Essay On The Nature of Man

I thought to learn from the collective life new things about the social order. I realized injustice done by others holds a light over mere human weaknesses adorned with the charms of fallible human imperfections. Before that realization, I was indoctrinated to believe that survival is about competition among individual classes, determined by factors such as one’s race, gender, education, and economics. Societal hierarchies accepted, as a fact, the theory of Social Darwinism influenced by Herbert Spencer and other Marxists psychoanalytical orators of their time from the Eugenics movement. Darwin theories influenced the nationalist writer Heinrich von Treitschke and the biologist Ernst Haeckel who influenced Hitler and also the social milieu in which he flourished. Natural selection is currently used in a dialectic fashion, manipulated or rather misconstrued for the survival of the individual or racial group.

This indoctrination of Darwinist thought is to accept at face value from the dominant culture of Europe and the West that society lives in a “dog-eat-dog” world and achieving prominence is about the survival of the fittest” determined by one’s race; a notion by which the power of the ruling elites used in consolidating their supremacy, by perpetuating stereotypes, bigotry, and racism: “If I make any grammatical or spelling errors, it is attributed to my race or ethnic group. If I have a responsible job, I got it because of “quotas” and it is assumed that I am speaking on behalf of my race, if I give my opinion on something.”

There is tremendous authority in the word, to create. Life is about creating the Self. Survival is not about race, gender, education, and economics. Survival is about a way of progression from our shared experiences. Then everything begins to make sense, it is the mind … what it demands is intrinsic to being a human being, living a happy life. At work, I answer to superiors to better a position, or keep employment. At social events, I act on selfish impulses out of a desperate need for attention, or respect. And, when the defenseless attempts to cause problems without looking for solutions, it is to bring down the strong that desires to survive in their cruel environment, in face of the weak struggling to survive in accordance to the human condition. Thomas Hobbes believed that “humans were selfish creatures who would do anything to better their positions; Left to themselves, he thought, people would act on their selfishly motivated impulses.”

In the state of nature and by the laws that govern it, competition is the dualistic force behind the weak and the strong. Thus, competing forces brings about ailments in our society: war and eugenics, conquest, divide and rule, manipulation, cultural subversion, the dominant social classes vying for power and knowledge as instruments of oppression. The time-honored ethic, from the Greek polis, is that men are beings by nature to live in commonalities of, belonging to a community, for the public commonwealth. And their purpose is the ultimate values from which the rest are derived, or with which their end as individuals fulfilled.

The nature of man is bound by natural laws in accordance to their own free will. Thus, the panacea of our society is without question, personal relationships, cooperation, organization, unity, and multi-cultural synthesis (mixing of the genetic makeup different to that of pure-blooded genealogies).I thought “Know Thy Self.” I know how a real human behaves towards another, the moral and ethical capability a human has for good and evil. As a student developing social dexterity in a certain environment, I made the clear observation that survival is centered on social interaction. Survival is based on the natural history belonging to our social dynamic, rather human-to-human interaction to ensure a broader aspect of the human condition: security, happiness, attention, love, knowledge, experience, and fulfillment. After that clear observation made through personal experiences, I was born into the Cartesian actualization of the Self (holistic world view about the Self and human interaction) that Survival is the natural history of humanity progression based on the environment and the complexity of culture.

John Locke defines the Self, in the terms of Paulo Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed, as being Conscious of Consciousness. Our consciousness is a particular manner of thinking based on reason, sensibility to pleasure and pain capable of happiness or misery, and so is concerned for the Self, as far as that consciousness extends. According to Paulo Freire, “People as uncompleted beings are conscious of their incompletion and their attempt to become more fully human.” Perhaps the mind is a tabula rasa–a blank slate, and it is through our shared experiences, sensations, and a source from which all our innate ideas are born. It is through our innate ideas the mind becomes concerned for that Freudian id: ego –the Self.

