Net neutrality is about fair and equal access to information free of undue influence by governments and corporations regardless of race, creed, colour, economic status, etc. Wikipedia also puts it as follows, “Network neutrality is a principle proposed for user access networks participating in the Internet that advocates no restrictions by Internet Service Providers and governments on content, sites, platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and no restrictions on the modes of communication allowed.” 

The issue has never been about the prioritization of TCP/IP services. In fact, voice over IP (VOIP), is generally given higher priority in most networking applications due to the requirement that data needs to be transmitted in “real-time” compared to other services. For example, if an image on a web page fails to load due to a transmission error, the router simply calls for that piece of information over again and if it takes an extra 300ms (milliseconds) for that to happen then its really no big loss. Further, if the image arrives out of sync with the rest of the web page it again is no big loss as the image is simply rendered at the point in time all the information becomes available. However the same type of delay on a VOIP call doesn’t work because all the data has to be streamed in a very specific order in order to be understood.

It would be like trying listen to a conversation to all words where the are randomly mixed.

See? – Doesn’t fly. So VOIP phone calls are given higher priority than data and for very good reason. In fact the same logic can and does apply to other types of applications and in general there is consensus as to which pieces of Internet traffic should be allocated to the fast lanes compared to slower lanes. The fact that this is controlled more by the hardware applications on each end of the transmission line is also of major benefit because it means the ISPs are not really in control of this but rather it is a function of specific types of data and the industry standards by which that type of data is agreed to be streamed at.

One of the core problems however is this idea of bandwidth throttling, which is controlled at the ISP level. Bandwidth throttling is a process whereby the ISP can control how much data, what types of data, and how fast that data is transmitted through their network. So while the industry may agree that VOIP traffic should be given priority over other types of traffic, an ISP can elect to “throttle back” the speed, or in some cases to block that type of traffic altogether.

Now this is really where net neutrality people really get their backs up. The expectation by people connected to the Internet is that if you are paying for a high-speed connection to the Internet (say 6 Mb/s download and 1 Mb/s upload), then there should be no restrictions on what you put on either end of that connection. Further if you are paying for a given amount of bandwidth (50 Gb/mth) then so long as you are under your cap again there should be no restrictions. Herein comes the rub. If everyone were to max out their connections all the time then essentially it would overload the network of most ISPs. While we sign contracts saying this is what we are suppose to be getting, quite often an ISP will either cut back or cancel an account that is actually using the connection to its maximum potential all the time. This is because ISPs rarely build capacity in accordance to what they are contracted to provide, but rather to what the aggregate usage is across all users of the system. That could be in some cases as low as 20% of the total contracted service levels.

Since an ISP is under no obligation to identify how large their network is, rather than put in more capacity, an ISP may elect to use other mechanisms first to address the increase usage of their system before purchasing more capacity.

Bandwidth throttling is one way to do this. In principle, what it allows an ISP to do is to narrow the amount of traffic going to each customer during peak periods so that, while you may not get your maximum allowable bandwidth, at least what bandwidth you do get will be stable and less error prone. All well and good. However a number of ISPs are using this same technology to restrict certain types of traffic all the time. Bit torrents for example where people have the opportunity to download large files (movies, music, etc) over an extended period of time. P2P file sharing is another.

ISPs are making these decisions not out of any real necessity to control bandwidth but rather are essentially “taxing” those services, which have both legitimate and illegitimate purposes, in order to upsell their services or to develop additional revenue streams for something that should be ”neutral” access.

The situation becomes worse when you add in the fact that content on the Internet is also being policed to the point where people do not have the right to choose what content they access. Anyone from Canada knows, for example, that Hulu is not accessible and yet it is a free service to anyone connect to an IP address based in the US. Similar thing with some content provided by the BBC.

The problem with this type of policing is that it is the slippery slope of creating classes of people who have or don’t have access to specific information and services. People that support net neutrality argue that information in any form should be accessible and that governments and ISPs should not have the right to tell us what we can or cannot see based on geography, economic status or any other type of profiling mechanisms. It is a form of censorship which no longer has a role in a world where one can go from Toronto to London in 6-8 hours. It is a means of trying to establish boarders where none should exist.

Look at it this way – Cable companies may have a monopoly in specific markets that they don’t want Hulu or the BBC intruding on by offering free services across the Internet. However there is nothing illegal about me travelling to the UK or the US and watching non-Canadian TV while I’m there. In fact there is nothing being broadcast, for the most part, that is illegal or morally reprehensible about any of this content nor is it against the law in Canada. So if technically I’m legally entitled to view this material, and if the copyright owners want to provide this material free of charge, then why should I not be allowed access in Canada?

