Genocide!? Yet another word to use and clearly understand when engineering a solution.

A close friend and former colleague (a world expert on genocide) Dr. Greg Stanton (Founding President of Genocide Watch) offered me an answer today that corrected to my opinion regarding the intentions of Israel and Hamas and the violent horrors not being extended between them.  Violence that could possibly spread globally. And maybe into another bi-polar world war. 

Dr. Stanton believes Hamas is a genocidal organization because its charter states its intention to destroy the nation of Israel and all Jews. He said "Its massacre of Jewish Israelis, men, women, children, the elderly, even babies demonstrated its genocidal intent." 

Israel is "committing war crimes and crimes against humanity" and "Its bombing and blockade of Gaza are war crimes because they do not distinguish between civilians and combatants."   

But it's not clear that "Israel intends to destroy Palestinians as a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, even in part. Israel's intent is to destroy Hamas".  Hamas is a political group that has attacked Israel. But Israel is not committing genocide by going after the perpetrators of mass murder.  People and the media use the term 'genocide' loosely to 'inform' others, but this term can actually lead to exacerbating of an existential problem instead of solving it. 

Humans and the media regularly misuse other well-defined, ill-defined, and undefinable terms that rarely lead to solving problems.  Engineers, medical doctors, and scientists can run into the same problem but that is why they usually rely on terminology in their respected fields to ensure success.   Other professions that have not provided reliable solutions include most elected officials, religious leaders, or economists. 

My former use of the term "ethnic cleansing" as an official crime was wrong.  It is not an approved term in any international treaty.  It was a euphemism invented by Milosevic that was used to deny genocide. The violent expulsion of people should be called "forced displacement" or "forced deportation", "both of which are crimes under the Rome Statute of the ICC" according to Dr. Stanton. 

I'm sadly predicting the inevitable use of genetically engineered ethnically targeted bioweapons with the clear intention to commit genocide.  That is now possible by any radicalized individual or group with limited funding but a deep commitment to use it in the future.  This capacity was predicted in an article in the esteemed "Lancet Journal" in 1998?   And the exponential growth of technology since then is beyond our mental capacity to grasp and our governments capacity to stop.  This is now left to humanities willingness to unite and grasp the fact that there is only one race.  The human race.  And we are all in the same family.  And the Golden rule still applies.  What can we do encourage all others to abide by it?    

FEAR populism & democracy! A brief explanation.

 

Populism is yet another self-inflicted consequence of our collective mental health problem - Anosognosia (a blindness to reality).  In this case we are blind to our global interdependence due to our mind’s belief in the illusion of independence.

Populism’s rise among the world’s democracies is a threat to human freedom and security globally.  And it may be heading toward another world war (something that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was intended to prevent).  

This predictable chaos is simple to explain and understand.  But only if one can admit the fundamental reason why democratic nations are increasingly failing to protect their voting populations from the unstoppable global forces that are persistently ignoring their national borders.   Pandemics, wars, genocides, extreme weather patterns, economic woes, corruption, cybercrimes, violent extremism, WMD proliferation, air pollution, forever chemicals, bio lab accidents...

Democratically derived laws intended to protect a nation’s freedoms and security cannot work in a world where ‘everything is connected, interdependent, and vulnerable.’  Humanities shared global reality requires global solutions.  Solutions that provide relief from these deadly pressures, build resilience everywhere, and intending to put humanity on a sustainable path of liberty and justice for all.

The bad news.  Even if all democracies united - but the billions of humans dominated by dictatorships and abject poverty can't join - the movement to establish global institutions (democratically elected with the sole purpose of protecting human freedom and security as Thomas Paine’s Common-Sense pamphlet implied) would fail.

In this context achieving the UNs 17 Sustainable Development Goals is our best chance of uniting humanity against the insanity of our current unsustainable global governance system.  A flawed system that persists in putting protection of national governments and corporations above the protection of inalienable human rights and the environment.  This will not end well. 

Here is one example of democracy leading to war.  

A 2017 Israeli Peace Index survey asked a question about applying the death penalty for Palestinians killing civilians and then specifically Palestinian killings of Israeli soldiers. The rate of Jewish Israelis supporting the first 70%, the latter 66%.  This result shows the view adopted by most Israeli Jews – as the survey itself noted:  “[I]n the view of a majority of the Jewish public, it makes no difference whether the victims of terror attacks are civilians or soldiers.” 