Then the intelligent mind gives birth to our modern Prometheus. The nature of man is governed by Natural Laws, docent omnia –everything teaches, rather to learn and accumulate successive knowledge of the self and our environment as an inborn innate idea. “Nosce Te-ipsum” human awareness or consciousness motivates our desire for power and knowledge, “scio nescio” scientific knowledge. “And thus knowledge itself is power” nam et ipsa scientia potestas est, quoted by Sir Francis Bacon.

In the Book of Genesis, the tree of conscience, the Tree of Knowledge on Good and Evil was in the middle of the Garden of Eden from which God directly forbade Adam to eat (Genesis 2:17). Eve, after being tempted and Adam, thus being tempted ate from the Tree of Knowledge. Since the fall of Adam from the Garden of Eden, man is merely acting like God. The Romans and Greeks credited Prometheus, who challenged Zeus by stealing from Mount Olympus the sacred fire–as a source of divine wisdom and inspiration, having fashioned human beings, this endless thirst for infinite-absolute knowledge and understanding of God. Intelligent design, rather our ambitious design is a mere representation of thought into existence, the act of creation.

Events in society reintroduced concepts about Intelligent Design. Heated debate brings to the forefront discussions on creationism and biological evolution. Avoiding false assumptions depends on avoiding the stereotypical ‘either-or’ beliefs on creation and evolution, because man is beginning to have a greater understanding of what it means to be human. Perhaps, humans are becoming androgynous beings with an enlightened understanding of existence —cogito, ergo sum, René Descartes, “I think, therefore I am.” In the Book of Exodus, God said to Moses, “I AM Who I AM” (Exodus 3:13).

The natural history of survival is a gradual continuous progression, with a beginning and an end (alpha and omega), but only in the sense of turning a full circle, leading to the pinnacle of civilization: scientific, technological, spiritual, and social advancement to an earlier and healthier state. The Tree of Life. Hobbes wrote, “The life of man is brutish and short.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, “Ars longa, vita brevis… trust yourself and you will learn the art of living” a life of self-actualized fulfillment: the intellectual, the sensual, the erotic, the aesthetic, and the spiritual. Human beings are merely determined to survive, live life as intuition is to reason … that instinct for survival is the natural history of humanity progression.

Creation is a whole of existence. . . .“On man when he came into life the Father conferred the seeds of all kinds and every way of life. If they be vegetative, he will be like a plant. If sensitive, he will become brutish. If rational, he will grow into a heavenly being. If intellectual, he will be an angel and the son of God. And if, happy in life, he withdraws into the center of his own unity, his spirit, made one with God, in the solitary darkness of God, who is set above all things, shall surpass them all.” – Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

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by Fiona-Angelica Smith (宝石)

Now is the Time for Bold and Unprecedented Action

The Paris Climate Change Accord and Leonardo DiCaprio UN Speech

On November 30th the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference was held in Paris, France. Countries from all around the world pledged $50 billion in research & development for clean energy. Technology companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, combined, and Bill Gates Microsoft Foundation pledged $150 billion to support climate change projects and innovation. A minimum of $100 billion provision was pledge to developing countries to mitigate the risks of climate change. The Oil companies pledged their support for the Paris Climate deal and investing towards a clean energy infrastructure for the future generation living in a 2°C degree world. However, the Paris Climate agreement was not ambitious enough.

The World Bank President Jim Yong Kim says, “the world our children inherit is a completely different world then the world we are living in today.” Financial institutions including Bank of America and HSBC made commitments. Their cooperation led by a coalition of investors is unprecedented when the world is facing global risks from climate change in an era of climate change denial.

Prior to this landmark accord in Paris, there was an unprecedented number of world leaders that attended the September 2014 Climate Summit at the UN. The summit included 100 heads of state and government, joined by 800 leaders from business, finance, and civil society. It included the actor Leonardo DiCaprio that gave an impassioned speech about the Climate, saying “climate change is not hysteria — it’s a fact.” The award-winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio described climate change as a “disaster” that has grown beyond the choices individuals make to one “that needs decisive large-scale action by industries and governments around the world.”

