History of life

Imagine you were outside the Earth but you were able to observe everything that has happened on it since its beginning.

At first, the Earth was a blazing hell, there wasn't even a crust and there was a constant shower of meteorites. When the Earth cooled down, it formed a crust and oceans and life appeared. When I say "life", I'm referring to very simple life forms, they were able just to replicate. When the right conditions occur, life arises easily, I say this because life appeared soon after conditions were met.

Life is just a natural phenomena, like rain and lightning and rainbows. Life has no equivalent really, although it has some similarities with fire, which also replicates, but without heredity.

There were lots of organic compounds on the Earth, in the oceans. Organisms are composed of organic compounds (carbon based).

The first life forms even replicated badly, which is the only thing they could do, really. They could not even move by themselves. The only thing that mattered was replicating before being destroyed. Some, of course, did better than others and soon the oceans were full of primitive life forms. When they used most of the organic compounds around, competition arose, very primitive competition, but competition nonetheless. They even started to "steal" organic compounds from each other.

Don't imagine that competition and "stealing" were the way modern organisms do. It's similar to how magnets attract iron. You don't need a good magnet to attract iron but a better magnet will attract more. Also, a good magnet can "steal" iron from a worse one. The better was a life form at attracting organic compounds and using them for replication, the better it did.

You can already see that life has a tendency to become better and better at what it does. Evolution is like a ladder, once you climbed the first step, you can climb the second one and so on, increasing in complexity.

An interesting episode in life's existence is the "oxygen catastrophe". One of the most important events in the history of life was the discovery of photosynthesis. It was also one of the deadliest, because it provoked the largest extinction in the history of life. Free oxygen (O₂) did not exist in the atmosphere in the first 2 billion years of Earth's existence. When it appeared, it was deadly for those anaerobic microorganisms. The "oxygen catastrophe" also provoked a "snowball Earth" event, called "the Huronian glaciation", which lasted 300 million years and the whole Earth was covered in ice.

I think we should learn something from this event, that is: life can destroy itself. Also, every end is a new beginning. Humans can provoke a worldwide catastrophe, just as cyanobacteria did back then. Cyanobacteria didn't know what they were doing, they were not aware of the consequences. We know what we are doing but we choose to ignore the consequences.

Most of history, life forms were very simple by our standards, but even the simplest bacteria is much more complex than the first life forms.

Life adapted itself to the oxygen in the atmosphere and even started to use it, most animals need oxygen to survive (including humans).

Life forms were not very interesting (to us) until the "Cambrian explosion", around 530 million years ago. If life appeared almost 4 billion years ago, the first 3 billion years were not interesting, because there were no animals or plants. The Cambrian explosion was indeed an explosion on the timescale of the Earth, because it lasted only tens of millions of years. This may seem a lot to us, but comparing them to the 3 billion years when nothing interesting happened, it is an explosion.

The Cambrian explosion can be compared to the industrial revolution. Technological progress was very slow until then. We have invented in 200 years more than in all the previous millenniums, ever since the early stone tools, 2 million years ago. What happened in both situations? I believe that something extraordinary was discovered, like the steam engine in the case of the industrial revolution.

So, we have:

• 600 million years of simple animals
  
• 500 million years of fish
  
• 475 million years of land plants
  
• 400 million years of insects
  
• 360 million years of amphibians
  
• 300 million years of reptiles
  
• 200 million years of mammals
• 150 million years of birds
• 130 million years of flowers
• 200 thousand years since humans started to look like they do today

These are approximate dates and, of course, they all looked very different in the beginning. In evolution everything is continuous, it's like a flow. You can't really say: here is where mammals appeared. It goes like this: reptiles -> mammal-like reptiles -> reptile-like mammals -> mammals. Everything is like that but we like to classify things, we don't like continuous things.

So, as the observer of the Earth during this long history of 4,6 billion years, what would you see? You would first see simple replicating structures that by competing become better at what they do and acquire new functions, which help them in their survival and reproduction. At one point, you observe that life forms start to produce their own organic compounds from CO_2, water, and sunlight, you observe mass extinctions, most created by natural disasters, some created by life itself. After mass extinctions life starts again to grow and cover the Earth. This is what you would see, life becoming more and more complex, with some mass extinctions along the way but the game stays the same.

The constant is competition. Competition has driven progress in life forms from those simple beginnings to the modern complex organisms we see today. If resources were infinite, competition would not exist and evolution would not have taken place. We are competing for the same resources: organic compounds. Plants compete for light, which helps them create organic compounds from water and CO₂.

