We should not be too sanguine about democracies avoiding war with each other.
Nor about the limitiations that democracy places on the flaws in the way we individually and collectively assess situations. Democracies can and do and, I fear, well make bad errors of judgement that lead to war and those wars will, as a result of the popular support for their inniatation, be large and total and existential. Similarly, as we are seeing in the UK about economics and immigration.
Justice denied anywhere imperils justice and peace everywhere.
We will only be freed from the scourge of war once we have truly embraced the truth that we are all fully human.
Well functioning democracies, however, remain the best hope of achieving justice and full humanity
Politics is as much a consequence of war as war is a consequence of politcs.
I fear a similar conflict lies in our future along much the same fault lines as the US Civil War, free or bonded labour. I think over the next 20-50 years more and more work will be done by machine intelligence driving robotic machines. Some polities will appropriate most of this labour and wealth to only a few people. Some will share or collectivise the wealth more widely. The implications for the mass of the citizery are obvious. The two systems can not long endure in the same economy. The former must encroach on the liberties of the latter by policy or it will be eroded by the anarchic enthusiasm of the latter.
If you found your political institutions on injustice or even just on entrenched positions and vested interests, no matter how rational, clever, emotionally intelligent and fair they are eventually you will end up in a conflict where the substance of the argument becomes wrapped up in the fairness of the system.
No one listens to Sherman until he is the commander of the last standing army.
no subject
Generally.
We should not be too sanguine about democracies avoiding war with each other.
Nor about the limitiations that democracy places on the flaws in the way we individually and collectively assess situations. Democracies can and do and, I fear, well make bad errors of judgement that lead to war and those wars will, as a result of the popular support for their inniatation, be large and total and existential. Similarly, as we are seeing in the UK about economics and immigration.
Justice denied anywhere imperils justice and peace everywhere.
We will only be freed from the scourge of war once we have truly embraced the truth that we are all fully human.
Well functioning democracies, however, remain the best hope of achieving justice and full humanity
Politics is as much a consequence of war as war is a consequence of politcs.
I fear a similar conflict lies in our future along much the same fault lines as the US Civil War, free or bonded labour. I think over the next 20-50 years more and more work will be done by machine intelligence driving robotic machines. Some polities will appropriate most of this labour and wealth to only a few people. Some will share or collectivise the wealth more widely. The implications for the mass of the citizery are obvious. The two systems can not long endure in the same economy. The former must encroach on the liberties of the latter by policy or it will be eroded by the anarchic enthusiasm of the latter.
If you found your political institutions on injustice or even just on entrenched positions and vested interests, no matter how rational, clever, emotionally intelligent and fair they are eventually you will end up in a conflict where the substance of the argument becomes wrapped up in the fairness of the system.
No one listens to Sherman until he is the commander of the last standing army.
Don't bring a knife to a gun fight.