Mind vs Human spirit: Mental intelligence vs Human wisdom

Much of our modern confusion begins with a quiet separation between the heart and the mind, and with language that drifts out of alignment with reality. Words are powerful tools, but they are also filters; they can clarify, or they can distance us from what is. When language becomes more about defending beliefs than describing Truths, it reshapes our reality into something thinner and more abstract than the world we truly inhabit. In that state, understanding becomes something we argue for, rather than something that arrives.

When we encounter nature not as scenery or resource, but as kin—as presence, elder, and wise teacher—the conversation changes. We are no longer at the center of the story, but participants in a much older one, living beyond the human gaze - in coexistence with all life. If we pause long enough to stop explaining, justifying, or winning, something deeper within us rises. Conversation becomes a bridge between two worlds: the one in our heads and the one that is real. And in crossing that bridge, we discover that wisdom is not always learned—it is often something our spirit and soul are quietly remembering and ‘re-minding’ us of.

Rotary’s Four-Way Test and commitment to ‘service above self’ quietly acknowledges this Truth that modern culture often forgets: not all intelligence is located in the brain. Beyond our analytical minds (the part of us that argues, optimizes, and persuades), there is a deeper intelligence carried in our very biology, encoded through millennia of human experience.  It is this wisdom that allows us to know what is true before it is fashionable, what is fair before it is popular, and what builds goodwill long before it is efficient.  And that deeper human intelligence recognizes, without debate, that a child should not die before a parent, that dignity is not bestowed by majority vote, and that unchecked majority rule can become tyranny rather than justice. 

The Sustainable Development Goals, at their best, are a modern attempt to give policy language to this ancient wisdom—protecting life, reducing injustices, strengthening institutions, and safeguarding future generations.   History shows us that constitutions and institutions endure only when they reflect “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” —those enduring principles like inalienable rights, that protect life, liberty, and human dignity  -- regardless of opinion polls or political cycles.

Rotary’s role is not merely to ask what works, or even what wins, but what aligns with that deeper human intelligence. The Four-Way Test reminds us that service above self begins not in the cleverness of our arguments, but in the wisdom of our shared humanity.

“If man chooses oblivion, he can go right on leaving his fate to his political leaders. If he chooses Utopia, he must initiate an enormous education program… immediately.” – R. Buckminster Fuller

“Every human being’s deepest, most natural expression is the desire to make a difference in life, of wanting to matter. We can choose to make the success of all humanity our personal business. We can choose to be audacious enough to take responsibility for the entire human family, to make our love for each other and for the world what our lives are really about.”  Werner Erhard 

 

The insanity of humanity is accelerating. With US support.

Yesterday’s WPost, page A13 news article titled, "Study: Aid cuts may lead to 9.4 million deaths by 2030: Pullbacks by US and other nations could undo decades of health gains."  The same “study also assesses a more sever scenario of aid budget cuts, in which the world would see 22.6 million additional deaths.”  You read that right. Additional!!!

Rotary, by urgently uniting other large globally minded service organizations into a Movement of Movements - to quickly achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 -- could reverse this modern holocaust that may take ten times the number of lives Hitler’s reign of insane ideology did.  

Unfortunately, Rotary's Legislative Council must move faster than the US Congress to make this Rotary's – and the world’s - highest priority.  Meanwhile, Rotary clubs and other progressive organizations continue to minimize their power by competing with thousands of progressive organizations, each with various priorities (like Rotary’s seven pillars) - for active members, money, media attention, timely access to policy makers.  And with Rotary a fear of non-partisan political advocacy. 

FYI: The US is over a billion dollars in arrears of our UN dues.  Plus, days ago, the US withdrew from dozens of UN agencies including WHO.  These US policies are a crime against humanity, and few Americans are speaking out.  More troubling is even fewer aware of the SDGs - humankind’s global need for a comprehensive, holistic, and synergistic global plan - needed to reverse this current insanity of humanity.  

And reported in today’s WPost - last month’s HHS announced overhaul of its vaccine schedule on one or more of the “leading causes of vaccine-preventable hospitalizations and death.” Even our nation’s own Vaccine campaigns are now making childhood Polio and Measles vaccinations optional.  All of this will lead to thousands of deaths and tens of thousands suffering needlessly in the US.  

The Truth?  I’m ashamed of my country...and particularly Americans believing that putting America First will not have catastrophic consequences both here...abroad.  They obviously don’t understand Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’.  Such leaders and followers aren’t fit to run a sand box.  

American First makes US weaker

Trump‘s MAGA mantra of putting America First is only making US fall further behind.  Tariffs, lies, and military threats make him predictably unpredictable.  This reduces what little trust nations once had in America’s global leadership.  And Trump's New World Order with his Board of Peace is marshaling into existence a new block of nations that refused to live by his rules.

At India’s recent major Energy Summit our Northern neighbor Canada, attended that summit.   And a quote out of Ottawa by Tim Hodgson, Canada‘s energy minister, asserted “we’re not going to live in a world where might makes right... where the strongest puts tariffs on everyone else. We’re going to live in a world where we believe in free trade, where we believe in trusted relationships.”  This is the sound of our nation tumbling further down and dust bin of history.

Meanwhile, most of the civilized world is recoiling at Trump‘s para-military force as its anti-immigration drive brutally swings across liberal states.  This is the weaponization of partisan politics that authoritarian leaders smile at.

Nobel prize winning economist Paul Romer’s 'modern growth theory’ asserts that ideas are non-rival: “My use of an idea does not prevent your use" of it.  "Knowledge" is like compound interest.  And a "new process, a better algorithm, a more efficient design can lift productivity across the entire economy. A barrel of oil can be burned once. A good idea can be reused forever.”  One major problem with this ‘theory’ is what will that idea being used for? To make more profits - or protect the health of people and our planetary life support systems?

America’s greatness and a little exceptionalism is in its global system that rewards discovery, experimentation, freedom, and entrepreneurial ship - all at scale.  But again, the main ideal must be using our freedom for taking virtuous national and global actions. Without doing this Americans will lose both our freedom and security.  And then our prosperity.  Simply because everything is connected, interdependent, and vulnerable.  And ideals need both virtue and global application.

