Weapons drones with names like Predator and Reaper are now actively engaged in combat. A recent article in The Economist suggests that the “next generation of drones will have artificial intelligence giving them a high degree of operational autonomy including – if legal and ethical questions can be resolved – the [self-contained?] ability to shoot…
We must never forget that abject poverty is an inescapable reality for more than a billion people living on Earth today. The majority of us pray that civilization will learn to better manage and even overcome this ongoing social catastrophe. Meanwhile, most of humanity expects to better their own personal circumstances. Recession, Depression, Famine Humanity…
Can the human community imagine and create a more constructive sense of solidarity when no obvious common enemy presents an imminent existential threat to civilization’s survival?
Women in Saudi Arabia will be given the right to vote and run in future municipal elections, which are the only public polls in the country, the BBC reports. The BBC’s world-affairs correspondent, Emily Buchanan, says it is an extraordinary development for Saudi Arabian women, who are not allowed to drive or to leave the…
The Ten Commandments appear three times in the Bible. Each entry is different. The Jewish, Protestant and Roman Catholic versions of the Ten Commandments are similar but not identical. The precise intention of the original text was subject to interpretation as the sacred words of the Ten Commandments were translated into new languages and cultures….
So Much Alarmed Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous…
Parenting is the most important responsibility shared by all humanity. Every people’s future is likely to be managed by their children. Parents have more impact on what’s in store for civilization than any other social cohort. Parents hold the long suit for advancing humankind. A thousand generations of passionate parenting hasn’t led to perfect people….
It’s important to remember that our self-discovery is a human project.
Nightmare of Devastating Surprise Embedded in Nature Think of civilization as a living treasury of self-protective culture and technology developed to avoid devastating surprise. Civilization maintains early warning systems, sponsors safer building practices, encourages an educated citizenry, builds hospitals, signs treaties, and shares sacred covenants in part to protect against destructive surprise. The Most Devastating…
So now we know that early humans bred with Neanderthals and Denisovans. We know this because genome sequences from these “evolutionary cousins” make up from 4% to 6% of the genomes of some humans. And we’ve recently learned that some of the genetic material introduced by this cross-breeding included an upgrade of our immune system’s…