The Marlowsphere Blog (#133)

There we were in the second half of the 20^th century, having experienced the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan that ended WWII, and watched in the late 1970s a pivot towards the west by Communist China following the 1976 demise of dictator Mao Tse-tung (Zedong), and in 1989 even as we watched the horror of Tiananmen Square, we also watched the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall. We saw the creation of the European Union, the death of South African Apartheid, the shrinkage of nuclear weapons on a worldwide scale, the expansion of democracies, the diminution of illiteracy to about 15% of the world’s population, and the increase of global trade, so-called globalism.

We also saw a further exploration of space and the rise of a few non-governmental organizations investing in the exploration of space. The Higgs Boson, the so-called “god particle” was confirmed and the “repaired” Hubble Telescope peered closer and closer into the origins of this universe. The future of generations to come appeared to be bright.

But here we are in 2016 and the reverse appears to be true. In 2001, on 9/11, Al Qaeda terrorists took over two commercial airplanes and destroyed the Twin Towers in New York City (this wasn’t their first attempt). There are now terrorist groups in Africa, e.g., Boko Haram, and in Russia, and in the Philippines, and in France, and in Belgium, among others. It has taken over eight years for the United States and other contingent countries to recover from the “mortgage crisis of 2008.” Britain has just voted to leave the European Union, the so-called “Brexit,” and in the United States the upcoming national election pits a politician, Hillary Clinton, with decades of regional, national and international experience, against an entertainer, real estate magnate Donald Trump, who has decades of experience on reality television. His vision of the future is to retreat from it by building walls between the United States and Mexico, to undo our trade agreements with other countries, and to (possibly) use nuclear weapons against our enemies (whomever they might be).

Elsewhere in the world, terrorists’ attacks have governments and peoples nervous about open borders and immigration issues resulting in the loss of jobs in one place only to turn up for less pay in other places. Local and regional wars have made millions of people homeless. The disparity between the so-called 1% (the haves) and the rest of the world (the have nots) grows deeper with every year. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is getting screwed.

Further, the Internet is not creating a level playing field. It is allowing those with the technical know-how and marketing imagination to create platforms wherein users create content for free and the owners of the servers housing the platform very rich.

It is a gross irony that while some countries, like the United States, parts of the European Union, Japan, and China are exploring space both within and without our solar system, several tribal cultures, such ISIS and the Taliban, are more concerned with what women should wear in public, women’s subservient role in their society, and a strict adherence to the word of Allah. Also, in the Middle East extremist Jews and extremist Palestinians are at war over who should own what territory. In Saudi Arabia, despite their ostensible acceptance of western trade, there is an adherence to an anachronistic extreme form of Islam, so-called Wahhabism. The so-called Kingdom funds this form of Islam with millions of dollars and proselytize their point of view wherever possible.

And in the United States, the chasm between predominantly white police forces and young mostly unarmed African-Americans appears to have exploded into the headlines and into television and radio news broadcasts in the last several years. The Civil Rights Acts were passed decades ago, but the blatant racism expressed by the shooting of unarmed black males by white police officers appears to have become a common occurrence, even in the historical context of an African-American president in the White House.

Q: Is America, is the world retreating from what seemed to be a        brighter future a generation ago?
A: Yes, it is. Or that’s the way it seems.

My view is that the world is experiencing a period of retreat from the future into a period of tribalism. And it is not recent. It has been building for some time, perhaps ever since the commercial introduction of the telegraph in 1844. This was the world’s first electronic communications medium that could transmit information from one point to another at the speed of light. In the mid-20^thcentury photonic technologies were introduced (these are technologies based on photons as opposed to electrons). These combined technologies have bumped up the speed of communication and transport of goods and services and with them cultural values on a global basis. Cultures around the world where the literacy rate is lower and much lower than it is in more developed nations are repulsed by this invasion of outside cultural values. It is anathema to their entrenched cultural values. And, in turn, we are repulsed by their reactions, such as when we hear about honor killings in remote parts of India, and the mutilation of female genitalia in parts of Africa.

Even in places that are so-called developed nations there is a retreat into tribalism. The Brexit vote is one example, the rise of neo-fascism in Germany, and the increasing rejection of Islamic leaning peoples in France are other examples. It is a retreat borne out of deep fear—a fear that one’s family and community values are being tested, challenged, upended, and revealed as untrue or unfounded.

People don’t want change even when it is beneficial in the long-run to the greater whole. The speed of light technologies that now are increasingly circling the planet have thrown opposing cultural values into the same economic pot and have created such fear among the members of opposing tribes that it is engendering violence.

And this phase of planetary cultural evolution will not go away quickly. It will be with us for a while, perhaps a generation of two. Until peoples of different cultural stripes begin to accept that the future is about the integration of cultural values, even the loss and rejection of some values—such as religious and political beliefs—there will be a retreat from the future. Accepting that change is the constant, that change is the way of the universe, a universe we are just beginning to learn about, is a deeply painful process.

This view parallels the structure of scientific revolutions. First, there is rejection of facts that contravene the prevailing view, then there is anger and battles over what is true and what is not true, then ultimate acceptance of the new factual context. We are looking at a generation or two of battles over what is true and what is not true. If world history is any arbiter, progress will prevail, but only after many more have died for their antiquated beliefs and many more have died defending the values of the future.

