Socrates: The important thing is not to live, but to live right. Self-knowledge is the key to virtuous living. That key can only be found in your immortal soul (your true self). That road is narrow, arduous, bumpy and steep. That is why so many choose to never enter it. They are simply discouraged. Their sluggish human minds, spiritual shortcomings and laziness hinder them.

 Comment: It is this dilemma that prevents the individual (the true self) from embarking on the path to self-knowledge, which Socrates recommended and considered to be the individual's only opportunity to approach the solution to the mystery of life.

Note: How this quote is very similar to the buddhist ideas on Samsara.

 Socrates (from "Apology" 30 a-b): The only thing I care about imprinting on you, young and old, is that you should not care about yourself as humans/individuals or your possessions. You should instead care about making your immortal souls (your true selves) as perfect as possible.

 I claim that virtue is not created by money, but that virtue creates money and everything else that is good for man, both for the individual and for the state.

Todde

Also check: http://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2016/03/about-socrates-and-his-attitude-to.html

and;

http://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2020/01/about-socrates-from-swedish.html 

 

Population growth needs to be slowed down

  There is a widespread misconception that population growth is an insignificant problem compared to the climate threat. Both are already significant problems.

 The next few years will be crucial in the work to limit global warming and stop the depletion of vital ecosystems. If greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced rapidly in Western countries, China, India and other nations with a prosperous middle class, the consequences, according to the IPCC and the UN, could be catastrophic. The responsibility lies primarily with us in the rich world. We got the favor of using the stored solar energy that has accumulated over hundreds of millions of years for a few centuries. Our civilization is fed by this "free lunch".

 We are now beginning to see the consequences: thawing permafrost and polar ice caps, rising sea levels, extreme weather, giant forest fires, dehydrated crops, food and water shortages, extinction of species' habitat, extinction. More hidden, another "challenge" is growing: the world's population growth, from 3 billion in 1960 via today's 7.8 to about 11 billion in 2100 according to the UN forecast. More and more people in poor countries are being hit hard by climate change in combination with a rapidly growing population.

 Malnutrition has been declining until recently, but where the number of people is increasing more than food, it is growing again. The FAO and this year's Peace Prize winner, the World Food Program, find that 690 million (approximately 9 percent) were malnourished in 2019, and estimate that they will be 840 million by 2030. The worst situation is in Africa. Despite the fact that many Africans have a better economy, the number of malnourished people has been increasing since 2014 and is now 250 million. If the trend continues, every fourth African will be affected by 2030.

 To stop humanitarian disasters, the supply of food needs to increase and birth rates decrease significantly (today 4.5 children per woman in Africa). Otherwise, the same mistakes as with global warming threaten - passivity that causes increasing future suffering and damage. Do we in the rich world at all want to understand what is happening? Rosling's bestseller "Factfulness" shows that the proportion of malnourished has decreased steadily since 1970. But that the number of malnourished suffering people is increasing is not mentioned. The number has grown every year since 2014, and in 2019 the proportion of malnourished people also increased.

 The Global Challenges Foundation recently found among ten countries that Swedes were most negative about the global population increase. But unlike climate change, population growth is rarely discussed in the media and is almost entirely avoided by environmental organizations. Why this lack of interest in one of the root causes of the rapidly growing imbalance between man and the environment?

 With a smaller population in rich countries, consumption, greenhouse gases and heating would of course also have been less. The IPCC wrote in 2014 that “economic and population growth continue to be the most important drivers of increases in CO₂ emissions”. 

 Influential European opinion leaders believes that rich racist Westerners are trying to blame climate change for the third world population increase, in order to avoid lowering their own unsustainable consumption (Guardian 26/8 2020). This may be the case in some circles; all attempts to evade responsibility and blame the poor of the third world must, of course, be rejected. But to claim, like many "progressives", that the fears of population growth are exaggerated is a fatal mistake, for several reasons.

 The UN's forecast from 2019 for the world's population until the year 2100 - Africa accounts for most of the increase. It is claimed that population growth is not a major problem from a climate or ecological point of view, as the ecological footprint of the poor is small. In itself true, but the goal is that every child born gets a decent standard of living, and then water, energy, farmland, housing and more are required, which means that the footprint increases over time. This is happening in many developing countries, and therefore measures to strengthen the economies of these countries must be paired with efforts to limit population growth.