Wise investments have never been more necessary.  And spending less money on servicing yesterday’s mistakes, lack of prevention, and interest on debt.  While investing more in preventing problems for creating a lasting legacy.  This means wisely prioritizing sufficient resources in achieving the 17th Sustainable Development Goals - ASAP.   We can either bring others up to our level of civilization, or they will bring us down to theirs.  

The US no longer has the market cornered on generating and applying new ideas. This is the freedom nearly every nation that makes it a priority.  And for the US to fail in affordably competing in this - is simply insane.  Because the cost of failure is simply unsustainable and un-American. 

Ubuntu {oǒ’boǒntoō|} in ten words: I Am Because We Are, We Are Because I Am

 African culture:  UBUNTU {oǒ’boǒntoō|}: The 0rigin of the word Ubuntu comes from the Xhosa/Zulu culture, the community into which Nelson Mandela was born, and has been summarized in the phrase, "Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu" in the Nguni language of Xhosa, Zulu, or Ndebele. The concept of this phrase can be translated to mean, "A person is a person through other persons," or "I am because we are." In Mandela’s explanation it touches upon the multi-faceted nature of Ubuntu, including the way one feels Ubuntu as an innate duty to support one's fellow man. People should enrich themselves, meaning grow in their own Ubuntu, but true enrichment will naturally align with the duty to act towards the spiritual growth of one's community. Ubuntu is a spiritual ideal, a way of life that is conceptually represented in a wide range of sub-Saharan African societies. While Ubuntu exists in many variations within different African cultures and languages, each conceptualization retains the same core of meaning that is both a goal and a guide for humanity. In a philosophical sense it promotes the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity".

The Spirit of Ubuntu Music Video:   https://www.spiritofubuntu.us/videos/The-Spirit-of-Ubuntu-Music-Video/  4 min.

"I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more. I will tell you in my way how the Indian sees things. The white man has more words to tell you how they look to him, but it does not require many words to speak the truth. If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian... we can live in peace. There need be no trouble. Treat all men alike.... give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who is born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men. Let me be a free man...free to travel... free to stop... free to work... free to choose my own teachers... free to follow the religion of my Fathers... free to think and talk and act for myself."  -- Chief Joseph  (1840-1904) Chief of the Wal-lam-wat-kain (Wallowa) band of Nez Perce Indians

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.

Here’s a video of optimism if you dare watch it  https://www.rethinkx.com/videos

Chuck Woolery 

Former Chair, United Nations Association Council of Organizations

Former Issues Director, Global Health Council.

Former Action Board member, American Public Health Association.

Author of 1996 and 1997 Congressional testimony warnings regarding threats to US and global bio- security.  For a Word Document copy of it...email chuck@igc.org

Rotarians (and other optimists) must rethink their hope that Peace is possible.

 

Is Peace Possible?  

 BC comic strip -Thor the Futurist:  A cave man asks Thor "Will there ever be an end to war?"  Thor's answer   "Yes! About 8 minutes after the Sun explodes." 

Not with Trump’s Board of Peace.  It would fundamentally work like the UN.  But under new leadership. Without fixing the UN’s basic flaw - its foundation is the illusion of independence. In a world where everything is connected, interdependent and vulnerable.  It maintains the protection of national sovereignty and wealth above the protection of human rights and nature.

World peace will not come from establishing Trump’s “Board of Peace”.  But humankind is not bored of peace yet. Not now, with more conflicts in the last 25 years than in the previous quarter century. If you haven’t noticed, the world’s progressive peace movement with its thousands of peace organizations hasn’t been working.  Even if they united, they could not overpower the national leaders who are so deeply committed now to the global paradigm of Peace through Strength – they are willing to let their nations go into bankruptcy or all go bust with WMD.

Here’s the problem in one word.  Ambiguoius.  The word “Peace” is ambiguous with every human ambition having a different definition.  The Truth is, Peace is a divisive word.  And trying to redefine it in our era of mounting Truth decay, political polarization, border disputes, the weaponization of everything, failing democracies, and rising tensions between an axis of tyranny and the instability of the axis of freedom -- not to mention the unknown future with AI‘s intervention in the evolution of weaponry as well as its own power, it’s a sure bet that world peace will not come even if 40 million or more people, play the Peace Game. You read that right.  It’s a real game!  Based on a decades old “Theory of Change” that assumes that if just one-tenth of one percent of the world’s people started taking small actions toward peace – we would have peace by 2030.  Rotary members are now being coached to play it between when they are not asking themselves the first question in their genius 4-way Test, “Is it the TRUTH?” As a Rotary member having studies peace and all other threats to human security for 4.5 decades, I assert it is “FAIR” that “all” Rotary members should be “concerned”.

A few years ago, I asked a wise Rotarian of 40+ years of ‘service above self’ what his “definition of peace” was.  He answered, “That depends on if you ask the policeman - or the protester.”  Now, with federal ICE officials murdering people when it feels right -while having the backing of their federal overseers, they are not building “GOODWILL & BETTER FRIENDSHIPS” with the 70% of Americans who are not MAGA devotees.  And this will not be “BENEFICIAL to all concerned!”

What is urgently needed here now and globally is a comprehensive, holistic, and synergistic effort at preventing violence. As well as every other form of human rights abuse known to humankind or nature’s vital environmental life support systems.

There’s only one word for this approach. It’s called Health!  And starting with mental health. By first transforming the concepts in our mind to prioritize cooperation and coordination among humankind, instead of competition and chaos between different religious, political, and economic views.

Next would be ensuring everyone’s healthy body, family, community, environment, government, and economic system, plus the health of our human spirit.

Fortunately, there’s a global plan already in place. In 2015 most of the world’s Non-Governmental Organizations and other concerned entities came together at the United Nations in NY. They finally agreed to and signed off on the 17th Sustainable Development Goals.  All to be achieved by the year 2030.  With only four years away from that goal – humanity is nowhere near achieving this wise endeavor.

With the world appearing crazy now from any perspectives, the most insanity can be found in the three progressive movements (Peace, Environment, and economic/social Justice) and their perpetual competition with each other for money, active members, media attention, and their access to key policy makers to urge favor for their particular mission.

Meanwhile, professional advocate leaders ignore the need of these movements to unite in common cause. And instead empower some to compete against each other for a limited amount of essential resources.

