Greatest Threats to Life on Earth
386 ViewsTop 3 greatest threats to life on Earth:
1) Biological weapons
2) Emergent diseases
3) Nanoweapons
A) Self-replicating weapons (ecophages) that make copies of themselves; their only means of attack may be to “eat” the enemy or his resources as they self-replicate.
B) Nonreplicating nanoweapons, similar to the tools of war today, that are manufactured in a factory and then used in battle.
More on the risk of nanotechnology.
The overwhelming message I get from reading about these potential threats is mankinds inability to govern himself without running the extreme risks of destroying the entire planet and all life. The arrogance found in the justifications for trying to unleash these technologies upon the world reveals severe flaws in the human mind - “we control” or “can control” whatever we want. Our science and our technology will not destroy us - it will “save us”. This unspecified “threat” and need of salvation is unspecified, but reveals mankind’s fear of the uncontrolled.
Obviously then, technology will lead to a loss of freedom, liberty, autonomy and independence. This has always proven to be the case, even if the technology is “controlled”. More technology will be championed as “beneficial” for mankind, but the exchange, what we lost, won’t be publically perceived.
It’s noted that it isn’t technology that is really the issue - but the nature of man.
August 16th, 2006 at 7:02 pm
this is well written (stolen from http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/08/bushs_road_map_.html)
Posted by: KissMyChaddis | Wednesday, 16 August 2006 at 12:05
The apparent plan to widen the conflict in the middle east by attacking Iran does seem to be what the right wing has in mind for winning at the polls this fall. Most of the comments and indeed the article correctly (in my humble opinion
) deal with many of the geo-strategic, and economic issues, the one issue that isn’t being looked at, I fear, is the psychological one.
I’ve been talking about this issue a lot, and reading high and low to see what people are thinking, and what is most stunning is that generally speaking, throughout the liberal blog world (the only news world I bother with) most commentators don’t really see a problem with the coming war! At best they don’t see that it is going to happen at all, and at worst, they buy into the israel=US equation and support anything that sounds like support of israel — no matter how disasterous in the long run for israel in fact.
There are two really big problems. The first and most important, is that most Americans not only support the ‘long global war on terror’ (that never ends) but also most americans don’t really understand that aggressive military action doesn’t bring peace. While support for the War in Iraq is gone, it is mostly still believed to have been a set of tactical errors, (this or that set of decisions made incorrectly) not a fundamentally doomed plan. When did America start thinking that they could impose their will on anyone they choose at the point of a gun, and why can’t we see that such a strategy has never worked? When did Americans get the idea that they were the only people in the world that had the desire, will, and most importantly means to assert their right to self-determination?
The 2nd big problem is that even among those who do realize that we have to take a fundamentally different tack in dealing with extremism, most (by a wide margin) are completely unable to fathom the depths of the machinations, the insidious and far ranging planning that is going on by ‘the other side’. So many ‘liberals’ are so utterly caught up in ‘proving they were right’ about yesterdays issues (Plame/Wilson, Iraq, Budget Deficit) that they have no ability to look forward and anticipate new problems. Even more critically, the belief that what is happening is basically the result of ’stupidity’, ‘ignorance’, or ‘naivete’ endlessly keeps them off-guard. Why think strategically about stupidity? So we see endless commentary on the left indicating their ’shock’ that the right isn’t ‘being honest’, or ‘amazed’ that so and so said some new utterly duplicitous thing. The left still basically believes it is dealing with the right face on, and that the right is presenting real issues, honestly, intending a true debate, and willing to stand up for ‘what they believe in’, in an honorable, courageous, and real way. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. As with our society in general (which in fact is the true problem) the ideals of truth, realism, courage, and fair-play have long ago been subsumed by the simple ethic of win at all costs, and that power is the only truth that matters.
Under such circumstances it isn’t really possible for the kinds of reactive aggressive, other-blaming, scape-goating, vilifying strategies, and war plans to not only be hatched but to grow and become dominant. If the Republicans don’t give it to us, the Democrats will — they would love a chance to do so. Why? Because it’s what Americans want.
Now that is depressing!