The ecologist, Nate Hagens, interviews Chuck Watson, an expert with decades of experience in the geopolitics of the Middle East, the USA, and Russia.
AT LEAST watch the first 20 minutes or so of this penetrating piece.
In our evolutionary history, we humans have moved further and further away from the reality of Nature. Instead of Nature, we've used social constructs to make up our own reality. Mistakenly, it seems most humans now believe the constructs of economics, politics, formal religion, and various other ideologies have placed us in a position superior to and separate from Nature. That's a false belief, and destructive to our habitat.
Such a view can cause, and is causing, catastrophic consequences. For example, many governments now appear to believe planetary biophysical limits can be ignored. As a result of such a belief, natural resources - essential to life - are being depleted or damaged or destroyed at astronomical rates. One result of that is: governments are going to WAR over land, water, minerals, fertile soil, natural gas deposits, oil, and the like.
[See the last online link in the post immediately prior to this piece. Also see: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/6/21/palestines-forgotten-oil-and-gas-resources ]
Nothing can excuse the brutal murder of civilians by Hamas; however, the context of Israel essentially strangling Gaza and the West Bank Palestinians for decades should not be ignored. It isn't only about religion. Immediately adjacent to Israel, sitting underneath the surface of Palestinian land are deposits of oil and natural gas. Israel needs such for economic growth. Like most countries, it believes in infinite economic growth on a finite planet.
Are our made-up constructs necessary? Yes, that's a given. But they must be implemented with care and comprehensive thinking, and if we desire to thrive as a species, they must not ignore the Laws of Nature. In modern times, our social constructs have made our lives more and more complex. In fact, the complexity now is so enormous it's beginning to look as though our governments are on the brink of not being able to cope with the situation. Underneath it all is the monstrous mistake we made after our discovery and development of a bonanza - fossil energy. Instead of thinking comprehensively and sustainably, we went on a 150-year energy binge. We're still on it.
That binge brought about (and it's ongoing) an exponential increase in the complexity of society in general. Complexity doesn't have to be harmful. An ecosystem is orders of magnitude more complex than any machine ever built by humans. What can be harmful is having the Powers-That-Be (both public and private) analyzing and dealing with complexity using only linear thinking and a reductionist method of analysis. A nonlinear, holistic approach needs to be in the mix. Reductionism can be useful in certain circumstances, but holism (or systems thinking) is required for successfully navigating through complexity. Very few political Leaders of today appear to have any clue whatsoever of holistic thinking. If they had such a clue, perhaps we wouldn't be entering an era of natural resource scarcity; and maybe there would be a lot fewer wars, especially during troubling environmental catastrophes. Perhaps differences among us would no longer impede peaceful cooperation.
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Not only my opinion. Be Well
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