 The reasons are mainly two. On the one hand, the risk of increased malnutrition. If Africa's population grows from today's 1.3 to 4 billion, it will have dramatic consequences. It is hardly possible to increase food production in proportion to such an increase in population. Malnutrition has been growing steadily in Africa for six years (FAO). No new green revolution is in sight. Poverty, malnutrition and hunger therefore threaten a growing part of Africa's population if it continues to increase as the UN predicts. Already large climate-driven migration will then be even greater through population growth.

 On the one hand, there is also the risk of an uncontrolled increase in greenhouse gases, from the large part of the population whose standard of living is increasing. The rich world should therefore now sharply increase its efforts to help African nations, and above all its women, achieve the reduction in birth rates that many of the countries are striving for according to the UN (see Population Facts No 2017/10). A major problem is that many women lack or are prevented from using modern contraceptives.

 Correcting the shortage is not a particularly expensive effort but can quickly contribute to lower birth rates. Smaller cohorts also strengthen the economies of poor countries as the proportion of children decreases relative to working adults, more women can take part in working life, the fewer children can receive longer and better education and so on. Self-determination and education for women are important and deserve strong support, but it is equally important to quickly increase support for modern contraception, counseling and family planning, where increased Swedish development assistance could make a big difference. Stopping population growth is therefore beneficial for African and other poor countries. Many of today's problems are due more to population growth than to climate change. For example, contact with new viruses, and extinction of species as population growth leads to food shortages, deforestation, more agriculture, hunting and fishing.

 To stop the climate crisis and the impoverishment of biodiversity, measures are needed both against population growth and against the waste of resources among the world's middle and upper classes.

 Reports on the earth's development and measures to solve the challenges must be more balanced, by paying attention to the consequences of population growth and the great need for family planning in Africa, among other places.

 Malte Andersson ecologist, professor emeritus at the University of Gothenburg (GU)

 Frank Götmark professor of ecology at GU, researches population growth

 Anders Wijkman, honorary chairman of the Club of Rome article writers, participates in the network Population Matters Sweden

Todde

 Check: http://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2019/02/philosophybuddhism-truth-and.html

  Learning from History

 The famous Quote from Voltaire:

 The only thing you learn from History is that Mankind does not learn from History.

 But few know that his qoute continued with: Some rare individual do learn from History and if they managed to apply the wisdom learned they could change History.

 The important message in the deeptime history is that man is a herdanimal depending on it's leaders to show the w3ay for the flock.

 The task of philosophy thus is to create leaders who can lead the folk in a ethical direction.

 This very interesting program on Youtube called Deep time History is available on youtube – It is diveded into three different programs and you can find them at:

https://youtu.be/z4cRiM--tz0

https://youtu.be/C4-SPpardp4

https://youtu.be/HSmvN-yeY_Q

 The language spoken is English. You can get English subtitles by clicking the ikon at the bottom to the left.

Todde

 Also check the following articles:

http://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2020/07/knowledgeof-history-is-important-part.html

http://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2020/11/thethird-industrial-revolution-check.html

The Third Industrial Revolution 

  Check this very interesting program about The Third Industrial Revolution.

 I enjoyed it a lot. It stresses the positive possiblities of the world at this point in time. It is very different from the tendencies of the human mind (and our mass media) to focus on negatives.

 Yet I must say that I object to some of the ideas presented.  I say that ”There is no free lunch”.  And I  miss the DUGA idea that to safeguard the future of our race, we need to stop stressing that material wealth is more important that spriritual wealth. I very much believe that it is necessary to change status from material status to spiritual status. In the future there is no room for ever expanding material wealth and status. In the future spiritual wealth (like increased knowledge of life and the laws of life for our planet) has to become what humanity is striving for.

 To build spiritual infrastructure ( i. e. schools teaching empathy and live communication etc.) is the most important infrastructure project. Teaching the importance of inclusion and how and what ”the group brain” (the magic happening when lot’s of humans come together) works and is.

 From a materialistic point of view the limited resources of our planet need to be recycled much more effectivly than today (just as the program says).