The answer is I should be allowed. If the cable companies up here cannot provide services I want then I should be free to access those services wherever they exist in the world if they are being streamed to the world wide web without restriction by the copyright holders. However that choice isn’t mine. I have no input into that choice. I have no reprentation as to influcing future choices of this type. And the same goes for people around the world. It doesn’t matter wether you are in Canada, US, UK, or the EU – the ability to influence these choices is completely out of your control.

Which is why the principle of net neutrality is so critically important. It establishes the world wide right to freedom of thought and freedom of expression regardless of the media used to convey those ideals. There is nothing more basic that being able to have freedom over where your thoughts and ideas may take you independent of any government or corporate entity and ensures that such freedoms are free of undue taxation or limitation without representation. It is as fundamental a right as breathing. When there is no mechanism available to provide representation to people to influence outcomes associated with fundamental human freedoms, then it is contingent on everyone to establish an open systems approach least we abdicate our rights as individuals to a series of fractured dictatorships for which we will have no recourse when it really matters. (okay you can inhale now)

No one is really losing sleep over not being able to access Hulu or slow bit torrents. It is what the implications of these restrictions mean as a culture which should keep you up at night.

- Kevin Feenan

So who is lying? M and Philip can’t both be right. If M was correct in 2009 then after all these cuts Second Life is definitely in a very solid financial picture at this point in time. It also means that a lot of these cuts to staff and programs were not necessary. If Philip is right however and we are in a good financial position now (compared to then) then we, as a community, were lied to in 2009 which begs the question what else is Linden Lab not telling people.

For example, in the last week Linden Lab has dropped the bomb of closing down the SL Teen Grid in the middle of the school year. 3 days later they just sent an email with 24 hours notice to all community gateway owners that they are shutting down the community gateway program effective immediately.  In both case no substitution was offered for the replacement of the existing service.  In fact the closure of the teen grid, which isn’t that surprising, in the middle of the school year showed remarkable insensitivity to the teachers and educators which have been working all spring and summer to prepare their curriculum only to have the core of that program yanked with 2 weeks to prepare substitute course materials.

I’m sorry as this is not going to be PC BUT —- how dumb do you have to be to think that yanking the teen grid in the middle of the school year is a good idea. (notice that isn’t a question) And we don’t even deal with the teen grid at Rockcliffe. Even I’m mad about this not because it impacts us but because it is a symptom of what Linden Lab has been doing all year long.  That is, making unilateral decisions that impact a very broad community without community input. And driving customers away as a result.

From a strategy stand point this is very bad. One of Second Life’s core assets is the user community. While a good brand can get away with the occasional hit to their reputation, establishing a pattern of behaviour that clearly shows a move away from being customer-centric to being investor-centric is a sure fire way to erode that brand loyalty to the point where any competitive product will drive masses of people away from your core product lines.

Fortunately for Linden Lab there is no such product currently on the market however there are several in development which will be in power positions within the next two years if the Lab doesn’t stop shooting themselves in the foot, stem the bleeding, and start repairing relationships. By the time they are ready to do that it may be too late as OpenSim, Blue Mars, Unity3D and others may have caught up with Second Life at which point it will be game over.

Personally I was really hoping that Philip’s re-introduction as CEO was going to be a sign that calmer heads are ready to prevail. But in continuing these 1980’s MBA-style draconian tactics without involving the community has simply served to erode whatever linguistic capital he had to trade in stepping back up to the plate. In fact, this is exactly the type of thing he should be divorcing himself from as every subsequent announcement of this type drives his personal image away from being the poster boy for 3D collaborative environments.

Anyone new that is brought in to repair all this damage being done is going to have their job cut out for them over the first 2 years of their mandate. Philip was someone who could have repaired that damage in less than half that time and instead he’s just being set-up to look like every other high-paid executive out there which is good for being put in-front of a group of investors but extremely bad if it results in him losing all his identity capital with the customer base supporting Second Life and where it potentially can go. As any business owner can tell you, it’s easy to spend an investor’s money on a business – getting and keeping a loyal customer base is hard and it’s even more difficult if you start with a culture that is ready and willing to walk for a comparable value proposition.

