There are researchers, people working with these issues, people engaged in theses issues due to ideological agendas and otherwise just interested lay men who are focused on today's climate problems and huge investments in military budget spending and (inter)national conflicts and similar problems and what risks they see for all of us in a future perspective. However, we want, as we have already said, to follow in Carl Sagan's (among many others) footsteps and show that there may actually already be empirical results that clearly state that (technological) life, wherever it arises, must be careful with its living, or how it lives.

We have spent two previous parts of this site trying to show what problems Humanity seems to have as an intelligent life form. The first is that throughout our history we have a large portion of us who are indecent and act indecent. We have, maybe nonchalantly, called them ¹⁄₂ (of) Humanity although that is not meant as an exact fraction.
What we mean by indecent is described in the ¹⁄₂ (of) Humanity section. In short it's a personality trait based on a fundamental need for affirmation stemming from inferiority complex and Narcissistic attributes. We see it in our daily lives in everywhere from regime leaders, pod-cast hosts, corporate leaders, gang members and in our work colleague that can't stop talking about when he (or she) won the junior Olympics in tennis, have climbed the Mount Everest or just happened to bump in to Barack Obama and got invited to dinner. We all know the type.
However, the described work colleague is the non-harmful example. The general incentives for these people to get affirmation is making sure that they get the affirmation, that they get a lot and also get frequently. To do so it have been shown that a very easy way to make sure you get the attention or affirmation is to promote polarizing agendas (a we against them), to create false narratives (it's much easier to vitalize and make a story incredible when you can make it up rather that stick to the truth) and to instigate fear or animosity in people. The unfavorable aspect for the 'decent' is that the indecent has got an outstanding new tool (since around 30 years) for connecting the affirmation-need and the different ways to get it. The internet.
Making things even worse are three things.
One is that polarizing, fake-news that establish fear or anger in people have checked all boxes for characteristics of information that spreads fast and to the maximum amount of people.
The second thing is that the ¹⁄₂ of us that we call indecent not only prefer polarizing and false information they don't seem to have the cognitive tool box to even analyze information to validate the truthfulness or analyze anything in a coherent and rational way, regardless of the intention of the cognitive endeavor. Such cognitive dissidents we have previously exemplified with the so-called . For a humanity that need to rely on global minded compassion, solidarity and science to face climate issues and nationalistic agendas, the traits that the indecent display are truly destructive.
And the third issue that makes the destructive narrative for the indecent a problem for humanity's welfare and sustainability, is that the indecent affirmation-seeking personality trait seem to be evolutionary hard-coded.

So having ¹⁄₂ (of) Humanity actively or implicitly counteracting humanity's welfare and sustainability we also have another hard-coded trait with the same destructive aftermath and that is our short-term mindset or SHORTSIGHTEDNESS.
The even worse inherent trait of shortsightedness is that it's not only ¹⁄₂ of us that are evolutionary linked to it - all of us, decent or indecent, lack the ability to think long-term.

The field of research that addresses the conditions for both the emergence of (technological) life but also the maintenance or sustainability of that life is called exo- or astrobiology.
There is only one known life in our galaxy and we therefore only have one empirical object to work with, but it is clear that the way we humans live and the (global) decisions we make play a role in how science views how a potential other intelligent life would manifest itself. That is, it is clear that one realizes that an intelligent life's attitude towards its own long-term 'sustainability' is a factor for the same sustainability.

In light of that conclusion and if you are also someone who considers these issues to be important, you immediately notice when people with pronounced cognitive disabilities*, on a democratic basis, start to be elected to the highest positions in their countries and throughout that process easily and intentionally occupy the top of the previously discussed 'Mount Stupid'. After that note, the leap in thought is not far to the next note that we have actually been in this position before. It was only a hundred years ago that the same top was occupied by another group that agitated for identical agendas in the form of nationalism, bigotry, contempt for science and deliberately made lies the norm for leadership and their form of government. That time it led to a world war, the second in a row. At that point, it struck us, and probably many others, that as humanity we must simply be f-ing stupid.


We as a civilization seem incapable of learning anything and it seems to take 2-3 generations and then it is as if the lessons we may have had regarding war, misery and the consequences of being dragged along by affirmation-seeking leaders who stand up and start screaming like 7-year-olds are blown away.

There are many of us who look at the world, listen to the news and who shake our heads daily because many of the things we hear are so obviously at odds with a sustainable future. And that is again 'sustainable' in its broadest and at the same time deepest sense. Sustainable for us, Humans. So how many of us have thought about "what would the world be like if people like myself were allowed to decide". And that is true. A large part of us could actually make ourselves and the earth be a better place and with a sustainable global resource management and disarmament, if only we were allowed to decide.

But that is not the case.

For some reason, those who create a bad situation, those who make it worse, those who lie and scheme against power and status, those who we often laugh at, always manage to be the ones who reach power and ultimately decide. It is as if it is a universal law that those who govern and thereby determine the political, ideological and economic compass needle are the indecent part. (and if you followed a link here without being introduced to the concepts of decency/indecentness, you can read a condensed summary )

A person in the editorial team of essentiell.org met a close friend a few days ago. A friend the person, without a doubt, would consider to be one of the decent ones. They were supposed to meet to go to a funeral in another city and traveled there independently of each other. The person took the train while the friend took the plane. At breakfast the day after the wedding, our editorial colleague couldn't help but ask why the friend took the plane and not train. The friend simply stated that he could sleep longer and saved an hour in travel time by taking the plane. The editorial colleague also sensed some irritation from her friend and that he cionsidered it hsi choice wether to take the train or fly. No one elses business. ain and n The reaction was a bit unexpected but still consistent with our second main theme on essentiell.org – that we all, regardless of essentiell.org's rough character division of decency, have such an incredibly difficult time both accepting the change in life-style we have to make and thus also our ability to think long-term. What we all seem to have a hard time accepting, or perhaps to a large extent understanding, is that we have already crossed the line for this type of choice.
To use a tiresome analogy - We are all sitting in a bus that is going way too fast towards a cliff. We can no longer demand either "equivalent alternatives" or even that our welfare should be intact. We can no longer say "How can you expect people to buy electric cars when they can't go as far and you have to stop and charge the battery all the time?" We can no longer say "No, in our municipality we don't want any wind turbines that obscure the view" or "...that stand in the middle of a nature reserve." . We can no longer say that "Unfortunately, we have to close down high-speed trains because it's not economically viable" or "...because we have to lower taxes/increase subsidies because people are having such a hard time." . We can no longer say that "It's up to me if I want to take the plane because I would have had to get up much earlier if I had taken the train."

