Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

AI AND Ai

By now, most people recognize the AI abbreviation: the A = Artificial, the I = Intelligence. Intelligence occurs naturally in us, humans, measured by IQ or Intelligence Quotient, with the average graded as 100. Animals, such as elephants, dolphins, dogs, apes, also, have considerable intelligence.

The burning question today is: “Can machines have ‘intelligence’?”

I guess not. Humans are unique: Made in God’s Image. A machine, a computer, is a factory-made device, can be programmed to simulate intelligence. When I misspell a word – which I often do – my computer warns me, and sometimes correct the error. That’s an inbuilt feature, which I greatly appreciate.

It seems to me that AI is basically a gigantic search machine that feeds on the information stored somewhere out there on a brother or sister instrument. It also seems to me, ignorant, computer-unwise, constantly searching, intense ‘religious’ person, that AI= Artificial Intelligence, is the culmination of human – thus sinful – endeavour to create a god in his/her own image. To achieve that, an ever – increasing mass of God’s buried energy resources – already in short supply and highly toxic – is needed to advance this self-defeating goal.    

Nevertheless, AI systems achieve results by processing vast amounts of data to recognize patterns, adapt to new information, and make decisions or recommendations to reach specific goals: and, in the process, replace lots of working people.

However: crime also keeps pace.

It is a typical human trait that, as soon as technical advances appear,

with remarkable efficiency they are being exploited for criminal purposes, deployed not to expand human understanding but to systematically subvert it. Instead of “democratizing intelligence,” we are witnessing a sort of collective brain damage. My website, www.hielema.ca., is almost daily attacked by evil – mostly Russian – infiltrators, trying to limit its reach.

So, where does Ai come in?

God saw the Jacob clan, entering ‘the promised land’ as his special people, holy to the Lord, an example for the world to follow. There’s where Ai comes in.

Ai? My resource book is the Bible, a collection of books, spanning many centuries of stories in simple language, understandable for us ignorant creatures, that’s why these booklets can give us an impression of God’s way with the human race. In very simple words, the Bible, immense in scope, relays how God created, how we uncreated, and how Jesus, God’s very Son, and also the very human, re-created.

Take Ai.

Notice the difference! The ‘i’ is low-case: not AI, but Ai. There is a Bible Story about Ai. I know, everybody has a Bible, the best-known and least-read book. Actually, the word Bible is Greek, Biblos, simply meaning ‘book’. It also is called, “The Book of books”, because it contains 66 booklets, of which 39 appear in the Older Testament, and 27 in the Newer one.

What happened in Ai, some 3,500 years ago, tells us about AI today. The story is found in the book named after Joshua, the man who succeeded Moses. He was the general who led the conquest of the Promised Land, among which the City of Ai, a small settlement, featured prominently. It seemed to be an easy target for Joshua’s veteran fighting force. But the initial plan misfired, the attack was repelled and scores of God’s people were killed. Suddenly, God, the mighty Lord, had abandoned his army, and God’s name sullied.

What was the cause?

One person’s Greed had dire consequences. Before Jericho’s immense walls mysteriously toppled, God had given specific instructions NOT to use the occasion to extract personal treasures from the ruins. One person, however, discovered a trove of gold, silver and other valuables, and secretly buried them. That one sin, caused the death of scores of people, and damaged Israel’s reputation as God’s chosen race.

The real point was that God’s honor was at stake here. The nation of Israel was (and still is) supposed to be an example for the rest of the world: yes, a city on the hill! It failed (fails) because of greed. Now the church, too, just as Ai, has taken that place: its members ought to be examples of godly living, especially as it applies to God’s Creation, God’s everlasting Created Word.

Back to AI.

Apart from its potential and imminent danger of spreading falsehoods and damaging the human psyche, AI needs the input – a word I dislike – of immense electricity volumes, so much that, since most of them are generated by fossil fuels, Climate Change will accelerate rapidly. Climate change, now beyond repair, is the equivalent to the defeat of Joshua’s army, then a rather minor affair, now a world-wide disaster that will quickly accelerate. Yes, our Greed, too, has dire consequences. Climate Change will cause the unlocking of the gigantic volumes of METHANE, buried in the shallow, already overheated, Arctic Ocean, a gas one hundred times more lethal than the C02 we dump into the finely balanced air mixture we inhale every few seconds.

