UPGRADING EARTH: Exploring the marvelous plan and purpose for humanity and our planet!

By Jamie Slaats

A Refreshingly Sensible Book about an Optimistic Future for Humanity!

Evolutionary science doesn't answer it. Religion generally doesn't seem to answer it. The elephant in the room is a question that demands a response: What is the practical purpose of the earth? Does one

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jamie Slaats
• Release date: Sep 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9783951994734

Jamie Slaats

Jamie was born and raised in rural Ontario, Canada. He's lived in 8 different countries over his lifetime including Italy, Czechia, Hong Kong, Germany, Austria and Lithuania. He has a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) in International Finance and Marketing from the Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen, The Netherlands. He's worked for three Fortune 500 companies and is passionate about information, data analysis, tech, blockchain, kingdom law, kingdom economics and challenging cultural norms. Most importantly, he's passionate about getting to know the hearts and minds of the people living around him.

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Copyright © 2020, 2023 by Jamie Slaats

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

The author has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Additional copyright found in the extra copyright section.

Published by Jamie Slaats

Creative work done in Vienna, Austria. Cover design done in Vilnius, Lithuania.

https://upgradingearth.org

Cover design by Jamie Slaats

Interior design by Jamie Slaats

Edited by ebooklaunch.com

Paperback ISBN: 978-3-9519947-2-7

eBook ISBN: 978-3-9519947-3-4

Revised Version (September 2023)

CONTENTS

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. A Product Needs a Blueprint

2. A Blueprint Needs Architects

3. A Virus Enters the System

4. Payment for the Antivirus Solution

5. New Foundations Formed

6. The Takeover and Upgrade Process

Conclusion

About the Author

Appendix 1: Knowing the Boss Deeper

Appendix 2: How to Join the Company

Appendix 3: A Cruel Character Assassination

Appendix 4: Why Version 3.0 and 12 Billion

Appendix 5: The Integrity of Law and Order

Appendix 6: Additions to the Upgrade Process

Extra Copyright

Notes

DEDICATION

To the greatest love of my life!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This being my first book, a book I never could have imagined I would write, there are a lot of people I’d like to acknowledge.

First and foremost, I’d like to thank all the support I’ve had from my family—my parents, my brothers, and my sisters. Your love and support have always been the greatest in my life, even though we live over 5,000 km away. I am blessed to call you my family.

A special acknowledgment to my Aunt Lucy, Nathan, Robert, Bettina, and Gur for being ones that fully read and reviewed my first version and all of the feedback you provided to me along the way. A big thanks to you, Nathan, for your friendship and all of your support, having been through the book publishing process before.

Thank you to Uwe. I’ve learned a lot from you over the years. It has been a truly transformative friendship.

For all of you who call me a friend, I’m also very thankful for your friendship and what you add to my life. I can’t name you all, but know I’m grateful. For all of those who may read this who have come into my life and, for whatever reason, have left my life, I’d also like to say thank you. The time spent with you and what I’ve learned from you over that moment in time will never be forgotten.

Finally, for all the random people I approached on the streets of Vienna, Austria in testing out the title of this book and testing out the cover of the book, I want to thank you. From teenagers to grandmothers, from Austrians to tourists, I’ve had such great pleasure and so much fun in our conversations and your feedback. Thank you!

INTRODUCTION

There was a baseball Hall-of-Famer named Yogi Berra that once said, If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else. If we listen to all the mainstream news, media, and politics over the last decades, it seems like where we’re going is down a road that is on the way to a very dark, bleak, joyless, apocalyptic, it’ll-be-the-end-of-the-world kind of destination.

Could it be, maybe, we’re reading the wrong map to our end destination? And that all of this bleak, dire, apocalyptic future is, in fact, a somewhere else on the journey to what instead should be a very hopeful, peaceful, optimistic, and wonderful future for us and the earth?

It would be as if I wanted to drive from Vienna, Austria westward to the beautiful Austrian Alps to go hiking. Yet my co-driver is directing me with a map of North Carolina, USA eastward towards our end destination, the Atlantic Ocean. Then onward to a really deadly destination if the car could drive on water, the Bermuda Triangle. However, practically … I’m still on the road to the beautiful Austrian Alps no matter what the map in front of my co-driver says. No matter how much he tries to convince me otherwise.