This mindset and attitude undoubtedly comes from our inherent inability to grasp long-term consequences or goals. We can only hope that we understand as soon as possible that it is actually a fact that if we do not do something quickly, our modern global (welfare) society is very likely to collapse. It is that simple and despite its admittedly outdated use, our bus analogy is absolutely correct.
No, it is impossible to assume that there is evidence of a collapse or even what is meant by collapse, but our modern society is not made for a 4°C increase in the global average temperature. Our logistics solutions and the effects 10m raised sea levels would be cannot be described in other terms than catastrophe. And then raised water levels due to melted glaciers, among other things, are probably not the most difficult effect for our society to parry and nevertheless cope with. More details about the effects of Global Warming and scenarios for different temperatures, years and geographical regions on our Earth, are described in more detail in the section on Global Warming under EDU.

So with our hard-coded short-termism and the knowledge that quite a few of us will always act indecently in the backpack, we set out into the interstellar medium.

We know that life can arise on Earth-like planets in the universe. We exist if nothing else. Whether this life thing is something fundamental and a frequent and inherent characteristic of our universe with its physical laws, or whether life on Earth is completely unique, that is the big core question.
We find the molecular building blocks of life, such as amino acids, on asteroids and we therefore assume, together with a large part of the scientific community and without any real scientific controversy, that our earthly life is not unique and that life can, has and will arise somewhere else in the universe. Regardless of how small that chance is, it exists. That that life would then develop into both multicellular organisms and ultimately intelligent life is also possible, even though that probability (of arising plus becoming intelligent) is of course less than "just" arising. And that intelligent life in turn develops a life based on technology is not much less likely than that life succeeds in becoming intelligent, but it is at least a little less likely than that life stops at "just" being intelligent.
If one assumes that we are not unique, and when one weighs these probabilities, one assumes that the big jump in the inherent probabilities is between life and intelligent life, not between intelligent and technological life. One thus expects a significantly lower probability that an emerging life becomes intelligent than that, once a life has evolved to be intelligent, that they also reach a technological era. Which is in line with the intuitive view that this would be the case.

So, no matter how small the probability is for life to arise, become intelligent and then develop into a technological civilization, it is not impossible and as long as one assumes that we are not unique as life in the universe, that probability is not zero.

However, we cannot see any traces of such life.

What then is meant by "traces" of life?
And if it is strange that we cannot detect traces of other life, it depends very much on what kind of probabilities we are talking about?

Everyone completely agrees that a technological civilization is synonymous with electromagnetic radiation (at least during some phase during the lifetime of such a civilization).
Electromagnetic radiation is everything from what we generally call radio waves to gamma radiation and within an incredibly small part of that spectrum there is also what we commonly call "light" and includes all wavelengths that we can see with our eyes. Click here for a schematic picture of electromagnetic radiation.

On the site in general and in the argument that follows, such life or such a civilization is categorized as "radio-active". The reason is definitional. A technological civilization is defined as a society that is based on processes that must 'leak' radiation in everything from passive internal communication processes to active attempts to notify the rest of the universe that "we exist!". We try to communicate that "we exist" to our galactic surroundings both by sending out radio pulses with a content that a receiver cannot misunderstand as background noise or other random radiation that occurs in our universe, but also through the space probes of the "Voyger 1-2" type that we have sent out on interstellar missions.

Radio-wave radiation is the type of radiation that has the longest wavelength and thus the least energy-rich and thus the radiation that is least likely to interact with "obstacles in the way" and thus be able to reach us and reveal that 'they exist' (or "we exist!"). It is therefore primarily the type of radiation that we are looking for with our enormous radio telescopes.

Our own electromagnetic radiation traces, or 'radiation leaks', which began with the first radio transmissions in the 1910s, have now reached about 110 light-years away from us. That is, our own tracks have barely taken up even a fraction of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, and it will not be until about 80,000 years from now that our signals will have reached all parts of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. So if there are other technological civilizations in our galaxy, it will be 80,000 years before we can be sure that they know that we also exist.

Please take a look at the following web pages with graphic content that gives a better explicit understanding of what our galaxy looks like and the distances we are talking about. National Geographic here and the following descriptive image, image source unknown.

In any case, the reason we haven't detected any signals from other life in our galaxy is not due to any major technical limitations and that the telescopes and instruments we have are bad or that they don't meet some limit of resolution or sensitivity. They do. So we should be able to detect such signals, if they existed.

But we don't.

In that respect, it is not surprising that the famous Italian physicist Enrico Fermi (1901-1954), also known as the father of the atomic bomb, addressed this situation with the now famous words "Where is everyone?"
Also known as Fermi's Paradox

We talked earlier about the probabilities that life could arise on Earth-like planets in our Milky Way galaxy. The consensus was that the probability is not zero, we know that because we exist*. Then that life would develop into intelligent life is associated with another probability. And that intelligent life in turn then develops technology and thereby becomes radio-active and therefore becomes detectable with our radio telescopes, is in turn associated with another probability.


If one could make reasonable assumptions about the probabilities involved, one could actually estimate a purely statistical number of places (planets) that are home to intelligent life in our Milky Way galaxy.
And scientists have of course already done that.

In 1961, physicist and astronomer Frank Drake gathered together the knowledge that was available about the probabilities we discussed earlier in an equation that has since been called Drake's equation, or the Drake equation.

• N = N = the number of places/planets other than Earth that we could discover and are or have been "radio-active". N is therefore the answer to the question posed by Professor Drake.
• R^* = How often are stars formed? R is given in the number of new stars in our galaxy per year
• ƒ_p = the proportion of these stars that also have planets
• n_e = number of planets per such system that lie within the "habitable zone". In our own solar system this would be 3, Venus, Earth and Mars
• ƒ_l = the proportion of these that actually develop life, even if it is only as a single-celled small bacteria-like life form.
• ƒ_i = the proportion of these that develop into intelligent life.
• ƒ_c = the proportion of these that develop into technologically advanced or "radio-active".
• L = the lifespan of radioactive life. So not the lifespan of life per-se, but only the length of time that such life is radioactive and thus expected to be detectable.