It is an open avenue for any competitive company, like Unity3D, to walk in and pander to the existing client base to say “we care – they don’t”. And people will believe them even if the value proposition isn’t as robust as what Linden Lab can offer simply because the pattern of behaviour established over the last 8 months by Linden Lab has been screaming “we don’t care about you and to prove it we are about to cut another relationship or product or service that is important to the community without offering something better in exchange other than empty promises”.

People are short sighted. In general, long term means “next week” en mass when it comes to decision making and every hole that Linden Lab leaves in their tactical plan is one more hole that leaves their customer based feeling unhappy and unfulfilled. Short of firing their strategists, the Lab should at this point develop a dedicated PAID community strategy group under NDA to knock some sense into them before the community at large just decides that enough is enough and better to move to OpenSim. They may not get everything they want but at least they don’t have to worry about the Lab cutting them off at the knees without compassion, consultation, due warning, and alternative solutions.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m still dedicated to building Rockcliffe up and Second Life is a very large part of that strategic and tactical plan. But that only goes so far. If the Lab continues to alienate the user base all the way to Blue Mars and back then there is no point in staying with a sinking ship. We are nowhere close to that point right now but for the sake of the community I am really hoping that this is the end of the bone-headed manoeuvres that have done nothing but erode Linden Lab’s brand identity and services over the past year.

Somehow I doubt it though. Who knew they had so many shoes.

From looking into a number of different tresses on the differences between culture and society it appears as if there is a common thread that both culture and society represent closed systems. Specifically culture is one based on a shared sense of language, beliefs, and traditions whereas societies are more based on geography, political systems, and the codification of perceived shared values.  This is obviously a bit of an over simplification but one that may provide some context around the current problems facing the global population today.

Whether you are talking about moderates or extremists, there appears to be a cross over between the idea of culture and that of society where culture is used to reinforce specific demands for socialization or rather that of the concept of a distinct society.

Take the conflict between Quebec and the rest of Canada as an example. No one disputes the idea that Quebec culture is distinct. They would be fools not to acknowledge the simple fact that language, beliefs, and tradition are all unique. However the idea that this uniqueness is tied to geography and political identity is something that stretches the boundaries of distinctiveness too far in my view. To follow that line of logic, every sub-division of social ideology should therefore be given an opportunity to form a distinct entity onto itself.

By the same logic Quebec itself should therefore also be divisible owing to the distinctiveness of the cultures represented by First Nations people in northern Quebec and potentially along the Canada-US border. Taken to an ultimate extreme we could probably take a 4km radius around Eglinton and Bathurst and sub-divide that into a new Jewish homeland or everything south of Spadina and Bloor as an extension of China’s territories for those that know Toronto well.

While in many areas of the world there is now the concept of the separation of Church and state, to a large degree we also need to look at the idea of the separation of culture and state.

Those people that insist that the distinctiveness of a culture can only be preserved under the auspices of a distinct society, with all the political control that such a term implies, are being both short sighted and missing the point. In Canada, we trust that those people we elect to government office will represent all constituents regardless of culture. So if I only speak Italian, I trust that the person I elect has the wherewith all to represent my interests even though they do not speak my language, read my books, or understand my idioms.

This trust relationship we have in Canada is unique in that it is a very fragile trust built upon the idea that culture and society can co-exist and be mutually re-enforcing of each other. Middle Eastern and other societies do not seem to have learned this lesson. Cultural and religious feuds spill over with blood debts  being waged over things that happened so far in the past as to be completely irrelevant to what they truly mean for the future. If the atrocity happened so long ago that, without the constant influx of hatred and persecution, the ramifications of those actions have died out on an individual basis over the course of 3-4 generations – Why perpetuate a past that is no longer when it is the future within the new social context that is important?

The challenge may simply be that there is no agreed upon mechanism for the creation or dissolution of societies that does not involve bloodshed and insurrection.

Even the United States which prides itself on being the hallmark of democracy does not allow states to succeed. And yet without some form of dissolution process, the outcome of talk of succession is one of doom, gloom, and potential treason to the state. Unless of course it is happening in someone else’s backyard at which point its perfectly fine. Or is it?

Where does the idea of culture wind up in all of this? Do cultures simply get swallowed up by the predominate culture that controls the social structure or is culture something that also deserves protection within the process of new societies being created or redefined? I would think most people would agree that culture is something that deserves protection even if it is not their own.

In the next few postings I will be going back to this idea of a truly realized democratic nation state and ways and means in which societies may be formed and dissolved without the need for bloodshed, riots, or civil unrest.