 But check the program and enjoy the optimism + see what you can do to assist. It is 1 hour and 47 minutes long, WEnglish is spoken with english subtítles (if you click on the square at the bottom)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX3M8Ka9vUA

Todde

Please also check:

http://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2020/08/about-duga-why-would-anyone-want-to.html

The left is now for the educated elite

 Today, skin color and religion are politics. But how many care about finances? Thomas Piketty does - and he believes that identity conflicts have increased precisely because we talk too little about economics.

 It was the taxes that made it possible - both colonialism and the welfare state. From the 16th century, the European states began to levy significantly higher taxes than China, writes the French economist Thomas Piketty in his new book "Capital and ideology". This is one of the explanations for Europe's dominance: with taxes, larger armies and navies could then be financed. In "Capital and ideology" he has collected data on the world's economic history from the bourgeois society through colonialism and industrialization to the present day.

 The period 1914–1980 is the great exception: then the Western world experienced an unparalleled material redistribution. Healthcare, education and rights took a leap forward, funded by higher taxes. The richest percent share of national wealth fell from 70 to 20 percent without harming growth; during the tax period, some of the highest economic growth rates ever observed occurred. After 1980, injustices began to grow again. The richest percent has received a larger share of world growth than the poorest 3.5 billion. In the USA, inequality is now greater than in 1910. Today the world's most unequal region is the Middle East, where the distance between rich and poor can be as great as in the French slave colony Saint-Domingue around 1780. Despite the ambition to write global history, Piketty is noticeably fond of Swedish social democracy. But today, European social democracy has abandoned all real ambitions to reduce inequality and redistribute wealth. The left has become "the parties of the educated elite". Voters react by becoming nationalists. It is "very convenient for the elites to explain everything by stigmatizing the alleged racism of the members of the less-favored groups," writes Piketty.

 You have just written 1,164 pages about the history of economic injustice, but who cares about economics? Politics is about identity, skin color, religion and nationality; that's what engages people today. How do you want them to discover that they have common financial interests? - One of the most important explanations for the increase in identity-based conflicts, I think, is that we have put an end to the economic discussion. For 20-30 years we have said that there is only one possible economic policy, that governments can do nothing to reduce inequality, the only thing they can do is control their borders. Then we should not be surprised if the whole political discussion begins to be about border controls and identity.

 Piketty points out that for a long time we have also neglected the legacy of colonialism and slavery. When Haiti, which was France's largest slave colony, became free, the Haitians were forced to compensate the slave owners for lost property, a debt that Haiti paid from 1825 to 1950. - Today, Haiti wants compensation for that, which I understand. The difficulty is to reconcile the universal perspective on equal rights for all with a recognition of specific cases of discrimination that have taken place, or are still ongoing. I get worried when it's just about symbols and identity issues. We have these conflicts over identity and over migration, but we lack constructive economic solutions, both in terms of class differences and racial discrimination. We need to start discussing economics again.

 Piketty wants to apply social democracy of European - or even Swedish - model to the rest of the world. Can that recipe work again, in a new context? Was not the model with high taxes and generous welfare dependent on the long boom of the 20th century? - There is a major economic upswing in China and India, and we will see an economic upswing in Africa in the future. If the condition for the welfare state is high growth, then it is already met in many developing countries. There is much to learn from Europe, but also from other parts of the world. In terms of progressive taxation of inheritance and income, the United States was a pioneer in the early 20th century.

 In his book, Piketty often describes growth as a reward for the right kind of political decision. Indian states that dare to try a land reform, for example, are experiencing better growth than their neighbors. How do you see the conflict between growth and the environment? - Ten percent of the world's countries account for more than half of global emissions. We need to change our criteria for economic development. I always talk about national income, not GDP. If you pump up oil for 100 billion euros, your GDP has increased by 100 billion, but national income has not been affected at all, because the oil was there from the beginning. When you then burn the oil, you get carbon dioxide emissions, and whatever price you want to put on the emissions, it gives a negative national income rather than an increase in GDP. "One of the most important explanations for the increase in identity-based conflicts, I think, is that we have put an end to the economic discussion.