See this:
The Origin of Life
Timeline of Evolution

Communism

I don't really know how communism should be but I have some idea how it was in this country. I was born in a communist country, but the revolution came when I was just a child.

Communism was bad but capitalism is worse, at least in this country.

In communism everyone had a home, unemployment did not exist and nobody was starving. Nowadays, I'm just tired of seeing people beg and searching through trash for something to eat.

My mother says that people were nicer to each other in communism because nobody had anything to gain by cheating others. People had enough money to go on vacations every year to the seaside or to the mountains.

There were dark sides to communism, of course. There was a dictator. Sadly, communism has always gone hand in hand with totalitarianism. There was a secret police. There was no freedom of speech. If you were caught saying anything bad about the system or the ruler, you were thrown in jail.

Contraception and abortion were restricted at one point, they wanted to increase the population. This led to abortions in precarious conditions and by dubious people.

It was very difficult to leave the country.

My aunt says that communism was great for a while but in the '80s, the ruler became simultaneously obsessed with repaying external debts and building himself a huge palace. Severe austerity measures were introduced, including food rationing, electricity rationing, gasoline rationing, etc. Most food was exported and what could not be exported remained for consumption. Not only was the food bad at the end of the regime but it was scarce and people queued up to buy it.

While nobody starved, people were not happy and this led to a revolution that ended the system.

Television broadcast was terrible, it was reduced to only 2 hours per day (austerity measures) and only one channel. I remember how people had antennas on buildings and we were trying to catch some russian TV channels to watch some cartoons.

The economy of ex-communist countries crashed alongside communism itself. After the regime ended, everyone took whatever they could, almost everything was dismantled, sold, almost nothing remained. Whatever survived was not competitive with capitalist products.

After the end of the regime, there was a mass flood to the country side. People were given land and they worked it with primitive means. Today agriculture is still mostly of subsistence in this country. During communism, agriculture was intensive, with irrigation systems and modern equipment. Even the irrigation canals were destroyed after the fall of the regime. Industry also collapsed.

The good part is that after the revolution we had no external debt, we've managed to pay it all. Oddly enough, the debt was payed off entirely just before the revolution. Since then, we have managed to gather more and more external debt but our situation has not improved.

Some people laughingly say: "during communism, people had enough money but there was nothing to buy; nowadays, you can find anything but you don't have money to buy it".

My mother says that work in communism is different than in capitalism. In capitalism work is more stressful, the employer exploits you as much as possible. In communism people had a certain amount of work to do every day, they had a norm. Maybe this is one reason why capitalism has been more successful, because it exploits you more than communism. I'm amazed to see that most people work over 8 hours per day, some people have 2 jobs, some people work over 12 hours per day. This is insane! In communism nobody worked more than 8 hours per day.

Nowadays people take loans from banks to buy an apartment and they struggle to pay it back. In communism they gave you a home, just like that, and a job too.

I don't really know how communism should be like. I don't really think that communism has ever existed the way Marx imagined it. I will read more about it and I'll come back to it to make the necessary adjustments. For the record, I'm not for any political doctrine. I just believe that everything should be done rationally, wisely. I believe that the current system is absurd. I also believe that communism (as it was) was absurd.

Inequality

Inequality leads to a lot of problems (source).
More unequal countries have:

• worse physical health
  
• worse mental health
• more drug abuse
• more school abandonment
  
• more imprisonment
  
• more obesity
• less social mobility
• less trust
• more violence
• more teenage births
  

It's ironical that the rich live with the fear of losing what they have, the fear of violence against them (for their money). The poor live with the uncertainty of tomorrow, if they will have the basic necessities of life.

10% of people own 85% of the world's wealth, so 90% of people own only 15% of the world's wealth. (source)

To only way to get rid of inequality is to get rid of money and property, because, if they exist, inevitably some people will have more than others.

A lot of people go on with their daily lives, shopping happily in malls, never thinking that there are people who are starving at that moment. Even people who care don't have real solutions to these problems.

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There are inequalities between countries too. I was reading one day how, on an island (Svalbard), there was a Russian mine and a Norwegian mine, only kilometers apart from each other and the Norwegian workers were earning ten times more than the Russian workers. The Russians were OK with this because they still earned more than they did at home.

In the current system, this inequality is normal. The inequalities between countries are normal and poor countries can't develop in this system.