Yet the right to resist occupation, even and particularly through armed struggle, is internationally recognized, as in United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/RES/33/24 of 29 November 1978:  “2. Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, particularly armed struggle;”

So a majority of the Israeli public then of about 2/3 believes that Palestinian resistance as a crime deserving of death. 

 

Terrorism’s FIVE Fundamental Principles/Truths: Applied to Hamas attack on Israel

 

Terrorism’s FIVE Fundamental Principles/Truths:

Applied to Hamas attack on Israel

(Draft 9-18-23  Updated 10-29-23)

 

FP#1.  Terrorism is a dangerous word.  Terror is an emotion.  A terrorists use fear as a tactic to achieve a result. No amount of violence, weaponry, or war can defeat a tactic. 

This flexible verb can be used by anyone who is terrorized by someone or something.  It plays on our primal urge to survive and thrive.  And any threat to one's life can be terrorizing.

Radical Hamas extremists or Russian troops invading Ukraine in 'special military operation mass murdering innocent civilians is terrorizing.  The use of traditional weapons, knives, vehicles, drones, bio, chemical, nano, or nuclear weapons is terrorizing.  A siege cutting of all water, food, and medical supplies to force a political achievement would be terrorizing to anyone with children.  If a pilot or an astronaut knowingly sabotaged a critical system already in flight would be terrorizing to most any conscious person on board.  When anyone can use this word anything they feel terrified it would be wise to have a more accurate noun and verb to use if one intends to better prevent or preempt terror.  Engineering a sustainable political, economic, or environmental system for human life on or off this planet will require the use of words that are precise and functional in the context of ensuring life, liberty and justice for all.  

"False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil."  -- Socrates   (469-399 B.C.)

“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.”  ― Confucius

"The battle for the world is the battle for definitions."  -- Thomas Szasz
(1920-2012) Hungarian-American Professor of Psychiatry, Author, Libertarian

 

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.’  – George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" [1946]

 

"Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."  -- George Orwell  [Eric Arthur Blair] (1903-1950) British author

“When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” Humpty Dumpty, Through the Looking Glass.

“The true terrorists of our world do not meet at the docks at midnight, or scream “Allahu Akbar” before some violent action. The true terrorists of our world wear 5000-dollar suits and work in the highest positions of finance, government, and business.” Peter Joseph

FP#2.  There are three types of truth.  One is the self-evident truths in nature.  The other two truths exist only in the human mind (personal and political truths).  

Our personal truths: What God do we believe in - or not.  Nearly everyone has a different personal truth regarding their religious beliefs.  The second is our political truths.  Truths we have grown up with, learned from those they love and trusted, and our own culture and/or personal life experiences.

Nature’s truths include “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”.  These are the foundational “truths” that “we hold” “to be self-evident”.  You may remember these within the Declaration of Independence. The US was founded on Judeo/Christian ideals.  Every other major religion including Islam shares the most fundamental religious ideal - the Golden Rule.  What is so complicated about this fundamental need to take care of nature (our shared life support systems/God's Creation) and each other?  

“There are some persons who, by habit acquired in youth, or by ill guidance, or foolish desire, or perverse inclinations, are so strongly attached and bound to an error or false view that they refuse to relinquish it, and it is grievous to them to hear any notion to the contrary, and they become unpracticed in hearing the truth.”  Aristotle, Metaphysics.

 “The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane.” - Erich Fromm, The Sane Society

 It is true that Hamas is a political organization committed to genocide of the Jewish people and elimination of the state of Israel. And those who carry out these intentions should be held accountable for their crimes against humanity.   It is also true that Islam is built on the foundation of the golden rule.  And Israel is guilty of human rights violations against Palestinian and other Muslim civilians.   And, it is also true that if Israel’s military or siege actions result in the mass murder of Palestinian civilians – then those in the Jewish state responsible for these crimes must also be held accountable. If accountability for these crimes are ignored, Israel will be falling into the same trap the US did after 9/11.  War cannot defeat a tactic.  It will only create more violent extremist intent on revenge killing without real justice.  It is a truth that injustices anywhere (Israel, Gaza, Ukraine, China, Iran, the US, Haiti, Iran...) will only lead to more deaths of civilians and future acts of violence.   Justice is the foundation of peace. Not revenge or punishment killing to deter more killings.  Or more and better weaponry and/or intelligence.  What's needed is wisdom. 