 Piketty describes how the workers' parties that built welfare have been transformed into parties for the highly educated. From being parties for people with problems, they have become parties for people without problems. Was this development inevitable? - In the 1950s and 60s, it was the low-educated who voted for the Social Democrats in Sweden, Labor in the UK, the Democrats in the US, and so on. Gradually, instead, it will be the highly educated voters who vote for these parties. My interpretation is that it is because the parties have failed to renew their redistribution policy. They have abolished progressive taxation for the highest incomes. This exposes the social contract to great risks, as it threatens the idea of ​​economic justice on which the welfare state rests. If you are a billionaire today, you should move your fortune to the People's Republic of China, where inheritance tax is zero; privatized companies and natural resources can be passed on to the next generation. It is very strange that Sweden has also abolished the inheritance tax, while it is 40–50 percent in Japan and South Korea. Youth unemployment in many EU countries is around 20 percent, in Spain 40 percent. This is a whole generation that the labor market does not need. A redundant generation equals violence and social problems. Where should the jobs come from? It becomes even more worrying if you consider that computerization is expected to take up a large proportion of jobs in many industries. - The young people have been let down, especially after the corona crisis. The paradox is that we are said to live in an innovative knowledge economy at the same time as investments in education have stagnated. The investments are at the same level as in 1980–1990, while the proportion who go on to higher education has increased from around 20 per cent in 1980 to 50, 60, 70 per cent.

 An explanation for why in 2014, Thomas Piketty spoke at a seminar in Almedalen arranged by the Social Democrats. Even today, six years later, Piketty speaks warmly about the Swedish Social Democratic tradition of ideas. Thomas Piketty attracted great international attention in 2013 with his book "Capital in the twenty-first century". With the help of long data series, it showed how the development of income and wealth in the industrial nations has moved towards an increasing concentration of capital in fewer and fewer hands and towards growing economic gaps (= Capitalist Accumulation). This summer, Piketty's new book, "Capital and Ideology", was published. - We have shrinking growth and growing inequalities, and sometimes a very worrying situation for young people. This is, I think, precisely because the educational investments are stagnant. Finally, let's talk about migration. In the 1960s, the newly independent colonies were surrounded by enormous optimism, they would rise on their own and become modern, successful countries. 50 years later, all you can do is try to escape from there. How do we get a world where no one needs to escape? - State formation is a process that can take hundreds of years. In the 1960s, we thought that the new, independent states would be able to do it in 5-10 years, but that was not realistic. In addition, these countries have experienced the largest population increase in history. Egypt had ten million inhabitants a hundred years ago, now they have one hundred million. Imagine the investments that would be needed for schools and infrastructure. Every society needs to develop a trust in the state's ability to uphold justice - not a perfect justice, but at least an acceptable injustice. - In Sweden's case, it is fascinating to see that you were one of the most unequal countries in Europe until 1910–20. In local elections, a single wealthy voter could have 50 percent of the vote; this is something that Donald Trump would not dare to propose today. Inequalities can disappear faster than we think.

 That's what makes me optimistic in the long run.

Todde 

Also check: 

http://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2016/04/economykeynes-national-economics.html

Knowledge of History is an important part of psychological defense

 The news service in connection with Black Lives Matter shows how important it is that historical references are used correctly. In order for the public to be able to understand and assess what is being said, it is important that proper time is set aside in schools teaching the subject of history.

 Now the public and journalists may get the impression that the United States is the country that should be condemned for slavery above others, but is that true? Slavery is taught extensively in US schools, and for half a century there have been extensive social support programs for African Americans. The United States is a nation most eagerly embracing theories of multiculturalism.

 One could always argue that more could have been done, but the United States has addressed its history in a way that other countries, such as African and Asian, have not. Author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who previously lived in Somalia and the Netherlands and now lives in the United States, has recently stated that there is no better country to live in than today's United States for a person who is black and female. Economics professor Thomas Sowell (2006), himself an African-American, rejects slavery as an explanation for today's problems for African-Americans.

 Historically, people in all parts of the world, including Europe, were held as slaves or "unfree". An expression that professor Harrison (2015) prefers to indicate that unfreedom has had different degrees. Slaves are mentioned in the earliest texts of mankind, such as Hammurabi's law from 1700 BC in Mesopotamia. If you read researchers like Harrison, you see that northern and western Europe is an exception in the world in that freedom declined and disappeared in the late Middle Ages, and that the historically remarkable thing is not that slavery survived but that it began to be fought in the early 1800s.

