Isafan Uranium conversion facility in Iran 

I always watch events on the international stage with attention. I worry myself into knots over things like the Russian-backed rebellion in Eastern Ukraine and the testing of the Affordable Care Act in the US Supreme Court. My family often find my concerns not so much irritating as baffling. Why should I care what transpires in places far away to people I will never know? 

It's the giant picture, the one that comes of adding all of the events together, that, I believe, should fascinate us. Or at least it should if we are to stand by our claim to being both decent and rational, that is, devoted to both love and reason. 

Under my worldview, there are patterns in the events of history, patterns that we could, if we applied our minds fervently to the data, discover. And once we had found them, we could derive inductively from them some laws of history that could be further tested against the data that we have from past eras of our civilization and others reaching back as far as our records go. Then we might even begin to solve and manage ourselves. 

But for me, finding the patterns in history and then the laws of human cultural evolution. and then using our knowledge to better manage our politics and economics so that we move forward toward a world of greater and greater justice and prosperity for all ...if we don't care to take on that task, what do we care about? 

Or to speak more grimly, if we look back over the horrors of our history - of nations deeds toward each other, in other words - we ought to be able to see that we do not want to do those things again. Or are we too stubborn or too stupid - or both - to ever deal responsibly with ourselves? I think not. 

Consider the examples we have before us just in the last few days. 

                          

                               Oxi (no) rally in Athens days before Greek referendum 

The citizens of Greece seem bent on becoming the greatest rationalizers in the history of the modern world. No one wants to lend them money anymore for a very simple reason: they don't pay it back. All of the excuses being made about how it is big banks who crafted the Greek's economic crisis for the advantage of the banks or Greece deserving special consideration because it was in Greece that Western civilization was born or any of the other creative excuses being bandied about are either dilatory or delusional.

Yes, several big banks in Europe lent too freely to Greece and several other European states in the good times. No, that does not excuse anyone from paying their debts. Greek governments one after another signed the deals. They ought to have to honor them. Worst yet, other European states have bought out Greek debt being held by some of their big banks. What was the alternative? To let the banking system of Holland or Germany come unraveled? And now the money is owed to the Dutch and German taxpayers. No wonder they're mad. 

In the meantime, in another arena, Iran is finally coming around to candidly discussing its nuclear program with the major powers of the world. No, it isn't fair for Russia, France, Britain, China, and the US to close off their exclusive club of nuclear-armed nations. But they see little choice in the matter. Sooner or later, the ones who have the nukes were going to close the club not out of some elitist sense of superiority, but out of fear. Every new nation added to that club increases the odds that a full scale nuclear war will start in the future. The human race can't run that risk. 

It looks now as if the club is closed. The real indicator that we can use wisdom and love to re-make our world will come when those in the club agree to reduce their arsenals until they blast the last of them out into space. But I think one day that will happen. Hard. Not impossible. 

And one more matter is fascinating me today. The Chinese are discovering that there are downsides to a market-based economy. Markets allow for the rapid creation of great wealth, but if they go awry, they can, for a while anyway, ruin many of the small investors who got lured in by promises of quick, easy gain.  

Market-driven economies where investors can buy shares in corporations that they believe will grow have some huge advantages over centrally planned economies. A stock market is intended to enable capital to flow to the places in the economy where it can do the most good, where it is most likely to turn into even more capital, that is wealth, in other words. And the flow can happen in a timely way, a way that responds to the very latest advances in technology and political realities. This system uses the talents and experience of millions of real people, investing their hard earned savings, rather than just the talents of a few hundred central planners who are personally risking nothing. 

There are going to be greedy people who are also crooked people in any market, but measures can be put in place to keep them under control. The SEC was set up for exactly this purpose. And we can set up new, tougher agencies to police the stock market.  

By and large, a stock market is just a rational device for a nation to set up in order to enable itself to get bigger and stronger faster. And all nations want to do that. Or to be exact, those that don't, don't get to consider the wisdom of their choice for very long.  

What do all of these disparate matters have in common? 

I see in all of them the cultural evolution of our species. We are acquiring wisdom the hard way, but I really do believe we are getting a little wiser all the time. The taxpayers of the better run EU nations are going to have to pay off a large chunk of the Greek debt because the alternative, we know from experience, is unpalatable. The US government bailed out several of its banks in 2008 for similar reasons. The banks could all have been allowed to fail, but then the country and likely the world would have been driven into a depression that might have lasted even longer than the one in the 30's. The banks have to be kept viable because if the whole system collapses, the end result is children dying of malnutrition in a land where there is food being burned to keep the price up. That scenario is the last one before the picture explodes.  

On the other hand, Chinese investors are learning the flip side of this lesson. While the banks have to be kept viable, small investors do not. The losses of small investors are their own to absorb. Harsh but necessary lesson. And we all get a bit wiser. 

The Iranians, in the meantime, have learned the hard way that they can't live outside of the world's markets. They have been falling behind in technological and economic terms for decades now. They are ready to admit, even in the circles of the ayatollahs, that the trend is not sustainable. 

Can pride make up the ground if a nation decides to reject any deal that it feels hurts its national image? Will the Greeks leave the EU, find a new resolve, and forge a new economy and a new place in the markets of the world? Will the Chinese once again work their way out of the losses and get on with their rise to number one status in the world? Will Iran become a serious player, perhaps even a super-power in the next couple of decades? 

All interesting to ponder. I love watching our times unfold. But to me what is most fascinating is the evidence that indicates that we are all becoming a human family. We're working these things out by talk instead of blood. Oh yes, some of the brothers and sisters are still not speaking to each other, and some truly hate each other. But we aren't the defiant children we were a century ago. National pride is finally beginning to give way to sense. Love and reason are overtaking tribalism and ignorance. 

A hopeful week, if you have hopeful eyes to see it with.         

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