At the 2014 Climate Summit, governments, business, and civil society long-term convergence agreed to define climate change as the most important issue facing our time and that bold action is needed today to reduce emissions and build resilience. Those leaders in both business and government would lead this effort. They announced their intent to mobilize $200 billion for financing low-carbon and climate-resilient development. New Coalitions agreed to mobilize sufficient public and private funds for low-carbon climate resilient growth essential to keep the world within less than 2° degree Celsius pathway.

Driven largely by economic and population growth, human influence on the climate system is clear. Recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history warming the atmosphere and the ocean. Since the mid 19th Century, the sea level has risen at a much larger rate than during the previous two millennia, and oceanic uptake of CO2 has resulted in acidification of the ocean. As a result, the ocean is warming and the never seen before sea life, deep water sea creatures, are washing up on the shores of continents.

Since the 1950s many people observed that the warming of the climate in unprecedented decades caused irreversible impacts on human and natural systems. There might be this attitude that the damage is irreversible and nothing can be done about it BUT something could be done to mitigate the worst consequential effects of climate change risks.

Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions increased since the pre-industrial era. This led to atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide that are unprecedented in past 800,000 years. Their effects together with anthropogenic drivers detected through the climate system are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th Century. It is very likely the earth will continue to warm and sea level will continue to rise over the next Century.

Limiting climate change risks would require substantial and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions along with adaptation to mitigate the global risks. The global risks are at a greater disadvantage for people and communities in developing countries at all development levels. Climate change is projected to increase the displacement of people. Populations that lack the resources for planned migration experience and higher exposure to extreme weather events, particularly in developing countries with low-income, may experience increasing violent conflicts over natural resources.

The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report on Climate Change released in 2007 revealed there will be a decrease in water availability due to climate change, disappearing coral reefs, negative impact of subsistence farmers and fishers, coastal flooding from rising sea levels, and increased morbidity and mortality rates (due to heat waves, floods, droughts, and change in the distribution of disease). The report recommended adaptation measures to reduce the adverse impacts of projected climate change. Key vulnerabilities may be associated with the climate system, including food supply, infrastructure, health, water resources, coastlines, ecosystem, earth cycles (cooling and warming), and oceanic and atmospheric circulation. The impacts of climate change are very likely to impose net annual costs worth billions of dollars per year in environmental damages.

  • Fact 1) Warming of the climate since the 1950s is unprecedented. The atmosphere and ocean are warming. The amount of snow and ice has diminished. Sea levels are rising. CO2 levels in the atmosphere are higher than they have ever been before, not necessarily due to population growth (that has remained relatively the same) but due to the growth in economic activity. Human influence on the climate system is clear. We need substantial reduction in greenhouse gases.
  • Fact 2) Climate change impacts have occurred across the world affecting ecosystems, human health, freshwater resources, and agriculture. The impacts tell us there are significant lack of adaptation and mitigation of risks associated with climate change. Those people marginalized by society due to inequality are the most vulnerable to climate change risks and lack access to resources and stake in decision-making processes.

Inaction is a greater economic cost than taking necessary action against the existential threat of Climate Change. We need scaling of renewables and sustainable technology by institutions in cooperation across all sectors of the global economy to mitigate the risks of Climate Change. It comes down to a matter of choice. We either continue on the path that we are on and face catastrophic consequences OR we listen to the voice of reason and act accordingly.

The actor Leonardo DiCaprio once again gave his impassioned speech during his well-deserved 2016 Oscar win as a constant reminder that “now is the time for bold and unprecedented action.”

“We need to put a price tag on carbon emissions and eliminate government subsidies for oil, coal, and gas companies. We need to end the free ride that industrial polluters have been given in the name of a free market economy. They do not deserve our tax dollars. They deserve our scrutiny for the economy itself will die if our ecosystem collapse. The good news is that renewable energy is not only achievable but good economic policy.”

by Fiona-Angelica Smith (宝石)