 Slavery has existed not only in Africa but also in the Middle East, India and China right into the 20th century. Here we will focus on Africa. In the case of Africa, Africans have used other Africans as slave labor since time immemorial and as the main commodity along with gold and salt. A person could be turned into a slave by becoming a prisoner of war, being assaulted in a raid, having been convicted of a crime or unable to pay his debts.

 Africans were from the beginning involved in the sale of African slaves to merchants who brought them to what we now call the Middle East. To reduce the risk of escape, the prisoner was immediately removed from the home area to make it impossible for him to have any opportunity to receive help from relatives.

 The Arab slave trade went in caravans through the Sahara, with high mortality, and along the east coast of Africa from Zanzibar and Madagascar up to Egypt but also across the Indian Ocean towards India and the Indonesian archipelago. Slaves were used for household chores, as soldiers and for agricultural work. Female slaves were wanted and sometimes more expensive than men.

 The African slave trade to the Middle East began earlier and ended later than the transatlantic slave trade and is estimated to have involved slightly more people. Domestic African slave trade and that of the Middle East increased sharply in the 19th century, when Britain and the United States banned the slave trade, and it developed especially in East Africa and included, among other things, the plantation economy.

 Some African countries such as Mauritania did not make slavery illegal until 1981. Even today, the conditions of some workers in countries around the Persian Gulf have similarities to slavery. There have been no major movements to abolish slavery in Africa or the Middle East or any major initiatives to compensate the victims.

 It is seldom pointed out that Europeans have also been victims of the slave trade. In the Ottoman Empire, people were enslaved from what we now call the Balkans and Ukraine, and the word slave is considered to come from the name of the slave people.

With bases in North Africa and, above all, Algeria, slave traders hijacked between 1,500 and 1,800 European ships in the Mediterranean and turned crew and passengers into slaves. Raids were also carried out on Spanish and Italian coasts to capture slaves. The transatlantic slave trade is best documented and most thoroughly studied. It was awful like all slave trade, and although slaves were everywhere in America, Brazil was especially known for slave labor. The strange thing, however, was not that there was slavery in America, but that for the first time in human history there was a strong condemnation of slavery. In the United States and Britain, the demand for the abolition of slavery became a popular movement based on the idea of ​​the equal value of all human beings.

 After Britain and the United States themselves made the slave trade illegal, their ships patrolled the seas to force other countries to stop the slave trade. As is well known, the United States itself fought a bloody civil war in 1861–1865, in which the abolition of slavery was a major issue, and nothing similar has happened in any other country.

 The condemnation of slavery became so successful that the public has forgotten that slavery existed throughout the world and who pushed for it to be abolished. It is therefore something that rubs off with the recent protests in the United States aimed at today's American citizens. One would expect the protests to be directed at such countries, where people are still in various ways unfree. A reflection for Sweden is that we are talking about the need for psychological defense and about tracking fake news. What we should do in the first place is to study more history.

Todde

Also check: http://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2019/07/freedom-slavery-has-strived-for-freedom.html

Karma and the Meaning of Life:

 From a buddhist point of view the meaning of life

is to change karma.

 I am today a Maitreya Buddhisy = Modern buddhism, 

which will arise when East meets West)

 Buddhism states that a human life is a gift to 

cultivate. As a free spiritual being, you have 

already shown that you have not succeeded in 

permanently improving karma (Buddhist point of view), 

even if the modern Western civilization 

(civilization type 2) has advanced amazingly in a 

purely material way and from an individual point 

of view it is a considerable karmic improvement.

 Our modern Western civilization gives the 

individual a great opportunity to improve karma, 

partly as the individual has an unmatched 

opportunity to break away from clan thinking and 

family ties and as our civilization has given 

modern citizens greater opportunities and more 

leisure time (to be used for walking on the Road 

to Enlightenment).

 From a Buddhist point of view, it is the duty of 

the human nature (= the meaning of human life) 

to seize this opportunity to be enlightened 

(= find truth).

There are five different ways to change karma:

1. Through education.
2. Through meditation.
3. Through environmental change.
4. Using inventions.
5. Using laws.

 For the individual, method 1. to 3. works best.
Methods 4. and 5. change the karma of the culture
and society.

Todde

also check: 

http://axiom1b.blogspot.com/2019/02/philosophybuddhism-truth-and.html