In short, the equation is about calculating an estimate of the number of planets that develop life and that also have a technological age that makes it "detectable". We have called such a civilization "radio-active" as in being active (and emitting) radiation within basically any frequency such as radio, microwave, X-ray, gamma radiation and so on, but for practical reasons it is precisely radio radiation that is easiest to detect and therefore tries to capture with huge radio telescopes.
As an example: The broadcast of the news of the assassination of JF Kennedy's brother Robert Kennedy in 1968, reached all newsrooms around the world within fractions of a second after ABC Radio's broadcast that day. However, radio signals spread like an expanding sphere in all directions (in space), not just towards the receiver of course.

Although the newsrooms were reached by the sphere of radio waves with the information within fractions of a second, it took about 1.2 seconds for the inhabitants of the Moon to be reached by the news of the murder. And if we were to assume for the sake of argument that there is intelligent and technologically advanced life on a planet in the star system Gliese 738, which is located approximately 50 light-years from Earth, they would have also been reached by the shocking news a few years ago (2018).
It is also easy to see that such information exchange also works in the opposite direction. That is, if the number of civilizations (N in Drake's equation) is large enough, the probability is also higher that we can expect to discover traces of such a civilization. So this would mean that the news of the sad passing of Princess Ȝ´ơƾ Ƈħƺŧƣƨ from the kingdom Ɯŧƣɣħƪ on Gliese 738, will soon also reach Earth. The tragic death occurred 50 years ago, but that is the rate at which information exchanges occur in the interstellar community (as we know it).

We have therefore been "radio-active" since the beginning of the last century (≈ 110 years) and have been broadcasting news and all kinds of information and radiation noise around the clock from all over the Earth, which can be detected within the sphere of star systems that by definition lies within ≈ 110 light years. If humanity had been 10,000 years old as "radio-active", that sphere would have had a radius of 10,000 light years.

We must assume that the estimates of the terms included in Drake's Equation are reasonable and well balanced against the knowledge we possess in those areas. With increasingly powerful telescopes in all wavelengths and with increasingly higher resolution, we can see further and better into the universe.
We can thus estimate with great accuracy the values ​​of:
= how often new stars are formed in our galaxy per year
= how many of these (star systems) have planets, and...
= number of planets per such system that lie within the "habitable zone"

The two factors with the absolute most built-in uncertainty in the estimate, besides (the proportion of planets within the habitable zone that develop life) but we will return to that term, is in (the proportion of planets that develop life also evolve into intelligent life) an (the time that such a civilization remains 'radio-active' and thus the time with which the civilization is thus detectable at all).
Why is it not = the proportion of planets within the habitable zone that develop life, is it also subject to great uncertainty? It may be. However, it is believed that life is either extremely rare or common. That is, that term is either close to zero (0) or 'not close to zero'. And the general consensus is that it is believed in the latter and note that even a proportion of let's say 10-20% (0.1 – 0.2) is considered a high proportion, or probability, for life to arise on the habitable planets.
It is believed that life, even if that life remains as single-celled bacteria-like life, is relatively common and that the term is then clearly distinct from close to zero. The great uncertainty therefore lies in the factor that estimates the development of intelligent life.
Since this was originally written, another interesting article has been published about the Drake Equation where is addressed in a new way. Feel free to read about that article here.

But, even if one relatively conservatively estimates the two factors with the greatest uncertainty, one arrives at a number (N) that is so large that there is some reason to exclaim with Enrico Fermi "Where is everyone?". The quantity N is therefore so many that we should easily discover them. Where is the error then? If the N of the left-hand side is estimated too high, then one of the factors of the right-hand side must also be estimated too high, that is, either , the probability that life will also become intelligent or , how long a time span that civilization is technologically viable.

We have already discussed the Drake Equation and that it obviously should not be seen as an exact measure of the number of places in our galaxy that not only achieve consciousness or intelligence but also become technologically advanced like us. Drake's equation does not even assume that there is any other life besides our own civilization. Since we only have our own civilization as "measurement data" and not really a clue about how common life is, we must of course take into account that the Drake equation is just guesses, qualitative ones, but still just guesses. What the equation does is that it functions as a way to put the question on the table and create a debate around questions and probabilities around, life, how, when, where, it arises. But also how long and whether it achieves intelligence.

The Drake Equation is thus not seen at all as a comprehensive equation and the terms are both incomplete and uncertain and Physicist Sara Seager has, for example, proposed a modified variant that takes into account the proportion of planets that exhibit a spectral signature of so-called 'Biogas'. This means that in a spectrum (analysis of the light emitted/reflected from a planet) one sees traces of gases and molecules that are considered essential for the emergence of life.
When this is written, a similar discussion is underway regarding Venus where 'Phosphine' has recently been found which is considered to be the result of active organic life.

The reason why we still attach importance to the equation is because the term must be included in any modified version of the equation that is considered the "best".

Since we have two factors with the largest margin of error and , the fault probably lies in one of these, so
...either intelligent life is very unique or

...such civilizations are simply not particularly long-lived on average.

That is, the estimate we get of N (which is obviously too high) is due to our estimate that L is too high.

Drake explicitly urged us to create debate about life and the evolution of universal such and we choose to see it from the possible aspect or the risk that we (universal life, we) on average do not manage to survive very long. If we follow that idea, there is an inherent property of life that, once it achieves a certain measure of technological standard, it acts in a way that is so fundamentally unsustainable that it relatively quickly sends its civilization down to a societal standard where they are no longer "radio-active". And that this property is thus inherent in intelligent and technological life, wherever it arises.
is not the lifespan measured in years for a civilization or life per-se but the lifespan for how long the corresponding civilization remains technological or 'radio-active'. So, if it were the case that the average lifespan for technologically advanced life seems to be universally low, it does not automatically mean that we will exterminate ourselves. Only that we will stop being 'radio-active'.