Just as in “Ai”, God, the sovereign ruler of the universe, today too, is not to be trifled with: his works are holy, his universe is holy.

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AI, GOD AND US.

This past Tuesday, the day after Labor Day 2025, I read Thomas L. Friedman’s 4,000 words essay in the New York Times. It affected me deeply. Friedman, the most senior columnist in this world-class paper, predicted that, unless the USA and China, unite in taming the Artificial Intelligence (AI) monster for the preservation of humanity, our future will be ruled by this machine.

The article reminded me of Jacques Ellul, the author of THE TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY, a book published in France in 1955, and whose 1964 English translation I bought in 1965.

Here is the synopsis the Internet provided.

Dive deep into the chilling predictions of French philosopher Jacques Ellul, particularly his seminal work, The Technological Society. Ellul argues that the true danger isn’t machines taking over, but the rise of “Technique” – the relentless pursuit of optimal efficiency in every human endeavor. Reading it, we discover how this principle, applied universally from industry to psychology, subtly shapes our behavior, values, and even our thoughts. Jacques Ellul explains how this drive for efficiency becomes autonomous, unified, and self-augmenting, creating a system that demands human adaptation, leading to a new, insidious form of enslavement. It explores how Ellul’s concepts of Technique and the technological society reveal the hidden pressures of modern life, from algorithmic feeds to performance metrics, demonstrating how we become optimized components within the very systems we build. Understanding Jacques Ellul provides crucial insights into navigating the modern world and resisting the passive conformity demanded by efficiency. We learn why Jacques Ellul’s warnings in The Technological Society are more relevant than ever in our digital age, and see how Ellul challenges us to critically examine the dominance of technology.

Jacques Ellul was also an extraordinary Christian, who saw the danger of enslavement.

Here is one of his quotes:
“Christians were never meant to be normal. We’ve always been holy troublemakers, we’ve always been creators of uncertainty, agents of dimension that’s incompatible with the status quo; we do not accept the world as it is, but we insist on the world becoming the way that God wants it to be. And the Kingdom of God is different from the patterns of this world.”

Professor Ellul’s prophetic words stir deep resonance within me: they hit me in my guts! They echo Friedman’s prediction, another contemporary prophet. Here is what Friedman writes:

A.I. will spread like a steam vapor and seep into everything. It will be in your watch, your toaster, your car, your computer, your glasses and your pacemaker — always connected, always communicating, always collecting data to improve performance. As it does, it will change everything about everything — including geopolitics and trade between the world’s two A.I. superpowers, and the need for cooperation will become ever more apparent each month.

The above quote reminds me of ‘the Antichrist’, the opponent of the Holy Spirit. Friedman emphasizes that there are two things in the world happening faster than you think: one is climate change and the other artificial intelligence — heading toward some level of “autonomous omni-presence, artificial intelligence, sometimes called superintelligence”.

When will we get there?

When will we get there? “This year, next year, five years — I’m not sure”, he writes. “But I would say the consensus within the A.I community is that we’re going to get there. And that is going to change everything about everything”.  Friedman also writes: “Before there was God and us. Now there is God, us and AI.”

I know this to be incorrect: ‘evil’ was always there: always, in the entire history, there always were God, Satan and us. Now, with Satan kicked out of heaven, he has landed feet first on earth.

It could well be that, just as God is a spirit, AI embodies, as Friedman writes, a vapor a ‘spirit’, unobtrusively invading everything, making AI the ‘new’ God!

We must not forget that history basically is the ‘fight between Good and Evil’.

History started in Paradise, and finds its finale in the End, today’s climax. The struggle basically is ‘who rules the earth’. That “The world today is swept by once-in-a-century transformations,” is obvious: by and large it has succumbed to nihilism: no longer is there a reigning, overarching, ‘faith’ system. The Age of Rationalism is over: Reason is no longer sufficient to enact a lasting future: spiritual understanding has replaced it: AI is the new God.

