We’re just coming out of a heat wave here on the East Coast, which has reduced my enthusiasm regarding just about everything, including this log. But I’ll give it a try. Let’s see, what’s on my mind right now: well, just a lamentation about all the war that’s going on in the world these days, especially in the Middle East. It’s too bad that everyone cannot grow up to think of themselves primarily as citizens of the planet Earth and members of the human race. We’re still hard-wired to pledge our loyalty to some relatively small sub-set, i.e. to a tribe. We’re still tribal, not global. Our primary loyalties are to the people of a particular area, or a particular race, or a particular set of beliefs. It still seems better to most everyone on this planet to identify their loyalties and their economic and political interests with some tribe. And that is so unfortunate.<\/p>\n
(Once again, Marx is proved wrong. Old Karl said that our true nature is in our “species being”, in our final unity with people of all kinds. He didn’t get out too much, did he.) <\/p>\n
The basic frame of mind for human beings is one of tribal competition, not global cooperation. Any half-witted mathematician who understands game theory could easily prove to you that there would be more to share if everyone adopted the cooperation viewpoint. Fighting for land and wealth and privileges appears to maximize each family’s well-being, in the short term. But in the end, cooperation and trust would cause the pie to be bigger; thus there would be more to share. Unfortunately, we live in a short-term world. So the Jews and the Palestinians keep on fighting, the Jews and the Shiites are going at it in Lebanon, the Shiites and the Sunnis are having a donnybrook in Iraq; and men keep teaching their young sons and daughters that this is the way it all has to be. If only science could find a way to change the human brain, toward cooperation and away from aggression. <\/p>\n
The free-market people might argue that aggression spurs innovation and economic growth, which causes the economic pie to grow faster, which should cause everyone to be more satisfied and thus more willing to let bygones be bygones. Yea, well — the Middle East has been, and will continue to be, the true test for that sort of thinking. Lockheed and Boeing are making all sorts of $$$ from these wars, based on hi-tech capitalistic innovations. But I don’t hear of much “trickle down” benefit from their prosperity reaching the masses in Ramallah and Tyre. The only thing that seems to trickle down in those places is their laser-guided munitions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We’re just coming out of a heat wave here on the East Coast, which has reduced my enthusiasm regarding just about everything, including this log. But I’ll give it a try. Let’s see, what’s on my mind right now: well, just a lamentation about all the war that’s going on in the world these days, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}