Have we been good? 

Oh... to die young in a blaze of glory for god and country! Or not be an old wolf dying from natural exhaustion while dreaming about the hunger of its youth...

In our era of Covid-infected civilisations, it appears that some of the young people are at a loss. A three minute song about servicing their genitalia might give them excited relief, then what? Comic relief? More drugs? More death?

We, old people, are more inclined to wear a mask at Bunnings. 

How do we create a sustainable civilisation out of this? Here comes a new book:

Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity
The world is in the midst of what may be the most deadly pandemic of the past 100 years. Threats to humanity, and how we address them, define our time. 


'Splendid . . . The Precipice is a powerful book, written with a philosopher's eye . . . Ord's love for humanity and hope for its future is infectious’ Spectator

Let's take a breather. The Spectator isn’t our best cup of tea in regard to civilisation and such threats as global warming. The Spectator is an ultra-right publication with disregard for scientific truths and human rights… Should slavery be legal, The Spectator would laud it daily. So... 

The blurb of this new book about to hit the stands, Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity, continues: 

We live during the most important era of human history. In the twentieth century, we developed the means to destroy ourselves — without developing the moral framework to ensure we won't. This is the Precipice, and how we respond to it will be the most crucial decision of our time.

Oxford moral philosopher Toby Ord explores the risks to humanity's future, from the familiar man-made threats of climate change and nuclear war, to the potentially greater, more unfamiliar threats from engineered pandemics and advanced artificial intelligence. With clear and rigorous thinking, Ord calculates the various risk levels, and shows how our own time fits within the larger story of human history. We can say with certainty that the novel coronavirus does not pose such a risk. But could the next pandemic? And what can we do, in our present moment, to face the risks head on?

A major work that brings together the disciplines of physics, biology, earth and computer science, history, anthropology, statistics, international relations, political science and moral philosophy, The Precipice is a call for a new understanding of our age: a major reorientation in the way we see the world, our history, and the role we play in it.
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We’ve been on this subject since we could walk. says Gus… We can modify our political ideologies much easier than our religious ones, mostly because we are raised in religion and fall into the political potholes by accident, when we discover we’ve been bombed. Tomorrow is the anniversary of the Japanese surrender...


Synopsis of Precipice:

Part One: The Stakes

Ord places our time within the broad sweep of human history: showing how far humanity has come in 2,000 centuries, and where we might go if we survive long enough. He outlines the major transitions in our past—the Agricultural, Scientific, and Industrial Revolutions. Each is characterised by dramatic increases in our power over the natural world, and together they have yielded massive improvements in living standards. During the twentieth century, with the detonation of the atomic bomb, humanity entered a new era. We gained the power to destroy ourselves, without the wisdom to ensure that we avoid doing so. This is what Ord calls "the Precipice", and how we navigate this period will determine whether humanity has a long and flourishing future, or no future at all. Ord introduces the concept of existential risk—risks that threaten to destroy humanity's long-term potential. He shows how the case for safeguarding humanity from these risks draws support from a range of moral perspectives. Yet it remains grossly neglected—humanity spends more each year on ice cream than it does on protecting its future.


Part Two: The Risks

Ord explores the science behind the risks we face. In Natural Risks, he considers threats from asteroids and comets, supervolcanic eruptions, and stellar explosions. He shows how we can use humanity's 200,000 year history to place strict bounds on how high the natural risk could be. In Anthropogenic Risks, he looks at risks we have imposed on ourselves in the last century, such as nuclear war, extreme climate change, and environmental damage. In Future Risks, he turns to threats that are on the horizon from emerging technologies, focusing in detail on engineered pandemics, unaligned artificial intelligence, and dystopian scenarios.


Part Three: The Path Forward

Ord surveys the risk landscape and gives his own estimates for each risk.[4] He also provides tools for thinking about how they compare and combine, and for prioritising between risks. He estimates that nuclear war and climate change each pose more risk than all the natural risks combined, and that risks from emerging technologies are higher still. Altogether, Ord believes humanity faces a 1 in 6 chance of existential catastrophe by the end of the century. He argues that it is in our power to end these risks today, and to reach a place of safety. He outlines a grand strategy for humanity, provides policy and research recommendations, and shows what individuals can do. The book ends with a vision of humanity's potential, and what we might hope to achieve if we navigate the risks of the next century.

Read more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Precipice:_Existential_Risk_and_the_Fu...
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On this site, we have not shirted our views and dare I say our satirical responsibility in taming the beast. 2,000 centuries is only 200,000 years which gives us a long way to go should we wish to live as long as the dinosaurs…

I guess our religious delusions of souls will vanish with the discovery of scientific beauty. So far sciences have been a bit raw in exposing what’s below our skin and neural systems. Some major work needs to be invested in to make sciences pretty. 

Obviously as god has sent us another plague, we must have been appalling and displeasing to Pompeo — the present godly foghorny archangel in charge of the weighing of souls of the US people versus those in despotic countries:

The fatman cannot see beyond his hypocritical evangelical nose. 