 “The only way to eliminate war is to love our children more than we hate our enemies.”  Golda Meir

“We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs - We have no place to go.” Golda Meir

FP#3.  The human mind can believe anything!   Then it believes everything it thinks or ignores the facts.

 We believe national sovereignty (independence) will protect our freedoms and security.  Armies, lines on a map, and walls cannot stop pandemics, extreme weather patterns, economic instability, cyber-attacks, fake news, corruption, or dual use technologies from crossing borders. 

 We believe our existing Constitution is worth protecting when it fails on nearly all seven intentions in its preamble.  

 We believe in Peace through strength, peace through disarmament, and peace at any price.  While knowing that peace is a function of justice.

 "Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it."   -- Maimonides  (1135-1204) Jewish philosopher

 “We are conditioned to believe, not to understand.” Marcelina Cravat

 "Those who can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities!" -- Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694-1778)

 "Men willingly believe what they wish."

-- Gaius Julius Caesar   (100-44 B.C.) Dictator of the Roman Republic

 

"Men prefer to believe what they prefer to be true." -- Francis Bacon- (1561-1626) Philosopher, British Lord Chancellor 

"There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe." - Friedrich Nietzsche

 

"American people are very much like the children of a Mafia boss who do not know what their father does for a living, and don't want to know, but then wonder why someone just threw a firebomb through the living room window." - William Blum - The Anti-Empire Report

 

Generally speaking, only simple conceptions can grip the mind of a nation. An idea that is clear and precise even though false will always have greater power in the world than an idea that is true but complex.  – Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America [1835]

We ignore obvious and credible warnings! 

1980 bi partisan US Presidential Commission on World Hunger warnings more wars, genocides, terrorism, refugees, environmental degradation, infectious disease if Congress didn’t collaborate with other nations to end the worst aspects of widespread hunger and poverty by the year 2000.

1995: Back Hawk Down spurs CIA study.  After the US military incident in Somalia, the Clinton Administration asked the CIA to analyze over 200 factors that could lead to a nation state failure. The intention was to find the likely factors enabling the prediction of one with the intent of reducing the need for US military intervention.  The study concluded that the top indicator was a nation’s infant mortality rate (IMR). 

1997 DOD, CIA, CDC, and National Academy of Sciences unanimous warnings about the threat of new and re-emerging infectious diseases.

2001 bipartisan US Presidential Commission on National Security in the 21^st Century unanimous warnings of Terrorism being our nation’s greatest national security threat just 6 months prior to Sept. 11^th. 

2017 book WARNINGS: FINDING CASSANDRAS TO STOP CATASTROPHES  By Richard A. Clarke and R.P. Eddy,  2017: https://cco.ndu.edu/PRISM-7-2/Article/1401978/warnings-finding-cassandras-to-stop-catastrophes/   The first 8 chapters detail the millions of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars lost to catastrophes,– natural and human engineered – due to people in power failing to act on the advanced warnings of experts.   The last eight chapters estimates the billions of lives and trillions of dollars that could be saved if humanity collectively works to prevent the other dire warnings now being given regarding other threats (some existential).  Chapter 11 “The Journalist: Pandemic Disease”.   Most instructive is Chapter 9.  It outlines three cognitive reasons why humans ignore such warnings.

 We don’t learn from history:  US Civil War:  WWI, 1918 Pandemic, WWII, Holocaust, Vietnam, HIV/AIDs, Iraq 2003, Katrina hurricane, Israel’s expansion into West bank, Bush re-election, Russia takeover of Crimea, Trump 2024?

FP#4.  Every tool/technology can be used for improving life on Earth or as a weapon.  And how any tool is used depends entirely on the heart and the mind of the user.   A hammer can be used to build a home for the Homeless. Or to crush their skulls.  A computer can be used to start a new business or crash a nation’s energy grid or banking system. Biotechnology can be used to cure cancer or a bioweapon targeting a specific genetic profile within a Jewish, European, African, Asian, or indigenous population.