This means that we must look around us, not with our eyes only, but through the Spirit, giving free expression to ‘intuition’, our ‘inner’ facilities, our ‘gut’ feelings, and so rekindle indigenous wisdom, genuine love for all created matter.

That’s why I reemphasize Ellul’s assessment of ‘the Christian”:

“Christians were never meant to be normal. We’ve always been holy troublemakers, we’ve always been creators of uncertainty, agents of dimension that’s incompatible with the status quo; we do not accept the world as it is, but we insist on the world becoming the way that God wants it to be. And the Kingdom of God is different from the patterns of this world.

And we all say: Amen!

 THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY.

For now, we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 

That’s the King James version of the conclusion of that famous poem, that Ode to Love, Paul wrote, as recorded in 1 Corinthians 13.

Translating is much more an art rather than a science. Here are some other examples of this very famous text:

For now, we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

That’s the New Living Translation, known as the NIV.

Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

That’s how the translators put it in the English Standard Version.

For now, we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

That’s how the American Standard Version runs.

Differences.

All versions differ. Why? Because translating is an art, not a science.

I translated 4 books from Dutch to English, all published by or through Eerdmans in Grand Rapids, Mich. USA. My theory of translating is: an effort to render a foreign text in a new language more beautiful than the original. And I believe that I have somewhat been successful in this effort.

I realize this sounds rather boastful, that’s why the Dutch have a saying: the phrase “Eigen roem stinkt” translates as: “Your own fame stinks”. It means that boasting about your own achievements or taking too much pride in yourself can be off-putting or unpleasant to others. 

But how about if somebody else praises you? I translated Dr. J. H. Bavinck’s book with the Dutch title, “DE MENSCH EN ZIJN WERELD, which the publisher entitled, “Between the Beginning and the End”, subtitled, A Radical Kingdom Vision.

Of the four reviewers, Dr. John Bolt of Calvin Seminary regarded the script as ‘elegant’, while Dr. Charles Van Engen of Fuller Theological Seminary was more explicit, writing, Bert Hielema’s translation is outstanding, readable, fluid, clear, forceful, and compelling.

In his 150 pages book, Dr. Bavinck, a professor of missions at the Amsterdam Free University devoted an entire chapter to the concept of God’s Kingdom, a topic he thought – and I concur – is sorely misinterpreted or misunderstood in contemporary Christianity: totally seen ‘through a glass darkly’.

Why?

Whenever the secular press refers to the outcome of the Christian Life, it sees Heaven as the goal of human existence, a concept totally influenced by Pagan Greek Philosophy. Most of Christianity has promoted and maintained this religious error, to the point where Trump, with the almost unanimous endorsement of The American Religion, has scrapped all environmental protection rules, in full accord with this pagan notion. Not only is much of the Church’s teaching totally wrong or misdirected, its vision has become more than blurred: It has become an obstacle to Salvation. “The Radical Kingdom Vision”, as espoused by Bavinck made him write:

“It is God’s intention to unite all fractured parts of his creation into one overarching harmony. There is no such thing as individual salvation: all salvation is of necessity universal. The goal of our life can never be that we personally may enjoy God and be saved in Him. The goal of our life can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the Kingdom of God, where all things are again unified under the one and only wise will of him who lives and rules for ever.”

In plain language this means that: My salvation and the salvation of creation go hand in hand. That is the “Radical Kingdom Vision” Dr. Bavinck opens up for us. No wonder Jesus lamented, “Many are called, and few are chosen”. (Matthew 22: 14).

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, is there truth in this at all?” 

We should be careful in what we believe for sure. Much of what I was told to be the ‘gospel’ truth – heaven, hell, evolution, doctrines, ‘Sunday best’, the place of women – has darkened in obscurity. Is same sex next?

Today, the mirror has become almost totally black, as Gnosticism rules the church, a heresy the Apostle John repeatedly warned against. Its central point is that spirit is entirely good and matter is entirely evil, making the human body/creation, bad, while only heaven/spirit is good. That today is the church’s ruling faith, in total contrast with John 3: 16, where Jesus categorically states that God’s total love is centered on his creation, hence Dr. Bavinck’s definition of redemption: the salvation of the person and salvation of creation go hand in hand. Indeed: a radical concept.

Did you ever hear that in church?

