one can assume its definition to be “a desire towards the materialistic and an untamed urge to consume”. We can break this sentence up in to two parts, “a desire towards the materialistic”, what I mean by this sentence refers to the growing desire for people to acquire material. It could be anything, from things that are required to things of extremely random nature and no use.

The second part, “an untamed urge to consume”, what is being consumed? Well, everything and anything. Consumables include anything from services to anything edible, smoke-able, injectable etc. The desire to consume is growing exponentially, much faster than what the earth can recycle (the whole issue about global warming). The medium to facilitate this advancement is money. In today’s world, money is obviously needed, but ones perspective towards it must change. It should be seen as a way to satisfy “needs” not infinite “wants”. One individual should not enjoy everything while another is dying of thirst; the collection of wealth in the hands of a few seems to beat the purpose of the survival of the whole species. After all, we are a social species; taking care of others entitles us to reciprocal altruism from other individuals from our species. Yes, money can buy you services that aid you in your survival but an altruistic world would be a world in which creativity is not bound by socio-economic constraints, science is not bound by the closed-minded and spirituality is not bound by religion, one will not have to worry about many things that cause us stress today.

One might argue that this is nothing but simple Darwinism, just evolution, taking place. After all, doesn’t it all come down to the survival of the fittest? My answer is no. At our stage, natural selection is no longer taking place and the argument of “survival of the fittest” does not apply, as it is a concept of natural selection. If natural selection is not acting on us then obviously that concept does not hold. However, natural selection is acting on a minute scale, basically on individuals who die before they reproduce. It is still not the same as “survival of the fittest”. The other evolutionary forces however are still acting. Mutation, the essence and root of evolution is occurring constantly along with genetic drift.

Also, nonrandom mating is taking place but without natural selection the characteristics that would have been favored naturally by evolution (namely by sexual selection) for our species, namely intelligence and altruistic behavior, have been replaced by superficial characteristics such as being economically rich, or being good-looking (although a physically fit individual is seen as a good investment since the physical appearance is a sign that the individual is healthy and will be more efficient in terms of acquiring resources, fending off enemies and raring the young), the “good-looking” I am referring to is what is portrayed by the popular media, a totally inaccurate and unrealistic image. Coming back to the point and addressing the issue in an informal way, one can say that what all this comes down to is the fact that nonrandom mating is taking place but the alleles for all the wrong traits are increasing in frequency. More and more deleterious mutations (harmful mutations) are occurring and this fact is due to the unhealthy lifestyle and delusional beliefs that mankind holds.

Religion and “god”. These are the two big contributors to chaos in today’s time. Humans seem to create a bundle of problems when it comes to religion. What is religion? Religion in my mind is a belief towards the identity and teachings of the “creator” and the processes and events that took place during Creation. Firstly, I must address the issue of the literature that is contained in different religions. Note, there are many similarities in all the religions that exist today and this can be explained by a simple fact that the texts are a description of events that they could not be described any more accurately than they were due to lack of knowledge. Some of the stories and myths are just that, stories and myths. Some so-called religions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism and few others, are not religion but philosophical and spiritual teachings, a way of life or perception but others may be description of events that took place in the past that were indescribable then, but what could these events be? They could be many things, things as simple as an attempt to understand nature and how it works, or it could be a description of aliens or anything else, that is are unimportant.

The important thing here is that we must not take them literally and definitely not in a way that puts logic and reason on the back seat. The topic of god is complicated. God can mean many things. It can mean the “super -conscious ” of the whole universe; it can mean a being from a higher dimension, could be an alien, to an early-man it could mean an airplane. If you notice I have not included the most famous depiction of god, as a human-like figure with the capacity to break the laws of the physics. Well, isn’t this depiction a little bit self-centered? If you have the idea of just how massive the universe is and just how small a human is, then you know that this concept is flawed. Why would, god, the almighty creator of the whole universe, take the form of one puny species on a tiny blue planet revolving around an extremely average star in one of the 500 billion galaxies? Obviously the reason behind why people depict gods like a human being is because they lack imagination! It is that simple. God, according to me, is not just one being.