However, we had another factor that was fraught with great uncertainty, = how many of the planets that develop life also evolve to intelligent life. The error, or why we cannot detect traces of intelligent/technological life, which we should if N is correctly calculated, could absolutely be due to that factor being misestimated (or, more crudely, any of the terms involved could be misestimated). It thus does not have to have anything to do with misestimating how long a technological civilization stays technological, i.e. ..

But should we really take a chance on that?

If we really think about it and analyze our world and quickly glance at our history, doesn't it seem possible that our civilization actually has excellent credentials to collapse on its own accord?
We think that we should, just to be on the safe side, consider that this could be the case. Suppose that the way we live does not work so that we can continue to live with the standard we are used to.
The internationally known physicist Carl Sagan, who is remembered for us 70s people for his fantastic, both book and TV series in the 80s, 'Cosmos', thus devoted a large part of his life to considering Drake's term L. He saw signs in both our history and our present that led him to take a strong stand on environmental and sustainability issues, as well as against our nuclear armament and our enormous arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Like us, he wanted us to consider that the very term is the limiting factor in the equation and that we should thus start acting and following all the compass needles that point away from a situation that can lead to climate catastrophes, war and the collapse of civilization.

ALL conflicts, ALL armament, ALL deforestation of rainforests, ALL polarizing ideals, ALL prejudices, ALL online hate and ALL short-term use-and-throw consumption, originates from an indecent person's easily offended and affirmation seeking personality and that person's compensatory actions. The rest of us, decent people, must start standing up for decency. We must, before it's too late.

To summarize the previous paragraph: There is a probability-based equation to estimate the emergence of technologically advanced life, for all practical purposes here called 'radio-active' life (= ) in the Drake equation. is the number of 'radio-active' planets that support life.
If we focus only on terms , which we have justified why we choose to do, gives a value of L between 1000 and 100,000 years a number which means that we should be able to detect some life with our radio telescopes

Which we don't.

Even one of history's most famous physicists, Enrico Fermi, considers this fact controversial:

Also known as Fermi's Paradox: we should find life, but don't.

Among several possible reasons why N is apparently overestimated, we consider the idea, or indeed the risk, that it is , the average lifespan of technological life which is overestimated. Incidentally, it is not a new or original idea. The big question is ultimately, ok how big is then?

Given that the purpose of the Drake Equation is actually to create debate and stimulate research initiatives about life and the factors that are incentives for that life, it does not feel relevant to provide precise information on . However, this has clearly been done and the number of planets harboring intelligent technological life lands in the domains where we should see traces of them and space would be filled with a lot of intergalactic gibberish and we would be well acquainted with the fallout of a multitude of royalties and galactic intrigues (not just from Gliese 738).

The term occurs within a large range in common stipulations of the Drake Equation, ranging from 300 years to 10⁹ years, and in the original calculations in 1961 it was stated be within the interval 1000-100,000 years.
In order for to really be in the upper regions of that interval, however, one must either assign substantially different values ​​to the other terms or adopt a series of ad-hoc solutions, such as the prevailing consensus that technological civilizations not wanting to be discovered.

essentiell.org chooses to see it from the aspect that is in the lower regions of the specified time interval and is rather measured in centuries. As we have previously stated, we are not alone in the ideas that, especially in our time, are not seen as anything controversial at all and the already mentioned Carl Sagan but also Drake himself were involved in similar hypotheses.

You have now taken part in the core of essentiell.org's ideas about the state of the world and now leaves it to a reader what it considers important and whether one tries to do something about the situation we seem to have found ourselves in.
We only have one earth and one example of life and that must actually be taken into account when reading about the conclusions we draw. We have no idea how likely it is that we are right in them!
But we still think that we are building a strong hypothesis whose consequences we believe we cannot afford to dismiss. Think for yourself and start living and acting as if we are right!

Even though the decent, substantiated and universally valid essentiell.org ends with those words, below follows a controversial section of text that has to do with how we can start acting to eliminate at least some of the threats that ¹⁄₂ of us are exerting against our survival.
Please read, but we warn that many of the following sections of text may be perceived as indecent and we can conclude that not all theses are as well substantiated as we might have liked. If there is a psychiatrist out there who feels interested in these questions and also knows the subject, do not hesitate to get in touch and contribute to our conclusions. Consider yourself forewarned.

As the previous section concluded, the average lifespan of life that achieves a certain technological standard risks being relatively short, even so short that it measures centuries and, as I said, we have already "used up" just over 100 years of that lifespan.

If we expect that intelligent technological life only survives a couple of centuries on average (at least as a technological one), what could be the reason and what signs do we see today that are in line with such reasons?
We of course believe that it is important. And that more people should consider it important.
If a technological civilization ceases to be visible or leaves traces detectable by other civilizations in our Milky Way, there are three main reasons why this could happen:
We've touched on it, but one reason could be that they don't want to be discovered and simply make sure that the amount of radiation such a civilization leaks into space is as limited as possible.
We may be a technological civilization based on a technology that does not use processes that leak radiation. It is unclear to us what technological advances this requires, but it is certainly not impossible that after a few centuries of technology that spews electromagnetic radiation, we will move to processes that do not.
Or, to some extent the opposite of point 2, civilization degenerates developmentally so that it "returns" to technical solutions that do not leak radiation. It is difficult to think of reasons why such a development would occur intentionally, but a degradation of technology to such a large extent can probably only occur due to a catastrophe and a collapse of civilization of some kind.

That essentiell.org believes that the risk is high that it is point which is the reason why intelligent technological life seems to be universally short-lived is because of all the worrying signs we see in our world and our time. And of course the reason why a reader is reading this right now.

Why or what could be the cause of such a civilizational collapse?
We have made it one of our core questions and main points that even if we were to list everything that could go crazy, from global wars to global heat death, all of these are just secondary effects of having half of our civilization that is indecent. For a reader, it is probably as obvious as for us that the people who cause all the shit in the world, all the Trumps, Putins and Bolsonaros and all those who embrace their indiscriminate lying, resource exploitation, polarization craze and violence-promoting ideology – they are the primary cause.
We must therefore not continue to sit next to the indecent and keep re-acting to all the lies about QAnon conspiracies, blood-drinking pedophiles who rule the world, that vaccinations are a way to control humanity, that science has a conspiratorial as well as political agenda to mislead and take over the world, the earth is flat, about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Zionist rule, that JFK is alive and collaborating with Trump, etc. etc. and there is no stopping the madness that is now increasingly growing in our societies in the Western world.