WHEN BAD NEWS IS GOOD NEWS.

’We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’ Matthew 11: 17.

Gladness and sadness typified the life of Jesus. His opponents called him a winebibber and a glutton. They saw him smack his lips when the wine was to his liking, when the food was just cooked to perfection, when jokes were told, and his laughter filled the room.

Jesus’ words were implemented in his life. His sense of humor, his feelings of compassion was almost an embarrassment to his disciples, but not to the women always in his company who saw in him the real human he was. So, it was no wonder that, in John 10: 10, Jesus urged us to live life to the full: dance when the occasion called for joy and exuberance, and mourn when circumstances required genuine sorrow, when matters go bad, when things go down, when life falls apart and sickness and death overwhelm people’s emotions.

Jesus’ life is a good example for us: When Jesus wandered in the outdoors, he marveled at beauty of creation, and exclaimed: “Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.” Luke 12: 27. Yet, when his friend Lazarus, Mary and Martha’s brother, died, Jesus wept, even though he knew that in the next instance He would call him back to LIFE.  I think, ‘Jesus wept’ because he was confronted with ‘death’, the end of things, something abnormal in His state of being in the Kingdom.

When my mother read this Lazarus story to me as a 4-5 years old, in my innocence and frankness – brainwashed with heaven – I asked my mother, “If life in heaven is so wonderful, why would Jesus deprive him of that pleasure?” I then was thoroughly indoctrinated about the beauty of heaven, with songs such as “In the Hemel is het schoon” (In Heaven everything is just perfect), and “Sluit u aan wie mee wil naar de hemel gaan” (Get in line and follow the ‘to heaven’ sign).

My mother had no answer there, but when she was on her death-bed, she asked me “What will happen when I die?” She wasn’t so sure anymore. What was my answer? Then, at her very end of life, it was no time to explain to her about the New Heavens and the New Earth, so I simply said, “You will be with Jesus.”

CHANGE ABOUNDS

We live in times of immense change, opportunity and finality, a time where we are tested as never before in history, as ‘endings’ are everywhere, endings that call for new beginnings, endings that should make us reflect on what comes next in human history. There is, in the ‘world out there’, increasing agreement that matters cannot go on for much longer anymore, that THE END is near. Yet, just as in Noah’s days, when he and his family were building the ARK, Noah’s actions were ridiculed and declared pure lunacy, so too today, we ignore Climate Change, are blind to the rapid extinction of species, bypass the godlessness of people in power – think Trump and Putin and Netanyahu – are willing participants in our insatiable thirst for earth-destroying fuels. We rather not look at John 3: 16: “God so loved the world he entrusted to us for whose restoration he sacrificed his beloved Son”. It is well worth mentioning that in Matthew 24: 36, the ‘sinners’ were taken away by the Flood, while the believers remained on earth: please note this, you Rapture adherents!

Love LIFE.

If we really loved LIFE – as Jesus did – we should go in mourning and dressed in ashes, and sing death dirges, because, through our way of life we have sealed the doom of God’s beloved world. Jesus once cleaned out the temple, trying to eradicate ‘Commercialism’ there, without success. Our feeble actions to stem the planet’s perdition, now too have become impossible, as, from the beginning, at the very root of society, we went wrong, and ignored the basic ‘holiness’ of creation: God’s gift to us.

Now, for a short time still, the TRINITY OF EVIL, consisting of Putin, Netanyahu and Trump, is calling the shots. All in God’s plan to speed up his reign of everlasting PEACE, the Shalom that has been prepared for us from the beginning.

This bad news really is the good news. Even though the LIE is fast, in race with TRUTH it comes in last. Remember 2 Peter 3: 10:

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare, heralding the onset of the RENEWED COSMOS.

“THE OLD WORLD IS DYING.” 

“The old world is dying,” Antonio Gramsci wrote, “and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.”

He wrote these words after World War I, which ended in 1918, now more than 100 years ago. Then too William Butler Yeats said something similar:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand

Question to myself.

I agree that the old world has died: what sort of new world is expected? Do I have the answer? Stay tuned.