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took offense at the suggestion police abuse of protesters at home had anything in common with behavior he criticizes in “authoritarian regimes,” deeming the comparison “incomprehensible.”

Asked during an interview Wednesday with Radio Free Europe whether the heavy-handed US response to protests “on its own turf” had “harmed America’s image” abroad, the American diplomat lashed out at the reporter, denouncing the question as “insulting.”
…

It’s hardly the first time Pompeo has been reminded of US inconsistency regarding its sanctimonious pronouncements about other countries’ crackdowns on “peaceful protesters” – or the press, for that matter.


A staunch defender of the right of some Hong Kong residents to express their discontent with Chinese rule by destroying their city, Pompeo was confronted with the disconnect between Washington’s indulgence of those “protesters” and its brutality toward some Black Lives Matter protesters back in June. Then, too, he brushed off the notion of a “moral equivalency between what takes place in these countries where they repress their people” and the US.


Despite Pompeo’s praise of their “amazing” work, US cops have killed more people in the few months following George Floyd’s death at police hands than Chinese cops have in the entirety of the Hong Kong protests. And while the US diplomat spent the past few months praising America’s press freedoms, the Trump administration was kicking dozens of Chinese journalists out of the US and severely curtailing the operations of Chinese media organizations.
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Even the secretary of state’s invocation of religious freedom as that which sets the US apart rings a bit hollow given that American places of worship have been prohibited for months from holding services due to the Covid-19 pandemic, while Wal-Marts and military contractors have been able to operate uninterrupted.


Pompeo launched what US media called his “anti-China, anti-Russia tour” in the Czech Republic earlier this week. He promised to deliver “freedom” to Belarus, where a landslide election in favor of incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko has brought hundreds of thousands of protesters onto the streets declaring the vote to have been rigged.
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https://www.rt.com/news/497947-pompeo-protests-belarus-crackdown-hypocrisy/

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Now, if this were only a matter of personal wellbeing, I’d be happy to keep playing up my Luddite schtick. The problem is that Big Tech, having successfully privatized the public square, uses its power to advance the progressive agenda.

Like the averse health effects of social media, this isn’t exactly breaking news. From censoring campaign ads to biased “fact-checking” to curating search results, Silicon Valley is openly working to undermine conservative and Republican causes. Surely, then, the sane thing for conservatives and Republicans to do would be to boycott social media.

And yet we don’t. We have voluntarily handed them the right to censor our political discourse. We know it’s wrong, both for ourselves and for our country. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to do anything about it.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/conservatives-need-thei...

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March 30, 2019

JERUSALEM — When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sat down for an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network in a hotel in Jerusalem earlier this month, he made a remark that was perhaps the most revelatory of any in his nearly one year in office.

An evangelical Christian, Mr. Pompeo had just returned from tours of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, built on the ground where Jesus is said to have been crucified and buried, and of tunnels beneath the Western Wall, by the holiest site in Judaism. The interviewer posed a question around a biblical tale about a queen who saved Jews from slaughter by a Persian official: Did Mr. Pompeo think President Trump had been “raised for such a time as this, just like Queen Esther, to help save the Jewish people from the Iranian menace?”

“As a Christian, I certainly believe that’s possible,” Mr. Pompeo said. “It was remarkable — so we were down in the tunnels where we could see 3,000 years ago, and 2,000 years ago, if I have the history just right — to see the remarkable history of the faith in this place, and the work that our administration’s done, to make sure that this democracy in the Middle East, that this Jewish state, remains. I am confident that the Lord is at work here.”


https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/us/politics/pompeo-christian-policy.html


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And god sends us the plague again…

So we arrive at Gislebertus, Gislebert, (born 12th century), French sculptor who made major contributions to the Cathedral of Saint-Lazare in Autun and to several Burgundian churches from 1125 to 1135.

Among Gislebertus’ most noted works is the tympanum sculpture of the western doorway of the cathedral at Autun, depicting the Last Judgment. This work is noted for its expressionistic carving and technical proficiency; some of the figures are abstract in design, and the demon forms foreshadow 20th-century Surrealism. His sculpture for the northern doorway is a reclining, nude “Eve,” a medieval masterpiece. Also at Autun the sculptor created 60 capitals in the interior and doorways, most of which illustrate biblical stories and reflect the artist’s far-reaching imagination. Some of the capitals that depict Christ’s infancy are gentle and tender, but the tympanum contains fierce and frightening scenes of judgment and damnation.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gislebertus

And god sends us the plague, again and again…

And we still don’t know who we are… Ah, yes. Monkeys. Faulty naked apes who can only survive by deceiving oursleves — and it works...



Gus Leonisky
Fierce atheist



Image at top: The weighing of souls by Gislebertus... The sculpture has been slightly damaged. One of the arms of the scale is missing and the head of the "good" soul is also missing. Auguring?