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This is the most dangerous time for our planet Stephen Hawking

This is the most dangerous time for our planet

Stephen Hawking

We can’t go on ignoring inequality, because we have the means to destroy our world but not to escape it

 Illustration by Nate Kitch

As a theoretical physicist based in Cambridge, I have lived my life in an extraordinarily privileged bubble. Cambridge is an unusual town, centred around one of the world’s great universities. Within that town, the scientific community that I became part of in my 20s is even more rarefied.

And within that scientific community, the small group of international theoretical physicists with whom I have spent my working life might sometimes be tempted to regard themselves as the pinnacle. In addition to this, with the celebrity that has come with my books, and the isolation imposed by my illness, I feel as though my ivory tower is getting taller.

So the recent apparent rejection of the elites in both America and Britain is surely aimed at me, as much as anyone. Whatever we might think about the decision by the British electorate to reject membership of the European Union and by the American public to embrace Donald Trump as their next president, there is no doubt in the minds of commentators that this was a cry of anger by people who felt they had been abandoned by their leaders.

It was, everyone seems to agree, the moment when the forgotten spoke, finding their voices to reject the advice and guidance of experts and the elite everywhere.

The concerns underlying these votes about the economic consequences of globalisation and accelerating technological change are absolutely understandable. The automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining.I am no exception to this rule. I warned before the Brexit vote that it would damage scientific researchin Britain, that a vote to leave would be a step backward, and the electorate – or at least a sufficiently significant proportion of it – took no more notice of me than any of the other political leaders, trade unionists, artists, scientists, businessmen and celebrities who all gave the same unheeded advice to the rest of the country.What matters now, far more than the choices made by these two electorates, is how the elites react. Should we, in turn, reject these votes as outpourings of crude populism that fail to take account of the facts, and attempt to circumvent or circumscribe the choices that they represent? I would argue that this would be a terrible mistake.

This in turn will accelerate the already widening economic inequality around the world. The internet and the platforms that it makes possible allow very small groups of individuals to make enormous profits while employing very few people. This is inevitable, it is progress, but it is also socially destructive.

We need to put this alongside the financial crash, which brought home to people that a very few individuals working in the financial sector can accrue huge rewards and that the rest of us underwrite that success and pick up the bill when their greed leads us astray. So taken together we are living in a world of widening, not diminishing, financial inequality, in which many people can see not just their standard of living, but their ability to earn a living at all, disappearing. It is no wonder then that they are searching for a new deal, which Trump and Brexit might have appeared to represent.

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 ‘In sub-Saharan Africa there are more people with a telephone than access to clean water.’ Photograph: Andy Hall for the Observer

It is also the case that another unintended consequence of the global spread of the internet and social media is that the stark nature of these inequalities is far more apparent than it has been in the past. For me, the ability to use technology to communicate has been a liberating and positive experience. Without it, I would not have been able to continue working these many years past.

But it also means that the lives of the richest people in the most prosperous parts of the world are agonisingly visible to anyone, however poor, who has access to a phone. And since there are now more people with a telephone than access to clean water in sub-Saharan Africa, this will shortly mean nearly everyone on our increasingly crowded planet will not be able to escape the inequality.

The consequences of this are plain to see: the rural poor flock to cities, to shanty towns, driven by hope. And then often, finding that the Instagram nirvana is not available there, they seek it overseas, joining the ever greater numbers of economic migrants in search of a better life. These migrants in turn place new demands on the infrastructures and economies of the countries in which they arrive, undermining tolerance and further fuelling political populism.

Together, they are a reminder that we are at the most dangerous moment in the development of humanity. We now have the technology to destroy the planet on which we live, but have not yet developed the ability to escape it. Perhaps in a few hundred years, we will have established human colonies amid the stars, but right now we only have one planet, and we need to work together to protect it.For me, the really concerning aspect of this is that now, more than at any time in our history, our species needs to work together. We face awesome environmental challenges: climate change, food production, overpopulation, the decimation of other species, epidemic disease, acidification of the oceans.