It is true that without all nations abiding by the golden rule, and basing their laws on the global rule, humanity will continue its devolution with the law of the jungle.   And under this law, the evolution of weaponry will enable even a single individual with the killing capacity of a superpower.  Biological, cyber, and nano weapons often replicate when used.  Unlike traditional weapons that are used up when they are used.  Security is an illusion.  It's something we all want and need.  But if one or more people are so motivated they can find many ways to circumvent the best defenses.  Military strength is not the path to humanities sustainable freedoms and security.

 FP#5.  Everything is connected, interdependent, and vulnerable.  We need a global approach.  This FP was offered by the Director of CISA our nation’s newest federal agency (Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency) created by President Trump.  This is another a self-evident truth. 

More than a year before Trump was elected a survey of US national security experts were asked to rank the threats our nation faced.  They concluded terrorism to be our greatest threat.  Second was our own “government’s dysfunction”.   These rated above Russia, China, N. Korea, Iran, and climate change.  And this was before COVID19 awoke the nation and the world (including terrorists) to the power of pathogens and their capacity to of bringing powerful civilizations to their knees.  TRUTH:  More pandemics will come. Be they from nature, intentional creation, or accidental release.  And humanity is unprepared for them and doing many things that are accelerating the inevitable risk of new and re-emerging infectious diseases.

CONCLUSION:  The surprise attack on Israel last week, and the surprise attack on the United States on 911 was more than a failure of intelligence.  These were failures of wisdom.

"Let us not cast the blame on the murderers today. Why should we deplore their burning hatred for us? For eight years they have been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we have been transforming the lands and villages, where they and their fathers dwelt, into our estate. - Gen. Moshe Dayan

Last week the Washington Post printed the first op-ed I'm aware of calling our constitution into question regarding our democracies sustainably.  They offered several useful amendments but knew they would never pass given the hyper political polarization of our nation.  But they failed to consider the three most fundamental flaws within our constitution.  Flaws that require a Constitutional rewrite.

Thomas Jefferson said every law and Constitution should be “changed every 19 years”. Because “the future belongs to the living.  Not the Dead”

Our Constitution's greatest existing flaw is that it is based on the concept of independence.  A mental construct that exists nowhere it is known universe.  Fundamentally independence t is an illusion. And we are delusional in believing it exists. 

Second our laws do not provide justice. They provide relief to people who are wealthy and guilty.  And imprison those who are often innocent and poor.

The third is the inability of our legislature to respond quickly to the emerging threats coming from the exponential growth in most technologies.  The constitution was engineered to work slowly. 

Fourth, those we have elected have failed to achieve any of the intentions in the preamble.  And it is “We the People” who prioritized our comforts, indifference to the suffering of others, and our lack of distinction between the three kinds of truth, that have led to our own loss of faith and trust.  Yet we blame our nation's dysfunction on social media.  Until we transform our constitution to abide by the wisdom expressed by our Declaration of Independence we are doomed as a civilized nation.

What is so complicated about taking care of nature and taking care of one another?  Independence is an illusion.  Everything is connected, interdependent, and vulnerable.  You don’t need to be Einstein to know a global approach is urgently needed.   Simply because all people are created and equal endowed by their Creator, with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and health.  In simple words, we must abide by the laws of nature and nature is God if we want to make this country and the world a garden of Eden on earth.  Just as heaven intended.

In the Jewish legend, the great warrior Samson ends up, as John Milton famously puts it, ´eyeless in Gaza´.  He is blinded by the Philistines and harnessed to a huge millstone, forced to drag himself around and around in circles, always moving but unable to go anywhere. Eventually, in the most spectacular of suicides, he gets his revenge by pulling down their temple on top of the Philistines, killing both them and himself. The story is apparently supposed to be heroic, but it feels more like a fable of vicious futility. Cruelty begets cruelty until there is nothing left but mutual destruction. -  Fintan O´Toole in the New York Review of Books, October 10. 

“Any country that seeks to control others is a country that seeks aggression. Any country that seeks aggression is a country that seeks war. Any country that seeks war is a country that seeks domination. Therefore, any country that seeks control, aggression, war, and domination is a country that must enslave its people in order to advance this agenda of imperialism. This is a description of the United States of America today. It has become a nation based on control, aggression, war, and domination, and only a totalitarian regime can achieve and hold empire.” Gary D. Barnett

Anosognosia: defined and applicable to all.

 

The term "anosognosia" has its origins in Greek. It is derived from two Greek words:

1. "Anos" (ἄνος): This word means "without" or "lacking."

