I do not accept Hegel’s concept as valid. For example, Christianity and Islam have been competing ideas for over one thousand years; however, there has been no synthesis between the two competing concepts. Two other competing concepts are democracy and dictatorship, and no synthesis has occurred between these two extremes. Where does one find a half of an election? Individualism and collectivism are also two conflicting ideas that have not found a synthesis because either the group (state) is more important or the individual is more important. These two ideas do not meld. Philosophy, modern or ancient, has not advanced because it cannot advance. People do not agree on ideas at a foundational level and never will as long as they think for themselves. Nevertheless, we do not want to underrate the impact of philosophy. It is of vital importance. For example, when the ancient Israelites invaded Canaan, God told them to annihilate the cities and people they found there. Seems strange, as people are a valuable asset; however, if a person thinks about the invasion from Hegel’s philosophical point of view all of the people had to be killed because, if allowed to live, there would be a joining (synthesis) between the Israelite’s ideas and the ideas of the conquered. Maintaining the purity of Israelite ideas required the death of all the opposing ideas. As ideas resided in the people’s heads they had to be detached.
Philosophy deeply affects the actions of governments. For example, the Constitution of the United States embodies the concept of the individual being more important than the state as critical to governance. As a result, the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution set forth a series of individual rights, such as freedom of speech, that the government cannot violate (“Congress shall make no law . . .”). At one point, the US Supreme Court ruled nude dancing was freedom of speech (which I disagree with, but no one cares about my opinion), and as such, it took on the status of an individual right. Even though 99 percent of the nation might disagree with nude dancing, the individual can keep that right against the entire state because the individual is greater than the state. This is an expression of the ultimate power of the individual and is an open display of the power of the individual in the US Constitutional system. In other systems, the fact that 99 percent of the country would be against this “speech” would automatically end its existence. In a dictatorship, if the state (the dictator) decides nude dancing is wrong it remains wrong even if 99 percent of the people are for it, because the state is greater than the individual.
Be aware that these philosophic differences make a huge variation in the way people approach the world. If life has no meaning (philosophical naturalism) then why protect life? Abortion assumes that certain lives have no meaning. The Nazis applied the same concept when deciding to murder the Jews. They simply determined certain lives were without meaning or were outright evil. Once we determine that we can take certain lives, for whatever reason, the concept can expand to other lives branded as worthless by the state. The Nazis quickly expanded the “no purpose” rule to include the mentally ill, Gypsies, Slavs, and many others. We have already expanded the abortion rule (some lives have no value) to include those who are terminally ill and requesting death (euthanasia). Concepts of utilitarianism, the greatest good for the greatest number, can easily justify abortion or euthanasia. A terminally ill person lingering on is a huge cost to our economy, society, and the family. The greatest good would be to kill the person and use the medical and economic resources elsewhere. Existentialism allows suicide or assisted suicide because the individual determines his own existence; thus, he can choose to end his existence. Compare this to the Jewish and Christian philosophies holding human life as sacred, and each life has specific purposes as determined by God. Christian and Jewish philosophy prohibits abortion, suicide, and euthanasia because God decides when a person’s life must end. Why not prohibit capital punishment? Because God told people that certain acts are punished by death. There is another philosophical problem . . . .
This very long discussion points out the importance of philosophy in history and its failure to advance the human condition. Three thousand years of arguments concerning what is real, is there a god (or gods), the nature of humanity, the nature of god, and the rest have failed to produce a genuine agreement as to “truth” or anything else at a foundational level, thereby leaving the human condition where it was before the arguments began. Nonetheless, our philosophical beliefs guide our decisions, and decisions make history.
Propaganda
Propaganda has played a large role in human society from the inception of social interaction. The myth of the ruler being a god on earth is one kind of propaganda found in the ancient world. During the American Revolution the pamphlet Common Sense was a masterful piece of American propaganda, and probably saved the cause. The modern world, with the Internet, cell phones, television, radio, newspapers, and other information outlets is replete with propaganda; however, few recognize it as such. Modern Sophists, people interested in forwarding their agenda without regard for the truth, literally rule the media on political and social issues. During political campaigns their presence is especially noticeable, but most people are not used to discerning the difference between propaganda and the truth. As a result, “spin” (propaganda) is increasingly effective.
Another form of modern propaganda, originally honed by Adolf Hitler and his genius associate Dr. J. Gobbles, was the big lie technique. In this method, a very great lie is presented so it is easy to recall. Then the big lie is repeated endlessly and in scores of different ways. The goal is not for the entire lie to be accepted, but it aims for the acceptance of at least part of the lie. For example, during the Iraqi War protestors raised the chant (and also signage) that, “Bush lied, men died.” Note the phrase was presented in an easy to recall fashion. President Bush did not lie about the war and men die every day for a variety of reasons; however, if the general public accepted that President Bush failed to say everything he could have, then the propaganda had achieved its purpose.