To do that, we need to break down, not build up, barriers within and between nations. If we are to stand a chance of doing that, the world’s leaders need to acknowledge that they have failed and are failing the many. With resources increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, we are going to have to learn to share far more than at present.

With not only jobs but entire industries disappearing, we must help people to retrain for a new world and support them financially while they do so. If communities and economies cannot cope with current levels of migration, we must do more to encourage global development, as that is the only way that the migratory millions will be persuaded to seek their future at home.

We can do this, I am an enormous optimist for my species; but it will require the elites, from London to Harvard, from Cambridge to Hollywood, to learn the lessons of the past year. To learn above all a measure of humility.

• The writer launched www.unlimited.world earlier this year

NATURALCAVE

Learning Yoga on Your Own: Best Tips for Success

by LYDIA NOYES NOVEMBER 25, 2016Few things in modern times have been culturally appropriated as quickly and completely as yoga. What was once a relatively obscure Hindu spiritual practice in east Asia has become a mainstream form of exercise for overworked city dwellers everywhere.

It’s easy to scoff at the widespread popularity of yoga in the western world, but the truth is that millions of people are drawn to yoga because it offers them something that is missing from their daily lives: inner calmness, total body awareness and the ability to exist in the present moment. In other words, yoga can restore to your life what a chronically over-scheduled, cell phone-addicted existence has been destroying for years.

If you are feeling stressed, overwhelmed or exhausted with the pace of your life, yoga can slow you down. You might be astounded at the difference that intentional mindfulness can make in the quality of your daily routines, even if they stay just as hectic.

What is yoga?

Yoga is an extensive collection of Hindu spiritual practices that are focused on melding together the mind, body and spirit into feelings of connection with the rest of the universe. The word yoga means ‘union‘ and is used to describe the melding together of the consciousness of the individual with the consciousness of the universe. Western yoga typically draws inspiration from Hatha Yoga, a yoga path that emphasizes physicality.

Despite the physical element of mainstream yoga, it’s wrong to think of the practice as an exercise; rather, it is a philosophy focused on returning our bodies to a state of balance and health. Though the mind can be deceptive and trick you into believing lies about itself, your body can only present itself to you exactly as it is. For this reason, fundamental yoga begins by fostering a deeper connection with the body.

A brief history of yoga

The philosophy of yoga began over 15,000 years ago and the modern interpretations have been credited to the Indian sage Patanjali who lived two thousand years ago and created the philosophical guidebook ‘Yoga Sutra‘ from a collection of 196 yogic poses and chants. This guidebook is the foundation for most of yoga that is practiced today.

Today, yogic scriptures contain over 84,000 poses and variations, making the field of yoga so large that even experts always have something new to try.

The health benefits of yoga

In recent years, studies have found that the benefits of yoga go farther than simply connecting you with yourself. Yoga is a fantastic way to improve your strength, flexibility, balance and aerobic fitness, all without using anything more than your body and a mat.

There are plenty of physical benefits of yoga that make it a smart way for you to exercise your body.

Stress relief

Yoga allows you to live fully in the moment, which can provide enormous relief if you are stressed about things that are beyond your control. Intensely focusing on your breathing can help you to detach yourself from concerns that aren’t grounded in reality and instead allow you to live in the present.

Strength and stamina

It’s wrong to think that yoga practitioners don’t get a strength workout, they just lift their bodies instead of weights! Yoga poses rely on leveraging your own body weight around, meaning that your core and shoulder muscles will be activated and get a great workout. For many people, yoga can be just as effective for gaining muscle mass as traditional strength training.

Flexibility

The essence of the physical side of yoga is stretching your body into different poses that are always just beyond what is comfortable. Over time, this improves flexibility and strengthens your muscular-skeletal system.

Better body alignment

Practicing yoga regularly can lead to improvements for anyone suffering from insomnia, back problems, digestive problems, or wanting to lose weight.