God is the collective conscience of every observer (life-form) in the universe. Not just the life forms, but also the conscience of every single sub-atomic particle. It may sound bogus, how can a non-living particle have a conscience? Well, the answer to that question lies in another question: what is a living being made off? Every living being is made out of individually non-living atoms, which combine to make up proteins and DNA etc. which further result in the formation of the cell, the fundamental unit of life. How can non-living atoms combine to give rise to your conscience? If a collection of atoms in a particular combination and permutation is capable of experiencing consciousness (an organism), then is it unimaginable that the universe containing all of those arrangements is also capable of consciousness and self-awareness? Another way to describe god would simply be a being from a higher dimension. Currently scientists assume the number of dimensions in our universe to be 11 under string theory.

Why 11?; Because any theory consisting of more than 11 dimensions collapses. We are 3-dimensional beings (length, width & height), although we perceive 4 dimensions, the 4th being time, we are able to move freely in both directions of only length, width and height but we only move in one direction when it comes to time, forward. If we were to perceive a 2-dimesional world, we would be able to see every corner and intersection of the plane while the 2-dimensional being would be blind to us. If they were to see us between the cross-section of the plane, they would only see a 2-dimensional representation of us. Similarly, a 5th-dimensional being would be able to go back and forth in time, see every single cross-section of our 3-dimensional plane at once (similar to the omnipotence of conventional god) and would be able to perform unimaginable tasks in our plane. A 6th-dimensional being would similarly be able to choose the exact position on the timeline as well as the desired timeline itself from all the possible timelines.

Thus, the conventional idea of god seems to be outdated in today’s age. The next problem is the problem of limited and depleting resources present on the earth. Most of the resources we use, direct, such as burning fossil fuels, or indirect, such as electricity which is produced by using radioactive elements such as thorium and uranium that are taken from the earth and are non-renewable. Although some energy sources such as solar energy, wind energy and natural gas are unlimited; the technology to harness energy from these sources is still not efficient enough to replace non-renewable sources of energy. This is the basic problem that mankind is facing today in terms on energy. Notice, this problem is directly linked to the “advancement”, both the sentences are the cause of why resources are being used at an exceeding rate. If one is to only purchase items that are needed or required and if one consumes without any waste, then this problem can be slowed down dramatically.

But this is not an efficient way to control this problem since it involves a change in something non-objective, something that cannot be measured, the desires and attitudes of people, which are relative for different individuals. The best way to deal with this problem is nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is science and engineering taking place on a microscopic scale. 1 nanometer (nm) is 10-6 times the width of a human hair. At such a small scale, the interactions are on an intermolecular basis, which means that the technology is far more accurate and efficient. Nanotechnology can change the world; in fact, it has the potential to change the whole solar system in the future. The question you may be asking yourself may be that; how can nanotechnology be the solution to our energy problems? The answer is somewhat close to “magic”. When one thinks of a magician, the ability to change the structure of the atom immediately comes to mind. One may have seen live or through media that all magicians try give the illusion of pulling out or disappearing matter from/in thin air respectively.

What are the requirements needed to do this on a scientific basis? One has to be able to somehow change the number of sub-atomic particles present in all surrounding atoms, namely the protons and electrons. For example, if I had the ability of a real magician, and I was given a balloon filled with hydrogen gas (H2) and I was given the task to change the hydrogen gas to Helium gas (He), what would I need to do on an atomic scale? I would have to change the number of electrons and protons from 1 in hydrogen gas to 2 present in helium. Note that a lot is not understood about the even smaller particles and their interactions thus it is not this simple but in theory, if one had enough knowledge of the sub-atomic interactions, this can be achieved.

The implications of a machine that can change matter from one element to another will be tremendous. It would mean free and unlimited energy for everyone, an equal and a completely altruistic civilization is a possibility with this. One would simple ask for what one wants, there would be no “need” to work or do anything! To avoid this and to ensure a technological and evolutionary growth, scientists are definitely required along with encouragement for free-thinking and self-actualization. Mankind will have smart enough “building material” that would be able to clean, repair and build all by itself via nanotechnology. In this world, an authoritative government would not be required and decisions regarding science would be left in the hands of science instead of law.