This has gone on for decades. With each movement, gambling on a different result. There are two names for this behavior.  Insanity and extinction.  Any living thing’s failure to adapt will not turn out well as environments change.  And our global environment’s irreversible interconnectedness has only increased while our minds and outdated governance systems have basically remained the same.

Perhaps with enough pain and suffering it might change their bubble mentality.  The finally unite to create heaven on earth with its unprecedent economic and technological wealth.  But don’t hold onto your lungs CO2.  

The resistance of the human mind to change - and doing the wise thing - is nearly impossible. 

Peace would be possible if humankind adopted the ideals within the American Declaration of Independence. Its 250^th anniversary is coming up in about 156 days. There are two phrases within we must contemplate. The first and most important “the Laws of Nature end of Nature‘s God.”  Take care of nature and each other.  The second is “…all experience has shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

This reflects the global movement’s failures to adapt.  They prefer their own favorite mission priorities. But not the single priority that humankind needs – achieving the UN 17th Sustainable Development, Goals.  And time is running out.  The acceleration of the evolution of weapons, pathogens, truth decay, political polarization, and mental insanity will not end well.  And time is not on our side.  Only by uniting do we stand a decent chance of pulling us away from this brink in wishful thinking.

 

"One day, hopefully, the globe will be civilized. All the points of the human dwelling will be illuminated and then the magnificent dream of intelligence will be fulfilled: to have the World as our homeland and Humanity as our nation."  Victor HUGO 1802–1885

 

"The unification of all humanity is a sign of the stage now approaching human society. The unity of the family, of the tribe, of the city, of the nation has been successively tried and fully established. Nation-building has come to an end. The anarchy inherent in the sovereignty of the state is reaching its climax; a world that is progressing towards maturity must abandon this fetish, it must recognize the organic unity and wholeness of human relations, and establish once and for all the mechanism that best embodies this fundamental principle of its existence.”  Shoghi Effendi  Appel aux Nations,

"Belonging to the human family confers on every person a kind of world citizenship, giving him rights and duties, men being united by a community of origin and destiny supreme. (...) The condemnation of racism, the protection of minorities, assistance to refugees and the mobilization of international solidarity towards those most in need are only coherent applications of the principle of world citizenship." John Paul II (01/01/2005)

 

“Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that in glory and in triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction, of a dot.” Carl Sagan Astronomer, Astrophysicist and Cosmologist

“I'm not from Athens or Corinth, I'm a citizen of the world." Socrate.

 

Homo Sapiens (wise humans) or Bubble brains?

 We still call ourselves Homo sapiens—the wise humans.   That name hasn’t aged well.

Humans don’t just kill; we mass-murder over ideas (religion, politics, economics). Concepts that once helped small tribes bond now scale badly in a world with nuclear weapons and planetary limits. Our brains outpaced our wisdom. We became jokingly—but accurately—Homo bullatus: the bubble-brained human. When we live out these concepts in our head... our perspective is vastly limited.

Each of has our own mental bubble—stories we mistake for reality. Some are religious, some political, some economic. Some are movements devoted to good—peace, the environment, social and economic justice—that fracture into smaller bubbles – then  resist uniting.  An important distinction is culture versus cult.  A cult is organized around a personal or political truth: loyalty to a leader, an ideology, or a narrative that resists hard evidence.  A culture—at its best—is organized around objective Truths: Unalienable rights, human dignity, ecological limits, shared facts, ethical restraints – like the golden rule.

Rotary International like other service organizations is a culture rooted in service to maximize health, positive peace, stewardship of the planet, fairness, and economic inclusion.  Like any large right-minded culture, Rotary includes ideological diversity - even some with MAGA hats.  That’s not a problem. The problem arises only when a personal or political truth replaces objective Truths.

Here’s the deeper challenge: even movements that agree on outcomes—health, peace, sustainability, justice—often compete rather than cooperate. Thousands of organizations chase the same limited pool of funding, active volunteers, media attention, and access to policymakers.   Each bubble defends its turf. Each believes its framing is the right one.  Meanwhile, the planet warms. Inequality deepens. Wars multiply.  And uniting is resisted like the plague.  This even happens between Rotary’s pillars and any other siloed organization or movement. 

The Declaration of Independence this 4^th of July offers an escape hatch appealing to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” That phrase anchors legitimacy beyond ideology—back to reality itself. And puts the protection of people and nature over abusive powers at any level – with a uniting message to prioritize the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals. These are not partisan. They are operating requirements for a technological species that wants to survive.  Imagine what Rotary could do if it championed these as a comprehensive, holistic, and synergistic solution for preventing most of humanities problems by 2030.  United humankind stands a chance.  Divided?  Other powers win.

Rotary’s role—now more than ever—could be a bridge between bubbles: grounded in evidence, guided by ethics, and brave enough to state that objective reality with “self-evident” “Truths” still exists.

Because if we don’t learn to govern our ideas, our ideas will finish governing us—without guard rails.

“Today the most important thing, in my view, is to study the reasons why humankind does nothing to avert the threats about which it knows so much, and why it allows itself to be carried onward by some kind of perpetual motion.  It cannot suffice to invent new machines, new regulations, new institutions.  It is necessary to change and improve our understanding of the true purpose of what we are and what we do in the world.  Only such an understanding will allow us to develop new models of behavior, new scales of values and goals, and thereby invest the global regulations, treaties, and institutions with a new spirit and meaning.”  President Vaclav Havel

 

What are we doing to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030?   Connect the dots!  See the web of life!  Achieve ‘liberty and justice for all’.  Or, prepare for the coming consequences.

What might spark a new American Civil War?

 

As ICE agents now regularly operate as "masked, heavily militarized, and without any visible identification" - ICE officials rationally argue that the masks are necessary to prevent their doxxing or harassment by rationally motivated citizens given repeated video evidence of ICE agents lethal abuse of force. 

But under the our nation's system of the 'rule of law', lawful force depends on legitimacy. And legitimacy depends on accountability. And accountability begins with personal identification. Thus anyone who is empowered to detain, arrest, or to use lethal force must be identifiable by a US government official for whom they are acting.  When ICE officers purposely conceal their faces and perform their  duties without name tapes, tags, or badge numbers, they turned their authority into a terrorizing anonymity.  “And anonymous power is precisely what democratic [rule of law] system is designed to prevent.” Retired Army Lieutenant General Mark Hurtling. Reported in The Bulwark. Jan, 2026

Recently a few US citizens have come out in their own community armed with military assault like weapons. Willing to risk their own lives to defend those they love and the peace their community has had for decades. 

