Living Like Brothers and Sisters

Unfortunately, what MLK says here is 100% correct, and turning this around will be a monumental task.  A few data points:

• There are more than 200 sovereign countries on Earth.  Each either has its own military, or maintains an alliance whereby one or more armed countries has committed to protect it from aggression.  The build-up of weapons, both conventional and nuclear, shows no sign of slowing down, largely because it’s among the most lucrative and powerful industries on the planet.

• The people in these countries are socially programmed to regard foreigners as lesser human beings, at best as unworthy of trust.  Even the most peace-loving and sophisticated nations on Earth, say, Scandinavia, have rivalries that are taken very seriously.  Rivalries exist at the local level as well.  For instance, appalling as it may be, the students at UCLA, if they are going to join a fraternity or sorority, are forced to dislike the  students at USC.

• Racism appears to be an intractable force governing human affairs, and it seems to travel around the globe, generally rising, though sometimes abating in a certain region here or there.  A significant aspect of the “Trump phenomenon” is the acceptance of white supremacy as legimate behavior.  People marching through a city with torches chanting “Jews will not replace us” would have been unthinkable before 2016.

• As population growth and climate change continue to make land and other resources increasingly scarce, we can expect xenophia to become more common and powerful in the coming decades.

• Racism cannot exist in the absense of ignorance; it’s incompatible with education, which is why we must continue to expand the funding of our schools and universities.  Yet that’s not what’s happening, at least in the United States, where learning at all levels continues to founder as the entire public sector is coming under pressure and government is seen as the enemy.

Most people, as individuals, are kind and decent, and would like to see a world of peace and harmony.  Yet many of our social institutions work at odds to this basic goodness.

Also, it’s possible that a cataclysmic event may unite us, e.g., runaway climate change, as it becomes obvious that business as usual is leading inexorably toward broadspread destruction.

In any case, as MLK pointed out, the human species has failed miserably to exhibit compassion for its fellows.