A Brief History of Humankind

In 2014 I took a history class taught through Coursera. Coursera is one of the Massive Open Online Class (MOOC) companies. The class was taught by Yuval Noah Harari, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The class was AMAZING. One of the things he said was that the time of one country invading and taking territory from another was over, the economic consequences would be too great. The class ended. Russia invaded Ukraine and took Crimea. 


I would have loved to have spoken with him about that and learned his thoughts. If I'd been a student at his university I am sure I could have attended a talk he would have given on campus. 


I looked him up to see what he thinks of Russia invading Ukraine now. Earlier this month he explained the decline in war over the past few decades and expressed that allowing Russia to take over another country by force would end the notion of peace we've come to expect, and end the peace dividend that allows us to put money into schools and health instead of military. 


"This is why the Russian threat to invade Ukraine should concern every person on Earth. If it again becomes normative for powerful countries to wolf down their weaker neighbours, it would affect the way people all over the world feel and behave. The first and most obvious result of a return to the law of the jungle would be a sharp increase in military spending at the expense of everything else. The money that should go to teachers, nurses and social workers would instead go to tanks, missiles and cyber weapons.
A return to the jungle would also undermine global co-operation on problems such as preventing catastrophic climate change or regulating disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence and genetic engineering. It isn’t easy to work alongside countries that are preparing to eliminate you. And as both climate change and an AI arms race accelerate, the threat of armed conflict will only increase further, closing a vicious circle that may well doom our species."
https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2022/02/09/yuval-noah-harari-argues-that-whats-at-stake-in-ukraine-is-the-direction-of-human-history
This adds a new bit to my thinking, which was focused on impacts in Ukraine, potential spillover to other countries, and impacts on energy markets.
This is the card my friend gave to me yesterday along with the origami flower. You know the 3d printers that make things out of plastic or chocolate based on a pattern you upload? She has a machine that cuts based on a pattern you upload. She cut the gold piece into the pattern of a tiger and then pasted it onto a red card.