In our accelerating age of fear and the growing threat of domestic and international terrorism, drug cartels, corruption, and lethal threats to our personal and family safety, all in addition to the context that many US states have “stand your ground” laws, this is a recipe for an very uncivil war.  

Prepare for more needless gun violence by innocent civilians caught in the crossfire between Trump’s abuse of power and our U.S. Constitutional rights to have guns for protecting our privacy, family, community security, and our US Constitution.  If a civil war is sparked as our existing political polarization and senseless violence increases, this will likely be the reason. 

So unless anyone who swore an oath to protect the U.S. Constitution takes their oath, the rule of law, and responsibility seriously - and removes the fools from office - with force if necessary - don’t expect this thing to get better anytime soon - on its own. 

After watching a movie last year about a modern US "Civil War" - obviously inspired by our nation's growing anger over political polarization, its premise was TX and CA military forces uniting against an elected and established President using his US Military forces.  Now I better understand how this might happen.  Spoiler alert - most Americans are not physically involved.  But it does not end well for those who hold government power.  

We the people must soon come to realization that our form of government can never achieve any of the seven intentions in its preamble.  Not without Constitutional Convention that puts into legal practice the fundamental principles that inspired the Declaration of Independence and the very birth of our nation's by its first civil war, that involved family against family, nations against other nations, and tribes against tribes.  With Freedom being the ultimate goal. But never achievable and sustainable without virtuous people and laws.  In the Declaration's words, "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God".  A biological translation; Keep people and nature healthy!  Health of mind, body, spirit, family, community, environment, government, economy...  This IS rocket science. If our species intends to transfer our species to other worlds, if we trash this one, we can't rely on aliens to do it for us.  

Should we prioritize Peace or Health?

 "There is no defense or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all.”  Booker T. Washington 

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.”— Carl Jung

Not having the IQ or wisdom of Albert Einstein, nor the spiritual genius of Mother Theresa, I've heard they both put Health as their highest priority.  I try.  As a biologist, one who studies life, certain fundamental principles to maintain for any life form to survive and thrive.  Human evolution has succeeded too well by using our mind as a problem-solving tool. 

Unfortunately, humankind hit a potentially suicidal cliff around 1945 when our smartest minds developed nuclear weapons. Then used two as a weapon of mass destruction (WMD).  Now with many forms of WMD (bio, chem, nano, cyber...with AI now accelerating their creation, manufacturing, an sometimes anonymous delivery methods ) a change in our mind's priority is vital.  Without this we put many species on Earth, especially our own, at increasing risk.  Without rapidly transforming our thinking to prioritize our flourishing by protecting the life support systems that all life depends on, we will continue killing and dying by the billions in defense of our mind’s favorite nationality, religion, economic system, or grievance.

Our species is now wrestling with this trilemma.  We are as free as all species - to do what we were created to do.  Survive and thrive.  Unfortunately, modern minds invented the illusion of independence and used it to engineer two clever yet unsustainable governance systems (on both national and global level). A delusional foundation for individual, family, community, national and global security. Indigenous cultures had a sustainable perspective on life.  They learned after thousands of years that everything is connected, interdependent, and vulnerable.   Humans will always free to do what we want.  But no one will ever be free of the consequences.  A few of America’s founding fathers understood this.  They repeatedly warned that only a virtuous people can live together sustainably.  

Quickly, our conflicted minds need to recognize and act on this most fundamental Truth.  We cannot have freedom, security, and independence at the same time.  We can only have two.  And we need to wise up quickly and pick the right two. Most minds now don't understand this. And our flawed government systems are unlikely to change anytime soon.  Fortunately, we do have the 17 Sustainable Development Goals with 169 subgoals within them. They are measurable, affordable, and achievable if (and this a huge if) they are achieved comprehensively, wholistically, and synergistically - given their irreversible global interdependence.  

In life we are either getting better or getting worse.  Just maintaining isn’t a rational option. We are all going to die because our body is always aging.  But technically, no one has ever died of old age.  Death always comes with a breakdown in one or more of our body’s 11 systems - or any one of the millions structures within these.   Currently, the greatest possibility of an early death is our mind’s cognitive resistance to change and adapt quickly - to our reality.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) might change this.  But don’t bet your life on it.   Current analysis of global competitiveness between nations, economic systems, and religious beliefs suggests that AI is more likely to spark a minor conflict or major war.  If/when this happens - your age or the stage of your body’s health and mind won’t matter. And you will finally rest in peace. A lasting one.

For the past 120+ years Rotary International has pursued peace as its foundation. But Peace is a concept like independence.  In Truth, our immune systems are always at war with viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites.  These remain the greatest cause of preventable human suffering and deaths.  The economic toll and this persistent burden is the best evidence of the political, economic, and religious insanity of humanity.  This is unlikely to change but there is sanity in uniting to achieve the 17 SDGs 

Health is a universal desire while Peace is a polarizing word.  Especially now with the number of conflicts increasing since the turn of this century.  This rise may be related to the increase in partisan political polarization  - within the last decade.  It's uncertain to be causation or correlation, but our minds are certainly divided into multiple tribal camps due to Truth decay.   And this is unlikely to diminish any time soon. 

The undisputed champion of this divisive peace over the last 400 years has been the human principle ‘Peace through Strength’. This remains firmly planted in the minds of most leaders with nuclear weapons, powerful militaries, united powerful allies, and a population unable to demand the need for this to change.

On the flip side of this dilemma the progressive peace movement is betting on “Peace through disarmament”.  But this road to peace washed out many times. And now almost anything can be weaponized by cleaver minds defending concepts that are highly motivating (nationalism, religion, economics....) in our minds, but not our DNA. 

What can be done by a leader when her people or nation is being attacked without clear cause? Willingly surrender some or all areas of their land? What if treaties are broken while starvation and/or genocides are in process?  A leader’s claim that he/she is defending the homeland by attacking suspected drug cartels in other nations? Or, suspected terrorists, or close ally’s of the enemy they don’t like?  Disarmament would be foolish.  Believing ‘might makes right’ is worse.

