1. Sex (I can speak at least on behalf of men here)
2. Sense of achievement (which is largely driven by #1)

We’ll never be able to throw away our wants just for the greater good. The communists tried it and failed (quite miserably). I think we should all take a lesson from that. The biggest breakthroughs, technological or sociological never came from goodwill, but good ole’ egoism. I think the sooner people accept this, the sooner we can actually come up with a strategy that will work on the long term.

Don’t misunderstand me, I would be the happiest person if humanity could unite under a single cause of making this earth a better place for us and our children. However, that flegmatic discordian in me says that until we remove humans from the equation, that’s not going to happen.

Then comes the pragmatic part of me which shivers whenever somebody wants to centralize something and impose a global governance. One government for the whole world will never work. Take the EU for example, I think we all know that the EU is not only not doing a good job, they are not doing their job at all. It is an army of bureaucrats sitting in Brussels raking in quite nice salaries. Every now and then they come up with a new row of nonsense regulations. The citizens of member states don’t want them, they are just tired and have no energy to remove them. The EU was based on a wonderful and simple principle of the free movement of capital, goods and people. Everything else is arbitrary. However, this just shows how an extremely simple and effective idea is corrupted into a behemoth that is by its design incapable of making effective decisions for everyone.

Just by taking the internet as a principle, we should be decentralizing and not vice versa! The internet strives because there is no single purpose of its existence. The internet has no purpose at all on its own. It strives on the fact that entropy is flexible enough that everyone can bring their own sense of order into it. Every creative idea has a chance and information flows largely unrestricted. If we were to remove localized or ‘nationalist’ governments in favor of a central ideal/leadership, the whole structure would become extremely rigid and prone to abuse. Let us not forget that any idea that claims it is the only good idea, is by definition a bad idea! Fixing environmental concerns seems to be the best thing to do today, but who knows what will happen tomorrow. In a world that is ever more unpredictable and fast paced, a slow central governance is the very worst that can happen to us. By all means we should do what makes sense to slow the global warming (we won’t be able to stop it), but lets not force it upon everyone and lets not restrict the whole world to a single dimension of ideas. Let’s help nature the way nature would do it, by the natural evolution/selection of ideas created independently of each other on fundamentally ‘egoistic’ principles. If we let everyone work independently, cooperation will happen naturally and in the end the best/most effective idea will emerge as the victorious.

Taking a green leaf from what Al Gore has done and the way that he has gone about it would be starting point for all to consider.

It really is case for urgency if we want to tackle the issue at hand will the new puppy step up an shine to be a world class hunting dog, or will its only trick be to get its master yesterdays news!

A concerned puppy
James