Today, the beginning of autumn, 2022, is an appropriate time to look back. I believe we are in extreme trouble; in fact, some sort of world collapse may be at hand. The following discussion is pitched at anyone who cares but lacks the time to research the particulars.
We want to thank Mary Maxwell for this Op-Ed Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
I have a background in sociobiology, and always see things from a human-nature perspective. Let me lay it out in simple terms, in seven parts.
Part One — The Distant Past
Once upon a time there was a human species that lived in connection with the plants and animals in its habitat. The cycle of life was as it is today, birth, youth, finding a partner, reproducing, getting old, and dying. A 24-hour day included, then and now, walking around, finding water and food, talking to others, learning some skills, acquiring property, and so forth. At night, sleeping for around 8 hours.
Before there was agriculture, humans developed ways to hunt animals. When they did so in male groups, they acquired a bent for teamwork — which is seen also in team sports. The females were inclined to build the nest and raise children, as well as keep the family fed by gathering fruit. After it was discovered that seeds could be planted to guarantee crops, the nomadic way of life gave way to settlements.
From early days, clans or tribes split up and went their way. On subsequently meeting each other, they sometimes had to compete for resources. From crude weapons such as sticks and stones, many means of conquest eventuated. This is important throughout history. Individuals cling to their group because it is a source of identity and belonging, but also for security and survival. Outsiders have no ‘rights’ — they can be killed.
Morality and law are human universals; that is, these appear in every culture. But there’s always the urge to sneak out of morality’s demands where possible. Humans, like some other animals, have an instinct for deception. They try to get what they can by bluff or by lying, hence there are rules against this.
It has been noted by evolutionary psychologists that self-deception, too, is natural. People believe what it suits them to believe. If you are really good at believing the lies you are purveying, you will do a sincere-looking job of it, and you won’t feel guilt.
Part Two — Civilization
Now let’s jump across eons to the period known as civilization, which started maybe 3,000 years BCE — before the common era. The common era, CE, means the one from which most people now date the calendar. We used to say BC (“before Christ”) and AD (“anno domino” — Year of Our Lord).
Civilization means sufficiently dense living in which not everyone farms — there is a division of labor with many specialty trades and positions. The oldest civilizations include Mesopotamian ones such as Sumer (in today’s Iraq), and Chinese and Indian ones. These all had writing. China had the infrastructure of irrigation. By 500 BCE, there existed the great religions that became worldwide.
Empires came about when a leader, such as Alexandre the Great of Persia (today’s Iran), conquered territory beyond that of his own ethnic group. The Mongol empire in China was the largest. The Roman Empire is best known to us, and its religion, the Catholic church, is still running.
Thanks to Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar,” we have a personal sense of the problems that beset high-up leaders. Caesar was a general in the Roman empire and was supposed to say outside Italy, as the Roman leaders knew that a man with troops, even ‘our’ troops, was a threat to the status quo.
In 49 BCE, Caesar disobeyed and crossed the Rubicon. He intended to become a dictator, and he did so. But five years later, in 44 BCE, his buddies Brutus and Antony (of Cleopatra fame) did him in. This led to Caesar’s dying remark, “Et Tu, Brute” — as in “Oh no, not you, you bastard!” Really, he should have known; just as he wanted to be top dog, so did others. A palace coup is not uncommon.
The Roman Empire grew and grew. Why? It may be because of what is called the Hobbesian dilemma — you may not want to take action, but you know that if you don’t, your rival will. Caesar’s offspring got as far as the British Isles in their drive to capture the land. Eventually, Britain started its own empire in the 1500s to the point where “the sun never set” on it.
Part Three — Inventing a Cold War
In my lifetime (1947 to present), I have discovered that much of reported history is a lie, so I must be cautious when talking of the ancient period or the Middle Ages. But roughly speaking, it does seem that many tribes wandered into the European landscape and became the nations we know as Poland, Italy, Germany, France, and so forth.
As kids, we were taught that William of Normandy (France) conquered England in 1066. We were not taught, however, that the kings of England, therefore, spoke French for the next 400 years, as that idea “goes against the grain.” And naturally, we did not bother to think of the history of Asia, Africa, or the pre-modern Americas.
Come to think of it, the ability of a people, in this case, my people, to picture the world from a narrow perspective is quite something. My “visual” of Europe, when I was in elementary school in the 1950s, and even when I was a Ph.D. student in the 1980s, consisted of a continent that had an iron curtain down its middle.
On one side was democracy and on the other was totalitarianism. The good and the bad. This made for a Cold War, which we were stupid enough to think was real. It was not real. It was presented to us to keep us from thinking about the real reality. Both sides, the capitalist nations and the Commies, were answering to a mutual boss. Their actions, even ones appearing to be hostile, were coordinated from the top.
I assume that today we Americans are being given a Mini Cold War that consists of Trumpers versus Bideners. So long as people talk about it as if it were real, it seems real. We are asked to modify our own behavior to suit the needs of the play-off between those parties. Think back to our evolving years when we had only sticks and stones. The very same emotions undergird a fight today. It’s instinct. But it’s pathetic, and we should grow up.
Part Four — Losing Our Moorings
I have already hinted that someone up there coordinates nations and does it secretly. They want to run a global empire. We can see their operations. I venture that their main concern is to prevent people noticing them, as they would not survive getting outed.
This concern has led the globalists, since the early 20th century, if not earlier, to disturb people’s lives by disturbing their normal routines. Consider a utopian book written by HG Wells in 1928, entitled “The Open Conspiracy.” It celebrates bringing an end to nation and religion as if that were a desirable goal. But it would be disastrous as humans are built to respond to their tribe and to a divine ruler.