Modern propaganda turns to emotional responses to achieve its goals often without the recipient of the propaganda ever knowing what is happening to them. During the 1964 US Presidential election, President Johnson’s team ran an ad showing a young girl picking flowers suddenly engulfed in an atomic explosion. This was followed by “Vote for Johnson” silently placed on the screen. The real impact was not logical, it was visceral. It implied his opponent was a war monger. This kind of emotional appeal is still present, but it is done in ways that are far more subtle. Today, propaganda artists make earlier work look amateurish, and this is a crucial problem for modern democratic societies.
Propaganda in all its subtle forms including sophistry, visceral methods, psychological methods, big lies and the rest is coupled with mass marketing through television, radio, the print media, and the Internet and now poses a real problem for the Western Democracies. If public opinion can be manipulated using the modern media, then elections and law making will warp to the side of those with the best, and maybe the most expensive, sophist and propaganda artists. This will make democracy something less than the will of the people and more of the will of the manipulators. If history is any guide, the ability to manipulate the masses will grow exponentially.
Beyond the Cold War
After the Cold War, the United States was the only “superpower” on the planet. Today, China is one of the foremost nations in the world, and its technological, economic, and military rise has been swift. China is a superpower by any standard, and many Asian nations are falling under the broadening Chinese sphere of influence. China became communist in 1949, and until the death of Mao it was fraught with political and economic repression. Mao’s death on September 9, 1976 allowed Deng Xiaoping to take over. President Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 started the process of opening the nation up to economic reform, and Deng Xiaoping acted to expand the economy through doses of capitalism. It worked. China is growing to be the most economically powerful nation on earth. Nonetheless, the political repression remains. The rise of
China also threatens the survival of Taiwan. As China is communist and seeking more power and influence in the world, this will result in yet another challenge to the democracies. In the East, Japan remains the only indigenous power that can match the Chinese economically; however, it cannot match the Chinese militarily. The testing of medium-range missiles by North Korea in 2007, another communist power, threatens Japan as well.
The fall of the USSR led to a bad economic time in Russia. Criminal elements literally stole the Russian economy and destroyed it for their own gain. After the fall of the communists dictators, Russia turned to democracy as their plan for the future; however, as time has moved forward the forces of democracy began to lose out to the forces of totalitarianism in Russia, and the elections put men into power who were not going to leave when their terms of office expired. As former strong men in the old USSR began to move to the top of Russian politics, they promised a return to past glories by confronting America and building up the Russian military to match the West. It seems old ways die hard, and Russia is turning back to its past of individual oppression and state supremacy. It appears that the dictators are returning as men such as Putin find ways to stay in office, newspaper reporters are murdered, the Russian legislature has less and less power, and foreigners who report on the activities of the Kremlin die mysterious deaths by radiation poisoning—or they just disappear into the snows of Moscow. As Russia melts into its past and transforms itself back to its old monstrous self, the impact on the world will be profound; however, it is too early to say where this will go. All the observer can do is compare where Russia seems to be going with where they were in the past and report that the ground looks familiar.
Europe is also growing into an economic powerhouse through its uniting in any economic, and now political, union. After the EEC showed its promise in the 1960s, other European nations began to join. They formed into a single market and a free trade zone named the European Union in 1995. Then they moved to a single currency about 2002, the Euro. Since 1995 the number of nations in the EU has swollen dramatically. As economic freedom and prosperity has advanced, so has democracy. Several former semi-dictatorial states in the EU have moved to a democratic way of government. Overall, the EU has been a dramatic success.
As World War II ended, a new international organization was set up to help prevent new wars, the United Nations. The organization started with hope, but as the years went on it became a debating society much like the League of Nations. Without total support from the Security Council the United Nations cannot act. There is a clear division in the world between political philosophies, and each of those philosophies sit on the Security Council; thus, when one party wants to act at least one other does not resulting in constant deadlock. Even when outright slaughters are ongoing the United Nations does not move. In Rwanda, a devastating slaughter has been going on for years, and the United Nations either cannot or does not wish to stop the murder. Even though UN forces went to Rwanda they were inadequate in size, training, and motivation; thus, the mission failed and the slaughter continued. In other areas of Africa, such as the Sudan, Muslims massacre Christians and the United Nations does not act. Famines take place all over the globe, but unless nations such as the United States do something, the United Nations seldom moves. In the United Nations no criticism can be made of such goings-on because the body will not stand for such criticism. Religiously antagonistic and ‘have not” states, whose agendas for the world are illiberal in the extreme, greatly outnumber the Western Democracies and consistently vote against the agendas of the West. Under these conditions the United Nations has devolved into stagnation.