In a sense prophets have no time-line. I suspect that, in his wisdom, (with him a day is as 1,000 years, and 1,000 years as one single day) God wanted humanity to advance even more technologically and religiously. I suspect that God wanted us to bring the entire world to the edge of total annihilation, which Climate Change is perfectly equipped to do. Throw in AI = Artificial Intelligence, nuclear rearmament, and lack of ‘religious vision’, and the possibility of human destructiveness is complete.

 Prophets speak for all ages. Take Isaiah, who envisioned a scenario (Chapter 24) perfectly applicable to 2025:

See, the Lord is going to lay waste the earth

and devastate it;

he will ruin its face

and scatter its inhabitants—

2it will be the same

for priest as for people,

for the master as for his servant,

for the mistress as for her servant,

for seller as for buyer,

for borrower as for lender,

for debtor as for creditor.

3The earth will be completely laid waste

and totally plundered.

The Lord has spoken this word.

4The earth dries up and withers,

the world languishes and withers,

the heavens languish with the earth.

5The earth is defiled by its people;

they have disobeyed the laws,

violated the statutes

and broken the everlasting covenant.

debtor as for creditor.

languish with the earth.

and broken the everlasting covenant.

6Therefore a curse consumes the earth;

its people must bear their guilt.

Therefore earth’s inhabitants are burned up,

and very few are left.

Remember that God’s Creation represents God.

That brings me to “Teleios”

In the ‘sermon on the mount’ Jesus said, “Be perfect as I am perfect”, recorded in Matthew 5: 48. However, I believe that the translation of the Greek word, ‘teleios= perfect’, is open to question. Here is the reason why this is the case: granted the Greek word “teleios”, generally means perfect, complete, or mature, but it can also imply reaching a goal or end, implying wholeness and fulfillment. I am convinced that Jesus had the latter interpretation in mind. Because, as he repeatedly said that in his life he embodied the Kingdom, the New Creation.

“Teleios” has its root in the Greek word ‘telos’ which means END or FAR. We find it back in our language in such words as ‘telephone’, ‘telegram’, ‘television’, all indicating communication from far away.

Jesus’ mission was to prepare us for the New Creation, which he, in totality represented: The Kingdom to come. When Jesus advises us to be ‘teleios’ then he does not ask us to be ‘perfect’ but to ‘live’ in the spirit of the New Creation, where, indeed, ‘perfection’ is the goal.

Yes: “The old world is dying.”

“The old world is dying,” Antonio Gramsci wrote, “and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.”

Well, two monsters met this week: one who sacrifices thousands of young Russian men for pure vainglory, and one who openly defies God in canceling all measures to combat Climate Change, a man who wants to shape the world in his own image, which the Bible calls “The Sin Against the Holy Spirit”, portraying the Antichrist, a sure sign of death, which both men embody. Also, expect ‘natural monsters’ such as storms, heat, volcanoes, hurricanes.

I would love to think people on Earth will join forces to decrease conflict. I would love to think we can give peace a chance. Alas, several thousand years on a planet characterized by conflict allow for little hope in a positive direction. Can we give peace a chance? History suggests otherwise.

The only peace now possible will be brought about by The Prince of Peace, the Great Healer, who alone has the power to do so. “The old world is dying,” Antonio Gramsci wrote, “and the new world struggles to be born.”

Now is the time for that NEW World to come.

WOE, WOE.

‘Woe! Woe to you, great city,

you mighty city of Babylon!

In one hour, your doom has come!’ Revelation 18: 10.

“Woe”, is an old-fashioned word for ‘great stress’. Let me rephrase this Bible text: “Our commerce-dominated world, our AI obsessed society is utterly doomed. We now live on the edge of the ultimate volcano: any minute the most lethal of all outbursts, its monstrous Magma, will totally engulf us, incinerating all that lives to total oblivion.”

What’s happening?

Psalm 50 has an answer:

He summons the heavens above,
    and the earth, that he may judge his people.

The Lord built a ‘revenge feature’ into his creation: Harm the heavens, exploit the earth, and creation exacts vengeance. That’s what we experience today.

You don’t believe me, of course.

Here’s another line: ”You must be ready, because the  Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him”. That is Jesus’ timely reminder in Matthew 24, depicting the earth’s conditions in 2025.Both the apostles Peter and Paul affirm this when they write that the Parousia, the return of the Lord, will come ‘like a thief in the night’.