But protecting one’s family and one’s own life is a fundamental biological right.  

The peace most folks desire/imagine rarely comes - or is sustained after - the outcome of a war or genocide.  There are at least five root causes of violent conflicts.  The first four are not an effective or sustainable arena for Rotary involvement.

1.    1.  Flawed political systems that cannot resolve differences peacefully.

2.      2. Different religious, economic, or political beliefs.

3.      3. Unresolved border disputes, legitimate grievances, or changing water/food needs. 

4.      4. Flawed or ignored elections - or lack of freedom or human rights

5.     5.  Inadequate basic needs/rights of a population not being met – driving up the Infant Mortality Rates (IMR)   This is where Rotary’s power - dollar for dollar/person to person  -already makes the biggest difference connected to its other pillars of service. 

The human mind offers a useful metaphor. Think of it as a powerful machine—relentless, tireless, literal. It follows instructions precisely, whether those instructions are wise or careless. Most people mistake that machine (the voice in their head) for who they really are (a body and sovereign soul). The mind is just their tool.  A powerful tool for quietly shaping thoughts, good behavior, natural stress, calming fear, building resilience, and preserving hope. Empowering a mind, body and spirit capable of building and sustaining a garden of Edan on our blue planet lightyears from another star.

Societies function the same way. When individuals are chronically unhealthy—physically, mentally, socially, their internal systems default to survival mode. Stress hormones rise. Short-term thinking dominates. Cooperation erodes. In that state, peace is not sustainable; it is fragile at best, illusory at worst.  Health is not separate from peace. Health is the precondition for it. 

Our subconscious mind teaches us several rules of life.  These apply just as powerfully to communities and nations:

• Literal Truth: Systems respond to conditions as they are, not as we wish them to be. A population living with untreated disease, malnutrition, trauma, or toxic stress experiences those conditions as emergencies. Conflict thrives where bodies and minds are under constant threat.
• The present moment: Stability is built now, not “someday.” When people can say, “I am safe. I am nourished. I am learning. I am valued,” their systems begin to organize toward cooperation rather than competition and fear.
• Habit and pathways: Just as repeated thoughts form neural roads, repeated investments form social infrastructure. Clinics, clean water, maternal care, vaccinations, mental-health access—these become the well-paved roads societies travel daily. Health systems create habits of trust, measurable results, and great economic savings.
• Images and imagination: Peace agreements are abstract. Health is visible. A vaccinated child, a mother surviving childbirth, a community with clean water—these are images the human mind understands and rallies around, and most people want to do.
• Emotion and motivation: Fear fuels division. Well-being fuels participation. Healthy people have the emotional bandwidth to care about others.
• Safety: The primary job of any system—biological or social—is survival. When survival is constantly threatened, change feels dangerous and conflict feels inevitable. Health restores the sense of safety that allows societies to evolve rather than explode.
• Persistence: Health improvements compound. They are sustainable. They can outlast political cycles and ceasefires.

This is precisely why the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals place health—SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being—at the center of sustainable development. Without health, progress in education, equality, economic growth, and peace cannot endure. Sustainability is not an environmental slogan alone; it is the ability of human systems to function over time without collapse.

If Rotary or other peace groups truly seeks to make the world better not just today, but generationally, then health is the most strategic foundation we/they can choose. Peace emerges naturally when people are healthy enough to unite, imagine a future, trust institutions, and then invest sufficiently in one another. 

 Peace is the destination.     Health is the engine.      Sustainability is the road. 

Rotary has always believed in service above self. By grounding our mission in health—physical, mental, family, social, community, environmental, government, economic- we need not abandon peace. We will make it possible, durable, and sustainable.    

The machine is waiting for instructions.  It’s time to give it the right ones. Not the ones it dreamed up hundreds if not thousands of years ago.  We must operate our machinery with the right context.  Not it- operating us.

 

"A universal peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts."
-- James Madison  (1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President
Source: essay in the National Gazette, February 2, 1792

 

“If success or failure of this planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do...How would I be?  And what would I do?” R. Buckminster Fuller

US Law Enforcement Appreciation Day: They try their best and risk everything.

 

 

Today is U.S. Law Enforcement Appreciation Day.  Difficult to do when the FBI under Trump’s leadership is hard to have faith in. 

And, we must still pause and recognize the men and women who step into life and death uncertainty almost each day.

The question is, are they doing it to uphold the law, or the rule of law. There is a difference. The Rule of law requires three fundamental elements to be legitimate in human affairs. 

First, is the law made by the will of the people.  Second, is it enforced equally.  Last, is the law protecting basic inalienable rights (see Universal Declaration of Human Rights). 

 

Their work is often dangerous, frequently misunderstood, and always essential to the functioning of a free and civil society.

 

But appreciation does not require blind praise. In fact, the deepest form of respect we can offer those brave souls is to be honest about what their role truly represents—and what it must never abandon.

 

At its best, law enforcement exists to protect life, liberty, and basic human dignity. Those principles did not originate in the Declaration of Independence. They came from “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”—a moral framework older than any nation and higher than any single law.  And they are not always enforced on the streets, in statutes or in courtrooms.

And not all laws are equal in every city, state or nation.

 

Some laws are administrative. Some are temporary. Some are flawed. History offers sobering reminders that legality and morality do not always align. From segregation to the internment of citizens or non-citizens, unjust laws have always existed.  And sometimes even enforced—by otherwise well-intentioned people and institutions. 

 

That reality places law enforcement officers in a uniquely difficult position. They are sworn to uphold the law, yet they operate within a moral ecosystem that demands discernment, restraint, and respect for fundamental rights. The legitimacy of law enforcement depends not merely on enforcement, but on just enforcement.

 

Justice is what gives law its authority.

 

When laws protect basic rights—life, liberty, due process, equal treatment—they earn public trust. When enforcement is proportional, transparent, and humane, communities cooperate rather than resist. When officers see themselves not simply as enforcers, but as guardians of civic order, the social fabric strengthens.

 

This is why training, accountability, and community engagement are not criticisms of law enforcement; they are investments in it and the civility of the community they serve.  A system that supports officers in acting ethically, safely, and wisely honors both the badge and the people it serves.  When it inserts is power from outside the community it needs to work closely with the powers within that community.

