Reading them was another of those occasions when I felt a powerful urge to say, ‘Well, duh!’. Putin, we’re told, only uses force when vital interests are at stake and a cost-benefit analysis suggests that benefits will outweigh costs. Of course! What else would you expect? After all, what’s the alternative? To wage war when vital interests are not at stake and when you don’t expect to end up better off? That would be crazy. …
And that’s where this article’s statement of the blindingly obvious becomes quite interesting. For, viewed this way, what this article explains to us is not the conditions under which Putin uses force so much as the conditions under which the West does so – when vital interests aren’t at stake, and when we end up worse off afterwards. Judging by this article, we’ve now become so used to this that anything else apparently comes as a big surprise."American exceptionalism."
So the US has become a country that can't keep agreements and acts irrationally. Where is this leading?
Irrussianality
The use of force
Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa
The use of force
Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa
Trump will keep all of his agreements...
ReplyDeleteTom business deals are not use of force...
ReplyDeleteThey are awarded to the best deal... if say Iran can’t compete on price then they shouldn’t get the deal...
If they lose all the deals and then try to make it physical with us then it’s all on them what we do in response .... not us...
This is how the materialist conscience works...
...we’ve now become so used to this [use of force] that anything else apparently comes as a big surprise.
ReplyDeletePeople come together to form a society – and all of the decisions of the society belong with the people. That’s the whole idea of a society – people coming together, collaborating together, and making decisions together, re their society.
So, based on that definition, we don’t have a society. We would probably decide no force is necessary and it is better to get along with the other society. But nation states are not societies and the people that make decisions at the top are not heeding what the people want, but what they want. The powerful few dictate to everyone else. So we have dictatorships, not societies. Military, industrial, corporate, dictatorship controlling everything, and human lives – through force and hypnotism. Selling weapons and fear, submission, through rote – not tshirts. Creating rifts between people; not unification. Killing people – not celebrating human existence. Trillions of dollars dedicated to war and barely a few bucks for peace. This is not because of the Intelligence in a human being.
Monkeys south of the Albertine Rift have a peace gene (which we have too) and share their food and territory; monkeys north do not, and fight over everything – scientists think the gorillas placed too high a demand on the food supply and the peace gene was never switched on. I think we need to switch that gene back on too, or we are toast.
There is generosity in a human being and there is the absence of generosity in a human being. We get to choose; and a few people make a big difference, either way. But enough people have to say NO – we want to live like humans; we want to unfold human potential – not power and greed. We evolved through collaboration, and let us continue on that ancient path. Let us use our human Intelligence to everyone’s benefit – not cunning by the few to enslave the rest. Are we civilised or are we not?
Because everyone, with just half a brain, knows force is heading us back to the jungle, even stone age - fast.
"force is heading us back to the jungle, even stone age - fast."
ReplyDeleteWe can simply re-build re-manufacture the infrastructure... so no "jungle stone age"... iow the material technology is not lost and keeps advancing... eg post WW2 Europe was simply rebuilt and even more advanced fashion than before the war trains, airports, electrification, etc..
"stone age" is a material condition description not a non-material condition description...
The non-material condition doesnt seem to change much we've always had warfare, etc..
The material knowledge and skills are needed to revive the system. Even a short hiatus for a generation or two can make this daunting, especially to scale.
ReplyDeleteLook at what happened previously in history in this regard when empires fell and the civilizations associated with them. Some, in fact, many, never did recover a similar level of development while others were just destroyed.
"It can't happen here though."
I don’t think in opposites Matt. ‘Stone-age’ ‘jungle’ for me is a feeling; a state of being. People are a feeling to me. Weird I know ....
ReplyDeleteI read somewhere, I think it was over the last few thousand years there has only been peace 8% of the time.
So, if a human being’s true nature is peace – what is going on?
It’s the box that everyone has their head in – not reality. Just words I know – but once again describing a state of being.