2. "Gnosis" (γνῶσις): This word means "knowledge" or "awareness."

When combined, "anosognosia" essentially means "lack of awareness" or "lack of knowledge." In the context of medicine and neuroscience, anosognosia refers to a condition in which a person with a disability or illness is unaware of or denies its existence.  These are often associated with certain brain injuries or neurological disorders.   I assert this word can now be applied to anyone who is experiencing illusions or delusions.

 1. Illusions: Illusions are misperceptions of sensory information, often related to visual or auditory stimuli. They occur when the brain misinterprets sensory input, leading to a false perception of reality. Common examples include optical illusions, where objects may appear distorted or misaligned, even though they are not. Illusions are typically shared experiences, and people can often recognize and understand that they are seeing something differently than it actually is.

 2. Delusions: Delusions, on the other hand, are firmly held false beliefs that are resistant to reason or contrary evidence. They are typically associated with psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or delusional disorder. Delusions involve believing something that is not grounded in reality and cannot be corrected through logical argument or evidence. Delusions can be bizarre, paranoid, grandiose, conspiratorial, or persecutory, among other types.

Back story:  Around 1997 I read a Harvard/WHO “Global Burden of Disease’ (GBD) study* of multiple global health risk factors and trends.  The study then was attempting to predict what the top global health issues would be in 2020.    As Issues Director for the Global Health Council then and one of 14 Action Board members of the American Public Health Association (APHA with ~120,000 US professional members), my priority was advocating for more global health funding to invest in prevention and mitigation of ‘new and reemerging infectious diseases’ globally which were predicted to serious future threats to US national security threats by multiple federal agencies ( CIA, DOD, CDC, and the National Academy of Sciences).   Back then, global fatalities of these were nearly tied with chronic diseases in 1st and 2nd place.  Mental health issues were around 10th and not considered a major death threat.  If I remember correctly, the study predicted mental health issues would be in 2nd place by 2020.  That shocked me.  I’m not sure what their reasoning was then, but now I’m thinking those researchers deserve a Noble prize today in medicine.  

Witnessing the acceleration of threats, our failure to address root causes, an over-abundance of mental distraction devises, truth decay, a common persistent belief that the problems ‘over there’ are not ours here, and many people blaming our dysfunctional democratic republic as the problem, we have a very serious mental health problem combined with and exacerbating increasing global insanity.  Anosognosia is both a medical and mental health term referring to conditions in which a person (usually with a mental health disorder or neurological condition) who is unaware of or denies their illness.   Or may not recognize the existence or severity of their own condition, which can make it challenging to provide them with appropriate support.   It is a complex phenomenon that involves impairments in self-awareness and perception of one's own mental health. Treatment may require a multi-faceted approach, which may include therapy, meditation, or support from those who only offer objective truths if the individual afflicted is open to evidence that personal and political truths vary by individual nationality, religion, economic status or other prejudiced life experiences (this definition has been modified to those not suffering from brain injury or mental delusions caused by drugs.) 

It should be increasingly obvious that our minds are easily addicted to the illusion of independence - the delusional concept that our government is based on, that is incapable of resolving globally interdependent problems and threats most impacting on our lives and threatening our security. This is also associated with the delusion that if we just get the right President in office things will get better.  

Unfortunately, a majority of citizens are simply unwilling (or unable) to accept this fundamental fact.  Our political system is structurally dysfunctional, and our polarized political parties are incapable of fixing it.  Independence is only a mental construct that exists nowhere in the known universe. And keeping this delusion institutionalized will only continue dividing, impoverishing, sickening, and killing us.   Plus, harming and killing tens of millions of others around the world in wars, genocides, revolutions, mass murders, extreme weather events, and easily preventable hunger and infectious diseases (which was and can always be a top killer).  Each of these affordability preventable if we only had a change in thinking.   

* Christopher J. L. Murray; Alan D. Lopez, eds. (1996). WHO IRIS: The Global burden of disease : a comprehensive assessment of mortality and disability from diseases, injuries, and risk factors in 1990 and projected to 2020: summary. World Health Organization. hdl:10665/41864. ISBN 0-9655466-0-8.