It does not matter what we respond to this with or write in "our" decent media. The indecent are fundamentally completely 'Fact-resistant' due to a cognitive impairment and this is, as we have already addressed earlier, not a half-hearted allegorical expression, these people belong to a category of people who have put aside, or otherwise lack, the cognitive instruments required to perceive the world objectively and truthfully. Creating a "Fact-Checker-Portal", like the Washington Post, of Trump's lies is completely pointless as it is just a way to preach to the already saved. The latter applies to all forms of treatment or forums for so-called "de-bunking". No one who is intended as a recipient will realize, or want to realize what the truth is and how the world is made.

We probably have to do something else about this before it is too late and instead of reacting, start acting.

But what is this "something else" and how should we act?

To begin with, there is a strength in itself in realizing that we are actually half of our planet's population who immediately perceive a person like Donald Trump as an overgrown baby. That is, for real. It is half of our planet's population who understands that the reason aspiring leaders and critical voices in China are put in prison or that Alexei Navalny dies of "natural causes" in a prison in Siberia is only because Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin lack something and have a deep-seated inferiority complex that makes them demand confirmation through their exercise and retention of power. So we are half of humanity that actually, immediately and fully considers these people to be mind-bogglingly ridiculous and clearly in need of confirmation.
Small people, simply put.
And if we think about it, our insight into how we perceive this other half's behavior in everyday life is completely obvious. Just hearing an indecent person open his or hers mouth immediately make it obvious to us that "this is a person who is obviously half-baked". And that's putting jokes aside.

This is a more important observation than you might first realize. A person who (unconsciously) seeks affirmation would avoid all ways of seeking that affirmation if it were obvious that they are seeking it.
Or perhaps expressed like this:
A person who needs to feel a little superior to others would not act compensatorily if it were obvious that the need itself existed...because then you admit that as a base level of self-esteem you perceive that you are a little below the base level and need human interaction and affirmation to get over that level. Or even more explicitly, it would be embarrassing if it were obvious to others that you are seeking affirmation to compensate for a inferiority complex and that you actually feel quite small. And since it actually is so obvious in everything from the work colleague's "-Oh, you know, I won the youth olympics in tennis and was ranked number 1 in my teens" to Trump's "-Nobody's ever been more successful than me." and the one who gets to continue to the next sentence: "- I know a lot of famous people!", we have stumbled upon a way of acting.


There is no way a person could say "- I Know a lot of famous people!" if that person realized that in a nano-second it would be perceived as lame and affirmation seeking by the recipient of such sentences. Even though it sounds obvious, there is a very important aspect to this fact that we must realize and start to utilize.
Imagine that you as a decent person would utter sentences like:
"- Oh you know, I know a lot of celebrities" or "- My friends usually say that I cook better than a Michelin restaurant". or "- I am someone who drives extremely well and my driving instructor always said that I was the best he ever had and didn’t really need to practice." or "- I have one of the highest IQ s in existence so Mensa hade to adjust the scales accepting me as a member!".

It is so insanely embarrassing to even think about saying such things and it is astonishing that those who actually say these things don’t understand that it sounds so incredibly corny.
And as we have already mentioned it is equally astonishing that half of the recipients of Trump's word sallad don't recognize it as incredibly corny and also elected him president and at the same time be consider him humble and moral. Or it's not astonishing at all but the same thing or because they are the same (breed).
And as we have already mentioned, it is equally astonishing that half of the recipients of an indecent person's affirmation speech do not recognize it as incredibly ridiculous and if we take Trump as an example again, not only do they not think it sounds insanely ridiculous, they act as if it were the opposite and elect him as president with justifications such as that he is humble and moral. Or it is not surprising at all but is the same thing, or expressed with better resolution - because they are the same "race"* (of indecent):
It's really something that is actually missing from an evolutionary cognitive perspective.

* As in the way Viktor Frankl used the term when dividing humanity in the decent and indecent.

We have already pointed out the editorial team's lack of psychiatric expertise, but we are still sure that we have a causal connection here. Even though all the above-listed examples of what an indecent person can squeeze out of themselves in everyday life sound innocent and at most cause the recipient of the statements to feel a bit embarrased, we are more certain than ever that we have evidence to call them indecent.
The lack of parts of the cognitive toolbox causes these people to either directly or indirectly cause everything we would colloquially say miseries-in-the-world" such as:
hate crimes, gang crime, conflicts, misery, corruption, war, polarization, cheating, armament, harassment, starvation, greed, violence, intolerance, environmental problems, mistreatment of women, genocide, devastation, fraud, rape, racism... and much more.

These people are therefore dangerous. Always have been and will continue to be.

And it seems that we actually have a way of acting to mitigate prominance of indecent behaviour.

We know that so much of the world's misery is driven by this need for affirmation. Even if, for the sake of the global holistic view and in our heuristic approach here, we exemplify with world leaders like Trump and Bolsonaro, this inferiority complex and need for affirmation manifests itself in all of the above - again:

hate crime,

gang violoance/criminality,

conflicts,

misery,

curruption,

war,

polarization,

cheating,

increase armament,

harassment,

starvation (implicitly),

greeed,

violence,

intolerance,

environmental problems,

domestic abuse,

genocide,

deforestation,

fraud,

rape,

rasism

...and much more.

