HOW FEAR HELPS THE GUN BUSINESS
(CONTINUED)
June 24, 2016
Let's see if I correctly understand the recent article on
guns I posted. Many white folks in the US were alarmed over black folks and
their supporters demonstrating and rioting in the '60s and '70s. Many of these
people became fearful, judgmental, resentful, and blaming. Instead of seeking
an understanding of why blacks were complaining and rioting, and, if any of
their complaints had merit, what if anything might be done to address their
grievances, many whites decided to call the disturbances a law-and-order matter
with an often unspoken undertone of group-blame based on racial prejudice and
bias.
A large part of their response to this perceived threat to
their person, property, wealth and power was to buy guns and shoot blacks and
anyone else who might try to rob or harm them. This, such whites thought but
most would not say, would help protect themselves and their stuff, and slow
down or stop the ongoing erosion of their societal power and privilege.
Let's now consider what happened next. Most Republican
politicians and key fundamentalist Christian leaders quickly jumped in and
proclaimed their strong support for this kind of thinking and action.
Underneath it all they knew it was a quasi-law and order response yet they went
along with it and festooned it all with religious righteousness and patriotism.
Now, let's see how this response to America's social and
cultural evolution toward a more just, humane, rational society worked out.
Well, we now have a society where gun selling, buying and use are, for all
practical purposes, poorly controlled to the point that a significant number of
preventable deaths of innocent people cannot be stopped. Worst of all, the
majority of a major political party and their base of supporters are on the
verge of putting forward a vulgar, race-baiting, misogynist, laissez-faire
uber-capitalist for the US presidency.
How did all this happen? Go to the top of this post and the
essay and start over. What can we do? 1) Do not confirm Trump as the GOP
nominee. 2) If he's nominated, vote against him in November and encourage
others to do the same. What about the problem of choosing inappropriate
responses to social problems? Support people at all levels of society and circumstances
who offer societal and individual responses and solutions based on reason,
unbiased research evidence, and critical thinking; and oppose in all forums and
situations those who act on, feed into, racialize, politicize, profit from, and
supernaturally sanctify our emotions and fears.
Do you think I correctly understand this? If not, please
explain.
POPULISM AND DEMOGAUGERY 2016
June 27, 2016
You know me, Mr. Positive and hopeful about our species'
continuing survival and flourishing based on our first 200,000 years of
cultural evolution. My optimism that the global morality and civilization we
are building, following the establishment of the UN in 1945 and the adoption of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN in 1948, will continue to
grow and become a reality.
However, the populism and demagoguery currently on display
among many in the UK and US, and elsewhere, and the continuing persecution of
millions by repressive governments and certain followers of religion are
beginning to make me question my hopefulness.
"Turning and turning in the
widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
...
- W.B Yeats
I've known and loved this poem for years. Now I look at the
phrase "the center cannot hold" and ask: What exactly is that
"center?" And what might Yeats have meant by "cannot hold?"
The center must mean more than a government authority. It
must also mean a commitment by Humankind to specific principles - enlightened,
reasoned governance; a balance between an individual's freedom and his/her duty
to others; and an appreciation and respect for the diversity of human beliefs,
values, and behaviors, locally and globally.
Irishman Yeats wrote this poem in 1919, during the turmoil
after WWI and at a time when Britain was dealing with Irish uprisings. His
center holding or not referred to Britain remaining a United Kingdom during
that time. It was also an obvious alarm about a broader, civilizational or
Humankind as a whole problem.
Is H. sapiens at another fork in the road of its cultural
evolutionary journey? Our first being to choose dependence on group life and
the development of ever more efficient tools as survival strategies, or not.
And now, after many successive evolutionary forks that have been navigated
successfully, are we at a time of choosing between reason and emotion, between
principled democracy and mob rule as means for pursuing human flourishing? In
many ways it would seem so.
Choosing paths forward in the past was accomplished by
different means - political, religious, military - and sometimes by necessity
or luck. Sometimes enlightened, benign despots held sway. It was only in the
middle of the last century that a successful attempt was begun to unify
Humankind under a set of elective principles to pursue peace, human rights, and
flourishing for all.
Is the current populism and demagoguery a statement that
these goals currently at the center of Humankind's collective striving are
ignoble or unachievable goals? That unfettered individual emotion and violence
and rabid nationalism are our preferred ways forward at this current fork in
the road? Are we now crying out to be the brutes of our short-sighted emotions
as opposed to the deliberate and measured guidance of our reasoning?
Your thoughts?