I’m a person who likes to ask crazy questions and is curious about everything. There’s maybe no answer to the question, but it doesn’t stop me from asking it and then trying to find the answers. The above is just one kind of example of the questions I sometimes ask. As I get older, I find there are certain questions that keep popping up in my mind that need answers. Therefore, this book originates out of a thought which has been on my mind of late. What do you think about this statement?

We think we know everything, yet the more we learn, the more we realize how very little we know. We are very divided. We have theories about everything, and everything is in some way supposed to be questioned. At the same time, we’re not supposed to question anything. Religion and science are still hostile to each other.

It seems only one or the other can be true, but can’t there be truth in both? At the same time, science has in many ways become as religion was in the fifteenth century. We’re not to question it. Yet religion has now become as science once was, and should always be questioned and tested and critiqued.

Is there any truth to this? What do you think? Have you ever thought about this before?

As I’ve been thinking about this statement, what stood out to me was the division in it. I’m not sure if you experience this around you in your everyday life, but I have, whether I’m visiting my family in Canada, traveling, or in the country I currently call home. The division seems to ramp up to extreme levels. Its impact is so severe that it’s literally dividing families. It’s dividing long-standing friendships. It’s dividing marriages and it’s dividing societies.

One tries to ignore it, but when it actually impacts you personally, it’s kind of hard to just push it aside and believe it’s not important. I suppose because of social media it somehow also amplifies it more than at any other time in our history. Have you experienced this in your own life at all?

My sense from this is that we have two groups battling it out for supremacy of thought and, sadly, for world power. I’m not sure this helps anyone in the end, as life is lived somewhere generally in the middle. Given my words above, I see these two groups as follows, with each having an elephant in the room which they seem unable to deal with. These being:

Group 1: Science, Evolution, Darwinism, Atheism, No God

Science is amazing and has shown us the depths of our universe, our planet, our animals, and our humanity. Yet, if we are honest with ourselves, as much as all scientists on this side of the coin claim to be correct, there are a lot of open questions that cannot be explained. The elephant in the room on this side is the wide gap in being able to answer the question of purpose. Why are we here and why the earth? What was the purpose of the Big Bang followed by evolution if then to have all of this become meaningless?

Darwin seems to have become a religion today and not to be questioned. Yet Darwin doesn’t answer the why. Why do we say there are laws to the universe? If there are laws, there must be a law-giver, right? Why do scientists call DNA the blueprint of life?¹ Did a blueprint just create itself? Surely a blueprint requires an architect to draw it up.

Do we ignore these deeper questions? Can we be satisfied with randomness? Can we feel okay that there really is no purpose or meaning for us or the earth? If the existence of eat, sleep, die, repeat is all there is to life? I can understand if someone has anxiety for the future of this planet. There seems to be a lot of doom and gloom being spoken of here.

What then brings us peace to know it will all be okay, even if we screw it all up? What allows us to keep calm and carry on? This is the elephant in the room with group 1 as I would see it. What do you think?

Group 2: Science, Creationism, Religion, Faith, God

Science is very important on this side as well. Many scientists who believe in creation see science as revealing how our creator designed the universe. Overall, religion and faith are good at answering the question of why we are here. It brings hope and to most a sense of some purpose and meaning to their everyday lives.

However, if we are also honest on this side of the coin, there is also a very large elephant in the room.

That is the question about the earth’s purpose and plan. If we try to do an honest survey of all the religions and faiths, they in fact don’t seem to answer practically the question about the earth’s purpose. Most religions and faiths understand we should respect, honor, and take care of the earth, though this isn’t universal, as it only works once you step out of extreme poverty and you have the time and extra money to care about the earth.

What I’ve found is most religions and faiths seem to be expecting to eventually escape the earth, rather than remain on it. There is the hope of going to Heaven if you’re good enough, or seeking to disconnect from physical matter altogether, or to end up hanging around the universe in some spiritual realm different from Heaven or end up personally obliterated.