Our present society however has turned the term “I’m sorry” into an admission of guilt for which a person needs to be punished. If anything the expression which at one time spurred social structures to be able to device new and innovative ways to overcome adversary has now turned the phrase into an automated defensive mechanism where learning cannot be engaged. Instead, social structures are now developing around the phrase in order to deflect and avoid opportunities for learning and growth irrespective of guilt or innocence.

In point of fact the inability of professionals and corporate executives to be able to say the words “I’m Sorry” without having to worry about whether those words carry an admission of guilt increases the degree of stress, anxiety, and delays the grieving process for those people who need to hear those words in order to move on with their lives. The simple fact that people are prevented from empathizing with the plight of others brings with it a hostility that is both unnatural and unhealthy for all concerned.

The other challenge with the phrase is that in some cases, no matter what our level of guilt is, nor our level of empathy, the phrase “I’m sorry” is so hollow as to be meaningless in certain situations. For example, the drunk driver that is truly sorry about hitting and possibly killing a child. Very few people even in their wildest dreams are that depraved that they wouldn’t reel in horror at the concept. And yet this scenario does happen each year.

This is not an issue with a person’s ability, even a guilty person, to empathize with a terrible situation. Rather it is an inability of those people to get over the emotional shock of having become a victim whether real or perceived. Some people never get over this shock to their systems while others recover in due time.

The BP Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is one of those situations where the words “I’m sorry” are so desperately needed to be said by those people in leadership positions, are so unwilling to be heard by those people who are now victims of its impacts, and yet so impossible to say. If we can’t say and hear those two words above everything else – how possibly can we grow from this situation and move forward in ensuring that such problems are less likely to happen in the future.

It is so important that as a culture we have the ability to empathize, forgive, and learn from our past mistakes. And yet my fear right now is that we won’t be able to do this anytime soon. They are the first two words that open the door to a larger discussion on what went wrong and how to prevent things like this from happening in the future. It seems however that it may be years – if ever – before we will be able to get there.

What the BP Executive Lamar McKay should have done was establish the framework which would lead towards greater accountability in the field (no pun intended) for the future. That being that each of these organizations, and more, each potentially has some measure of responsibility in what was probably a preventable accident.

The problem is one where there is no direct line of accountability within complex systems. Very large projects require that a large number of autonomous activities each perform at peak efficiency. Essentially the assumption is that failures in one system will not cascade across other systems for which there is no proper oversight and management. Add to this the Bush Administrations to push for energy independence at a rate which likely has exceeded the ability of government oversight groups to effectively monitor and control, and companies which are trying to both recoup from financial losses due to the financial market’s meltdown and increase profitability on their balance sheets.

A single point of failure in a project which is suppose to have multiple levels of oversight essentially means a cascade failure among all the parties involved that share responsibility to various degrees. Halliburton for example cannot renege on their responsibilities for capping the well if they are supposed to be experts in this field. If the removal of the mud prior to insertion of a cement plug is not something they do on a regular basis then someone from Halliburton should have been aware of the safety concerns and halted the procedure when a non-standard technique was about to be employed.

I’m not suggesting that this was or was not the direct cause of the explosion and sinking of the oil rig. Rather what I am suggesting is that this type of behaviour where unsafe practices are not identified and corrected because “that is not my job” or “that is someone else’s responsibility” is representative of the type of systemic issues that plague large projects.

Problems like this are often far too easy to recognize but are stopped mid-stream in the escalation process because eventually the communication of these issues hit the ‘pay-grade ceiling” – that is, the attitude that nothing can be done because the decision to take corrective action is “above my pay-grade”. Similarly, when there is a lack of communication across multiple organizations each having responsibility for a specific aspect of a project, communication can also be stopped because “that is not our area of responsibility”. There is an expectation that an individual’s span-of-control goes only so far and when safety or other concerns branch beyond that perceived span-of-control then they are forced through peer pressure to not make waves and let people do their jobs.

Unfortunately, for a number of projects that type of attitude isn’t good enough. In part because no one wants to be the outcast for saying that the “sky is falling”. In part because those people whose job it is will in general take exception to other people poking their noses into their job.  We can look to a number of instances such as the multiple NASA space flight failures, Chernobyl, Seveso, and Bhopal. Time and time again what we find is that even though it may be the actions of a few which have cause the actual catastrophe, it is the social culture which surrounds those individuals which leads to the pattern of behaviours that make such catastrophes inevitable.

