Dear Sirs/Madams,
As it follows from your public statements, you are seriously concerned about the modern course of events in the world and are willing to support activities aimed at ensuring sustainable development of the human civilization. With the aim to initiate a discussion, let me present a brief review of the present-day situation.
Almost universally accepted that at our stage of civilization development, a number of threats to its continued existence.
The following are the most serious problems:
As it is now becoming clear, is not so rare and natural disasters: Space - the fall of large asteroids, outbreaks of dangerous radiation - the sun and distant stars, geophysics, planetary phenomena - volcanic eruptions, climate changes and fluctuations in the level of the oceans.
Based on results of numerous research performed into the problem, experts often name the middle of the 21st century as potential date of such global cataclysms. Television and filmmakers compete with one another showing apocalyptic scenarios for the human race. Most of the threats mentioned above have appeared (or exacerbated) during the last 100 years, i.e. during the period which is fundamentally different from all other phases of development of our civilization. Technological breakthroughs have led to the appearance of global means of communication, new types of weapons and means of influencing public mindset and attitudes. Wars have become much more destructive and claiming bigger death toll: The two world wars of the 20th century claimed 26 million and 55 million human lives, respectively. Most of the planet's suitable for life areas have been developed and populated; human activities are causing significant changes to the environment. Over the last 100 years world population has grown from 1.5 billion to 7 billion. Continuing extermination of many species of living creatures and plants. Natural studies have brought us closer to the understanding of the human civilization's place in the Universe and in its many-billion-year long development cycle. These dramatic changes in the life of the human civilization appear to have little effect on the main traits of our consciousness, style and manner of group and individual behavior as well as the instincts that have formed over the long period of evolution evolution - often dangerous on the present stage of development
Society is almost unable to cope with the numerous emerging contradictions, and the main question to ask is whether we will manage to overcome the growing threats and continue our path forward. It is obvious that without a fundamental change in the way of life, approaches to conflict resolution and planet's resources management mankind will be very likely to become degraded or even extinct.
Apart from such 'traditional' sciences as history, political science, globalistics, etc., a new science has appeared to deal with looking ahead into the future of human civilization. I'm speaking about synergetics - the science of describing complex systems and laws governing their existence. According to synergetics, the epoch of evolutionary, upward development, may be followed by a phase of instability, bifurcation, i.e. a state where the system becomes unable to continue living by its former laws and slides into a state of chaos with unknown consequences..
The recent several decades saw the appearance of a number of organizations concerned about the ways of humanity and looking for solutions that could ensure its stable and durable existence. Given below is a list of organizations and forums which are (or were) involved in struggle for peace and preservation of mankind or have been actively studying these problems. It has to be noted that these organizations have often been successful in quenching local conflicts which cannot be said about their activities and strategies directed at sustainability of the human civilization.
Regular summits of the world's mightiest countries (originally, G7, it recently became G8 and G20) focus on the crucial and most challenging issues of the global level management. For more than 40 years now government and business representatives have regularly come together at the Davos Forums. There are several more regularly held regional level and religious forums. Considerable attention at such meetings is given to problems of interrelations between communities and peace preservation on the planet.
The biggest and most authoritative organization dealing with global management is the United National Organization which was established in 1945. Most meaningful events staged under the UN auspices in the recent several decades have been two world forums - the Sustainable Development Forum in Rio-de-Janeiro in 1992 and "Rio+10" forum held in Johannesburg in 2002. These forums were attended by the leaders of over 100 countries and dozens of thousands of participants. The spirit of these conferences is best expressed in the words of the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan: "responsibility for our planet, whose bounty is the very basis for human well-being and progress. And most of all, responsibility for the future - for our children, and their children." A next congress, "Rio +20," is expected to take place in 2012.
The Rio-de-Janeiro conference of 1992 was followed by the adoption of the document called "The 21st Century Agenda" which outlined measures to counteract the dangers noted above. Similar proposals are present in the Millennium Declaration which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2000. "We have approached a decisive turning point in history… New and various threats have taken shape. We have to take another look at the mechanism of international relations: whether or not it is up to these new challenges? And what changes should be introduced if it is not?," former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said. Academician Nikita Moiseyev made the following assessment of the conference. "[The forum in Rio] has failed to rise to a sufficiently high level. We ought to reach the level of society where people think and act together." The Rio forums inspired many countries into the adoption of their own programs of combating the dangers facing humanity, but it had not been much time before these efforts had mostly faded away.