This is an important conclusion that we have only previously rushed past with all the examples of indecency on the internet, resistance to facts, polarisation zeal and short-sightedness etc. in the personal pattern of action and how such a person can behave. But it is clear that this indecency also manifests itself on a macro level, or communal level might be a bette word. And that the consequences collectively of indecency have both created and continue to create many of the things we are listing now.
We can take gang crime as an example. In Sweden, the latter category is highly topical with an explosive increase in gang-related violence and murder. If we look at it more closely, for example, you can hear people in this world use expressions such as
"- He looked at me disrespectfully!" or
"- He didn't show respect!", to justify violence. Or to flaunt on social media large bundles of money, expensive alcohol, fast cars and beautiful women. What is called is extremely important and honor and respect are words used in the criminal gang world. In reality however, such words are far from being tainted with real ethical positions but rather as means to guarantee the availability of confirmation, mostly via fear or suffering. There is clearly no common honor or respect in shooting 12-year-olds, someone's mother or someone's wife who is out walking with her stroller.
For a clinician in psychiatry, the entire structure and pattern of action in gang crime is a stemplate of how inferiority complexes and the need for confirmation stand as check boxes over the entire phenomenon. We use the term "lilleputt" syndrome* in appropriate parts of the text below.

* From the book 'Gulliver's Travels' by Jonathan Swift where Gulliver comes to the "Lilliput" land where all people are tiny compared to Gulliver.

The connection to confirmation and/or inferiority complexes is of course neither new nor controversial. References can be found here, here and here. Although the above paragraph only gives one example of the multitude of related areas we can influence if we just start acting, we clearly find the indecent people's great need for affirmation behind pretty much everything we can point to as "misery" in the world and which we have already listed above.

hate crime,

gang violoance/criminality,

conflicts,

misery,

curruption,

war,

polarization,

cheating,

increase armament,

harassment,

starvation (implicitly),

greeed,

violence,

intolerance,

environmental problems,

domestic abuse,

genocide,

deforestation,

fraud,

rape,

rasism

...and much more.

Yes, there is a point in repeating everything negative that we are absolutely certain is the result of the lindset and actions of those we label indecent.

We have already touched on a possible at least partial solution. And if we continue with the example of gang crime , that solution may become more obvious if we recapitulate an earlier section that contained something like the following sentence:


That is: If it were globally recognized and accepted by everyone that a (violent) reaction due to another person "looking disrespectfully" at you ("optics" of making a person suffer)- is because of poor self-esteem and inferiority complex. A normal, decent person with good self-esteem does not care about interpreting exchanging looks.
Or...
If it were globally recognized and accepted by everyone that a wife-beater beats his wife and needs to feel superior to his/her partner to get confirmation - is because he has poor self-esteem and inferiority complex. A normal, decent husband with good self-esteem does not need to feel superior to his wife.
Or...
If it were globally recognized and accepted by everyone that regimes or leaders get rid of political opposition, ban free journalism/speach, etc. because that person needs power and the "optics" of power to gain affirmation – happens because of poor self-esteem and inferiority complex. A normal, decent leader with good self-esteem has no need for power by itself.
Or...
If it were globally recognized and accepted by everyone that all forms of conflict-inciting actions by regimes or leaders are carried out because a "us-verus-them-conflict" concentrate and maximize the “optics” of power to gain affirmation – occurs due to poor self-esteem and inferiority complex. A normal leader has no need for power as an end in itself.
Or...
Here we believe the point is made and how one can at least begin to act to respond to some indecent behavior.
If it were globally recognized and accepted that people who instigate or practice violence almost exclusively do so because that person lacks or at least has a deficient self-esteem. The key word in the previous sentence was “instigates”. So all violence, whether it is a bare-knuckle bar fight between 2 people at 2AM or an offensive war with an army, it is always initiated by (a) person(s) who fundamentally lack self-esteem and crave affirmation in the interface with the surrounding people. Regardless if it's other customers in the bar or people as in fellow country men in a war.
It can be the power of seeing the fear of the person one is threatening with violence (the person who starts a bar fight is obviously doing so against an opponent one sees is insecure and one knows is inferior) or it could be a more indirect path towards affirmation in a political leader who starts a conflict or war. In the latter case, the affirmation lies both in consolidating one's power but also in the fact that conflicts and wars provide much greater scope for getting rid of opponents of opinion, whether political ones or, in modern society, media and journalistic platforms. The macro perspective of the need for affirmation in a context of war also coincides with the small bar fight in that the person who instigates the conflict expects a profit and therefore sees in front of him an inexhaustible supply of popular affirmation from the half of the people who, like the leader, are synonymous with the indecency we have raised.

There is hence a great deal of misery that is created through the "liliput-syndrome" that can be avoided.
In all areas where one can unequivocally point to a behavior where the root is poor self-esteem that stubbornly needs to be compensated with affirmation via indecent actions – in such areas the above pedagogical hypothesis will work.
After all, there is no one who desires power, admiration and affirmation who wants a lilleputt syndrome stamped on their forehead.

Let us therefore speculate that, from the 1st grade in school, something like the following lesson would be included in the curriculum in a primary school class:
"-There are people who need to hurt other people in order to feel good about themselves. These people feel like little kids deep inside compared to other people, regardless of their age. We can call such people "liliputs" in a reference to one of the people Gulliver met during his travels.
In order for such person to stop feeling like a 'liliput', and instead feel normal and good like other people, that person has to inflict pain or anger or fear in other people. It's not enough to be yourself because they feel like a liliput. What these liliputs do instead is to take on a role and just pretend that you are the opposite of what you feel. So, instead you pretend that you are the boss and tough.
Maybe you have someone in school that are bragging a lot or maybe bullying other kids. That is a liliput.
For adults, there are many ways liliputs can pretend. It can also be to brag a lot or you have to show off your money or you have to show that you have a fast car or pretty girls or that you have a big house.
If you are a liliput, it means that you have low self-esteem and low self-esteem means that deep down you feel a little like a small person or less worthy than other people. Unfortunately, it's not always that such a person is only bragging or wants to show that they are the boss, sometimes they want to make other people afraid or even beat them. Such liliputs usually say that they want 'respect'. They can for example pretend that someone looks at them with 'disrespect'. Liliputs say these kind of things so that he gets a reason to either beat someone or make them feel fear or in the worst case even kill someone.

