I worry that the Bush/Blair unilateralism and privatization piracy risk severe repercussions for Western publics. In terms of an Arab or Muslim backlash that could take a disastrous, even thermonulcear, form.

Much of the Western public, so easily swayed by patriotism, media propaganda and plain narrow-mindedness, cannot seem to see how the Iraqi invasion played in the Arab and Muslim world.

How starting a war based on enormous lies undermines the very credibility of the West. How Bush and Blair couching the war so clearly in terms of "Good" and "Evil", and "God" and "Country" inflames the Islamic believer, and the Arab nationalist.

I am saddened by the continued susceptibility of the Western public to appeals to the White Man's Burden. And by the continued refusal of most Westerners to look as critically on Western-caused atrocities as they do on Islam-caused horrors. By the continuing inability of the Anglo-American Middle to feel discomfort at the insanity of their own societies.

The U.S. could never control Vietnam, because the U.S. refused to identify with the Anger of the Colonized. Israel cannot stop the violence of the Gaza for the same reason.

Any Zionist or carpet-bombing anti-Communist can find rhetorical reasons to dismiss their "enemies" cause. Any Zionist or 1960s anti-Communist could comfort themselves in moral outrage at Tel Aviv suicides and Viet-Cong dirty tricks. But the Moral Certainty of the Empire doesn't quell the Anger of the Other. It only feeds it.

I am afraid about what the future may hold. What strange brew will come from the mix of Western arrogance and Arab anger.

I find the human species very odd, ugly, enormously able to self-deceive and deny.

I feel great embarassment at belonging to this species. This stupid, short-sighted, greedy ape.

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Originally posted by Gaia_Child:
I feel great embarassment at belonging to this species.

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USA + UK = bilateral (bi- 2)

USA + UK + AUS + 32 others = multilateral, right?

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Much of the Western public, so easily swayed by patriotism, media propaganda and plain narrow-mindedness, cannot seem to see how the Iraqi invasion played in the Arab and Muslim world.

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You may have a point here, but the anti-war movement's hands are not clean. There are BOTH happy and rejoicing Iraqis AND angry and resentful ones. Both "sides" only represent one side- Bush & co. with their rose colored glasses and the anti-war movement with their doom and gloom. The fact is that neither are true, and that both sides are attempting to brainwash a somewhat apathetic populace.

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How starting a war based on enormous lies undermines the very credibility of the West. How Bush and Blair couching the war so clearly in terms of "Good" and "Evil", and "God" and "Country" inflames the Islamic believer, and the Arab nationalist.

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What were they supposed to do? Its a WAR. Of course they are going to "inflame" those on the other side.

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I am saddened by the continued susceptibility of the Western public to appeals to the White Man's Burden. And by the continued refusal of most Westerners to look as critically on Western-caused atrocities as they do on Islam-caused horrors. By the continuing inability of the Anglo-American Middle to feel discomfort at the insanity of their own societies.

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Originally posted by Gir Draxon:
Is it White Man's Burden, or is it a refusal to look the other way because Hussein in Iraq (allegedly) could never have harmed people in Europe and NA?

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What were they supposed to do? Its a WAR. Of course they are going to "inflame" those on the other side.

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Some definitions are needed.

What's a war? I'm serious. What part of what the US government and its followers (who seem to behave as one - quite less than the sum of their parts) are doing is conducting "The WAR" and what is something else?

Who is "the other side"?

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Originally posted by spatrioter:
In what direction were they looking in the 1980s?

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Originally posted by Rufus Polson:
Gaia Child, I think you're expecting a lot of people. What are we supposed to be, here? Avatars of a perfectly rational supreme deity created in His image, or something?
No. We're just these critters who, like essentially all other critters, are basically obsessed with getting more and making more of ourselves.

I was going to say that the difference with us is that we've broken that balance, but I'm not at all sure we have. It's just fluctuating rather wider in the case of humanity; as we erode the world's carrying capacity, we're gonna get pared back eventually. The four horsemen gonna ride. But again, that doesn't necessarily mean we, or the ecosphere, will be wiped out. Just pared back heavily. It'll be a horrible time to live through, I expect. But I also expect there'll be something on the other side.

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And then, of course, no guarantees that anyone else will be spared either.

We can't go on. We must go on. We go on.

Slight drift -- question to Mike Keenan:

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When microorganisms first developed photosynthesis, around a million years ago, they had an immediate advantage over their competitors, but they unleashed a biological catastrophe that has never been exceeded, before or since, because a byproduct of their adaptation was oxygen, and it poisoned the world.

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Anyway, one thing I have been less than sanguine about is the continued survival of the Anglo-American portion of the continent.

I said in 1997 that "North America is dying". That may have been an overstatement, but since then I think I am probably still correct. The US's continued reliance on military spending, while it frees Canada of the same requirement, nevertheless binds us to a common fate if the US disintegrates in any degree - and certainly, the US economy is feeling the effects of a sustained redirection of government spending into, essentially, unproductive expenditures, since the goods produced and the services rendered have no counterpart in the civilian sector.

A country that once built a highway network under the rubric of allegedly military needs now can no longer adequately maintain those roads.

A country that once set itself the goal of being better than the Soviet Union is now becoming a cracked-mirror image of that other nation.

