DEDICATION
Billions of people around the world struggle to survive on meager income. For the longest time, people in the West were fortunate enough to enjoy a high standard of living. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. While some westerners are still able to strike it rich or land high paying jobs, most are struggling.
This essay introduces new ideas which will pave the way for an economic recovery and is dedicated for people around the world who are enduring hardship, yet; still make a great contribution to humanity.
In every culture, ordinary people are ignored. While there is nothing wrong with honouring the few that make it to the top, we must always remember that without an educated and knowledgeable public, geniuses like Edison or Einstein would not have been created.
Scientists and artists can only evolve with an evolving society. This is why for thousands of years no one had heard of moving pictures, incandescent lamps or nuclear energy.
The reason Edison and Einstein had succeeded in tackling these subjects can be attributed to the work of many brilliant minds who were considered to be pioneers in these respective fields. For instance, electricity and the electric motor was invented by Faraday. Without these inventions, Edison would not have thought of inventing any of his gadgets.
Conversely, without the work of previous physicists, such as Newton and Maxwell, it would have been impossible for Einstein to come up with any new theories or formulae.
What is also important happens to be the forgotten common people. Inventors and scientists could go nowhere without an educated literate public. They need an educated public to make use of their new gadgets, otherwise their inventions and theories would never see the light of day.
Their ideas are kept alive by the ordinary people who take an interest in studying them if not find them practical in lively applications. Unlike a herd of stampeding cattle, humans are strung together like a poem where every word counts. It is the composition of words that results in a great poem. It is the composition of society that determines the level of civilization.
Reaching a higher level of civilization begins by improving the living condition of all citizens of the world. The first step toward reaching this would be by establishing a prosperous economy that provides meaningful employment for anyone willing to work.
It is my hope that one day humanity will be able to reach a higher level of civilization and begin to include employment among other human rights. We must look at every person as an asset or a force, not just during wars but when we are enjoying peace as well. The value of a human being should not appreciate only when he or she is forced to defend the nation and play the role of hero.
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NOTICE TO THE READER
This work has been edited to the best of my ability. In my view, the interaction that takes place on the internet has eliminated the need for a professional editor. Please feel free to comment on any aspect of this work. Unlike printed materials, internet publishing is very flexible, changes and additions can be quickly made once they are detected or deemed necessary or useful. Please forgive the errors, these essays were written in the office of a grocer while answering phone calls, serving customers and supervising staff.
CHRONOLOGY
The first time I began thinking about writing a book with similar topics to this one was forty-two years in the past. The place was Beirut. Back in 1975, at the beginning of the civil war I was in complete shock to witness the destruction of a beautiful country by its own people.
Lebanon before the civil war had many problems, however, the people, regardless of their religious beliefs or political persuasions were friendly, polite, well mannered, peaceful, educated, open minded and generous in the extreme. At twenty-four, I was a young entrepreneur managing and operating a small food warehouse.
It was by coincidence that I had an opportunity to deal with merchants and suppliers from every religion the country had known. Lebanese bankers ran a tight ship and took very little risk, if any, in conducting their business.
The food retail market relied heavily on food importers and suppliers like the Tabbarah family to extend credits to smaller warehouse operators like myself who in turn extended credit to small food retailers. Even when the war broke out, this arrangement remained intact and did not collapse until at least a year later.
Ever since I got involved in business with my late father, who taught me the ins and outs of the trade, I remember dealing with Jewish suppliers, Muslim importers and needless to say Christians. I say that because most people who heard about Lebanon may assume that as a Christian born, I would only be dealing with suppliers of the same creed.
Truth is most Christian suppliers tended to be less competent and aggressive than their Jewish and Muslim counterparts. Noticing the change in the behaviour of people that took place after the war, and witnessing first-hand the atrocious acts of violence committed by Muslims and Christians on innocent by-standards, dealt me such a devastating blow that I started to believe that humans were of a lesser species than animals.
At least on the surface, this may be the case; however, things turned out to be a lot more complicated than this simple observation. From a physiological and an anatomical perspective, we are deficient when compared to other living forms, but not so when it comes to our collective thinking and creative ability.
In 1976, by sheer luck, I was able to immigrate to Canada. Despite starting a business and putting in over eighty-hour work week for decades, the question of our status as an intelligent species never left me. In 1993, I began writing a book on the environment which I finished in 1998.
Although I had published two books in the past, it did not seem to me that any publisher would be interested in publishing this one. I must clarify that the previous books were published on my own. While seeking a publisher, I began asking myself why anyone should bother with talking about the future and what is the big deal if humankind failed to survive on this planet.
From 1998 to the end of 2005, I added a new part to the original book and changed the name from the Environmental Revolution to a different one entitled Immortal Species. This came about after I reached the conclusion that nothing in this universe gets to be completely destroyed, and humans are no different.
After a period of reflection and debate, I found it compelling to answer whether humanity would be able to survive beyond the destruction of this planet. Soon after starting the work on the third part, I started to notice that whatever we do in life is somewhat connected to survival - from the way we behave, to the reason we tend to explore and discover, to everything else. I cannot remember exactly when I had made the decision to change the title to SURVIVAL THE ULTIMATE MISSION.
I must admit that my first intentions were restricted to examining ways and means which would help modern societies around the world free themselves from their dependency on oil and fossil fuel. Since the purpose of the essay was meant to save humankind from self-destruction, the old thoughts about our frailty as a species resurfaced.
After studying the way, we survive and behave compared to other living forms, my views on the human race started to take different shapes than the ones developed during the war. I am glad to say that thanks to the major events that took place in the last few decades, the most remarkable of which was the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the rise of China and India, I have come to discover a new type of species we call humanity.
I have come to the conclusion that although we may not have been a superior species in the past, we are in principle at least, hard wired to be one. As a matter of fact, if we put our act together, we may be the only immortal species on the planet and may be in the universe.
Indeed, despite a history tainted with blood and violence, our accomplishments and the role we play in this universe are enough to justify saving us if not convince us that by virtue of the universes we create on our own, we have also become a parallel immortal universe.