This kind of behavior is usually done by liliput boys in the age of 13-30 years. However, they can't confess that they feel small inside and actually feel inferior and need affirmation so they often motivate this kind of behaviour with words like 'honor' and the need for 'respect'.
This is beacuse people need to feel something, need to create feelings in other people. Normal people get that from love or kindness, self-esteem or real respect. But liliputs lack all that and must replace that emptiness with any feeling they can get. Regardless if its fear, sorrow or anger.
This type of liliput is of course not only in gangs or in music videos with money, guns and fancy cars and women. One can also see the same behavior in boys who beat their wives or girlfriends. They do it for the same reasons and because they feel like a small boy inside and lack self-esteem. They need to feel power over their girlfriends or wives. By creating fear in their woman, they get power. And fear they create by hurting them both on the body or in their heads making them sad or scared. When they see the fear they get a rush of so-called 'confirmation' of power. That 'confirmation' then fills their empty bucket of self-esteem and personality.
And its not only the boys in gangs or the boys in music videor with money and guns and the boys who beat their wifes or girlfriends, It's also boys who often become presidents or prime ministers and leaders or bosses in their land. They can start wars and they can kill other persons who also want to be leaders so that they can keep the power. The need for power is actullay one of the other things that can fill liliputs empty personalities, when they lack love, kindness, self-esteem or real respect.
Of course, not all presidents or bosses are liliputs, but most liliputs want to be presidents or bosses.
You may wonder why we say 'boys' and not 'men' when it is usually adult men that we see doing these things because they feel like liliputs. We do it on purpose and because these boys do not have fully developed personalities and brains."
We can listen to the following to make that point: (only in Swedish unfortunately) It's a man, possibly gang related, screaming and threatening a police officer while making sure initially that his friends are filming so that his tough behaviour later can be displayed in social media.

Or a clip from TikTok if the above don't work.

Previously we hade a clip showing a bully liliput who was about to fight another boy and then publish the clip online. The words used, the different height and weight between the assaulter and the victim had all the hallmarks of a liliput.
The assaulter had friends backing him up, his 'crew', he was a head taller and more muscular than the victim and he asked his 'crew' if they were filming. All with the intent of creating fear in the victim, showing how tough he is in front of the 'crew', creating a sense of power and superiority and also aiming for online publication to show and get likes from other liliputs who enjoy and probably does the same thing.
If we instead look at this clip, we can hear that the voices are dark and that it is an adult man who is talking, but if we had only had the words in front of us, we could just as easily have thought that it was a 5-year-old who was fighting with another 5-year-old in the sandbox at kindergarten because the other 5-year-old had accidentally pushed the first one. There are other things that make us understand that it is probably an adult and that is that he uses bad swear words, but you probably understand what I mean when I say that it is not real adults who are talking, but boys who have stopped developing and lack something in their brains called self-esteem.
You also hear that the boy who is screaming asks another boy '- Are you filming?'. That is exactly what we mean by attention and confirmation. The boy who is screaming wants as many people as possible to hear and listen to this video so that they can see how tough he is. Or that he is 'the king of this neighborhood' as we used as an example before.
The whole purpuse for the liliput is to fill his own empty bucket of self esteem and having an inner sense of inferiority. The only way to compensate for the inferiority and lack of self-esteem is to provoke other types of feelings that might create fear and hopelessness in the victim and function as substitute self-esteem feelings.

Yes, a reader understands what we are aiming for and even if we have tried to chosen words and tone to mimic addressing a primary school class, there might certainly be other, better or at least equivalent, pedagogical or corresponding possibilities to achieve the same result - which of course is that it should feel ridiculous slash childish!.
It should be globally recognized and accepted that the behavior we describe is childish, ridiculous and is only carried out because someone needs to compensate for inferiority complex and low self-esteem. The idea is to introduce a subject in school, perhaps within social sciences, which is re-occuring and maintained through the entire school system where this is emphasized and repeated.

Assume that it would become globally recognized and accepted that people who are both drawn to the lifestyle of gang-related behaviour and violence, are so due to poor self-esteem and inferiority complex. Or as we have chosen to call it – the "liliput syndrome". Gangs and the extremely silly 'honor' and 'respect' attributes would be recognized as the need for affirmation and only display such a person as a liliput and having a feeling of inferiority.
Gang related crimes would disappear in half a generation. Guaranteed.

We clearly realize that there is a proportion of both adults and children who suffer from low self-esteem and who actually need help and not to be associated with being indecent by society. That is however not the only problem with the reasoning above and the ideas described:
One, having an inferiority complex that is relieved by external affirmation is a clinical diagnosis that many have and it is absolutely not our intention to expose such a diagnosis as something negative and malicious per-se. It is the connection to an indecent and, not infrequently, criminal compensatory affirmation behavior due to the inferiority complex that we want to illuminate and eliminate.
Two, the obvious fact that we are re-discovering the wheel both when we identify the problem that we have affirmation-seeking individuals in our society who cause problems for us but also the realization that these individuals would clearly not like to be described as affirmation-seeking.
And three, there are a number of areas beyond those listed above where the described solution is not quite so simple. How do you, for example, link reckless exploitation of natural resources or perhaps deforestation of the rainforest to something negative that the person doing this does not want to be associated with? Or how do you act against the enormous 'click-bait industry' whose sole purpose is to spread conspiracy theories and lies to create distrust and polarization in society in general and methods such as science specifically?

For one, we already answer in the statement and numbers two and three we would like to elaborate and make the final words in our PROPAGENDA.

We realize that we have hardly stumbled upon completely new incentives for either how our society works and why we have major problems or novel ways to counteract the effects of having half of our humanity that actively risks putting an end to that same humanity.
Making it clear from early school age that people act indecent, why people act indecent and why this is potentially harmful to society and suggesting counter measures, is of course not a new or revolutionary idea.
But we have to start somewhere and we therefore believe that the threat to our humanity from the indecent is so serious that it justifies why we must both realize that it indicates that it is an innate functional variation and that decency must begin to be included as a cornerstone of our school system.
It must be globally recognized and accepted that indecent behavior is not accepted.

Moreover, we have already devoted an entire section to this topic, but in short, the only reason we still have objective and relevant news portals is because we have 2, but soon only 1, generations that grew up with completely different information platforms and thus know which portals or channels to rely on for objective facts. (speaking in general for the Swedish media landscape which differ from other western countries but the point can be made still)
We have also made the observation that the amount of information and 'facts' you are fed today is extremely much larger than before and the only reason that a reasonably correct worldview still exists among the younger generation is because there are these 2, soon to be 1, generation(s) that function as frameworks and walls around the younger generation's thoughts.
We, the editorial team's own experiences, are thus increasingly faced with our children's questions that begin with
"- Is it true that...?"
Although this was not the intention, Kellyanne Conway's response to an interview question was that there are "Alternative facts" a vastly greater truth than in the sense she intended. In many ways, quite the opposite. She saw it as a way out and a reasonable answer to a question she knew she couldn't answer truthfully. But it is also just as much completely true, we have an immense amount of 'alternative facts' that we are all bombarded with daily.

