What are the threats the human civilization is facing today? The following issues have been in the focus recently: Dangerous poisoning of the environment, depletion of natural resources, overpopulation, opposition between different countries and religious denominations and the danger of Earth's collision with a sizable celestial object. The last century's two world wars snuffed out dozens of millions of human lives and then mankind stood on the verge of a nuclear catastrophe which could have wiped the life out from the face of the Earth.
Although these problems belong to different kinds of human activity, the most important factor which complicates the task of mankind's survival and its long-lasting sustainable development is the inadequacy of the accepted behavioral patterns and mentality to modern-day realities. Even such seemingly significant developments in social and public life as the advance of democracy and liberalism and sharp decrease in the number of totalitarian and dictatorial regimes over the planet have caused very little change to the choice of methods for conflict resolution. War still remains to be ultima ratio.
"I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." Albert Einstein
That notwithstanding, with the intellect it has, mankind is capable of analyzing things, and, apparently, is able, providing it puts in some coordinated efforts, to resolve the most complicated problems of today and direct its evolution along a favorable path. As things stand today, with this haphazard and almost uncontrollable course of events, it is hard to predict which variant of future will realize.
The recent past epochs have seen very impressive breakthroughs in natural sciences, including physics, engineering, chemistry, computer science, genetics, medicine and a number of others, therefore, we must be aware of the danger of new means of destruction being invented and created already today based on these scientific achievements. The mankind's entire experience only goes to show that whenever people got hold of new powers of nature, priority was almost invariably given to their military applications. Besides, it is fairly probable that the production of, say, nanorobots programmed to kill people of certain ethnic groups or extremely dangerous selective viruses will not require any sophisticated or high capacity industrial facilities. Therefore, it will be more difficult to control the development and production of such weapons. In the worst case, such destructive weapons can be produced and brought to bear by a small group of people. In fact, on the planet overstocked with weapons of mass destruction, a global war might be triggered by the effect of various factors – from somebody's evil will to mistake, blunder or somebody's psychological disorder. (There are several known scenarios of an inadvertent start of war; indeed, one can hardly expect to live long if he lives in a gunpowder keg). Due to rapid proliferation of critical know-how around the planet, increasing numbers of people acquire the ability to destroy the world, including nation leaders, the military, terrorists and technical specialists. Now the destiny of our planet depends on what we choose to do and on our ability to control things.
For how long will the human civilization last? This question is almost not receiving attention in professional discussions. In all likelihood, this is primarily because it is impossible to extrapolate the course of many processes which determine evolution and changes in our life. Besides, some of these processes are of fast growing, even explosive nature.
It is well known that surviving in the Earth's evolution were the most aggressive, cruel and adaptable species – the winners in the continual struggle for survival. Finally, homo sapiens made it to the apex of the evolution pyramid, wiped out quite a few animal species, expanded their habitat over vast territories around the planet, and changed the environment so that mane areas have become hardly suitable for living. Conquest and massive killing of the neighbors and annexation of their lands has been practiced worldwide in all times, though with varying intensity. And now we, with our mentality forged out of the merciless struggle for survival, are taking possession of increasingly sophisticated and destructive weapons which we tend to use mostly against each other.
This gloomy picture should force us to stop and think about possible ways to survival: What needs to be changed, how we can use our brain, intelligence, knowledgebase, resources and technologies in order to preserve our civilization. Obviously, the first thing to be done is to bring this logic and this concern to the understanding of the broad public and those who make decisions and govern our life. Then, it will be necessary to develop and start implementing measures designed to turn away from the risky path we are treading now in favor of a safer and more stable one. Several attempts have been made to this date at developing a tentative plan of such measures, and this Website is to review and analyze some of the latest programs proposed. Projects like these will obviously require further review, elaboration, and, probably, some rework, however, this will not be possible without public awareness of the issue.
Source : http://www.savefuture.net/how-to-protect-ourselves
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