Pale Blue Dot

The 20th century was the bloodiest, most destructive, century in human history. The first decade of the 21st century, fraught with death and destruction, does not bode well for humanity. It is abundantly clear that things cannot go on like this. It is also abundantly clear that existing institutions have not been effective in significantly reducing the level of violence. The United Nations, while of value, is not up to the job precisely because its components are nations each of which is still playing the balance of powers game. What is obviously needed is a united people of the world. This, I suggest, requires a paradigm shift in human socio-political attachment from the nation, tribe, and religion to the Earth itself. Further, this attachment must be rational and evidentiary as in science, so that adjudication among the people has a better chance at fairness.

This suggestion is different from the one-world community's focus on bringing the nations together to form a world society. It is also different from Earth First, which is concerned with our impact on our physical home, the environment, as important as that obviously is. This proposal is about conditioning human beings, as we do with good citizenship in our public schools, to see the Earth as our only home, as small, as fragile, as alone in the vastness of space and upon which we are utterly dependent. This awareness must be the mother's milk of childhood education and as pervasive in day to day human affairs as the weather. With this pervasive awareness, the conflict, death and suffering we visit on each other will be seen as the pure folly it is. For this to happen we need a concept and a symbol so powerful that it can overcome narrow allegiances and the emotional ties humans have to them. I believe the absolute loneliness of our pale blue dot in the vastness of space as Carl Sagan has described it, and the NASA photograph of that profound isolation, can serve this purpose. As Sagan wrote in his book Pale Blur Dot, "Apart from that, (the warmth ad light we receive from the sun) this small world is on its own."

Bob Newhard

E pluribus duo

I recently had occasion to consult Samuel P. Huntington's essay The Clash of Civilizations, which was initially a lecture delivered at the American Enterprise Institute and subsequently expanded into a book. The primary thesis of the essay is that following the end of the Cold War America's conflicts would no longer be over ideological differences, but over cultural, especially religious differences. Huntington names the various civilizations and in the book even provides a map of them. Knowing that Huntington's thesis was especially popular among conservatives, note where he first broached his thesis, I sought critical evaluations of the work. Fortunately, the magazine Foreign Affairs, which had published the original essay, had collected the responses to the essay and Huntington's rejoinder in a book titled The Clash of Civilization. The Debate. One of the critics of Huntington's thesis pointed out that it viewed civilizations as though they were clear cut, highly defined, "hard," objects like billiard balls, which repel each other upon contact. The author of this criticism suggested a more apt metaphor would be the sponge. In this author's view civilizations absorb much from each other, which, among other things, makes any analysis of civilizations and their relationships a somewhat murky enterprise. For example, you may have noticed that the mass protests in Egypt consisted of men predominantly reflecting Muslim culture, yet these men were mostly dressed in western style jeans, reflecting an acceptance of western culture.

I believe this apposition between Huntington's "hard" concept of civilizations and his critic's "softer" portrayal reflects a deeper political division among humans. Remembering that Huntington first gave voice to his thesis in a lecture to the conservative American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, we can assume The Clash of Civilizations reflects a conservative view of things as they are and as they will be. I suggest that it found favor among this group, in part, because of its prima facie clarity and its call to conflict as the resolving mechanism. In brief, it offered a simple, easy to grasp, explanation of what is going on at the global level. It also tapped into American cultural beliefs, making it an easy sell for politicians and the corporate media and providing cover for corporate expansionism. This has a good deal to do with the conservative preference for military, whether by act or threat, solutions over the tedious and uncertain diplomatic solutions. They have the shoot first and ask questions later mentality. Despite the warnings against invading Afghanistan and Iraq, which they declared to be a "cake walk," they went ahead and ten years later millions are dead and the invaded countries nearly demolished. The same initiative and its consequences occurred in Vietnam. There are real consequences to our conceptions. We should not treat them lightly, for in many respects they are the fathers of all wars. This desire for sharp distinctions plays out in conservative domestic policies, e.g. the standardized and rigorous testing of the No Child Left Behind approach to education, which has nearly destroyed meaningful education. Their social "solutions" in general do not take account of the variety of human conditions, capacities and responses to life. This tendency to over simplification in public policy is fodder for the greed of the wealthy and the bigotry of their religious supporters. As the philosopher Alfred Whitehead advised, "Seek simplicity, but distrust it." It should also be noted that simplicity functions well for propaganda purposes. It not only relieves people of the need to think, it also reinforces prejudice, taps the emotions of tradition, whether valid or not, and in general suborns a thoughtful approach to the world.

This conservative view of humanity can and has eventuated in dictatorship and the worst form of religious and cultural bigotry. Osama bin Laden was a firm believer in the clash of civilizations.

Progressives and people who place people first derive their views, tentative as they often are, from the needs and opinions of the many and do not, in general, have recourse to simple answers. They must consider opposing views and, as in the Occupy Wall Street movement, seek consensus. An interesting contrast is the organized precision and discipline of the annual World Economic Forum and the comparatively chaotic World Social Forum. This willingness to begin with the amorphous "people" can and has, in the extreme, led to mob rule, witness the French Revolution, the storming of the Bastille, and the wanton killing based on class membership that followed it. Daily it becomes clearer that in a world of murderous technology we must find a way to facilitate profound change without the violence that greed, fear and bigotry create. We can, for instance, pressure our government to seek cooperation with liberal elements within otherwise conservative regimes. Israel comes to mind. Why do we let the far right Likud define the Israel we will support? Why not the liberal element that want a two state solution to the Palestinian issue? We had no qualms about supporting the opponents of Gaddafi. Why not support the liberal opponents of the Likud who want a two-state solution to the Palestinian issue and decry the continuing expansion of Israel's borders and desire a secular state? Where was our support for the substantial component of the Egyptian revolution that wanted a secular state? We obviously have a major task in foreign policy. We can do better at promoting democracy and peace. As is so frequently the case, we progressives must construct an organized movement, as they did in the Progressivism of the turn of the last century. This constitutes both a morally commendable and a very difficult undertaking. We progressives have a profound need to offer mankind a coherent view of society as we conceive it and an organized path to that end. This path is subject to change as humanity better understands itself, but is always guided by eliciting what is best in human nature. It is a very tall order, but one of absolute necessity if civilization, not to mention our species, is to survive.

Bob Newhard