Getting started at home: What you need to know

One of the best little-known secrets about yoga is that you don’t need to live close to fancy studios to get involved. A home yoga practice gives you plenty of health benefits, and cultivating your own routines allows you to fit your yoga into your schedule, rather than changing your life to comply with a pre-set class time. Even if you can only spare ten minutes in your day, that’s enough time to start a meaningful yoga practice from home that will make you feel more empowered and centered.

Remember, anything that’s worth doing takes practice, patience and a strong level of commitment. Practicing yoga by yourself means that you don’t have the accountability of a class to keep you motivated, so your resolve to get on the mat everyday will need to come from within yourself instead.

The tools you need

You don’t need much equipment besides your body and your breath to practice yoga, but a few key supplies can make your practice easier.

• Yoga mat: mats are an essential tool for yoga, and a proper mat will give you good grip while also defining the space for your practice.
• Straps: Especially helpful for beginners, straps can help you reach the parts of your body you aren’t flexible enough to access otherwise.
• Blankets and blocks: these props help with flexibility when you can’t properly complete a pose. They can be used for elevating the hips or creating the space to do extensions when your hands can’t reach the floor.
• Yoga balls: Though not often used, some yoga practices require balls to help with stability, balance and strength.

Online resources for cultivating your practice

The beauty of the internet age is that you are no longer limited by where you live. There are some incredible resources online for practicing yoga, and many of the best ones are completely free on YouTube. Each instructor will have a slightly different style, so it’s a smart idea to try several different websites until you find a practice style that resonates with you.

Below are some of the top online yoga programs to get you started.

• Do Yoga With Me: This massive website relies on donations to provide high quality yoga content that ranges from full beginner classes to power and prenatal yoga and even meditation. This is a comprehensive site with a little bit of anything which should keep your practice interesting.
• Be More Yogic: Premium access to this site will cost you, but you’ll be able to benefit from hundreds of yoga videos that are filmed in beautiful locations around the world. This site relies on only a few instructors, so you’ll get to know your favorites really well.
• Yoga with Adriene: Adriene’s yoga channel has over a million subscribers, which isn’t surprising because her teaching style is clear and engaging, which makes you feel like she’s right in the room with you. For the beginning Yogi, Adriene’s 30 Days of Yoga challenge is not to be missed.
• Yome: This comprehensive search site has indexed hundreds of quality yoga videos that are all sorted by level, style, and even the part of the body they target. You could try a new routine everyday for a year and still not go through them all.
• Interval Yoga: If you’ve been comfortable with yoga for a while and are looking for a strength workout to go with your practice, Interval Yoga might be your style. These powerful yoga sequences are designed to get you buff, and a new video is posted every week to keep you motivated.
• Yoga House: If you are more interested in exercising your body than exploring its connection with the universe, yoga house is a great channel to find workouts that challenge you physically.

Best tips for success

The best online yoga program won’t do you any good if you can’t get yourself to stick with the program. Getting into a long-lasting yoga habit can be hard, but if you follow these steps you are likely to succeed.

• Figure out the timing that works for you: Both our bodies and our minds need to commit to a routine to make it stick, so try to maintain a specific yoga practice time everyday. After you’ve gotten in the habit of a daily practice, both your mind and body will crave your practice at this time.
• Make your practice space sacred: Have a spot in your house that is perfectly set up for yoga. It can be a corner of your bedroom or an empty hallway, but make it feel like YOUR space so that you stay eager to return to it.
• Start in silence: Even if you don’t intend to meditate, take some time before the start of your routine to commit an intention for what you want to accomplish. This both helps to center you on your primary feelings and gets you prepared to have a high quality practice.
• Practice on an empty stomach: Yoga involves lots of stretching, which can be uncomfortable when you’ve just eaten a big meal. To keep things feeling good, make sure your last time you ate was at least two hours before your practice.