So what should the Chairman and President of BP America said to the congressional hearing?

Every day around the world BP is engaged in hundreds of thousands of decisions related to the quality and safety of their global operations. Influencing those decisions are hundreds of thousands of other voices including local, federal, and regional government agencies, global business partners, environmental groups, and non-governmental organizations. And underlying all of those voices are thousands of risks and circumstances which cannot be anticipated, predicted, or mitigated.

The exploration for oil is one of the riskiest ventures that humans can for reach and accomplish. Companies like BP are expected to take every conceivable precaution but the bottom line is that no industry can uniquely provide a 100% iron clad guarantee that ever possible situation will be controlled to the point where failure is impossible. It just doesn’t happen as much as we would like it to.

So long as our culture has a thirst for petroleum, humans will continue to do stupid things like stick a hair thin straw into that 8000 mile wide orange we call the Earth and hope to heck nothing goes wrong.

What needs to happen is the culture from Government to BP and its partners need to be looked at to identify why the culture allowed safe practices to be compromised. Then engage in changes to the system which both support the culture through education, technology, and policy. And then it needs to be made into best practice around the globe with all organizations engaged in similar activities.

You can’t do that however in an environment in which is focused on assigning blame to the few organizations that are in the best position to be leaders of that change. Are they at fault – sure – but now that we’ve just invested $30 Billion dollars or more in their education why would we deliberately put them out of business and in so doing create a culture in which the rest of the players in this industry drive their bad practices further underground.

We need these practices out in the open in order to fix them and we need solid leadership to drive that point home to all the other competitors in the field that the status quo isn’t good enough anymore. It’s not going to be a quick fix. But if handled correctly by all parties it could prove the stimulus for substantive change in the industry towards better accountability and safety while the need for petroleum is still a major factor in the economies of the world.

Let’s assume for a moment that both 2012 and 2060 represent significant turning points in human consciousness. Most religious prophesies indicate the coming of a new golden age after this period of fire and rebirth. In order to be reborn however one has to grow through some psychological trauma which effectively shatters old root beliefs in order to make way for new and healthier thinking.

Consider the alcoholic for a moment (or any addiction really). In order for that person to change it is not enough for the person to want to change. They need to shatter the root beliefs that are the trigger for drinking responses in the first place. Otherwise what you wind up with is simply will power self imposed over top of a cycle of behavior that really hasn’t changed. This is the reason why most people with additions, even if they have been ‘clean’ for decades tend to go back to the point they would have been at had they never stopped the addictive process in the first place. Because the root belief on which that person bases their reality upon never really changed.

The cycle of addition is fairly straight forward. Some type of emotional or psychological pain brought about through disillusionment (i.e. an inability to have justified true belief in alternative patterns of behavior) leads to a sense of entitlement and demand for relief via the self destructive tendencies. Such relief will form the symptoms of the addition until such time as dissatisfaction settles in. This dissatisfaction may be in the form of shame or guilt which either accompanies the addictive behavior or leads to promises of amending the self destructive behaviors. This may mask the original disillusionment if the root beliefs have not changed which eventually lead to the patterns of behavior eventually reasserting themselves.

In order to understand Armageddon we must first understand what it is we are addicted to: power, capitalism, nationalism, control, ideology, religious dogma. Any one of these could be the basis on which there may be a need for a global intervention. As a number of prophesies address the idea that it will be the 3^rd rebuilding of Soloman’s Temple I choose to focus on concepts related to nationalism which will be called into question. This is in part because the will to rebuild Soloman’s Temple would only be an undertaking that would be possible through nationalistic after some conflict in the area settled the land ownership rights in one form or another.

I further chose the idea of nationalism as the principles by which religious fervor and zealotry is built up in order to send people to war is almost exclusively established on principles of ‘us’ verses ‘them’. Rather than looking upon society as a cohesive whole, most conflicts are built on the principles of power, access to scarce resources, and control of populations which is most easily accomplished through a systematic rhetoric of group think based on simple principles of what makes ‘us’ better from ‘them’ .

• We are Americans – they are terrorists.
• We are Christians – they are unholy.
• We are enlightened – they are primitive.

Beyond this however the previous two world wars appear to have been wars of nationalism with the rise of nationalist sentiment rising out of world war 1 to a fevered pitch during world war 2. Today we are seeing extremisms taking root as counter-cultures within nation states which is a far more difficult beast to slay. The ‘enemy’ has no geographical borders and as a result everyone becomes suspect. Whereas before there were clear geographical lines, today the roots of the new nationalism is buried in the backyard of all counties.

