The World In Which We Live
The world in which we live is a very bizarre place. We all have varying perspectives of normality and a tenuous grasp on reality. We tell our selves that it is our moral code that keeps our society together whilst we throw rocks and bombs at one another over our contrasting views of what is and isn't moral.
The world in which we live makes sense to few. Some simply pay no heed to the turmoil that surrounds us, others take refuge in an ideology. Whether it be religion or conspiracy theories, they comfort themselves with the notion that behind it all there is an architect to the madness they see accelerating around them. That things are either all part of the grand plan or that there is a villain to be fought in order to make things right.
The truth is that we as species are not as far removed from the animal kingdom as we like to think, yes we have opposable thumbs and complex linguistic abilities giving us the ability to build complex structures and tools whilst documenting our achievements for the next generation to advance on, but our brains haven't evolved very far at all past the Darwinian kingdom from which we set our selves aside from.
In this blog and in the series which will proceed it, I will try to break down the world in which we live. I will no doubt get a lot wrong and in fact may even get it all wrong. I am after all a human like you and my grasp on reality is no stronger than your's. I can only share what I have learned and the conclusions I have drawn.
I live in the UK and my country is at war, in fact the UK has been in continuous wars since 1914 and are currently trying to gain enough support to invade Syria. The reasons for which are complicated in their geopolitical and economical aspects but at the very root the reasons are as simple as Darwinian animals given the tools to talk and teach through mediums. We have evolved from from simple tribes, small groups of people who banded together to to survive and who lived in relative peace within their groups but quick to become hostile to the unknown or those who were a deemed a threat, to towns, counties, nations, unions and now political superpowers who clash aggressively for the same primitive reasons.
Over the last century we have seen these political superpowers grow and move against one another in a deadly game of thrones, each armed with an arsenal capable of turning our planet into a lifeless molten rock.
There are numerous threats to our existence, Some we can avoid and others we can't. Aside from an all our nuclear war or being pelted by a large chunk of rock from space, I'd say the greatest threat to our species along with many others is our consumption. Currently species on this planet are going extinct at rate 100 per 1,000,000 a year with that figure expected to rise to 1000 per 1,000,000 annually. As it stands we have enough food on the planet to feed 10,000,000,000 people but 795,000,000 people on this planet are hungry, that's about 1 in 9 of the population and many people believe that the planet is overpopulated as it is, which may be true as our species has proven that having enough simply isn't enough. In the UK we throw away 7 tons of edible food from our homes alone, 40% of the food in the United States is never eaten and globally 7,000,000,000 tons of food is wasted annually.
In one century(1900-2000) our demand for fresh water multiplied by 6, twice the rate of population growth, 85% of the worlds population live on the driest half of the planet and 6 to 8,000,000 a year die from water related disasters and diseases yet in the USA more fresh water is used watering peoples gardens than is used to water all crops in the country. 70% of our planet is covered in water but only 2.5% is fresh water that we can drink and only 0.007% of that water is accessible leaving less than 1% of the planets water for us to use and drink. In developing countries 50% of the water is lost through leaks and 40% is lost globally due to intensive irrigation. Water I predict will be our greatest challenge over throughout this century providing that we can avoid another global war.
We have however seen some progress in the distribution of resources. Since the start of the 90's the level of human hunger has dropped and there are 216.000.000 less chronically malnourished people in the world today than there was then. The Millennium Development Goals established by the millennium summit of the United Nations in the year 2000 has made significant progress. The declaration committed United Nation member states and at least 23 international organizations to achieve the following goals by 2015
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Well it's not all bad. As you mentioned in the last paragraph, we've come a long way in the last century or so, fighting poverty, improving quality and longevity of life and so on. But yeah, possibility of another global war is way to great to be comfortable.
Yeah Eutopia is within our sights, it's now just a case of whether we can get there before we bring about an apocalypse..
Welcome to Steemit calrodger. Let me know if you got any questions about Steem or anything related to it! The official FAQ can be found here and has A LOT of information https://steemit.com/faq.html - Also remember, Steemit is just ONE of the sites built that uses Steem the blockchain. We also have DTube - our very own Youtube, DSound for Soundcloud and Steepshot if you prefer Instagram like experience. I'd also like to mention ChainBB - forums, Busy - Steemit with more modern look and DMania for memes. That's right, you can actually make money of memes now! Welcome to the blockchain
Thanks! Will do, I did just try to upload to the dtube but it didn't work for me :( was saying couldn't connect to blockchain or something along those lines