Mental Health Day: You can’t handle the TRUTH! If you can’t see it. ANOSOGNOSIA

As two young fish passed an older fish, the elder asked, “how’s the water boys?”. The two youngsters look at each other and responded, “it's fine!” and swim past.  Moments later one asked the other “What’s water?”

Most people swim in a world without seeing the truth regarding the reality around us that our bodies actually inhabit.  We wander around our home, streets, offices, or parks with many thoughts in our head, but we rarely consider the health of our immune system, our flawed global governance system, or nature’s life support systems that all life on this miracle planet depends on.  This is an existential problem.  And in the growing chaos around us this reality perpetuates a loss of faith and trust in our political, religious, and scientific institutions.  And one another.  We are blinded to the truth that the primary source of most of our needless suffering, premature deaths, mass murders, and environmental destruction is our collective blindness - our collective mental illness. 

This cognitive blindness to our collective truth on fuels the hyper polarization of beliefs (political, religious, and economic) that are eating away at our trust, health, freedoms and security.   Neal DeGrasse Tyson's observation offers a solution.  He suggests there are three types of truth.  Understanding these variations may have the potential to end the destructive consequences now coming home to roost: terrorism, extreme weather events, pandemics, wars, hunger, political polarization, drug addiction, suicides, and other mental health problems.

Our first ‘truth’ is personal.  Dictated by our religious beliefs or lack of.  Almost everyone’s mind has a different perspective. Even within the same religion.  Second is our political truth, usually determined by others we love, our education, and/or our experiences.  Last is objective truths.  Self-evident truths we can argue about, but reality is simply unaffected by argument or majority view.

Consider this objective truth.  The three most complex and complicated systems in our known universe are nature, the immune system of all higher life forms now surviving, and the human mind.  It should be self-evident that the degree to which our metal concepts harm nature or our own immune system, is the degree to which our health will be harmed.

Rawle Andrews Jr., Esq. Executive Director American Psychiatric Association Foundation asserts "there can be no health without mental health." 

Another objective truth.  Everything is connected, interdependent, and vulnerable. And a universal approach is needed to ensure our balanced and sustainable order needed to ensure our existence.         

In Samual P. Huntington's classic "The Clash of Civilizations and Remaking of World Order" the Harvard historian said future conflicts would be between religions and ideologies. He didn't anticipate the threat of pandemics or our wanton destruction of nature.  

But nature has sustained our vital planetary life support systems for millennia.  And immune systems evolved with it or perished.  Our mind (within our brain) evolved with an astounding capacity for solving problems related to nature’s evolving challenges. This unique skill empowered humans to survive and thrive within nature for hundreds of thousands of years.  

Unfortunately, our mind is now failing us.  Its original purpose was solving problems focused on survival and thriving.  Eventually it has engineered astonishingly complex and complicated infrastructure systems and structures we now depend on.  But our world is always changing.  With technology changing exponentially and changing everything around us faster than are changing.  But our governance systems and mental constructs resist change.  And failing to adapt to these accelerating changes is suicide. Adaptations are urgently needed to make our lives safer, more mobile, and more comfortable.  Avoiding change will not end well.  We have prioritized wealth over health, instead of wealth for health.  With health being our highest priority within our mind, body, spirit, family, community, environment, national, and governance system.

Unfortunately, the unprecedented wealth now generated - plus the old governance systems driving it - mixed with our unprecedented technological advances - have become the primary destructive forces on our home planet.  Resource extraction, competitive nationalism, and advertised materialism are each unsustainable. 

 The good news is that humanity retains the capacity to unite and flip this degradation of human and planetary health to create heaven on earth.  By simply using that same wealth and advances in technologies to remedy the multitude of globally interconnected and interdependent threats we face.  Unfortunately, we remain wedded to our mental barriers blocking this.  Human invented concepts like national sovereignty, peace through strength, and market forces will protect us. 

But today’s growing chaos appears unstoppable. This is a sane evaluation given the multiple of unsustainable trends that most of humanity believes is getting worse.  And properly anticipates getting worse, much worse, if it can even get better.   

Recent research on brain size may explain our conundrum. Why don’t we unite globally and change our thinking and behaviors - even in the face of such existential threats.   New studies document that our species brain size has significantly shrunk over the last 300,000 years.  And lost a golf ball size of brain matter over the last 3000 to 5000 years.  