It seems the earth is a bit of an afterthought once you die, and so the purpose of the earth has no answer as well. This is the elephant in the room with group 2 as I would see it. What do you think?

Whether one identifies with group 1 or group 2, we are all human. We all have our good traits and we all have our flaws. Nobody’s perfect and nobody has all the answers. I know I certainly don’t. If we step back for a moment and consider these things from a bird’s-eye view, maybe then we can better understand the division between the two groups taking place.

At the heart of the division is maybe the topic of the earth and our end destination. To the one group earth is everything, as we have no Plan B or Planet B. It’s up to us to save it, otherwise who will? To the other group it’s important for sure, but it’s also, in fact, kind of an afterthought. Maybe it’s a temporary testing ground. But once we die, we won’t be coming back to it anymore. We’re taking off elsewhere.

Having said all of this, in our heart of hearts, no matter what we believe or think, we’ve all, at some point, asked ourselves this question: Why am I here, and what’s my purpose? Looking at this division from the bird’s-eye view, let us then add, What’s the purpose of the earth?

If I combine these two questions into one, we have What is the purpose of the earth and us being on it? I think now we have a very good question moving forward. When I asked this question, I have to say I couldn’t find a very good answer within the two groups above. By that I mean a practical answer, not a philosophical one. What is the practical purpose of the earth and us being on it?

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a rational person. At least, I hope they believe me to be a rational person. I don’t blindly accept what I’m being told. I just can’t. When I approach a topic, I need to survey all the different perspectives. I need to understand what everyone is saying about the topic, what proof points exist on each side, and then come to a solid conclusion.

Facts which have not been manipulated matter to me, not feelings. I found when I focused on what answered the question about the practical purpose of the earth, then I could be secure in standing upon that foundation with confidence. Not in blind belief but in secure rational analysis.

To the best of my ability, I began surveying all the data and information I could find. I found that there is in fact a clear practical answer for the purpose of the earth. That is, if you want to consider it. There’s a solid plan and blueprint which has been active for around 6,000 years. Most of its foundation is on a legal system which the entire plan is derived from. A legal system so good that, in fact, no nation is functioning with its perfection yet.

You may find yourself surprised by what unfolds. It could be you have never heard of this plan in this way. What follows, then, is asking: do we want to take this into consideration? Can we have peace about the plan, and can we accept it as something truthful? Do we then want to pick up the correct map for our journey?

This book will speak about the plan of how the earth and everything in it will be upgraded. How it will once again become a beautiful, perfect paradise in the millennia to come. There will be no corruption, injustice, debt, crime, hate, or oppression. There will be no poverty, sorrow, pain, suffering, or vanity, no ideologies or philosophies, and no religion. Each person’s work will be meaningful and full of life. Yes, the world as we know it will be healed. It will be completely upgraded.

I hope through this book we will see that there is an amazing future and hope for us and the planet. It’s a hope that is very practical. A hope with direction that will spur new forms of action. A hope that I would like to see create greater unity in the world, rather than division. A hope that will crush fear, anxiety, and division.

Can you imagine this? I can. I also look forward to taking part in the work of this great upgrade, as there’s some very special work to be done ahead. This book will also help you understand how you can practically be a part of this great upgrade.

What criteria need to be met to be a participant and join the management team which will execute the upgrade? Knowing this will help in guiding you to learn about and understand "what’s your purpose now" for your life.

Come on this journey with me to discovering the great future of our planet. Come on this journey with me to discovering the upgrading of earth.

1

A PRODUCT NEEDS A BLUEPRINT

We All Love to Upgrade Things

It’s now the twenty-first century. Technology is all around us. There are many in the world who are still missing the modern conveniences of life, yet, the one piece of technology that’s most common to everyone today is the mobile phone. The latest statistics that I found on this were from 2019, which showed that five billion people own at least one mobile device.¹ We now have countries existing where the mobile phone is the only access point to our connected world.