A poor African country does not have the money to buy equipment to start modern agriculture. So, we are basing ourselves on foreign investment, which means that some very rich people have to go there, buy land and exploit it with modern means. This seems logical, right? Well, it's not. If someone did that, who would they sell the food to? The people from that country don't have the money to buy that food. The reason they don't have money is that they don't produce other things to trade for food (money is just a trading tool).

So, the rich guy can just export the food to other countries. This is not very efficient, because transportation is expensive and food can get spoiled. Not only is it not efficient but it's evil to export food from a starving country.

Primitive agriculture and industry can't compete with modern ones, so they just stagnate.

If we can't start with agriculture, maybe we can start with modern industry in poor countries. This has been done a lot. China and India are good examples. Factories have been built there because the workforce is cheap and qualified. In Africa people are not educated and are not qualified to work in factories. A lot of them can't even read. So, we need to educate them first, before we can employ them but if they are qualified and there are no factories there, it's still in vain.

So, in the current system, I see no solution for them. If you can't make money from improving the world, the world will not be improved. This is the current system.

Needs

We need:

• a home, food, clean water, clean air, warmth
  
• education
• healthcare
• peace
• freedom
• to live sustainably
• to protect nature
• to control the population growth
• modern agriculture all over the Earth (where there is arable land)
• to upgrade the entire world to our current technological progress
• an equal society because inequalities lead to problems (details)
  
• to reach our highest potential
• free access to ALL information

It seems odd that nowhere did I say that we need money or property.

How do we fulfill those needs?
We bring together smart people and we find solutions. When I say smart people, I'm referring to the best in their fields, scientists, university professors, engineers, people with high achievements in science and technology because our problems are technological. Politicians, lawyers, bankers and other parasitic life forms should not have a place there.

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We don't need:

• to multiply like mice
• to destroy nature
• poverty
• trash
• violence
• inequality
  
• pollution
• religion
• politics
• anarchy
• prisons
• slavery
  
• junk food
• drugs (alcohol, cigarettes, heroin etc)
• money
• property
• copyright

Human habitat

Humans have created large cities, with skyscrapers, with millions of people, where little life grows, except for themselves. We have created artificial environments, we have become more separated from nature.

This is the habitat of half the world's population: cement, pavement, steel and glass, where cars create smog, where there's a lot of dust and the air sometimes becomes unbreathable. People live in apartments like rabbits in storied cages. In cities diseases are more frequent and spread faster.

What is life like for a modern human?
They wake up in their cage, they go to work in another cage usually, come home and look at screens and are entertained. The next day they resume the cycle. This is what we've become. Do we see the Sun? Do we see the stars? Do we still look at bees flying from one flower to another? Do we still see the beauty in nature or are we so alienated from it that we can't appreciate it anymore?

Maybe this is why we are so careless with it, maybe this is why we destroy it as we do. We cannot live without nature, although many people believe they can.

For most of human history, humans have lived in close connection with nature. Was that so bad? Is our life better? They suffered from some diseases, from natural disasters but so do we. We have our own diseases and natural disasters still affect us. Human lifespan has grown but at what cost? Maybe we should understand that a longer life doesn't mean a better life.

I'm not saying that we should abandon our cities and move into caves but can't we reconcile nature with technology? I believe we can. Nature and technology are very important parts of human existence and we have no choice but to reconcile them.

Unity

Why am I here? Why am I not in some other country or even another planet?
Why am I here now? Why not in some other era?
Why am I a human? Why am I not some other animal or something else?
Why am I this human? Why not some other human?

We are biological machines and we have a natural programming. We are programed to feel separate, independent, autonomous. This is an illusion, because we depend on this planet for air, water, food, warmth. This planet can sustain life because of the Sun. The Sun is part of a galaxy, the galaxy is part of the Universe. We can live without an arm but we can't live without the Universe.

The Universe is the unity, we are part of it. We may feel separated but we are all one, not just humans, but other animals and plants, bacteria, even rocks and stars and planets. All that exists is part of the Universe.

There is no "I". I don't exist as a separate being, I am part of the whole, along with you and everyone else and everything else. We can't really destroy anything or create anything, this unity has always existed and will always exist in one form or another because energy can't be created, can't be destroyed, it can only be transformed. Matter is a condensed form of energy, so it too will exist forever in one form or another.

Our lives are a blink of an eye in the life of the Earth. The Earth is like a speck of dust in this enormous (maybe infinite) Universe.

