From time to time, I watch these nature films and also the boxing. They are about violence, first recourse is to violence. Like the American reaction towards the Palestinians. Or America's response to Russia, that finally responded vack to America by entering Ukraine after years of fearing invasion.
We human animals quit the jungle and agreed to live together in tribal settlements for protection from outside attack by animals and other tribes. To manage the impulse to violence inside the group, to keep order and direct energies, we developed religion and began building the rule of law.
That's all very rational. But America's behaviour increasingly defies reason, it goes beyond simply wanting to maintain its world hegemony (athough that explains a lot) and now we see only threats and actual violence.
America spends no time on foreign policy analysis and no effort was made evaluating the programs of work necessary for success, such as would the military supply chain be up to the challenge.
No reflection before action, no planning after setting the goals, nothing except an immediate recourse to violence. Why is this?
It's true that the political leadership in the West is mediocre, some leaders have been mad, others senile even, but given that foreign policy doesn't change much from one Administration to the next, it's not really the leadership that's deciding foreign policy, it's what we call the Deep State keeping up the momentum of wars, so this won't explain the serious mistakes in American foreign policy.
Although Congress seems to be a most corrupt place, where in reality it is the military industrial complex calling the shots, the congresspeople as paid spokespersons for commercial causes, this still doesn't explain satisfactorily, to me at least, why America would get itself into three seriously-losing positions, on three war fronts, with three nuclear powers, and all at the same time. Why are they not seeing the colossal risks, let alone the injustices?
Europe has been neutralised, France has lost its voice and lost its way since Mitterand, and Germany didn't see the American maneuver coming. So Europe is not there to warn America, it daren't.
Never mind what all the clever Talking Heads tell us in the alternative media, no one in power listens to them.
It's very apparent that America has lost its head and become irrational, plain irrational - it is destroying others as well as itself and as I say, it is hard to see why. There's no listening, no internal dialogue within the elite, only conflict, propaganda and cancellation; and there's no external dialogue or diplomacy, only war.
If you are not inside the small box of permitted thinking then you are outside and you are ignored or cancelled. And yet, I believe in a plurality of voices and let the best ideas win through. This is what democracy is about. If we don't work like that, we have a dictatorship or fascism, call it what you want.
No listening, no reflection, no objective thinking, no analysis of history. There's just an immediate resort to violence ... so we are back in the jungle!
It was religion and the rule of law that was supposed to keep the peace, so if there is no peace, little social cohesion left - as evidenced by the culture wars, the mass demonstrations, the rise of populism - it must be due to the collapse of a cultural or moral framework, once offered by religion. Religion gives a vision (of heaven and hell as motivator to individual acts), a common way of life (the Commandments and catechism, rewards and punishments for morality) and a set of values (the protestant ethic starts with education, there is a belief in progress from hard work, this needs discipline, thrift and discovery, there is great moral pressure on the individual). Religion unifies and controls ... or it used to.
Thesis: the Puritan Work Ethic united the people in praise of the Lord. Now that's dissappeared, replaced by science, people feel pushed into extreme individualism, to deny limits once set by our collective identities. By identities, we understandI mean, your race, your culture, your orientation, your gender...all these things you are free to choose. This means that "society", "the family", all these groups we belong to and define who we are, all are swept away.
With the result Western governments are losing physical, moral and financial control and are devising more and more methods to control their people.
Our reserve of tolerance and restraint is broken, it's just constant stress and in-fighting and attempts by the elite at Total Control through blatant propaganda, social credits, discrediting those telling uncomfortable truths, outlawing protest. This strips out our capacity for rational thought and leaves us reacting emotionally and instinctively.
I think that to arrive at this state, our society and its leadership suffer from some kind of group psychological madness. Behaviour is no longer guided by reason but by animal responses. Perhaps an anthropologist could explain this one day... it looks to be a form of nihilism, this is what happens when an elite loses its sense of purpose and when the people lose their moral sense, Society disaggregates and becomes anomic. Doesn't that characterise the United States today? And increasingly the United Kingdom?
Seems we have the re-emergence of irrational animal instincts. We have this madness that we cannot explain through any kind of rational analysis.
So what to do about this? The usual route for dealing with madness is to get back in touch with reality and attempt to adapt to the real world ie change, respond to the opportunities and threats on offer. Means relaxing, opening doors, listening to the winds of change.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-war-russia-fridge-parts-uk-b2483117.html
