- Margaret Rose-Goddard — Legal Futurist, Founder the Caribbean Procurement Institute, Disclosure Today, Global Social Entrepreneurship Award Winner, serial social entrepreneur and trailblazer in public procurement, anti-corruption and civic empowerment, and
- Anja Blaj, — Chief Strategist Officer- Future Law Institute, President of Blockchain Think Tank Slovenia, Level Counsel at Datafund and the Co-Organizer of the DGOV Foundation,
for a riveting and revolutionary-rousing discussion on Democracy, Information Tyranny, Capitalism, Colonialism and his views on the T&T’s COVID-19 Recovery Committee and the enigmatic and exclusionary modus operandi of such committees thus far on the island and their lack of effectiveness thus far in bringing about real progress towards an equitable, sustainably developed society befitting the country’s wealth of human and natural resources. Video courtesy Future Law.
- Programme Length: 01:13:26
- Programme Date: 10 May 2020
AfraRaymond.net 
Conversations for Change 8
Capitalism is a system that divides and rules us that is pyramidically tiered and variously classified with its core being the control of money, land, labour, minerals and violence.
The triangulated discussion began with information being superior to tangible products and our histories show this to be unquestionably true with many variables: Knowledge is power. This is proved by Afra’s identifying some commercial billionaire corporations, Facebook, Apple Amazon, Netflix and Google (FAANG) and supported by Anja Blaj that they are the creators and curators of information. Afra cited four texts: No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald, The Panama Papers of Mossack Fonseca by Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, the US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and he later added Treasure Islands by Nicholas Shaxson.
The myth of democracy and republicanism as having the potential to establish social equilibrium within capitalism persisted. Capitalism has convinced us that value equates money despite it being convincingly refuted by Henry George in his 1879 publication called Poverty and Progress. Fanon on page 39 of The Wretched of the Earth describes the mode of the divisions as, “the principle of reciprocal exclusivity”, in other words no equality is conceived. Margaret Rose-Goddard unwittingly and ironically expresses her satisfaction at T&T becoming first at Covid lock-down measures, which valorises the mythical claim to first world intellectual superiority. The use of technology to retain that status quo by FAANG follows the hollowness of United Nation’s proclamations in those veins and I shall offer three:
Food for all declared at the UN in 1974.
See https://research.un.org/en/foodsecurity/un-milestones
Water for all declared at the UN in March 1977
See https://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/pdf/human_right_to_water_and_sanitation_milestones.pdf
Education for all declared at the UN in March 1990
See https://www.humanium.org/en/world-declaration-on-education-for-all/
My recent viewing of a 2011 documentary called Mercury Undercover and a 2012 one called The Fourth World underscore these failings and paint the uselessness of our hanging on to capitalism that lives in democracy, socialism, military overthrows, education, health, religion, security and all other levels of today’s living. So exclusive have those boundaries been established that they are boldly proclaimed within and without all levels of stratification. Racial, sexual and other abuses, pollution, structured delays and silence on public issues are woven into miseducation, underemployment, underpayment and the over-exploitation of human and mineral resources of the majority of the earth’s human and physical assets. The economic realities of capitalism conflict historically, (Afra read that replacing enslaved Africans was cheaper than keeping them healthy), and are so embedded today that Covid has more economic than health tags including price gouging.
Our conversations are profound but remain pure abstractions in the face of persistent and increasing third and fourth world dis-empowerment.
Thank you Afra. If there is a problem that I can fix, please let me know.