The following is a list of selected documents - manifestos, appeals, declarations, events, etc. - focused on the matter of our concern:
Futurology on the Internet:
Albert Einstein, Herbert Wells, Max Borne, Frederic Joliot-Curie, Joseph Rotblat, Aurelio Peccei, Ervin Laszlo, Stephen Hawking, Bertrand Russell, Robert Jungk, Stanislaw Lem, Mihajlo Mesarovic, Eduard Pestel, Donella Meadows, Alvin Toffler, Glenn D. Paige, John Haldane, Hazel Henderson, Francis Fukuyama, Nick Bostrom, Bill Joy, Erich Fromm, Ray Kurzweil, Alexander Bolonkin, Vladimir Tsaplin, Georges Krassovsky, Immanuel Wallerstein, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke, Samuel Huntington, Ilya Prigogine, Thomas Friedman, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Irina Bokova, Konrad Lorentz, Al Gore, Federico Mayor, Roland Robertson, Lee Dingsin, Norman Graham, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Andrey Sakharov, Igor Kurchatov, Nikita Moiseyev, Igor Bestuzhev-Lada, Vyacheslav Stepin, Sergei Kapitsa, Mikhail Gorbachev, Akop Nazaretian, Yegor Gaidar, Alexei Ggvishiani, Nikolay Timofeev-Resovsky, Sergey Kurdyumov, Vladimir Yakunin, Alexei Turchin, Georgy Malinetskiy, Leo Semashko, Anatoly Karpov, Mikhail Delyagin, Alexander Neklessa, Alexander Ageyev, Boris Kuzyk, Yuri Yakovets, Viktor Sadovnichiy, Vladislav Inozemtsev, Alexander Zharov, Yuri Sidelnikov, Lilia Shevtsova, Dmitry Aksyonov, Petr Saveliev, Kim Losev, Aidar Abdullin, Arkadiy Fedotov, Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, Ivan Artyukhov, Dmitry Medvedev, Andrey Korotayev, Alexander Nikonov, Аbdusalam Gusseinov, Alexander Chumakov, Artur Chilingarov, Yuri Izrael, Arkady Ursul, Oleg Kuznetsov, Askar Akayev, Viktor Kamyshanov, Viktor Shmakov and Evgeny Abramyan.
The present-day situation in the world community shows no signs of positive development in the direction toward resolving the problems described above, and there are no serious and purposeful efforts currently underway to counteract these problems. Let's now have a brief look at the obvious measures that need to be taken to preserve human civilization that were proposed by the author of this text about 10 years ago and which are contained in various forms in numerous appeals and declarations.
Transformation of the consciousness and mindset of the people, changing the historically formed behavioral patterns that are no longer acceptable in the modern world. Large scale (embracing vast majority of the population) activities of upbringing, propaganda and education directed at cultivating tolerance, peacefulness and equality, eliminate aggression, national and religious hatred and to limit the excessive consumption.
Gradual disarmament and disbandment of national armies. Only international security forces should be preserved. Termination of development and production of conventional weapons and weapons of mass destruction. International control of scientific research.
Development of humanitarian technologies ensuring transformation of mindset and behavioral patterns in line with the Consciousness project as well as technologies that would help enhance quality of life and environmental protection. Establish an industrial base in outer space.
Develop Third World economies through the introduction of innovative technologies, personnel training, financial aid and fostering regimes based on social justice and stability. Elimination (dramatic reduction, for starters) of the gap in the quality of life.
Unification of countries (by the European Union example), elimination of borders and armies. In a longer run, establishing a united world community, i.e. achieving a political (and, possibly, social) globalization.
It is easy to see that there is little work actually performed in the modern world along these directions despite the numerous programs and declarations calling for radical measures for the preservation of the human civilization put forth by various organizations and forums and works of leading experts in the field. See, for example: http://humanityplus.org/learn/transhumanist-declaration/; http://wpf.unesco-tlee.org/rus/socr-sch-r.htm; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYq7LdHSeNY. The actions taken in the right direction by a few teams and individuals are by far insufficient for achieving problems solution on any large scale.
Let's try to analyze possible causes of this impasse situation:
If no changes to the better are achieved from the present situation, the following scenarios will be the most likely ones:
According to expert estimates, the probability of a global cataclysm in this century is as high as 25-50%, therefore, there is no time to lose to start working on counter-measures. In view of the above, I deem it necessary to prepare and discuss specific programs aimed at resolving the main problem of our time - the problem of the human civilization's preservation. If you agree with my vision of the present situation, I would like to invite you to joint efforts in changing it to the better, specifically, to provide your proposals how to organize such cooperation. Near-term actions could include "information attacks" through the Internet, a large scale international forum of those concerned about these issues, and, probably, setting up international working groups oriented on resolving specific problems.
The idea, which should and can unite humanity - is the salvation of human civilization.
The following is the list of priority actions:
Professor E.A. Abramyan
let@savefuture.net
evg.abramyan@gmail.com
(Wikipedia: Evgeny Abramyan)
For more details see:
[1] Already at this point it is possible to name a number of possible sources of funding efforts aimed at resolving global problems:
[2] The tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was so widely publicized and outspoken that held mankind back from rushing into a global nuclear war in the times of the Cold War although the level of confrontation was very high.