In summary

Yoga is a powerful practice to incorporate into your daily life, and you don’t have to go to a fancy studio to start experiencing the benefits. By cultivating a home yoga practice through online instruction, you can teach both your body and mind to be more present and to live a more joyful, engaged life.

If you’ve got an internet connection and a few feet of floor space, you’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain by committing to your own personal yoga routine.

'It shocks people that I refuse to lie': what parents tell their children about Santa

Is it wrong to encourage Santa Claus stories? Or is this what Christmas is all about? Here, a group of parents discuss their approaches

 ‘My sons think it’s strange some parents go along with the Santa story.’ Photograph: Hannibal Hanschke 

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Spoiler alert: this article may ruin childhood dreams

Christmas is just around the corner, and with it comes excitement about the arrival of Santa. But academics Christopher Boyle from the UK and Kathy McKay from Australia warned against going too far when it comes to the Father Christmas myth. They said the Santa story can lead children to distrust their parents.

For many, however, 25 December wouldn’t be the same without the big man in red. We asked parents whether they worry about perpetuating the Santa Claus story, or if they feel it’s a rite of passage for children. 

Alfred Piers Walter, 69, from Provence, France: We rented Santas every year to come over on Christmas Eve

My children were born in quick succession, from 1988 to 1990. So all three boys are close in age. This meant that Christmas was a big deal – and until my youngest was 11, I would rent a Santa to visit them all.

It didn’t cost too much, but the quality of the Santas really varied. They would come on Christmas Eve. Some would make a huge effort and really look the part, while others had very poor beards and bad costumes. One guy that really stood out was around 60; he was very magical and convincing. He even carried a decorated wooden stick. To this day, I ask myself whether he was the real deal. 

Santa would visit for around half an hour, and give the children gifts from his sack. The boys were really excited, and each year they’d make a list of what they wanted. We still have the lists today.

Eventually we realised that we couldn’t keep renting Santas – and that’s when we started sending our children a letter from Father Christmas. In it he said that he couldn’t come any more, as younger children needed him more. The kids were not upset by this; they understood.

Now my boys are adults, we never talk about the Santa myth. Telling them it was a lie would somehow ruin the magic, even though they are all grown-up. One of my sons is now a father himself and I think he will keep up the tradition with his child.

Andrew, 58, from Invergordon: My children think it’s odd that other parents pretend Santa is real

There wasn’t an occasion when we had to sit our boys down and explain that Santa was not real. We just never pretended he was – in the same way we don’t pretend that Woody from Toy Story or Batman are real. 

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 ‘We just never pretended to our boys that Santa was real. In the same way, we never pretended that Woody from Toy Story or Batman were real.’ Photograph: Andrew from Invergordon

I don’t remember anybody actually accusing us of being bad parents because of this. When the subject cropped up, people were usually a bit shocked. The myth of Santa is so ubiquitous that an alternative approach isn’t really considered. Some people have definitely suggested, not necessarily in an unpleasant way, that a child’s enjoyment of Christmas might be diminished without belief inSanta.

But that’s definitely not been the case for us. We have had some wonderful Christmases. In 2004, when the boys were nine and six, we decided to spend Christmas in the middle of a teak forest in southern India. We’d each had a small amount to spend locally on gifts for each other. On Christmas Day they got wooden tops, some sweets, a comic and a ride through the jungle on an elephant. They still say it was their best Christmas ever. The visit to the jungle was part of a six-month round-the-world trip, and by Christmas the boys were already seasoned travellers. Life had taken on a different normality, and presents under a Christmas tree would have been bizarre.

Other than a few trips abroad, we have mostly spent Christmas at home. In many respects it’s a simple affair. We would put a small bag of goodies by the kids’ beds (a couple of small toys, chocolate money, satsumas) that they could have before waking us up. The presents that we gave when we were at home may not always have been the most extravagant, but at the same time we didn’t want them to feel too alienated from their mates.

Now they are older, we have talked to the boys about not lying about Santa. They think it’s odd that parents go along with the pretence. 

