Stephen Hawking’s Harrowing View of Human Civilization
If you want to hear that this is the most frightening time in U.S. history, you can simply Google it, and read any of the 5.6 million articles posted on the subject. But if you want to hear it from arguably the world’s most intelligent person, Stephen Hawking, click here.
This excellent article points out the main reasons that our society is falling apart, as evidenced by the Brexit and the election of Trump, both occasioned by the populist movement of poor and ignorant people who, out of sheer desperation, made choices that will hurt everyone–mostly these voters themselves. Hawking argues that the primary cause of this anguish is the inability of the common person, formerly a member of the middle class, to earn a good living, as a result of the impacts of automation on manufacturing jobs and the advent of the Internet, which enables a few people to make enormous sums of money with very few employees. This results in the growing gulf between rich and poor, and simultaneously, the defunding of public programs (like the development of new technologies) that could have otherwise ameliorated the situation.
Perhaps the scariest part of the whole essay is its conclusion, i.e., that the only route to safety lies in world leaders’ humbly admitting that they have not served the masses well at all, and agreeing to relieve tensions between theirs and other nations.
Does that sound likely to happen?
Much of what Dr. Hawking has written is quite true. However, there are things which he omits.
We have been through this before, not in exactly the same way, but in a similar way. During the Industrial Revolution, which included the Robber Baron era, the gap between rich and poor was very extreme. People lost their jobs because of the Industrial Revolution and there were riots because of it. It was because Andrew Carnegie’s father could no longer support himself as a weaver that his family moved from Scotland to the U.S. Many people moved from rural areas to cities where they remained poor and lived in over crowded housing under ghastly unsanitary conditions. We got through that. We CAN get through it again. Whether we will is another matter, but there is no reason to assume that we will not get through it again and actually come out better off.
The PBS news hour recently covered a new university in Ghana which has been founded to overcome one of the principal problems in Africa, i.e., corruption. The new university was founded by a citizen of Ghana who was educated in the U.S. and was a Microsoft executive for a number of years. I think that if his principals were included in the education systems in other countries of the world, many of our problems would become more manageable. For more information, check out the following link to the PBS program:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/university-ghana-focuses-critical-thinking-change-attitudes-corruption/
Hi Craig.
You have misinterpreted the nuance of Hawking’s comments.
He did not say “populist movement of poor and ignorant people who, out of sheer desperation, made choices that will hurt everyone including themselves” those are your words.
In fact Hawking nuanced the exact opposite “the absence of people and nation equalising policy reforms by the global governing elites, due to self-centred arrogance and prejudice, have led them to make choices that will hurt everyone including themselves”
The question really must be then; what else can anyone reasonably expect from the poor; ignorant and desperate that you have identified Craig about their existence and future? Praise and bouquets seems unlikely!
PS: We should ask ourselves, are these the same people perhaps that 2GreenEnergy commentary often gets a little over excited about when another container of solar PV panels is reported to have found its way to a village somewhere distant, in the absence of a visionary national energy and development policy being in force?
Lawrence Coomber
Craig,
The sheer scale of arrogant condescension by those who consider themselves to be an intellectual elite, never ceases to amaze me!
What’s even more amazing is these same individuals always claim to represent the best interests of the people they despise.
That’s always been the ultimate failure of leftist ideology, it’s inherent hypocrisy.
Do you really think everyone who voted for Brexit was “poor and ignorant” ? Do you even understand the issues, or have you based your judgment solely on the outpourings of leftist media ?
Stephen Hawking may be very bright in his own field of endeavor, but that doesn’t qualify him to make pronouncements about subjects about which he possesses little knowledge and is completely unqualified by a lack of experience to pontificate upon.
The observation;
” the only route to safety lies in world leaders’ humbly admitting that they have not served the masses well at all, and agreeing to relieve tensions between theirs and other nations”.
Has about as much profundity as a beauty contestant proclaiming she “wants to work for world peace” !
Sanctimonious, self-interested moralizing and trite platitudes are unhelpful.
Social progress seldom occurs without pain and imperfections. Society mirrors the strengths and flaws of the imperfect individuals who constitute society.
This is not the most “the most frightening time in US history” ! Every era considers itself to be “”the most frightening time”.
Had you asked people at the time of the US Civil War, Great Depression, WW2, Nuclear Confrontation etc, they would say today’s generation have little to worry about in contrast.
As Frank quite correctly points out, in any era the conflicts occurring through changes in social dynamics are always difficult, but inevitably resolve themselves. The process of resolution is always painful, but that’s the nature of human societies.
Intellectual pundits such as Bertrand Russell, George Bernard Shaw, Stephan Hawking, and countless others can afford to pontificate from ‘Ivory towers’, because they don’t have to bear the responsibility of implementing their philosophic musings.
Currently, all over the Western world the excesses of leftist agenda’s and overly idealized “green” policies are being reviewed and reassessed. This process will be very painful for advocates who thought the orgy of world continue forever.
It’s not just the US, although the scale of US public debt is truly staggering, throughout the Western world the orgy of debt funded, ideologically driven, impractical policies have left a bitter legacy.
Some governments are better able to reassess and restructure than others. Surprisingly, the UK is taking the lead in restructuring it’s economy to retain the best of the “green’ boom while dismantling excessive policies.
The Europeans seem less flexible and nations like Spain, France and Germany are experiencing real problems. In countries like Spain, the difficulties are most obvious since the economy is smaller and more vulnerable, but the cracks are beginning to show even in the huge economies of France and Germany.
Even wealthy, energy rich countries like Australia are struggling to restructure from the excesses of poorly conceived, debt funded “green’ policies.
Soon the US will be spending $20 billion a week just to service it’s out of control national debt. The recent energy boom has staved of the worst effects of a debt laden economy, but for how long?
To say that Stephen Hawking isn’t a member of the “intellectual elite” is a pretty fringe viewpoint.