10 Vital concepts for 2016

The 10 key concepts to know and remember as we start a new year (2016) of fear, politics, endless dilemmas and a perceived absence of any alternatives.

1. Technology and information advances exponentially, while human nature advances glacially, and our species capacity for effective governance remains static or is in decline.

If you understand this and respond according, the other nine are just icing on the New Year ’s Day cake.

2. The globalization of technology, information and economics means that the US dominance in military, economics and global leadership will continue to be diminished, regardless of who is President or what congress does if its solutions continue to be based on the concept of national independence (national sovereignty).

3. Advances in the power, affordability, pervasiveness and miniaturization of technology will continue to offer small groups and even individual’s unprecedented capacity for doing profound good and/or catastrophic harm.

4. The dual use nature of every technology makes it virtually impossible to control how it is used without an extremely intrusive/ invasive inspection regime which few people or nations will accept peacefully.

5. Advances in technology give far greater advantage to offensive capabilities than playing defense.

6. Increasing dependence on technology increases vulnerability to human and technological errors, unanticipated events and/ or intentional sabotage.

7. Advances in technology are making it increasingly difficult to monitor or detect the movement of financial resources or weapons, but easier and easier to monitor and detect violations in human rights or changes to the environment.

8. The human minds capacity to believe anything and not even do what it knows needs to be done.

9. Superhuman stupidity is still a far greater threat to our security than artificial intelligence.

10. Human rights are inalienable and universal and without global justice enforcing them there will be no means of ensuring individual, national or global security.

In conclusion, one would be foolish to predict any breakthroughs in national or global governance without our leaders experiencing catastrophic events or a global movement of movements by “we the people” forcing urgent transformation in the global systems and structures that are now failing us, centered on these ten concepts.

If you doubt any of these please read the Executive Summary of the report by the Commission on Global Security, Justice and Governance released June 2015.  http://www.globalsecurityjusticegovernance.org/