Just a few examples, something we city-slickers don’t notice:  Already an insect apocalypse is under way. Considering the importance of insects to our daily lives, the ongoing insect apocalypse is very important. Insects pollinate our food, control pests, decompose dead plants into soil, and serve as a food source. They contribute to the cycling of nutrients and are vital for maintaining soil health. Beyond land, they also maintain the cleanliness of aquatic ecosystems.

Another warning: “Already chemical pollution is beyond remedy: it too is a threat to the thriving of humans and nature.”

And then, of course, there is Climate Change: it is advancing and accelerating much faster than earlier predicted.

Don’t kid yourself: Collapse is coming.

Two books confirm this.

In addition to the biblical warnings, there are lots of alarm bells ringing. In 2005, an almost 600 pages book: COLLAPSE, was published, written by Dr. Jared Diamond, professor of geography in Los Angeles. Its subtitle: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.

Being a Collapsetarian by faith – deeply influenced by the last Bible book, Revelation – I bought the book two decades ago. Paid $47.00 (Can.), and here is what I read: “Dr. Diamond traces a fundamental pattern of catastrophe, spelling out what happens when we squander our resources, when we ignore the signals our environment gives us, and cut down too many trees”.

Interesting times.

We live in a time of cosmological chaos. We see hierarchies humbled; we see social norms discarded, we see morality demolished, we see new philosophies emerging, and we see God ignored.

Then there is this new book, discussed in the Guardian: Goliath’s Curse by Luke Kemp. Here’s the opening line:

“We can’t put a date on Doomsday, but by looking at the 5,000 years of [civilisation], we can understand the trajectories we face today – and self-termination is most likely,” writes Dr Luke Kemp at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge.

Kemp’s new book covers the rise and collapse of more than 400 societies over 5,000 years and took seven years to write. The lessons he has drawn are often striking: people are fundamentally egalitarian but are led to collapses by enriched, status-obsessed elites, while past collapses often improved the lives of ordinary citizens.

He notes that today’s global civilisation is deeply interconnected and unequal and could lead to the worst societal collapse ever. The threat is from leaders who are “walking versions of a dark triad” – narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism – in a world menaced by the climate crisis, nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and killer robots.

“It is the few people high in the dark triad who fall into races for resources, arms and status”, he says. “Then as elites extract more wealth from the people and the land, they make societies more fragile, leading to infighting, corruption, immiseration of the masses, less healthy people, overexpansion, environmental degradation and poor decision making by a small oligarchy. The hollowed-out shell of a society is eventually cracked asunder by shocks such as disease, war or climate change.”

Three reasons.

Dr. Kemp cites three reasons why the collapse of the global Goliath would be far worse than previous events. First is that collapses are accompanied by surges in violence as elites try to reassert their dominance. “In the past, those battles were waged with swords or muskets. Today we have nuclear weapons.”

Second, people in the past were not heavily reliant on empires or states for services and, unlike today, could easily go back to farming or hunting and gathering. “Today, most of us are specialised, and we’re dependent upon global infrastructure. If that falls away, we too will fall,” he says.

“Last but not least is that, unfortunately, all the threats we face today are far worse than in the past,” he says. Past climatic changes that precipitated collapses, for example, usually involved a temperature change of 1C at a regional level. Today, we face 3C globally. There are also about 10,000 nuclear weapons, technologies such as artificial intelligence and killer robots and engineered pandemics, all sources of catastrophic global risk.

 “The three most powerful men in the world are a walking version of the dark triad: Trump is a textbook narcissist, Putin is a cold psychopath, and Xi Jinping came to rule [China] by being a master Machiavellian manipulator.”

The global Goliath is the endgame for humanity, Kemp says, like the final moves in a chess match that determine the result. He sees two outcomes: self-destruction or a fundamental transformation of society.

My final comments.

Finally, we have a sober assessment: the forces at work are irreversible. I agree with his synopsis, with one single tiny change:

Self-destruction AND a fundamental transformation of society, to which I add: brought about by Jesus’ crucifixion – John 3: 16.