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In these times, it appears obvious that we're facing not just numerous but also very large
problem. When I first heard about these problems I thought, "Let's get going, let's solve this,
let's do something!". But before we figure out how to solve these problems, we have to
agree on where we're going. If our current situation is A, then we must find out what
this B is before we can get there. Because we want to be sure that we end up at our desired
destination and that we're on the right path. There's many examples what happens if you
do not have a clear goal, where perhaps the best example would be Egypt, a country which
over the last 3 years has seen three changes of government, with little to no hope of improvement
and where history repeats itself over and over again. Other recent examples would be
Ukraine, Bahrain, Libya and Turkey. I don't mean that this B, whatever it is, must be
our absolute, ultimate goal, it's surely only a milestone, but it's what we want, it's the
"world we dream about". So in more concrete terms, what is "the world we dream about"?
What kind of society do we want to live in? How will the environment be, both in an ecological
sense in a personal sense, both socially and biologically? And I do not mean that we should
attribute any special word or term to it or categorize it, but what should it contain
and consist of, and how would it work? Should we be hungry or not? Should some be hungry?
Should we were sick or healthy, safe or unsafe? Should we compete, fight and make war, or
should we collaborate? Let 's say we could jump through a portal to another universe,
which is just like our own with the only difference being that on the planet Earth there's a society
that actually works. How is it structured? Well I'm quite sure it 's a very egalitarian
society. Not that everyone is the same, but everyone has the same opportunities, and are
free from hierarchical structures. This is something that is absolutely necessary for
a sustainable society, because when any group of people are exclusively privileged with
access to any resource, tensions will arise and that will eventually lead to some form
of conflict. It is therefore in everyone's interest to minimize gaps and work towards
pre-emptive structures in this sense. The society would not only be egalitarian, everyone
would also be as healthy and happy as possible, everyone have to get their needs met. Because
I am very confident that if we 're talking about the world we dream about, we all want
to have a society where we're not hungry, were we are healthy, safe and without stress
and competition. So what do we humans need? When I say needs, I make a distinction between
what we actually need and what we want. Needs are what we have to satisfy because of how
evolution has shaped us, biologically and psychologically. Wants are cultural manifestations
which, unlike our needs are subjective and constantly changing. But back to my question,
what are our real needs? All people need food, water, clean air, sleep, biophysically and
psychosocial protection from the environment, meaning we should feel good both mentally,
socially and physically. We need a low stress environment, a lack of diseases, nice friends
and families etc. We also need something fun to do, something that inspire us and motivates
us to move forward. No one truly wants or can just sit still and really do absolutely
nothing. All of the things mentioned are stuff that we humans need and for a lot of these
needs, we would die if we lack merely one. In a society that works the members will all
work together to ensure that our needs will be satisfied for all humans. Because there's
to no individuals gain to have sick and suffering people amongst us. In this functional society
the realization of our limitations are also present. The most important limitation is
what's called the carrying capacity. It is a term used in biology and ecology, which
means "The largest number of individuals of a species that an environment can sustain
indefinitely." This is what ecological sustainability means, to maintain a dynamic equilibrium,
within the carrying capacity of any environment. This means that even if resources are used
and consumed in this society, the level of access to resources are sustainably preserved
over time. So it's not that the situation is working just right now, but it will continue
to do so even in the future. And I don't mean that there should be quotas on how much food
you can have access to and so on. But in a functioning society people realize that if
they use more resources than what can be produced, things will turn to the worse eventually,
and that has to be avoided. They people of such a society must therefore live within
not only their local carrying capacity, but also within the entire Earth's carrying capacity.
So how do manage all this, how do they meet the carrying capacity of the Earth? How to
streamline their production in order to satisfy everyone's needs without exceeding the carrying
capacity? To begin with, we can say this: If this is the world we dream about, but it's
still not just a fantasy world but a world we one day can achieve then this world has
roughly as many people as there is on Earth today. So it feels very obvious that they
would be technologically advanced, they use technology to streamline their production,
distribution and management of resources. And in order to create and develop technology,
to manage and solve the kind of problems that arise in a modern, technological society one
is fully dependent on the scientific method. It works like this. First, you identify a
problem or question that you want to be answered. Often it is a question like " how does this
work? " for example, " How is it that things fall down? '. Step two is to set up a hypothesis,
a guess about how you think the phenomenon works, and ideally should one have read up
on the subject first so that you can set up an hypothesis as specific as possible. Maybe
someone else has already solved your problem and then you have saved a lot of time. But
if your question is unique and no one has found a definite answer, you can proceed to
the next step, trying to disprove your hypothesis. That's the beauty of the scientific method
really. It is humble in that it takes into account that sometimes we 're wrong, that
we do not know everything. If one were to show through an experiment that his hypothesis
is correct, then it is easy to think, "Yeah, I was right good," and then let it slide.