Christopher McMaster Trinidad West Indies Home, 868-624-5451 Cell, 868-682-0678
Isn’t our problem human ‘consciousness’ being erroneously conflated with actual awareness. For example: Democracy is the majority mandating actual policies, and not the mere (s)election of party political personalities. Uncle Albert (Einstein) observed that: “We shall require a substantially new way of thinking, if (hu)mankind is to survive”. Might an appropriate equation for that be, E(nlightenment) (=)equals (m)ental (c)ertainty (c)hallenged? Consider this: Isn’t a believer someone unwilling/unable to share the infallible methodology they personally used to confirm the accuracy of their own preferred certainty? And isn’t an atheist someone claiming to possess that all-knowing capability entirely exclusive to a supernatural entity, who they incongruously assert is nonexistent? Humans appear able to hold two totally incompatible ideas in their head, without registering the cognitive dissonance (doublethink) concomitant with such an unrealistic, impractical, and paradoxical practice. Fortuitously this is an easily remedied failing. Although not a venture suitable for the fainthearted.
The solution to this situation was identified two and a half millennia ago by the ancient Greek Socrates. Who discovered that asking anyone a series of bespoke questions, prompted them to contradict their own ideological narrative. A breakthrough, which an alarmed establishment ruthlessly suppressed as an existential threat to those without answers. Yet there is nothing magical nor mystical in such a feat. It is simply that all ‘understandings’ of reality are devised by humans. But all humans are fallible. Ergo all human ‘understandings’ of reality are fatally flawed. As a universal generic alternative to said face to face enquiry, try this thought experiment: Take up virtual pen and paper, then reverse engineer the means by which unadulterated reality finds its way into the human brain. Should you determine that it never could, nor ever can, you will have experienced a revelation. If that task proves too onerous, try this:
Q1: Is your understanding of reality 100% correct?
Given that an unwise claim that it is, could quickly be disavowed by the posing of a few elementary enquiries.
Q2: What percentage of that unique personal ‘understanding’ of reality is incorrect?
Posing such queries can result in the creation of a notional void, where untested certainty once held sway. But persisting with that enquiry protocol does identify some potentially potent possibilities, capable of subsuming the newly freed space.
Question A: What is the most important function human beings perform? (Purpose). Potentially there are as many different responses to that as there are individuals to devise them. However nothing entirely dependent nor wholly reliant on the existence of humanity can occur, in the absence of humanity. Including the practice of religion and science. Thereby rendering those two both subservient, to an all encompassing primary requirement and enabler. Thus isn’t the meaning of life, life itself; ensuring continuity of the species? Although even if it is not, and some greater yet undiscovered purpose exists. Does not securing longevity for our kind, constitute an indispensable prerequisite for that endeavour too?
Question B: Why wouldn’t humans appreciate something as elemental as this? Maybe there is some unregistered constructional shortcoming in the human means of perception. If homo sapiens had a passive aperture in their craniums, through which the mind could directly experience reality, probity might theoretically be possible. But cursory examination reveals a series of limited bandwidth active sensors, distorting and encoding one medium into another analogous form. Which a remote and insular decoding device, is charged with decrypting. When we dream we are fully prepared to accept, without question, a ‘reality’ completely confined to the inside of an hermetically sealed enclosure. When we wake we encounter another experience, which can serve as a comparator for that lower level example. However we can never attain a higher level of consciousness, represented by direct connection to actual reality. An all-knowing condition, which would provide the means for crosschecking the accuracy of the wakeful state. Without experiencing this third level consciousness, we cannot but blindly believe that wakefulness is synonymous with the real reality experience. Hence all our ‘realities’ differ from each other, and often confirmable reality itself.
We are missing a (classroom) credo that tells us to think, not what to think. For truth risks nothing from enquiry, as it could only be strengthened by continual verification. Untruth however, dare not permit examination that would inevitably expose it as falsehood. Would that Socrates had ‘corrupted’ our young, by teaching them how to cogently test-question everything. Since our species would thenceforth have effectively been rendered immune, to future infection from all inane ideologies promoted by idiotic ideologues.
Best regards, al.
p.s. Even that belief system known as science (all fallible methodologies involve faith), is now belatedly becoming aware of this fundamental design flaw in consciousness. Through enquiries conducted by Dr. David Eagleman and others. Although if (hu)man made global warming is real. Who gifted humanity yet another means to destroy itself, before such enlightenment can occur?