 

Law enforcement is not meant to be a blunt instrument of power. It is meant to be a shield—especially for the vulnerable. It stands between chaos and community, between fear and freedom. That is a heavy responsibility deserving respect and a decent wage.

 

On this Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, we can hold two truths at once:

 

We can honor those who serve with integrity and courage. And we can recommend ourselves to the idea that laws must remain rooted in justice, human dignity, enduring moral principles, and the Truths that we should all hold to be self-evident.

 

When law enforcement aligns with those higher laws—of nature, conscience, and shared humanity—it does more than keep the peace.  It helps make a free society possible and sustainable.  It all starts with virtue and the wisdom and compassion to know what is right and what is wrong.

From what I saw on the visual coverage of the killing of a woman in a care by an ICE agent was the abuse of power and/or the fear of the woman in the care and the intent to kill by the man with the gun.  Three shots. Two nearly at point blank range while he was next to the car, never really in front of it.    Only a drone video (or God) from above - will we know any time soon.                                                                       

 

Peace through Strength is insane.

Yet it remains the predominant belief for the majority of powerful nations that remain in competition for power. In violation of human laws and even "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God", (the Golden Rule & the best definition of the Rule of Law- that requires three elements: democracy, justice, and the protection of inalienable rights.)  "When will They ever learn?" (a peace song in 60s)  They didn't. And we haven't either.

 “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” — Stephen Miller to Jake Tapper on CNN, Jan. 5, 2026.

“He who would live must fight. He who does not wish to fight in this world, where permanent struggle is the law of life, has not the right to exist. Such a saying may sound hard; but, after all, that’s how it is.” — Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf

“The Fascist State expresses the will to exercise power and to command. Here the Roman tradition is embodied in a conception of strength. Imperial power, as understood by the Fascist doctrine, is not only territorial, or military, or commercial; it is also spiritual and ethical... Fascism sees in the imperialistic spirit — i.e., in the tendency of nations to expand — a manifestation of their vitality.” — Benito Mussolini in The Doctrine of Fascism

Not a single journalist or podcaster that I've heard from makes the self-evident Truth that Peace is in the eye of the beholder. Their mind actually.  Putin's mind is different that Zelensky. And between a police officer and a protestor.  

Any serious martial artist will tell you (as Darwin did) that real strength is through genetic diversity and adapting to change.  The word for failing this is extinction. 

This is self-evident Truth tested over millions of years.  And why White Supremists or any other religious or 'race' extremist should get a freaking clue and shed their concept for their own survival in the real world.  

Being united (hint, hint to the 3 progressive movements: Peace, Environment, and economic/social Justice, and the thousands of organizations within each) as a MoM (a movement of movements that Naomi Klein called for in 2014 at the global Climate March event from NYC) we could achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The only plan globally approved for a comprehensive and holistic effort to address the root causes of most of the disruptive forces that are now ignoring every nation's borders. 

We have just over 6 months to get our minds and actions united or the divisions now will only get worse for people and nature's systems all life depends on.  

Insane

I'm dispirited with the Progressive habit of not uniting . and getting further divided by MAGA's distractions.  And doing this repeatedly for at least 3 decades and expecting a different result.  There is a term for his.

The Purpose of Government? Ours failed long ago

 “That the whole trust, power, and authority of the magistrate is vested in him for no other purpose, but to be made use for the good, preservation, and peace of men in that society over which he is set, and therefore that this alone is and ought to be the standard and measure according to which he ought to square and proportion his laws, model and frame his government.”  – John Locke, An Essay Concerning Toleration [1667]

"Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz., freedom and security.  And however our eyes may be dazzled with snow, or our ears deceived by sound; however prejudice may warp our wills, or interest darken our understanding, the simple voice of nature and of reason will say, it is right.”   Thomas Paine, Common Sense.  Published Feb. 14, 1776. 

"In existing criminology there are concepts: a criminal man, a criminal profession, a criminal society, a criminal sect, and a criminal tribe, but there is no concept of a criminal state, or a criminal government, or criminal legislation.  Consequently, the biggest crimes actually escape being called crimes."  -- P. D. Ouspensky  [Pyotr Demianovich Ouspenskii] (1878-1947) Russian esotericist   Source: A New Model of the Universe, 1931

“In a government of laws, existence of government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.  – Louis Dembitz Brandeis, Whitney v. California [1927]

“The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to,—for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in many things even those who neither know nor can do so well,— is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.”  – Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience” [1849] 

“It is a mistake for the government to consider the problems of the sick apart from those of society as a whole.... The broader problem is, in a moral sense, one of promoting respect for the individual and the furtherance of initiative and self-providence; in an economic sense, one of increasing production for the benefit of all citizens; and in a political sense, one of removing government as a battlefield for special favor and substituting cohesion and solidarity for division and disintegration.” – Darryl W. Johnson, Jr.

"That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant."  -- John Stuart Mill  (1806-1873) English philosopher and economist    Source: John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)

"The mission of the law is not to oppress persons and plunder them of their property, even though the law may be acting in a philanthropic spirit. Its purpose is to protect persons and property.... If you exceed this proper limit -- if you attempt to make the law religious, fraternal, equalizing, philanthropic, industrial, or artistic -- you will then be lost in uncharted territory, in vagueness and uncertainty, in a forced utopia or, even worse, in a multitude of utopias, each striving to seize the law and impose it on you."

-- Frederic Bastiat  (1801-1850) [Claude Frederic Bastiat] French economist, statesman, and author. He did most of his writing during the years just before -- and immediately following -- the French Revolution of February 1848  Source: "The Law" by Frederic Bastiat (1850)

"That the sole object and only legitimate end of government is to protect the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property, and when the government assumes other functions it is usurpation and oppression."  -- Alabama, Declaration of Rights Article I Section 35 

"The government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers. The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of government, but it is the government's greatest creative opportunity. The financing of all public enterprise, and the conduct of the treasury will become matters of practical administration. Money will cease to be master and will then become servant of humanity." -- Abraham Lincoln   (1809-1865) 16th US President

"The difference between [socialism and fascism] is superficial and purely formal, but it is significant psychologically: it brings the authoritarian nature of a planned economy crudely into the open. The main characteristic of socialism (and of communism) is public ownership of the means of production, and, therefore, the abolition of private property. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal."  -- Ayn Rand  [Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum] (1905-1982) Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter    Source: “The Fascist New Frontier,” The Ayn Rand Column, p.98

To abide by "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God"? America's Declaration of Independence 1776.  OMG. Our US government must be transformed.  Unfortunately, the majority  "We the People" here lack the wisdom and the virtue.  cw

Happy with the New Year 2026? It’s more of the same insane.