Eugene Marlow, Ph.D.
September 5, 2016

© Eugene Marlow 2016

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The Marlowsphere Blog (#106)

My last blog posited that we are moving in the direction of humanizing technology. That is, increasingly our communications systems in particular—the Internet, World Wide Web, telecommunications—are morphing into very human-like sensory characteristics, for example, increasing voice characteristics, increasing use of motion video on the Internet. In homes, businesses, and public spaces video screens have become flat (some are curved), and large.

I also posited that our communications systems have created a global marketplace for information and communications. We have inexorably become what Dr. Marshall McLuhan   described in1964 as a “global village.” His use of those two words is correct. The planet has become global with respect to all manner of human activities. In one sense we have moved from villages, to city-states, to countries, and in the last century to regional economic entities, e.g., the Pacific Rim, the European Union, OPEC, the Organization of American States, the BRICS, and so on.

But the phrase also reflects the characteristics of a village of the past: people in the village are an entity unto themselves, sometimes dealing with outsiders, sometimes not, where men are dominant, and women are secondary. In today’s world the concept of a “village” is reflected in the fact that most if not all the new countries that have been admitted to the United Nations are based on “ethnic centers,” never mind geographic considerations. Further, current conflicts in the world are ethnically-based—that is, there are groups at war with each other based on perceived cultural differences. It is not about territory, especially, or even economic gain. It’s an extremist view—“we perceive who we are and if you’re not one of us, you must be killed.”

It is ironic that for all the technological advances in communications and the collaboration it fosters, there seems to be more groups coming into existence who are insular, exclusive and extremist.

Examples abound. The current Israel-Palestinian conflict in Gaza is about Hamas wanting to destroy Israel; it refuses to recognize Israel as a legitimate state.  On the other hand, Israel exacerbates the perceptions by continuing to build settlements on land the Palestinians regard as theirs. They also perceive that the entire region is theirs, but the United Nations   in 1948 voted otherwise. There has been conflict ever since. The conflict is exacerbated by Iran that is apparently supplying rockets to Hamas. Iran seems also bent on finding a way to destroy Israel.

In Iraq ISIS believes its Sharia interpretation of Islam is the only interpretation of the Koran and in that context feels no constraint in executing people who do not believe as they do and blowing things up—such as the resting place of the biblical Joseph.

In Syria newly elected (for the third time) President Assad thinks nothing of killing his own people who disagree with his self-centered, elitist policies. In Egypt the former, now deposed President Morsi thought nothing of inculcating his Brotherhood of Islam’s narrow-focused perception of the world. An ex-military general is now the new president. We’ll see how that works out.

In Africa, the Boko Haram, led by a man who was once interred in a mental institution, believe that everything in the west is bad. It thinks nothing of killing and kidnapping in the name of Islam.

In eastern Ukraine recently, Russian President Putin thought nothing of seizing the Crimean Peninsula and annexing it to Russia. He also supports the “Ukrainian militants” who similar to the abovementioned extremists think nothing of seizing buildings and killing those who do not feel the way they do about Russia.

In Chechnya rebels there continue to blow things up—including people—because they want a separate state based on their cultural heritage. The war in Bosnia at the end of the last century was also ethnically-based. Many died because each side saw their cultural heritage as the culture to follow. Ethnic cleansing followed.

Adolf Hitler used his Nazi propaganda machine to manipulate much of the German populace into perceiving that the Jews were at the root of their problems and that Jews were less than human. Starting with Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass) in November 1938, the Third Reich succeeded in exterminating six million Jews.

In China towards the end of Mao Zedong’s rule, the Cultural Revolution purged a generation of intellectuals and artists who were perceived as out of step with Mao’s dictates. Millions perished.

In the 16^th century the Spanish Armada attacked England. Why? Because Spain was Catholic and Elizabeth I wasn’t.  The Armada famously perished in the English Channel from a storm that came up just at the right moment.

Go back a millennia and you have the Crusades that pitted the righteousness of Christians against the righteousness of Muslim-based cultures. Go back another thousand years and you have the righteousness of the Roman Empire against the emergent righteous Christians, and so on.

Conclusion: toleration of other people’s cultural values and views is not a prominent human characteristic. To bring us back to the present, former Secretary of State Madelaine Albright recently said: “In a sentence, the world is a mess.” The problem in the early part of the 21^st century is that the world means the world. Two thousand years ago the world was much smaller, but larger than the world of early agricultural communities of 10-12,000 years ago, and certainly much larger than the villages of pre-literate tribes before that.

The problem is conflicting cultural ethnic values and views are now supported and accelerated by contemporary transportation, information, and communications technologies. Information (whether factual or not) moves at the speed of light and this only expands its impact.

So, why hasn’t contemporary transportation, information, and communication technologies made the world a better place for all of us to enjoy? Why haven’t these technologies made us different? Why are human beings bent on pursuing conflict rather than peaceful co-existence?

Perhaps part of the answer is that human evolution takes a lot longer than technological development. After all, it took a couple of million years for homo sapiens to develop the capacity for language, but only a few thousand years to move from an agricultural world, to a world with accounting, then writing, then printing, then electronics, and now photonic and nano technologies.

We’ll probably have men and women living on planet Mars sooner than men and women will learn that cooperation and collaboration is more fruitful than armed conflict.

Please write to me at meiienterprises@aol.com if you have any comments on this or any other of my blogs.

Eugene Marlow, Ph.D.
September 1, 2014

© Eugene Marlow 2014

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