We all know that at some point in our lives our mobile phones need to be upgraded. Why do I share this, you may ask? Well, what this means is that at least five billion people in some way, depending on how their local language uses it, understands the term To Upgrade. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as a verb:

To replace something (such as software or an electronic device) with a more useful version or alternative.²

Everything we use today needs to be upgraded at some point. It can be our electronics, our clothing, our furniture, even our homes. It’s our national infrastructure like roads, bridges, and airports. At some point, the things we use will need to be upgraded. We can’t avoid it. Considering this, what if the earth itself is also a type of technology? Let’s call it Organic Technology. What if we can’t save it any more than we can save our iPhones from becoming obsolete? What if the earth just needs a very complex upgrade?

I have a lot of experience with this myself. I worked as a sales and business operations lead for ten years at HP Software, HPE Software, and Micro Focus. A key part of my role was managing our processes. This responsibility meant looking at how we could improve or upgrade them. Sometimes upgrading also meant throwing out the old and starting from something brand new. This is what we did when we removed our old CRM software and installed the largest deployment in the world of another CRM software solution.

This customer management software had come to its end, where it was so slow that it couldn’t be upgraded anymore. It had to be thrown out and replaced. When Micro Focus bought the software division from HPE, we had over 1,200 IT professionals working for one and a half years on building an entirely new IT system from the ground floor up, which would then run the new combined company. This was a huge undertaking, where the older systems were thrown out and the upgrade comprised new products.

When we speak about upgrades, then, it becomes clear that an upgrade doesn’t happen on its own. Sometimes, it requires thousands of people working on the project. It needs key leadership overseeing the plan and knowing how this should be achieved. It’s certainly going to fail if the management team is not in full control of the process and doesn’t know the ins and outs of their product.

Therefore, if we can even consider any kind of restorative upgrade plan for the earth, there must be some kind of management team as well driving this plan. Wouldn’t you agree? If the earth is to have any purpose at all, a purpose can only be fulfilled when there’s a plan in place for it to fulfill. This chapter is important in helping us to understand where we find the blueprint plan in all the data out there.

From Never Reading a Book to Devouring History

I grew up in a small rural town called Rodney, in Ontario, Canada. It had a population of 1,100 residents. My high school in West Elgin County had around 375 students in it across all grades and covered the villages of Rodney, West Lorne, and Dutton. This was rural Ontario at its best. Through and through, I’ve always been a small-town boy at heart all my life.

I was someone who only did what I had to do to graduate high school. I wasn’t a grade A student. Man, I hated school. Counting down the days to freedom, when I could get out of there. How many of us can relate to this from our high school years in some way or another? For me, opening a history book, or in fact any book, was like kryptonite to Superman. It wasn’t going to happen.

It didn’t matter what I tried to do, I somehow couldn’t open a book for enjoyment. I preferred playing my Nintendo or whatever fun or trouble I could get into with my cousin Jeremy and my friends Jamie and Ricardo. Let’s just say there was a lot of cruising in our cars at the end of the school day. Have you ever played car tag? That was the best. I think you get the point; books were not a thing for me.

This kryptonite of books progressed into my adult life as I lived and studied for a time in Toronto and later when I moved to the Netherlands to go to university. Again, I just read what was necessary. As I moved to Germany and entered the workforce, it continued. I didn’t read for pleasure at all. After three and a half years in Munich, I moved and settled in the capital of Austria in 2008. Throughout those years, opening a book was on a need‒only basis.

Therefore, it’s amazing that now I’m writing this book. Something clicked in 2010. It was like night and day, where suddenly I loved books. Specifically, I found myself hungry for history. It’s the strangest thing, but it came out of the blue. I can devour a 200-page book in an evening. As I shared in the introduction, now I’m someone who loves reading, analyzing data, and trying to understand the world around me. Asking crazy questions.

But it wasn’t always this way. I think it’s just something that comes with age, maybe, but I have to say, looking back at the last ten years, I have loved this diving into the past. I find that learning about history opens us up to better understand the world around us and to be able to grasp our present day. It’s fascinating though, how we as humans can change and grow as we get older and wiser. I’m now very thankful for the switch that took place in 2010 that has brought me to writing this book to share with you the things I’ve discovered along the way.

Understanding Impact of Language, Culture, and Time

I have learned that over time the meaning of the words we speak change. They change many times and they even disappear. A simple example of this during my lifetime is the word sick. When I was in high school, this word