Ensuring security in any nation where the Rule of Law is actually the Law of Anything Goes - if your nation has nuclear weapons and the leader want to use them - like the U.S. Russia and Israel - is simply delusional.  

When will the majority of “We the People” on earth accept the objective Truth exposed by the Director of the newest US Federal agency President Trump created in 2018?  October 29, 2021, CISA Director Jen Easterly said “Everything is connected, everything is interdependent, so everything is vulnerable”... “this has to be a more than whole of government, a more than whole of nation. It really has to be a global effort”.  CISA is the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.  https://www.csis.org/events/next-steps-critical-infrastructure-protection-challenges-cisa-and-congress   FYI: in early 2025 CISA was hacked.

As Americans await Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on January 4, attempting to justify his criminal act of kinetic violence against another nation in our Hemisphere, plus the kidnapping of another ‘democratically’ elected President, consider this question.  When will we and the world wake up to the illusion that democracies might work.  They don’t, never have and never will - unless the majority of legal voters favor “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”. These ‘laws’ were clearly offered within the 1776 “self-evident” “Truths” expressed in the American Declaration of Independence.  Laws no nations have yet globally adopted.  And even if just one nation doesn’t...everyone in the world would still at risk of losing their freedom and/or security.  Why?  Simply because the word “everything” means just what it says.  It is an autological word.  Thus, for the world to work as President Lincon asserted, “for everyone everywhere for all time’ we need precise language for developing and enforcing the ‘just’ laws under which everyone has their God given “inalienable Rights” to “Life Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”.

Warning! Around 1776 the word ‘happiness’ had a different definition.  It meant finding one’s bliss in using one’s talents to best serve their community.  A community where virtue was prioritized.  Not looking good, feeling good, and/or prioritizing profit over people.  In our era where most people acknowledge our irreversible environmental linkages to our own health, plus our collective vital need to keep nature healthy, protecting our environment would be another virtue. 

Don’t bet on this from most MAGA voters. Especially those claiming to be Christians.  In Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” pamphlet published months before the signing of the Declaration, he must have realized our global interdependence then.  He asserted that the only purpose for government is to protect people’s “freedom and security”.  Likely because during his time and before it, the diversity of people living within the 13 colonies was as mixed as it is today.  And everyone then was 99.9% genetically human. Regardless of the different nations, religions, or indigenous tribes they originally belonged to.  

In biological terms...strength is not in powerful muscles or weapons; it is in the ability to adapt to the real world in which every species finds itself.  At point in our mind’s evolution, it invented concepts that bonded, greatly benefited the grow of its own tribe. Concepts that usually were at the expense of other tribes.  

Around 1945 with the mind’s invention of nuclear weapons humankind should have adapted a new and better way of sharing this goldilocks planet.  Instead, the winners of WWII created an unenforceable global governance system known as “international Law”.  Done with the majority vote of powerful nations that enabled them to dictate to over a hundred other nations, that the protection of human rights is about three steps down from protecting ‘national sovereignty’, corporate power, unlimited accumulation of wealth, and military power.

The collateral damage of using US military force over the last few months experienced by the Venezuelans’ was not about saving Americans deaths from our nation’s addiction to drugs.  The killing of innocent people in the here or there was the consequence of American demand.  Not drug supply.  In fact, most preventable deaths over the last 5 decades related to conflicts are linked to the US addiction to oil. And ten times that number for lack sensible investments in preventing deaths by infectious diseases and fouled environments. All a product of US voter’s minds and policy makers addiction to protecting the US Constitution.  A document they could change but still lacks justice for all, the protecting human rights.  All a product of our mind’s addiction to believing almost everything it thinks.  The wisdom in our heart and the true American spirit in 1776 knew the “self-evident” “Truths”.

Today America’s flawed truths are ‘peace through strength’, our mind’s belief that military power will best protect our freedom and security, - ‘Democracy if we can just get it right -can protect these.  And the illusion that ‘we can keep our freedom, security, and our ‘independence’ without losing anything.  This is delusional. The insanity of our humanity.  Simply because in reality, “Everything” needs a global effort.

Yet many Americans believe in America First.  And continue to ignore their flag pledge “One nation under God with Liberty and Justice for All”.     Lord help us!  Our mind’s certainty on so much that isn’t true is going to keep killing people killed and the unsustainable destruction to the environmental life support systems all life depends on.

‘Prevention’ appears to be an un-American word.  Yet it is the foundation of all health.  Health of mind, body, spirit, family, tribe, community, government, nation, economy, and environmental systems.  I hope the prayer “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do”, reaches God. If not, prepare for the predictable and catastrophic consequences.  Simply because we humans keep doing the same thing over, and over, and over again...expecting a different result.  

Some wise soul once said prayer is a prelude to action.  If you favor action with or without prayer.  Actions consistent with the laws of nature and of nature’s God, and you are willing to work like hell to sufficiently fund the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals ASAP.  Humankind may yet stand a chance. Especially by uniting on around self-evident Truths - like a child should not die before their parents. 

The good news?  Humankind already has a global Health plan.  A comprehensive and holistic plan globally agreed to in 2015.  The UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals.  And if progressive movements (Peace, Environment, and economic/social Justice) unite within thousands of local communities - to measurable advance a few of the 169 subgoals within the 17 SDG’s in 2026, miracles can happen.   Achieving the SDGs comprehensive by 2030  would be the near equivalent of buying the 30 Rights listed in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Its purpose was to prevent another world war, another genocide, and the use of WMD.   

Failing this, it won’t matter how AI complicates our future.  Fact is AI could actually help us create heaven on earth, if that’s the goal of humankind’s collective will.  Otherwise, don’t plan on any more Happy new years.  You can try to survive these years but there won’t be much thriving.  You might find some time to regret that our species once had the possibility of flourishing.  Once imaged as a garden matched by Eden.  One in which we used our mind’s to engineer our world using the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God – the Golden rule.  Instead of using it to defend outdated and deadly concepts like nationalism, different religions, unregulated capitalism, freedom without virtue with no consequences.   