Simply put - our mind’s unique problem-solving capacity that gifted us our current level of ‘civilization’ (and I use this word lightly) enabled us to better protect our family and favored tribes by relying on various ideological, political, religious, economic, and/or cultural systems.  These enabled larger and larger populations to exist.  But these group advantages also ran parallel with often fierce competition between them.   Without effective restraints on economic systems, exponentially powerful resource extraction machines, and increasingly powerful weapon systems, modern progress for our species has no guarantee.  Not unless our minds change, and we valued nature and the Golden Rule above our previous tribal ideas.   

So now these very large and powerful groups (nations, economies, and religions) defend these outdated mental constructs by relying on wars, genocides, sanctions- which can be even more deadly, or diplomacy with cannot work without a system of global justice.  It is suicide to rely on diplomacy for stability.  This would be laughable if it were not so tragically deadly.   Governments and groups continue to wage war, genocide, invent new weapons, repress, torture, assassinate, or finance other violations of fundamental human rights with the singular intent of protecting their own narrow interests.       

“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane.” - Erich Fromm, The Sane Society

There should be no question that these powerful forces now risk the survival and thriving of the human family.  While ‘progress’ persists in bombing, farming, and paving over nature -- with little regard for the inalienable rights every human was born with -- things look hopeless.    Yet without question, we assume our modern governance systems can protect both our national sovereignty/security, global security, personal health, and sustained prosperity.  Unfortunately, both our national and international systems are based on the delusion of independence -- that mental construct that exists nowhere in the known universe.  A concept that endangers our freedom and/or our security.   

In Thomas Paine’s Common Sense pamphlet, he summarized that the only legitimate purpose of government is protecting human freedom and security.  I’ll believe he intended it to be a sustainable government.  Our existing Constitution and UN charter are not sustainable.  If you doubt this give a school grade to each of the seven intentions listed in the preamble of the US Constitution.  Or the overall intention of the United Nations.  Then considering our world’s accelerating domestic and globally connected polycrisis of political polarization, truth and trust decay, unsustainable debt, environmental degradation, evolving pathogens, unwinnable arms race, escalating refugee flows, and unstoppable WMD proliferation. 

Ignoring the source of these trends is an existential mental health problem.   It explains why we allow the laws created by these flawed systems to persistently violate ‘the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”.  What is so complicated about nurturing nature and each other?  There are truths that we hold to be self-evident.  Some are listed in our Declaration of Independence which Abraham Lincoln called our Apple of Gold”.  Then compared it to our Constitution which he called its “frame of Silver”. 

Are the concepts of nationalism, political parties, splintered religions, democracy, communism, and unregulated capitalism really worth dying for?  And killing for?  It seems only sane to put the protection of each other and our environment on this miracle planet as our human family's highest priority.   

“How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?” ― Bertrand Russell

Humanity needs a bridge to the future.  Yes, bridges collapse.  But dependable engineering systems and structures are based on fundamental principles. And they only fail with a lack investment in planning, maintenance, and accountability.  Or resistance to re-engineering when reality changes. 

Why do engineers swear an oath to protect public health and safety, yet US elected officials swear an oath to protect the constitution" Or, why do armies swear to protect a king, dictator, or religious majority?   

When astronauts reach space within their perfectly engineered craft and see the earth from above, they usually experience what they call the “overview effect”.  They clearly see our miracle planet we all inhabit and recognize the petty mental differences that too much of humanity lethally experiences.  

There is a mental health term applicable to our earthbound minds resistant to seeing this reality.  It's called Anosognosia.  We have this mental health problem and are logically saddened or depressed by diminishing hope.   Seeing the ‘overlook’ of reality could fill us with inspiration and hope.   We can resolve our problems without mass murder or environmental mutilation if we remember what Golda Meir said.  “The only way to eliminate war is to love our children more than we hate our enemies.”

This is a universal truth!  We must engrain in our brain that physical change is universal.  Yet fundamental principles are reliable.   Being blind to this fundamental truth is suicide.   

Rotary has thrived on its 4-way test.  And serving others based on this fundamental truth, will pass the other three tests. 

It should be obvious that anyone doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result – has a mental health problem.  ANOSOGNOSIA     

It’s time we opened our minds and prioritized our actions starting with taking care of one another and taking care of nature by putting the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals at the top of every national, religious, and economic agenda.

