May 4, 2012
VIDEO: The Joy of Stats
I just watched a video clip from a recent BBC show, The Joy of Stats. In it, Professor Hans Rosling charts over a hundred thousand points of data and presents one of the most inspiring, original, and eye-opening four minutes that I have ever seen. After watching a video like this, it’s hard to argue with the fact that things are better today for more people on the planet than they ever have been!
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Andrew Cohen is a spiritual teacher, cultural visionary, founder of EnlightenNext, and the author of 
Very uplifting and heartening. Thank you for posting this.
The video is visually very effective. The trends are clear. What isn’t are the veracity of the underlying assumptions. When the global limits of tolerance are reached in systemic terms, the trend line may not extrapolate linearly in the upward right direction. There may well be ‘bucking failure’, both in individual countries, and in collective geographies. The graph may then look like a load-extension graph of material fatigue, as the ‘strings’ that hold together the earth gradually give way to environmental collapse, ecological imbalance, economic system atrophy, social unrest and technology-induced destruction.
This is where consciousness and culture need to play the crucial role of overall bounce-back and upliftment.
Andrew … This video only talks about material wealth. How about the needs of the Soul, are we doing better ? I don t really get what you are up to with those stats and material technological progress. What is the big New idea here ?Indeed there will be some more wealth and more technology Hummm maybe, maybe it will, etc… But will it ensure alone that spiritually we are better ? If yes my dear, we don t need spiritual teachers anymore… scientists alone will dictate the future will tell what is good, beautiful and true, and only stats will be the ultimate temple of Truth.
My view :Spirituality shall unite with the scientific paradigm if anything really New has to emerge. This video is completely naked on any allusion to spirit. Only technological factors and yes tech growth is exponential at the moment. Yes it is awe inspiring, but it lies only in the technological realm.
Are you ready to give scientists and their stats a blank check ? My advice as a scientist : think twice because stats is the only thing we have in our pocket . We still need spiritual teachers.
Ok a more scientific view. Exponential s do saturate always. technology material wealth and human computation abilities at the moment in a state of exponential growth. This WILL saturate at some point . The only question is to which state will it saturate and can we influence this state. The video seems it imply that we don t have to do anything and that tech growth by itself leads to progress in all domains. With all due respect I beg my right to doubt this. volition need consciousness behind and again one doens t have the right at the moment to leave the field mcompletely open to scientific paradigm alone ( which means that’s the Soul is never mentioned that only material growth is the drive for evolution) . this video is in that camp.
I would like to offer another though about the idea of survival and evolution. I agree with Spiritual Teacher A Cohen when he says that the human drive for survival is very different than the human drive to evolve. Survival is always colored with fear while evolution not necessarily. Now my scientific insight here is that we know from the theory of phase transition that every sudden change of state ( also called emergent state) is preceded by extmely strong fluctuations ( infinite, actually this infinite is the characteristic of the phase transition). If we transpose this theory into the theory of evolutionary leaps it is inevitable that sudden evolutionary changes will be preceded by turmoil, fluctuations. This fluctuating state also called critical state inevitably will revive the human instinct for survival, and since we are very good at surviving, I feels this is a good thing, not a bad thing. The tech world is in an exponential growth, hence a phase transition will happen for us.We human feel this and our instinct of survival is revived. This is good. To me the only relevant question is whether we an and have an obligation to. Influence the emerging state.love, C