If ready for action in your US local community email Project250@earthlink.net.  If outside the US bless yourself and email MoM2026@earthlink.net

Why Don’t We Do What We Know We Should Do?

"Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions, are the "latent spark"… If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?"  -- John Adams  (1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President   Source: the Novanglus, 1775

This question sits right at the intersection of neuroscience, philosophy, and lived human occurrences — Here’s layers: reasons, clichés, and then some human Truths.

1. The Brain Is Not a Single Decision-Maker:  Your “knowing mind” (prefrontal cortex) and your “doing mind” (limbic system) often disagree.

• The prefrontal cortex plans.
• The limbic system wants comfort, certainty, or dopamine now.

Knowing is cheap. Self-control is metabolically expensive.

 2. Present Bias (The Tyranny of Now):  We systematically overvalue immediate rewards and undervalue future consequences.

• Cake today beats health next year.
• Silence now beats conflict later.

Evolution favored survival, not long-term optimization.

 3. Cognitive Dissonance Avoidance: Acting against what we know creates psychological pain.  So instead of changing behavior, we: 

• Rationalize
• Minimize
• Redefine the problem

It’s easier to adjust beliefs than habits.

 4. Fear of Social Cost: Often we know what’s right but fear:

• Rejection
• Ridicule
• Loss of status
• Being “the only one”

Humans evolved in tribes; isolation once meant death.

 5. Habit Beats Intellect: Behaviors are established and faster neural circuits.  Logic interrupts these — but arrives late.  That’s why insight rarely equals transformation.

 6. Learned Helplessness:  Repeated failure teaches the brain: “Why bother trying?”  This isn’t laziness — it’s protective shutdown.

 7. Moral Licensing:  After doing one good thing, we subconsciously “spend” the credit.

• “I exercised today… dessert is earned.”
• “I vote… so I don’t need to stay informed.”

Well-Worn Clichés Persist for a Reason:

• “Knowing is half the battle.”  (The other half is doing — which is the hard half.)
• “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
• “I know better, but…”
• “Easier said than done.”
• “Old habits die hard.”
• “Do as I say, not as I do.”
• “Tomorrow is another day.”  (Which mysteriously never arrives.)

Deeper takeaways of these predicaments:

Democracy fails for the same reason individuals do:

• Knowledge without restraint          Power overrides accountability
• Desire outruns virtue                       Comfort beats discipline
• Intelligence disregards wisdom      Safety ignores courage.

Our human problem is not ignorance.  It’s acting against what we already know.

Why Don’t We Do What We Know Is Right:  George Washington understood something modern societies prefer to forget- free government depends less on intelligence than on character. Knowledge alone does not produce good behavior—either in individuals or in nations. The same weakness that causes a person to act against their better judgment is the weakness that causes democracies to unravel.

Washington warned that the greatest danger to republican government would not come from foreign armies, but from internal decay—specifically the loss of civic virtue and the rise of factional passion. He understood that human beings often know what they should do, yet fail to do it because of desire, fear, and habit overpower restraint.

This is not a flaw of education; it is a flaw of human nature.

In individuals, we see it when immediate comfort overrides long-term well-being. In democracies, we see it when short-term political gain overrides constitutional limits. In both cases, the mind knows—but the will yields.

Washington’s concept of virtue was not moral perfection. It was self-restraint: the capacity to limit one’s own power, appetite, or passion for the sake of the common good. He believed no constitution, no law, and no election could compensate for its absence. That insight explains modern democratic backsliding.

Today, democracies rarely collapse through coups. They erode through legalized impatience:

• Laws bent for convenience
• Norms abandoned for advantage
• Truth sacrificed to tribal loyalty
• Rights treated as conditional or negotiable

Just as individuals rationalize behavior they know is wrong, societies rationalize actions they know are dangerous—until the damage is irreversible.

The parallel: What habit is to the individual, faction is to the republic.  Both are easier to excuse than to discipline.  Washington’s farewell was ultimately a warning about self-deception. A people convinced they are virtuous no longer practice virtue. A democracy convinced it is stable stops protecting its foundations. The lesson is neither cynical nor nostalgic. It is preemptive.  Free government requires what human nature resists most: restraint exercised willingly, before forces make it unavoidable.   Stated plainly for our time: Democracy does not fail because people don’t know better.  It fails because knowing better is not the same as doing better. 

 The core argument anchored over historic across 2,500+ years.  

Why We Don’t Do What’s Right:  George Washington understood what many modern societies resist: knowledge alone does not produce good behavior. Free government survives only when citizens and leaders exercise virtues like restraint over impulse with harmony between factions and over self-interest. The problem is not ignorance—it is human nature.  This is ancient.

“The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.”  — Aristotle, Politics   He warned that democratic systems fail when passion overwhelms proportion and justice.

 Majorities, like individuals, often confuse desire with what’s right.  Washington echoed this concern in his Farewell Address, warning that faction would become a “frightful despotism,” not because people were uninformed, but because they would surrender judgment to passion.

“The spirit of party… serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration.” - George Washington, 1796  This mirrors the individual moral struggle: we know the better course, but choose the easier one. Societies do the same—rationalizing short-term advantage at the expense of long-term stability.  

 “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.”  — Edmund Burke    Burke’s insight explains modern democratic backsliding. When citizens reject self-restraint, they invite external restraint. Laws expand when virtues contract.  This pattern is consistent across centuries: “The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.” -Montesquieu

Today, democracies rarely collapse through force. They erode through legality.  The bending of laws, weaponizing norms, and excusing behavior that would once have been unacceptable.  This is nothing new.  “A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.”  — Cicero   The treason Cicero described was not always criminal—it was moral: the abandonment of duty for convenience.

Washington believed that constitutional mechanisms could slow decay, but never eliminate it. Without virtue, the republic becomes procedural but hollow.   

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”  — James Madison, Federalist No. 51.   Madison’s insight cuts both ways: because men are not angels, power must be restrained—but because citizens are not angels either, democracy itself must be restrained.

Democracy doesn’t fail because people don’t know better.  It fails because knowing better is not the same as doing better.  And history keeps reminding us:  Freedom survives only where self-restraint arrives before force.