FUTURE

How We Can Save Our Future

There have never been so many extremely rich people in the world as there are today, and this is something that puts the future of all the people of the world in danger.

Not all the richest are selfish.

Some of the multibillionaires are also socially conscious, intelligent-minded people who think the best for the community and the earth. But many such very rich people, unfortunately, think and act exclusively as they think it best serves them and their narrow self-interests.

When such people think of the future, they do not think of the community, they think only of their own good. They are buying up land in New Zealand, which is supposed to be the country best suited to survive an apocalypse. They plan to build bunkers and fortresses where they believe they will be safe from all kinds of external threats, including unwanted mass immigration.

One of those who think this way is Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist who co-founded PayPal and was an early investor in Facebook. He considered New Zealand to be “the Future”. He is the only major capitalist from Silicon Valley who backed Trump during his 2016 campaign. But there are many more.

Should the idea be fixed in broad sections of the population to act in this way and flee to an island community where it is safer to stay than on the continents, then the world is on the wrong course, and it is a very dangerous course.

— This way of thinking is destructive for the community because it aims to ensure a very small minority of wealthy people a screen existence in relation to all possible imaginable and unimaginable apocalyptic threats.

Dark clouds on the horizon

In the book The Population Bomb, by Paul and Anne Ehrlich in 1968, the authors wrote:

“Population growth, along with over-consumption per capita, is driving civilization over the edge: billions of people are now hungry or micronutrient malnourished, and climate disruption is killing people.”

I believe that many who read this quote will perceive it as a relatively realistic doomsday prophecy.

Scientists and intellectuals all over the world have long pointed to a number of possible scenarios that could lead the world towards an apocalypse. There is talk that the world is approaching the brink as a result of a combination of disasters: regional collapses in production and trade, global economic collapse, climate catastrophes, pandemics that are many times as contagious and deadly as Covid-19, regional wars, large-scale terrorist attacks, stand-alone nuclear attack, the earth could be hit by a large asteroid or we could be hit by nuclear war.

Such doomsday descriptions are not entirely unrealistic, but they must be taken for what they are: worst-case scenarios.

What is even worse is that there are many people in different countries who believe in QAnon and similar insane conspiracy theories, and they use these to destabilize society by influencing people in extreme, often right-wing radical directions. This in itself is a sign of illness for the time we live in and an important warning for all of us.

How can we manage to stop this dangerous development?

By all means, we must talk and write about the dangers facing the world, we must take to the streets and express our opinions, and we must support democratic and socially conscious politicians in democratic elections.

It is extremely important that many people receive reliable, correct information about how the world is going in the wrong direction, and everyone must be made aware of the catastrophic consequences of a development where a very small minority of very rich people are allowed to steer the world community towards the edge of the precipice.

We must come together and use the information and good examples to show that the world is undergoing a disturbing development. This dangerous development must be stopped. Sound thinking based on facts, reason, ethics, and a strong sense of community must have a greater foothold in broad strata of the people.

What the world needs is the vast majority of the people in the world gather and work together to create a world that is safer for all, a future with hope.

Billionaires we can trust in this picture are Warren Buffet (stock investing), Bill Gates, Elon Musk.

Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have together created an interesting Giving Pledge: 98% of the fortune will be donated to the Gates Foundation when they die.

For the interested, I also recommend the podcast Making Sense with Sam Harris. He has many very interesting guests who speak with him about the perspectives of the future.

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Sources and supplementary reading:

Why Silicon Valley billionaires are prepping for the apocalypse in New Zealand

Paul Ehrlich: ‘Collapse of civilisation is a near certainty within decades’

New Zealand rated best place to survive global societal collapse