In order to fight the beast what we (potentially) need to give up is nationality. We are all one race. But that is a very big pill for people to swallow and likely will continue to be until people realize just how small this planet truly is.

So how would Armageddon come about? Likely through a series of escalating conflicts which focus more broadly on the subjugation of populations based on racial profiling. I realize that is an unpopular concept at the moment but if you think about it for a moment it makes sense. If the last 10 attempts to blow up the nation’s capital have all consistently been by Muslims (or Chinese or Hispanics or Neo-Nazis or Mormons, or field mice, or whatever) then sooner or later people are going to take the hint that stopping people who are of African descent in the street isn’t going to solve the problem simply because you are afraid of offending someone’s sensibilities.

The problem is not the one-off conflict. Rather it is a systematic process of 1000 cuts that leads to an extremist position in mainstream political systems and is very difficult to back down from. While the solution is not to get there in the first place, the principles of extreme nationalism can lead to a form of group think that, by the time people realize what has happened, it is already too late to reverse course. The energy needs to burn itself out. In the case of WW II, that resulted in the deaths of 60M lives. For the next series of wars there is no reason to think that the cost will be in the 100s of millions.

Herein becomes the problem. In the past, when populations rebelled, they did so against a political system that had essentially the same weapon arsenal as the uprising population. Today, political leaders have access to weapons of mass destruction at their disposal that can be launched in relative security remotely. The tables are no longer balanced. And that is what makes the next set of wars so devastating – not the fact that they happen but who it is that will eventually pay the price.

There is a theory of social cycles that suggests there is a pattern to social upheaval. Societies are ruled by military regimes, then intellectuals, then acquisitors (capitalists) and finally for a very brief moment in time, laborers. This cycle is known as the Sarkar Theory of social cycles and if the pattern holds, the next big revolution will be lead by laborers. So what is a little revolution here or there?

The problem is this: the blue collar class is the one that actually make the world work. So if you use massive retaliatory tactics against your agricultural base, for example, then who is going to sow the fields to produce wheat or rice to feed people? Where are the medicines going to come from? Who is going to triage patients or run the water waste reclamation plants?

The process isn’t going to happen all at once. Likely the conditions under which this type of doomsday scenario will take years before it happens. Similar to the recovering alcoholic there will be periods of violent outbursts followed by passive-aggressive responses to solve the underlying problems. However where such issues are couched in the language of diplomacy such that the true underlying causes cannot be agreed to, much less reconciled, these solutions would be like putting a band-aid over a 6” knife wound. It will not last.

Global consciousness changed radically during both World War I and World War II. Should another such conflict erupt it would similarly change global consciousness again only this time we have the conflicts of several thousand cultures which are all interconnected via the Internet. A populist uprising wouldn’t necessarily start in any one particular location but rather using the principles of mob dynamics would like erupt at similar time frames around the world. A war with no geographical boundaries but for which the only tool that governments have to fight it is nationalism.

What causes this uprising? Most likely a backlash from fascist elements of national and transnational corporations which are being supported through the democratic process in the name of moderation. Principles of copyright and ownership which are entangled with the idea of Freedom of Speech but for which only serve to restrict the rights of individuals to envision, communicate, and seek out new ideas and information. The escalating encroachment on personal liberties to the point of totalitarianism under the disguise of a free and open society.

With 7-8 billion people on the planet the first battles will be for rights to resources. As the conflicts escalate to the point where leaders are willing to take larger and more dangerous actions that impact the entire world, not just a specific regions, people will start to go into collective shock over exactly what our nationalistic tendencies have wrought upon us. Collective disillusionment will leave cultures susceptible to ‘false prophets’ as cultures look for a way to recover and regroup. And it will be the shattering of this illusion that could trigger the final battle as a smaller population starts to realize in a global identity.

This is not an overnight process however and looking at a 40-50 year time horizon between the initial confrontations and resolution of those conflicts would not be out of question based on historical trends and the fact that time needs to be given for a new generation with new ideas opportunity to come to power and influence in their own right.

——

Do I believe in all this? I neither believe nor disbelieve – it is a thought experiment and one for which the timeframe between 2012 and 2060 seems to be viable based on the way our society is headed. Personally I’d like to think we are better than this but the whole of human history seems to be against cultures being able to do the right thing for the right reasons at the right time.