{"id":6306,"date":"2016-07-25T19:46:03","date_gmt":"2016-07-26T00:46:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=6306"},"modified":"2016-07-26T20:54:13","modified_gmt":"2016-07-27T01:54:13","slug":"midnight-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=6306","title":{"rendered":"MIDNIGHT IN AMERICA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just before Donald Trump’s dark and gloomy acceptance speech at the Cleveland GOP Convention last Thursday evening, President Obama gave a much more optimistic review<\/a> of the current state of the world. At the White House Summit on Global Development on Wednesday, Obama opined that despite international terrorism and the economic distress that many experience from globalization, we are living in the most peaceful, prosperous and promising era in human history. To nail his point home, he asked that we take the view of a young person just entering the world.<\/p>\n

when I\u2019m talking to young interns at the White House who are still immunizing themselves from the cynicism that\u2019s so chronic in this town–I remind them, if you had to choose a moment in history to be born, and you didn\u2019t know ahead of time who you were going to be, you\u2019d choose now. Because the world has never been less violent, healthier, better educated, more tolerant, with more opportunity for more people, and more connected than it is today.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As to Trump — I loved the way that NY Times “soft-conservative” columnist David Brooks related Trump’s convention message<\/a> to a “coming attractions” clip for an upcoming superhero blockbuster. Brooks asks you to “read this paragraph in your super-scary movie trailer voice”. Yes indeed, watching candidate Trump is just like sitting in a modern wide-screen theater surrounded by images of mayhem (coming attractions indeed!), while a deep loud menacing voice rattles your head and shakes your bones. To wit,<\/p>\n

Welcome to a world without rules . . . Welcome to a world in which families are mowed down by illegal immigrants, in which cops die in the streets, in which Muslims rampage the innocents and threaten our very way of life, in which the fear of violent death lurks in every human heart. Sometimes in that blood-drenched world a dark knight arises. You don\u2019t have to admire or like this knight. But you need this knight. He is your muscle and your voice in a dark, corrupt and malevolent world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(And you can imagine how that clip ends — black silence with only the words “PRESIDENT TRUMP coming November 8, 2016” on the screen.)<\/p>\n

So whose point of view is correct? Is domestic social disorder and international terrorism, along with a host of other modern threats (not the least of which includes global climate change and growing economic inequity), threatening the very roots of human civilization? Or is the world on an upward trajectory, where all of these problems are just manageable hurdles along our ever rising road of human progress?<\/p>\n

I believe that both points of view are correct, in their own ways. A host of studies support<\/a> the President’s claims that the world is more peaceful and civilized today. But . . . although the threats to humankind from violent crime and war may be decreasing statistically, at the same time the rising “disruption” threats, whether planned (as in the case of ISIL) or inadvertent (e.g., the unanticipated side-effects of the never-ending parade of technological and financial innovation), increase the odds of very negative and game-changing “black swan” events. <\/p>\n

The world today is obviously more linked, more complex, and more inter-dependent than ever; as such, it is more efficient, but also more frail due to its increasing vulnerability to “system cascade effects”. It’s like a group of 10 wooden houses all 10 feet apart, versus 100 feet. If one catches fire in the well-spaced scenario, the damage can be contained. In the tight-packed instance, all of the houses could burn down at once. In the world we live in today, the chances of a house catching fire are lower than ever. But, the potential consequences of a fire are much higher than before. <\/p>\n

And even if just a small kitchen fire breaks out in one of the houses and is quickly contained, everyone in the dense neighborhood will find out almost instantly. That’s good if it inspires everyone to take measures to prevent kitchen fires. But if these fires are largely unpredictable and hard to prevent (as with terrorism and global warming effects), especially given the increased complexity of the appliances in that kitchen, then panic and despair (or perhaps anger against those who built those kitchens) is likely to break out. And sometimes, such panic and anger leads to the rise of political demagogues.<\/p>\n

I am NOT endorsing Donald Trump here, speaking of demagogues. I do not plan to vote for him in early November. However, I believe that the Democrats would make a big mistake in minimizing and disregarding the sense of uncertainty and fear that Mr. Trump is currently seeking to address in his campaign, now that he is the “law and order” candidate. President Obama is a very smart man and his point about the world being better today is in so many ways correct; but Obama also needs to consider the effects of increasing world complexity, especially the “fat tail” effect<\/a> on extreme events. <\/p>\n

If the Dems keep telling people things like “the chances of dying from a lightening strike are much higher than dying from a terrorist act” or that anti-police violence has not significantly increased despite recent high-profile incidents, they truly risk irrelevance in the minds of many voters. Because, in our highly complex and interdependent high-tech world, the opportunity to “disrupt” the bonds of trust and faith that hold civilization together are quickly growing. We are living in a time of “disruptors”, and many people celebrate the fact that disruption fosters innovation<\/a> (or vice versa). But too much disruption can make equilibrium impossible, and all living systems, biological and social, ultimately depend upon equilibrium for survival. And bad guys are getting better and better at disruption.<\/p>\n

The sense that “the whole thing is about to collapse” may be exaggerated on the part of many people today, but it is certainly not entirely irrational or dismissable, given the increasing vulnerability of our high-tech<\/a> interconnected world. Don’t forget the recent work of Dr. Joseph Tainter<\/a>, an anthropologist who has studied the pessimistic fate of past societies and empires that had grown increasingly complex, inter-connected, and inter-dependent. Hillary Clinton and her supporters had better start displaying some real concern for these modern perceptions, and had better offer the public some realistic (if not always liberally-correct) proposals to deal with them. I wish that I had a good list of such proposals, but for now, that’s beyond my pay grade. All I can say regarding the Democrat’s mealy response so far to Trump’s “dark world” scenario is — cue the ominous movie trailer voice — DISREGARD IT AT YOUR OWN PERIL. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just before Donald Trump’s dark and gloomy acceptance speech at the Cleveland GOP Convention last Thursday evening, President Obama gave a much more optimistic review of the current state of the world. At the White House Summit on Global Development on Wednesday, Obama opined that despite international terrorism and the economic distress that many experience […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6306"}],"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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6306"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6315,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6306\/revisions\/6315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}