anti-gay demonstrations, U.S. 


    
                                           gay pride demonstration, India, 2013


   
     protesters at Uganda House, London, UK, protesting anti-gay law passed in Uganda, 2014



   

                                                           anti-gay protester, Moscow, Russia, 2010



    
            Ethiopian Jews protesting under-employment of Ethiopian academics in Israel, 2010



   

                                              Black Lives Matter demonstration, New York City, 2014



   
  Yunnan, China, 2011: farmers versus police over meager government prices offered for farms 



   

                           Idle No More (aboriginal people) demonstrators, Ottawa, Canada, 2013


   

                                           women's rights protesters, Kiev, Ukraine, 2010


   

                                     anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim protest, Dresden, Germany 2016


   
                   
                                                                 anti-Muslim riots, India, 2010

   

            Islamist protesters, London, England, 2006 (protesting cartoons depicting Mohammed) 




Another discouraged day, readers. I can't stop thinking about where I believe we're headed if we don't change our ways. What is the point of all of these photographs? 

Well, they do have a lowest common denominator. Our societies, world wide, are becoming more and more fragmented. "Polarized" is not the right word. "Polarized" implies that we are dividing into two mutually hostile groups. The truth is there are hundreds of special interest groups who see the world through one lense and one only. The various splinters keep wounding one another and shrieking ever louder, partly in order not to have to listen to even one sentence that is not affirming the opinions they already hold. Democracy in action is good, but when people stop listening entirely, that is not what is happening.

But how could it be otherwise? When postmodernism is seen world wide as being the most informed picture of how human societies work, there are no paths to the resolution of disputes except more and louder saber-rattling until finally the protesters must, as we say in English, put up or shut up. Take their grievances into direct confrontation with their (perceived) enemies and fight. With guns, bombs, knives, clubs, rocks, and eventually even fists. 

The police forces would have to be rigorously disciplined and contain about ten times the numbers they do now to control that kind of street violence. Simply not doable in other words.  

I see more and more of this scenario every year, and it seems to me at least, that all the while, the "informed" and "enlightened" everywhere, the pomos who have been Western-educated, have no answers, no models, no suggestions even as to how we shall decide whether women's rights trump black rights trump aboriginal rights trump gay rights trump workers' rights ...and on and on. 

History - especially recent history - points very clearly to how this trend will resolve. One strong, well-armed, unified faction will step in. Led by a majority? Or at least a large minority? Not even close. It will be a group of less than 5% of the population, mostly young males, trained and armed, and they will impose the order envisioned by their beloved leader. Who might stop them? Kids? The poor? Demonstrators -- female, gay, poor, black? 

Blood is a very different currency than talk. A little of it buys a lot of credibility, then media control, then propaganda, economic control, prosperity, and then a totalitarianism that is virtually universally loved. People have always been good at finding reasons to endorse what they are actually doing, forced or not. It soon becomes just "our way".

There is nothing new here. When the wrangling gets strident and silly-sounding enough -- and it will -- violence is the trump card. And to follow the metaphor, it soon changes the suits of all of the other cards on the table and even those in every hand already held. 

"Why didn't we see how logical this way is? Well, we're together now. Nothing can stop us. Human rights are a tiresome old-fashioned notion. The modern way has superceded such old-fashioned notions. Thank God for our leader!" 

It will come out exactly like that if we don't work out and test and prove a moral realist model. My model is just one candidate. But I am unaware of any other that does not fall prey to begging the question, i.e. assuming what it eventually attempts to prove, or to postmodernist deconstructions that make it seem hopelessly biased. 

In short, we learn to ground right and wrong in Science or we go under. World war with 21st century weapons. 

Courage and wisdom, in balance, are the human cultural answer to entropy. Freedom and love, in balance, are the human cultural answer to (quantum) uncertainty. They can be fine tuned in real time by a committed population of citizens who love democracy. Especially, they can be taught to the young. They, in a decade even, could achieve this revolution. They want one tribe. They just need a peace-affirming rationale/model to begin from. But I fear that is not where we're heading, especially if we keep giving in to worse and worse tribalism. 

My kind. Your kind. Fight. 

I'm really tired right now. Enough. 

The latest and probably last iteration of my book begins last April, about 5 months ago in other words, on this blog. I hope, if you're interested in the future of your species, that you may find some clarity and sense of direction there.    

In the shadow of the mushroom cloud, nevertheless friends, have a nice day.