Where the post-modern world will take humanity is difficult to say. Europe has shattered into a hive of small competing ethic regions. The same fracturing appears to be happening in Asia, Africa, and perhaps Latin America. Everyone wants to rule themselves. The shattering into small politically independent, but economically dependent, nations can hurt trade. Can these tiny areas really survive? The unifying force of religion is failing, as radical Islam stupidly adopts violence to unite people. Violence is the last method that works to unite people.
There are several trends influencing the modern world. Let’s take a quick look:
Technology
Technology is alive and well in our modern world. It is intrusive, complex, and allows technocrats tremendous power over those who do not understand the machines that technocrats have mastered. Computers are now tied to every aspect of life in the modern Western world. Mobile telephones are everywhere, and the World Wide Web (the INTERNET) has proliferated beyond comprehension.
The start of much of this technological wizardry was the Space Race between the USSR and America. In 1961 when President Kennedy announced that America would reach the moon before the decade was out, computers were machines that filled entire rooms. The number of vacuum tubes in computing machines like Univac numbered in the thousands (and they burned out a lot). One of the major accomplishments of the space program was to shrink computing technology to diminutive scales so they could fit onto spacecraft and help navigate and otherwise assist the astronauts in the complex flying needed to reach and return from space.
When the United States landed on the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969, it was the result of fantastic progress in marrying machines with computers. Neil Armstrong (the first man on the moon’s surface) and Buzz Aldrin (the second) were able to transmit from the moon to the Earth with radios that were minuscule compared to those available in 1960. When IBM launched its first personal computer it could address a maximum of 640 kilobytes of information at once. Now (2010) computers can address gigabytes of information with no problem. The growth of the power of the computer is one of the phenomena of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that will reach far into the future. There is little doubt technology will continue to power the machines of the future, but the future itself may be dark or bright. The machines and computers will not decide that issue; people will decide.
In 1974, a group of computer geniuses invented the protocol that would lead to the Internet. In 1992, the number of Internet users was extremely small, but by 2006, the number had grown to 350 million with millions more being added each year. The worldwide acceptance of the Internet and computers displays the acceptance of change in the Western world. The Internet has had a dramatic impact on societies in the West, and its impact will only grow as computers and transmission techniques become better and faster.
Bureaucracy and technology nowadays unite in both wonderful and dangerous ways. We cover this topic in the section on Bureaucracy in the Modern World (below).
War
First the good news; since 1945 there have been no general wars between any of the great powers. The bad news is war is changing rather dramatically in the twenty-first century. The super weapons owned by the United States and other technologically advanced nation states are virtually useless against insurgents who are able to hide among the population and strike indiscriminately and without warning. This type of warfare is the most difficult for the Western Democracies to face because it is very different from previous conflicts, and it forces the West to get involved in cultures they do not understand. Winning the support of the populace is not an easy matter for political entities viewed as former imperial powers or, going even further back, crusaders.
The insurgents strike soft points for the purpose of inflicting casualties and gaining worldwide headlines. These tactics will be successful if the insurgents can carry them out consistently and wear down the forces of the West. The new form of warfare favors the enemies of the West because as long as they can keep or obtain the allegiance of the locals the Western powers cannot successfully prevail against them. The native factions making this kind of war often use terror tactics to gain and keep control of local populations. Thus, to “win” such a conflict the West must learn the ways of the locals and then attempt to convince them that democracy and moderation is the path to a better future.
If for any reason the West fails in this endeavor, then the opposing combatants will continue to avoid capture and continue to inflict losses. The West should note that for hundreds of years the eastern cultures have been living next door and have not adopted Western ideas. Will they now choose to do so just because Western military units reside in or near their land? (See: The Accidental Guerilla, by D. Kilcullen, Oxford University Press, 2009)[389]
Good intelligence is the key to victory in these new wars. What must happen for the West to succeed is that the locals must give away the positions of the insurgents and warn the Western Democracies fighting in the area of planned raids or the placement of bombs and other traps. A clear indication of nearing victory is an increase in accurate intelligence from locals wanting the insurgents out of their area. A clear indication of nearing defeat is zero intelligence tips, for whatever reasons. Thus far, the Western Democracies have not adapted well to this new form of warfare. Corruption in foreign governments presents a significant problem—if not the most significant. Budgets for the Western Democracies show the spending levels for massive new weapons systems to fight World War II type contests are either stable or rising. To win the new wars the West must spend funds on additional intensive training and new specialized equipment for their foot soldiers and avoid spending excessive sums on super weapons capable of destroying entire regions in one blow.
The Super Summary of World History Page 61