If we are all one, why do we feel separated? Evolution favoured selfish genes. A brain that's aware of the unity has no survival advantage, on the contrary, it may even be fatal. When you know that nothing really matters, not life, nor death and this struggle is futile, the most important things in life become pointless. There's no point in struggling for survival if life and death are the same.

Memories help us form identities, if we lose our memories, our identities are also lost.

In many religions, through meditation, a communion with the Universe is achieved. This happens by deactivating a region of the brain. It seems that this region of the brain makes us feel separated.

Everything is an illusion, life and death, love and hate, pleasure and suffering, even reality. As Einstein said: "reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one".

Science tells us that all our atoms come from the center of a star, we are all made of star dust. We will live as long as the Universe, in one form or another. We are all one.

Economy

The economy is basically divided in 3 sectors (three-sector hypothesis):

1. the primary sector (agriculture, fishing, forestry, mining)
2. the secondary sector (manufacturing)
3. the tertiary sector (services)

Economic development has been divided into three phases:

First phase:
This phase corresponds to the Middle Ages and current developing countries, where the workforce is divided like this:

• primary sector: 70%
• secondary sector: 20%
• tertiary sector: 10%

Second phase:
This phase corresponds to industrializing nations. More machinery is deployed in the primary sector, which reduces the number of workers needed. As a result, the demand for machinery production in the secondary sector increases. The workforce is divided like this:

• primary sector: 20%
• secondary sector: 50%
• tertiary sector: 30%
  

Third phase:
This phase corresponds to developed countries. The primary and secondary sectors are increasingly dominated by automation, and the demand for workforce falls in these sectors. It is replaced by the growing demands of the tertiary sector. The workforce is divided like this:

• primary sector: 10%
• secondary sector: 20%
• tertiary sector: 70%

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You might see a pattern here, that is, employment in every sector grows at the beginning and after a while it starts to shrink, because of automation. Nowadays, a few percentages of the workforce can feed the entire world, because of modern agriculture. Industry needs fewer workers as technology advances because they are replaced by machines.

As the first two sectors shrink because of automation, only the third sector is left to absorb the workforce. The third sector has already started its automation.

My mother used to work in a bank and there were a lot of people employed there but one day they brought computers and a lot of people were laid off because of increased efficiency. This is technological unemployment, where technology makes you redundant.

In this sick society it is normal to fear technology because it can replace you. As the third sector becomes more efficient and it needs less workforce, what will happen?

In a sane world, people should rejoice when new technology is developed, because it should make life better and reduce the work hours for everyone. This does not happen. Indeed, the work hours seem to get longer and more stressful.

People fear losing their jobs to machines and to other people (there's always an army of unemployed waiting to take your job). In another interesting twist, people become xenophobic as foreigners are willing to work for less money and are more docile and subservient. Fear makes us lose our dignity. This society is a spineless society.

The current trend is to brainwash people so that they buy more things (which they don't need) so that they can keep this absurd system going. This is why a lot of companies spend more money on advertising than on actual production. This system creates the desire to want more, to want to be rich, to own as much as possible. Of course, as one man owns more, others own less, so, the system is encouraging selfishness. Is this the direction we want to go in?

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At one point the system will fail. That point will be reached when less and less workforce is needed for the three sectors. At that point, unemployment will rise sharply. As people don't have a job, they can't afford some things. The first sector to suffer will be the tertiary one, because people need food more than they need haircuts. They will go less to restaurants, restaurants will close and so on, this leading to rising unemployment and rising unemployment taking down the economy with it.

Employers want to have as few employees as possible, because they will have more profit. As technology will be able to replace more humans, employers will do just that, they will replace humans with machines. So people have to find new things to produce and convince the others that they need them, even if they don't really need them. This is already happening, as the market is full of stuff nobody really needs, but they are convinced they need them.

When supermarkets open, a lot of small shops close, because supermarkets are more efficient and need less workforce than those small shops put together.

The end of the system will be like this: few people will produce a lot but only they (who produce) will have money to buy what they produce, so it will be a closed circle. All the land, all the factories, everything will be owned by them, by those who produce. Nothing will be owned by the rest of the people. So those who produce nothing will try to do stuff for the producers in return for money. This leads to a continual depravation of society, where every service possible is sold for survival and every possible thing is produced and resources are exploited in vain, just to create more trash. Damn, we are here already. Everything can be bought.