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Mike Robinson

Eco-Guardian/Warden,

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Where are we going? By this I mean, what is humanity's goal? Is there one? If we don't know where we are going, how will we get there?

In almost every aspect of life humans develop goals, individual or group, and takes steps to achieve those goals. Leadership can be defined as the acts of establishing direction, aligning intent and motivating action in the intended direction. We can see this all around us in our human activities and systems. However I see no evidence of a common goal for humanity, or even much thought or conversation on the matter, yet it may be the most important question of our time. Security and comfort seem to be priorities (with misguided means of attempting to achieve them) but, and perhaps this reflect some limits to human consciousness, no one seems to care much about what the world will look like in 100 years.
I suspect that ethnocentric consciousness and short-term desires have retarded this important conversation, but enough people are now world-centric in awareness that perhaps this conversation can begin.
Where do you want us to end up, and where do we begin?

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Closing Statement from Mike Robinson

Thank you everyone for sharing your thoughts.... sorry I got distracted trying to debate religion with some of the posters!

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    Ahimsa Fruitarian

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    May 23 2012: Humans are actually a species of the world's ecosystems - supported by ecosystem services, but humans have began to evolve towards universal intelligence that can be carried beyond this planet. Humans have got to the point where they can understand what intelligence is. but have not yet perfected intelligence so it works flawlessly. When we do - it means we can solve all our problems. Like theer was a gold rush evident in history, now there is a rush to invent intelligent computers because all our survival and environmental problems can be described in our language and therefore can be depicted as data and just needing algorithms for manipulation of data to resolve more answers (solutions to problems).

    • Mike Robinson

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      May 24 2012: I like your hypothesis! You are sort of saying that humans are the Beta run of an intelligent being. We show promise but have some major glitches to iron out. (As you can read from the conversations below there is some disagreement as to whether the code is being written by a hacker god or is being organically generated through evolution).
      A lot of young people I meet seem more predispositioned for more evolved or holistic ways of thinking. It is only a matter of time before some of our squandering/vandalizing ways will become inexcusable, for all the common-sense reasons. We can have so many wonderful technologies if they are convivial, renewable and designed for efficiency.

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