But if you try to disprove his hypothesis and succeed, you have shown that the hypothesis
is not entirely correct, and one can then rephrase it or find a new one that applies
to the reality as it has been observed in the experiment. And this process of setting
up a hypothesis and try to disprove it is then repeat many times, and in addition to
this you let others people try the same experiment to see so that they get the same result to
make sure that the phenomenon is independent of the person. And when you finally have repeated
and refined your hypothesis so many times that despite extensive and continuing attempts
you can no longer successfully disprove it, you can be very sure that the hypothesis is
close to the truth. The hypothesis has then ' passed ' and become a scientific theory
which with very high probability accurately describe how the phenomenon works. But you
cannot tell if you've found the truth about how the world really works, and new information
may at any point in time overturn old theories, which has happened many times in history.
Despite of this, science is the best method to find out how something will most likely
work and scientific theories can be used to describe how things will behave. I tend to
see science as our grammatical rules that we use to be able to communicate with nature.
It 's not about "cold science" where scientists without ethical perception callously pours
liquids from one test tube to another. It is a way to talk to nature and understand
it. Science does not only gives us the knowledge to develop new technologies that are fun and
interesting as for example faster cars and better phones, but science gives us through
sociology and psychology knowledge of how people behave and interact with each other,
which means we have the tools to prevent and solve social problems at both the individual
level and on a global societal scale. The development of technology also means that
we can automate and streamline our production, which leads to people being freed from released
from tedious and hazardous occupations and can instead devote themselves to things they
are passionate about. But, not only that, science is beautiful! I wish I could describe
how beautiful it is, but I can't do it better than the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson,
so I'll show a short clip where he answers the question " What is the most astounding
fact? " What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the universe? The
most astounding fact... The most astounding fact. ... Is the knowledge that the atoms,
that comprise life on Earth, the atoms that make up the human body are traceable to the
crucibles that cooked light elements into heavier ones, in their core, under extreme
temperatures and pressures. These stars, the high mass ones among them went unstable in
their later years. They collapsed and then exploded, scattering their enriched guts across
the galaxy. Guts made of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and all the fundamental ingredients
for life itself. These ingredients become part of gas clouds that condense, collapse,
form the next generation of solar systems, stars with orbiting planets. And those planets
now have the ingredients for life itself. So when I look up at the night sky, and I
know that yes we are part of the universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more
important than both of those facts, is that the universe is in us. When I reflect on that
fact I look up, many people feel small because they are small and the universe is big, but
I feel big because my atoms, came from those stars. There is a level of connectivity. That's
really what you want in life, you wanna feel connected. You wanna feel relevant. You wanna
feel like, you're a participant in the goings on of activities and events around you. That's
precisely what we are, just by being alive. So before the end of this lecture, I would
like to do a short summary. We know that the current world situation is not stable or sustainable,
but before we can get out of here, we must know where we want to go, what kind of society
we want to live in. If we want a society where we feel as satisfied as possible, there are
things limiting its structure. It must be socially equitable to prevent conflicts between
different groups. This means that we have to satisfy all human needs, not just for equality's
sake but also because no one feels better to have suffering people around them, it is
in our interest to help each other. We must also take care of our planet and the environment
we depend on. We must live within the Earth's carrying capacity and maintain a dynamic equilibrium,
for otherwise it is not a sustainable society and if that's the case, it isn't working,
right? To do this on a global scale, we must use the best problem-solving method that exist,
the scientific method, and use our knowledge and technology to give all people the highest
possible standard of living. And it is this body of concepts which we in the Zeitgeist
Movement calls "A Resource-Based Economy ". that was all, thank you for listening.