If we persist in resistance to changing our minds, ‘civilization’ as we now experience it is simply unsustainable.

"We have it in our power to begin the world over again." - Thomas Paine

“We are called to be the architects of tomorrow.  Not its victims.”  R. Buckminster Fuller 

"Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think." Thomas Edison

Failed Letters to the Editor.

Dear editor,

 

Today’s front page WPost article (Sept 19, 2023) “Evil cannot be trusted” referring to “leaders of the Global South and Republicans in Congress who say the war is consuming too many resources and drawing away from other priorities” combined with Zelensky’s warning to the UN --is so rich with irony it could pay off our nation’s debt.

When Putin’s army first invaded Ukraine the UN was powerless to stop it.  It was an official ‘war crime” as defined by the UN.   Soon after Putin’s murderous violation Zelensky said “Freedom must be better armed than tyranny”.  That is a fundamental principle that every human should agree on.  Unfortunately, resistance to arming Ukraine is slipping due to the current ‘world order’ cemented into the UN Charter after WW II.  That effectively put the protection of national sovereignty above the protection of human rights and the environment.  Thus, the UN’s ability to protect people on the receiving end of Putin’s war crime only accelerates factors of global polycrisis.  And simple-minded people believe national sovereignty, populist leaders, and political borders with walls will save them from the accelerating chaos. 

The future will not be safe or free for anyone unless ‘we the people’ in most nations insist that our own governments make purchasing human rights and environmental protection their greatest priority. Neither charities nor indebted governments have the money, but profit-rich businesses do. They must use their unprecedented global wealth to assist in achieving the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, ASAP.   Or everyone suffers the consequences of allowing tyranny more freedom than people.

Not printed as of 9-30-23

 

Dear editor, Washington Post, September 29, 2023.

Your editorial regarding the GOP debates imaginative talk on foreign affairs would be comical if it weren’t so damaging to our nation’s future.  A free world without security equals chaos.   Freedom’s require responsibility for actions if there is to be any maximizing of human freedom and security in any nation.

Our international system of chaos created with unenforceable international law simply can’t work.   We need the global rule of law that effectively protects existing national borders and human rights for all.  Holding leaders accountable for war, genocide, starvation, or other policies guaranteed to violate human rights will only allow things to get worse.

The “great moral question of the century” is why we have failed several times to learn this fundamental fact of life on a miracle planet.   

Will we ever put the protection of human rights in the environment above the protection of national sovereignty?  Frances Moore Lappe insisted decades ago with hand levels.  That “we are up here”  and they (the south) are down low.   “We can either bring them up to us, or they will drag us down to them!”   The America 1st movement is going to drag us down. 

 

Dear Time Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs,

 In your “Shaping the Future” list (Sept. 25^th issue) of individuals you left out one capitalism transforming CEO.  Bank of America Chair & CEO Brian Moynihan who is pushing business like the Oil companies who have massively profited in the last decade or more, to finance the UNs 17 Sustainable Development Goals if capitalism and profit making is to be sustainable.

 

Below is the C-span program 6-29-23:  Interview: Bank of America Chair & CEO Brian Moynihan discusses the state of the economy and the U.S. financial system during a conversation hosted by the City Club of Cleveland.  Program ID:  529044-1  https://www.c-span.org/video/?529044-1/bank-america-ceo-remarks-city-club-cleveland

 

If they want “sustainable capitalism”.  It “requires a greater purpose than making more profit”.  And, achieving these will require approximately “$6 trillion annually”.  “Governments are too debt burdened” to fund them and “Charity is insufficient”.  “Business leaders” “like the oil companies” need to step up and prioritize a balancing of short-term gains with long term interests globally.  Politics must be good for business and society. 

 

The World Economic Forum’s latest Podcast interview is with two brilliant and fast talking women [transcript available!] ‘sharing insights’ regarding businesses adopted the SDGs based on long term values...now essential in this era of “polycrisis”.   

https://www.weforum.org/podcasts/meet-the-leader/episodes/surprising-climate-progress-blindspot?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2811408_Prod-Si-WeeklyNewsletterV6&utm_term=&emailType=Strategic%20Intelligence%20Weekly&ske=MDAxMFgwMDAwNEt2cjNRUUFS   19 min talk.... (one can follow the transcript word for word with the podcast as they race through this vitally important interview).