Destinations

Follow the middle road, to make rapid progress in a cooperative setting.

Turn hard left to rapidly terminate forward progress.

Turn hard right to rapidly terminate forward progress.

So it is with UK politics.

STEAM Power (that’s STEM and A)

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math skills are undergoing a period of increased emphasis in our schools. Some might argue it’s at the expense of Art subjects. Does it have to be a zero-sum game?

Science hypothesises, experiments and interprets. Art creates directly, with no underlying rules or logic to adhere to. Science is structured simulation. Art is role play and improvisation. To reach human markets (voters or buyers) needs emotion, not just product features. Art and Science should therefore be seen as a partnership.

Secondly, at school, can we engage more students in STEM subjects, by emphasising it as a means to an Art end? Invite students to come on the STEM journey to empower Art.

Thirdly, great science discoveries utilise Psychology and thought experiments. Or sudden leaps of insight (realisations). Great thinking is arguably as much an art as utilising the science.

Pressure and flexibility

Since everything is inter-connected, governments shouldn’t bow to single-issue pressure groups.

It’s possible to retain existing flexibility when you slow things down. If you can’t control outcome uncertainty, try to control the pace instead.

Better research upfront makes for better policy outcomes later.

Time

Time is frozen – the moment you discover you’ve been betrayed.

Our calendars are there to help working people count down the days to their next holiday.

Time seems greatest at both ends of a person’s life – looking forwards and looking back.

Brexit meanings

A close vote (52/48) suggests to me a mass of people wavering between the 2 choices, not a mass of people at either extreme. When the media report the result, it’s all too easy to think voter views are hugely far apart, just because it was a binary choice, not a reading on a scale.

On referendum voting day, I think most clear-thinking people voted in spite of the referendum campaign exaggerations, not because of them. Also, the campaign did little to increase people’s opinions of the Westminster politicians.

Since a referendum is the purest form of democracy, a small bunch of people not liking the result and then campaigning for a second referendum just insults everyone who voted.

I didn’t vote Leave but I understand that it’s entirely possible to love the various cultures of continental Europe, but hate the bureaucracy of Brussels and Strasbourg. Labelling this group of Leave voters as racists, suggests the accuser doesn’t know what the word racist actually means.

Sadly the bureaucrats of Brussels seem to have learned nothing from the Brexit result and simply carry on regardless. A timely reminder of why bureaucracy is so maddening.

 

 

If people were smart…

we’d plan tax reform BEFORE income distribution undergoes the full onslaught of machine automation.

The UN would fund and deploy aerial nano-bots that fly around the World destroying unregistered guns.

religious opinion leaders would MODERNISE religious doctrine to accommodate future technological change.

we’d REFORM things in society before the flat part of the (technology) exponential curve turns into the steep part of the exponential curve.

Government social services would MANAGE people’s expectations in a honest way upfront, not make excuses in a patronising way afterwards. Prevention is usually cheaper that cure.

we’d APPOINT lobby groups to represent the animal kingdom and not pretend that humans and corporates have all the votes and all the freedom to act.

We’d ENCOURAGE people to self-learn to cope with global changes in progress.

Eyes without a face

The day AI takes over human medical research, is the day we surrender control of our destiny.

Flash trading of financial futures is split-second trading on our own futures.

Gene therapy (GM that removes cruelty and indifference) was never needed so desperately on a mass scale, as when there is human suffering, rainforest deforestation, ocean pollution and global warming.

Politics and credit – the art of stealing opportunity from the future to buy votes and gadgets in the present.

The borders we sit behind are insignificant compared to the technology, fame and entertainment we seek.