There has also been a move to undo the family. Plato had already recommended it in 300BCE, and Israel’s kibbutz movement of the early 1900s designed a collective rearing of children. Later, in the 1900s, it seems that moves were made not openly but indirectly to prevent marriage. One such way, in the US, was to offer financial support to women who produced babies out of wedlock. Another method of attack is that TV shows teach kids to have low respect for their parents.
It’s not only the removal of peoples’ strengths (nation, religion, family) that the globalists desire. They have seen the possibility of managing a worldwide economy. This allows them to get many helpers for their schemes, insofar as great profit can be made — individuals who have become invested in this do not want to lose their advantage.
I reckon the pursuit of efficiency, too, is a natural drive in itself — bright minds don’t want to stop partway when they notice how to do things more efficiently. Additionally, as Max Weber noted, bureaucracy has a drive to perpetuate itself — everything gets reduced to a system of rules, some irrational. This was seen in a New Yorker cartoon of two men stranded on a desert island. One says to the other, “Did you get my memo on conches?”
Part Five — Values and Principles
Values are biologically given. A simple animal, even a microscopic one, may have moisture as its main value. It needs water and will migrate towards it. A small mammal may value warmth; it must avoid freezing. Various species of primates value social contact, and social doings. People’s values include possessions, approval by neighbors, and a chance to have fun.
Thus, you could say that what one values is the same as what one desires. Still, for humans, ‘values’ has some additional aspect to them. We value, with extra strength, a shared social habit. Scots value frugality, Sudanis value education, and young people (at the moment) value getting tattooed. Members of an environmentalist organization value every tree. It’s as though participating in one’s cultural themes or group themes adds to one’s stature and worthiness. (I am not aware of the physiology involved here, but it does engage the emotions.)
Americans value their principles. A principle is something of value that has come about via rationality and logic. The Bill of Rights was thought up as a list of what a tyrant wants to do, to which we (the Founding Fathers) said, “Fergit it.”
Principles are also found in the maxims of law. Two examples: Malus usus est abolendus — An evil custom should be abandoned. Quod necessitas cogit, excusat — That which nature compels she excuses. Law itself is rational. It emerges when people have a need to decide what is right and wrong and how to punish those who act unsociably.
I said above, referencing HG Wells, that some persons aim, openly or secretly, to kill off a society’s vital components, such as the family, the nation, or religion. Today they are killing off values and law. I can see it happening before my very eyes. The main perpetrators of this are the MSM — the mainstream media, and schools.
Part Six — Making War
As already noted, groups compete for resources, and empires compete so as not to be outdone. All individuals are born with a double standard of morality: we want to be good to our group and helpful to allies, but we want to be as bad as possible to any enemy.
Once a leader calls for war, men will readily fight, even at the risk of death. This included scenarios, soon after gunpowder was invented, in which row upon row of men would step forward on the battlefield to kill each other. But there has also been, for millennia, the study of strategy. This includes ambush, smoking the enemy out, starving him, or using guerilla tactics.
I mean, therefore, to say that war is natural. But it’s also possible for some people to create a war in which it is necessary to dupe one’s soldiers into fighting. That is, the advertised cause of the war is fraudulent.
Three shocking motivations for persons to create an unjustified war have been discussed in our lifetime. First is the chance to make money, such as by selling armaments (to one’s own side, or to both sides!). Second is a leader’s desire to win popularity by being seen to have acted valiantly. The third motivation is to keep one’s own population busy and distracted so that they don’t rise up against their ruler.
Orwell presented that third one as a book within his book “1984,”; supposedly written by a dissident named Emanuel Goldstein. In fact, Goldstein said the powerful keep soldiers occupied with ever-changing wars (between “Oceana” and “East Asia”) for the purpose of using up funds and thus preventing people from getting luxury goods.
The second one, about a leader being motivated to start a war to gain domestic admiration, was bandied about when Margaret Thatcher set out to “defend the Falklands” in 1982. The problem was also outlined at the Philadelphia Convention in 1787, where the Framers of the Constitution gave it as a reason to make Congress, not the president, the declarer of war.
The first item, the profit to be gained by weapons manufacturers, is widely understood today to be a likely cause of many wars. President Eisenhower warned against a takeover of government by the military-industrial complex. After the Covid pandemic, some have expanded it to the military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex. It’s also said that bankers have a motivation to lend money to governments for war-making.
We should not be so stupid as to fall for all the deceptions that send soldiers off to die. But a big stumbling block is the fact that soldiers are praised for valor and for making sacrifices “for our freedoms” even when a war is but a lark for some of the aforementioned players. It is utter sacrilege to say that the soldiers are mercenaries — even when they plainly are.
Part Seven — The Power of Impunity
Most humans have a conscience. Conscience is apparently innate — a person feels a painful humiliation when caught sinning. That’s an emotion, and emotions are deployed by chemicals in the brain. Guilt and shame must have evolved so that society could keep its members in check.
Today, many persons who are high up in society don’t have a conscience. This is unbalancing everything. I can’t help noticing that the public is very reluctant to step in and order the punishment of bad people at the top. It’s like we are in a trance.
The authors of the 1776 Declaration of Independence noted that “Experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
That is, we practice impunity. Impunity is the failure to punish.
For the last two years, we have been in an openly revealed genocide — a genocide of the human race. Some people fought it — Tanzania’s president John Magufuli comes to mind; he was apparently “dispensed to Eternity” for his trouble. Most individuals calculate their immediate interest and stay quiet.
You have to decide now whether your survival is worth risking death. You have to see if there are creative ways to punish the guilty or at least halt their activities. The human species is known for its creativity…
Be encouraged. The success of the guilty ones, thus far, is impressive, but theirs is most likely a house of cards.