Robbo, 53, from Melbourne: My husband had to tell the children a reindeer kicked him after a mishap one year

We had six children; they’re now aged from 24 to 34. Christmas was always a huge effort. It involved taking gifts out of hiding, wrapping them, stuffing stockings, hanging them up. On Christmas Eve, all six kids would sleep in the same room, which involved lots of squealing and not much sleeping. We always told them that Santa landed on the roof with his reindeer just before midnight. The older ones were desperate to make the little ones go to sleep before that time. 

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 ‘Christmas was always a huge effort, involving the hiding, wrapping and stuffing of gifts into stockings.’

Once we had presents wrapped and children in bed, my husband and I would always have a drink. One Christmas Eve, he started a little early and went to sleep on the couch as soon as the kids were in bed, leaving me to wrap all of the presents. I was furious.

When I finished everything, I shook him awake and made him climb over furniture to hang the stockings. One year, he made it to number five before he fell headfirst over the couch and tore the skin from the entire length of his left shin. He must have been in terrible pain, but didn’t dare yell out and wake the kids. He continued to hang the last stocking on the wall while bleeding profusely. After this, we went to bed.

We woke to lots of squeals in the morning at around 5am. With about four hours of sleep, we joined in their delight. But we were stumped when they asked why there was blood on the floor and how Dad’s leg got hurt. Without missing a beat, my husband said: “The reindeer kicked me.” Even the older kids were enthralled with that answer. And when they asked later how it really happened, we promised to tell them on their 21st birthdays. Every single one of them has waited for that precious moment to find out what “really happened”, so we’ve had many years of joy from that one moment.

Marty, from Sydney: My kids love the lights and tinsel. That’s enough

We go camping (it’s summer in Sydney) and pretty much ignore Christmas. My kids love the lights and tinsel. That’s enough. One of our first Santa encounters was with three breakdancers in a shopping mall wearing Santa fat-suits. My daughter was terrified. There’s really no point in extending the myth after that. Thanks, boys, you made it easy.

I was raised in the Bahá’í faith, but consider myself agnostic, and my wife is from the former Czechoslovakia, where most of the population are atheist and there is no Santa. It’s a bit ridiculous to watch grown men in the middle of summer pile on the heavy suit, boots, hat and fake beard – they must shed half their weight in sweat.

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 ‘My kids love the lights and tinsel. That’s enough.’ Photograph: Marty

Jennifer Gibson, from Melbourne: We send our son a personalised video from Santa each year

We get our son to write a letter to Santa each year. But we always stress it’s just a wish list and he may get other things instead. We also have an advent calendar that we fill ourselves and he can open a door every day with tiny gifts of chocolate, polished stones, key chains etc. We have an outdoor and an indoor tree, too, so it’s Christmas wherever you look.

We also use an app called Portable North Pole to have a personalised video from Santa detailing what our son has done well this year and what still needs a bit of work. We show this to him a couple of weeks before Christmas. It works really well, and when we play it our son nods and shakes his head along to all the questions and statements about his year. On Christmas Eve we leave Santa a scotch and the reindeer a carrot or an apple on a table by the tree. Finally we check online to see what time Santa leaves the North Pole and how far he has reached before our son goes to bed.

Our son has a lot of questions, so we use euphemistic and vague language to deflect them. He will ask things like: “How does he deliver all the presents in one night?” To this we say: “All I know is that kids get presents and adults don’t, so maybe when you stop believing you stop receiving.”

Last year he was six, and he decided not to write to Father Christmas because he says Santa should know what he wants. We suggested he not take the risk and write anyway but he declined, until bedtime on Christmas Eve when a bit of panic had set in that he might get nothing. This year he says he’s going to write and has made no mention of not believing – so while he goes along with it, so will we.

Santa just leaves a small stocking filled with little items, and the big-ticket items are from us. This is mainly to keep Santa’s gifts more equitable with families who have less. Also, why should the big fella take credit for our hard-earned cash?