Oxford Dictionaries, as mentioned in a previous section, already chose the 'word of the year' for the "Post-truth era" in 2015. essentiell.org believes that this situation is much more dangerous than it may seem. We actually live in a world "beyond the truth". In a world where truth is no longer the truth but can be fully justified substituted for an alternative truth, often also filtered through a personal "common sense".
This scenario is as frightening as it is insane, and we therefore believe that we must start reacting to this because everything can be justified when there is no template for truth, and even if there is, we have a growing proportion of the global population who do not know how to find it.

As it is now, the destruction of a rainforest can be justified by the fact that the consequences of such destruction are simply "fake news".
A country can invade another country and justify it by saying that it is ruled by "neo-Nazis" and is a legitimate historical and demographic part of the invading country, and all obvious facts that claim the opposite* are swept away by the simple "It is fake news!".
A president can lose an election in an otherwise law-abiding Western country and claim that the loss was the effect of election fraud. The response to information that could show that this was not the case, after serious investigative journalistic work, is swept away with the same easily accessible "It is fake news!" and immediately gets half the country's population into the same mindset.

A sentence that takes 1 second to say, "It's fake-news!" eradicates the entire value base of man in a fundamental way. You create a narrative that is in line with your own or an ideology's worldview and they are just as true as anyone else's. The result of that is a completely lawless society and not only or mostly lawless in any legal sense but a society that erases the entire basis of human values ​​in a fundamental way. And of course the bar is also generally lowered in society when it is so easy to justify a conclusion that is so changeable and completely modifiable with respect to the goal.

In a previous version of the site, we had a formulation here like this: "soon we will be in a situation where the entire value base we considered to be in danger will also be cemented in a state system where school curricula are simply rewritten to suit and benefit a regime to achieve a goal." There we are now. A country ruled by indecent people has done exactly this. References here and here.

We must therefore, in the countries we can and still have the opportunity, put an end to "alternative facts". We are really afraid of what the lack of a common and accepted truth will do to our society, and please read civilization, because that is of course one of essentiell.org's core issues and purpose of connecting this with the term in the Drake equation.

What do we do then with the indecent behaviors that are difficult to draw parallels to "ridiculousness"? And how do we get rid of indecent people who create their own truth from alternative facts to achieve goals or justify their indecent behavior?

• troll factories must be hunted down and closed down*.
• Polarizing, xenophobic forums, blogs and podcasts online publishing objectively false information must be are being hunted down and closed.*
• harsh censorship and 'punishment' for false information flows. There must be some form of derogatory attribute on someone who, like a 7-year-old, can't keep his fingers in check and click that 'share button'. If anything can work, maybe it's...
• The incredibly strong ability of search algorithms to create information bubbles must be removed. Advertising and 'click-bait' in search engines must not be the purpose of the algorithms, but simply what it should be: The best (true) match
• free 'subscriptions' or similar for objective, truthful media (while we still have some), for students from 1st grade onwards
• In school: Mandatory lessons from 1st grade on what is true and false regarding current important news events and issues. Also source references to serious sites with a decent agenda.
• In school: What is science? That science is actually a methodology that is not necessarily objectively 'True' but still the method that results in a theory that currently best describes the reality we live in.
• In this polarized world we need a joint or common institution that presents facts. A UN funded platform that is simply setting the template for an objective truth.**
• ...essentiell.org would be happy to come to your school and lecture about this

* Since we are on the brink of a possible welfare collapse as a result of both Global Warming and troll factories instigating local and perhaps global conflicts, we may need to review constitutional obstacles to quickly imploding this type of activity.
** To put an end to false information, 'alternative facts', troll factories and conspiracy theories, a globally independent body (preferably UN-funded and -based) must exist that can be recognized by all camps as a guarantor of objective truth. As soon as a platform, vlog or other (social) media that gains ground presents false information, it is challenged directly within its own forum to its own audience and shown to them, on their own terms, how and why the information is not true. This institution must be so globally recognized and accepted that a denial of its authority or a refusal to interact with it is taken as an admission that one is spreading falsehoods.
To get there, we must have a societal, not to say civilizational, definition of "truth". That definition must also be recognized and discernible as objectively true. Historically, this dilemma has taken care of itself when external or objective definition of truth was simply science and research, but that is no longer the case. Which a large part of this site has devoted a lot of words to showing.
In the best of worlds, all media platforms (from state television to personal TikTok^® channels) in order to obtain a broadcasting license, would have to sign an agreement to always be obliged within the same platform to interact with this 'truth institution' when it challenges the platform about a published statement.
It's a long way to the global goal.
To start somewhere, essentiell.org will therefore launch a site called "Truth button".
One of our editors came up with the idea when as a child he always wished he had a truth box with a button on which you could ask things and get a true answer. So you asked the box, pressed the button and got a true answer from the box. We will launch this section during 2025 and in the mean while welcoming questions from anyone and about anything and we will answer it truthfully with no political correctness or "wokeness" who some people would describe it.
mail us at info@essentiell.org or directly to our science editor mats.enstero@essentiell.org.

And folks regardless all the words here, don't forget that the indecent could actually cause the end of humanity and that we could already have the empirical evidence for that by not finding ANY traces of other life in out galaxy. Although we should (unless we a totally alone).
These people who are categorized as indecent must be prevented in a much more dogmatic or consistent way from causing more problems for us (others) in humanity. We recapitulate as the finla conclusion of this site:

hate crime,

gang violoance/criminality,

conflicts,

misery,

curruption,

war,

polarization,

cheating,

increase armament,

harassment,

starvation (implicitly),

greeed,

violence,

intolerance,

environmental problems,

domestic abuse,

genocide,

deforestation,

fraud,

rape,

rasism

...and much more.