"Anyway, one thing I have been less than sanguine about is the continued survival of the Anglo-American portion of the continent."

For about 5000 years we have been struggling with developing ways to live in large groups, without destroying the carrying capacity of the world around us, and without destroying the groups we are trying to build. I suspect it has gone on for more than 30000 years, but the first 25K or so didn't do as well (at developing larger and more complex societies).

I often fear that we are about to reach the limits of this current social experiment, and see some serious shrinkage and collapse of the international scene, and particularly international economics. I don't think it will be pretty, no civilisational collapse ever has been.

As for what to do about it, I don't know. None of us can change the world alone, we might not be able to change it collectively. I have come to the conclusion that it is beside the point. All we can do is try to contribute to the experiment this time round, and hope that it either works, or at least doesn't make it impossible for any future societal experiments to happen (for humans anyway).

One of my favourite books is called "The Man in the High Castle" by Philp K. Dick. The premise is that the Axis won WWII, and it takes place in Japanese controlled Western USA. While I can't go into the brilliant concepts of colonised/coloniser etc. that the book explores, one of the main issues of the book was essentially how humans remained human within the context of a world that was about to be completely dominated by Nazi ideology and practices. Essentially, there was no hope for the world, but the characters still faced individual moral and ethical decisions and dilemmas. Brilliant novel, and what I took out of it was the basic concept that we have to be as ethical and moral as possible, regardless of the eventual outcome on the global scale.

We might not be able to save the world, or even just keep it going for another 20 years. We might not be able to do anything at all, and someone might push a button or start a chain of events that destroys it for good. That doesn't remove our role in making decisions and performing actions that will contribute, in some way, to finding a way out of the current mess.

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Originally posted by arborman:
I often fear that we are about to reach the limits of this current social experiment, and see some serious shrinkage and collapse of the international scene, and particularly international economics. I don't think it will be pretty, no civilisational collapse ever has been.

As for what to do about it, I don't know. None of us can change the world alone, we might not be able to change it collectively. I have come to the conclusion that it is beside the point. All we can do is try to contribute to the experiment this time round, and hope that it either works, or at least doesn't make it impossible for any future societal experiments to happen (for humans anyway).

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We can certainly try to contribute to the experiment (indeed we must) but we should also be doing something else. We should do our utmost to prevent collapse, but we should also prepare for the possibility that it will happen. And I don't mean simply stockpiling goods like the survivalists (though that might well have to be part of it) but stockpiling information (hard copies, of course). You mentioned that Phillip K. Dick novel, I've got a recommendation of my own- A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter Miller. It takes place many centuries after a nuclear war, and centres around a Catholic monestary devoted to the Liebowitz of the title. Liebowitz was a scientist who had stockpiled information to rebuild civilization, but the new civilization that arises heads down a similar path. What strikes me about the novel is that Liebowitz himself was too narrow in his selection- he included (rightly) all the important scientific works that he could, but perhaps part of the problem was that that was all he included. A good Liebowitz wannabe should look at stockpiling other works as well- works of history, philosophy, and politics. In short, we should look at trying to start the next experiment off on a better foot than this one.

[ 16 December 2003: Message edited by: Mike Keenan ]

I think the problem this time out is resources. We are using them all, a civilization that would follow any apocalyptic event would be hamstrung from the start. We've dug up almost all of the easy to reach stuff.

Focusing on keeping this experiment going, but redirecting it to more sustainable and humanist (as opposed to unsustainable and inhuman) is what I try to focus on. We have a lot of amazing things here, and some really awful things. Protect the amazing, work to remove the awful.

It may all be pointless, but everything is, ultimately. Might as well concentrate on making things better. What I did at work today could be irrelevant, it could make a small difference. I can't make a big difference, so I have to accept the small one for now and try to work with enough people to make a big one later.

India and China are both being set up to be the inheritors of the Anglo-American capitalist model. The 'Apocalypse' will simply be the end of Western domination of the world. A lot of people will be uncomfortable with that. Perhaps they have something to lose.

Many North Americans would find themselves cramped in prosperous Western European cities - even my friends who have relatively highly-paid professional jobs, such as full-time journalists or full professors, live in relatively small flats. Some have country houses.

This has improved somewhat if you have a portable job and are prepared to live in a smaller town or village, with information technology, but such places tend to be insular, and while polite, reserved towards folks from "away", even if they are from another region of the same country.

I'm a hardcore urbanite, but people who like space and the outdoors could feel very stifled in prosperous European cities.

There is a lot in Vancouver and its environs that I am willing to fight to protect, of course. However, I have family in Greece, and may look that way someday...

I especially appreciated your insights, Rufus. I find it quite ironic, actually. When I read your post, I recalled that only a week before, I had provided a similar analysis to my in-despair friend.

We were discussing why humans cannot respond honestly to debates on major world issues (ie. modify and adapt their belief structures and opinions when faced with contradictory, but true, information.) And, equally important, why people cannot seem to think outside of the intellectual and cultural boxes which they inhabit.

And I replied to my friend, "When confronted with human dysfunction, always remember that we are just big-brained apes. Just baboons who can do calculus. And then most of the contradictions and injustices in human behaviour will seem less perplexing, and hence, emotionally more manageable."