From the 1918 ‘Peace’ of Versailles to the 1992 ‘Peace’ of Paris, we experimented with capitalism, fascism and communism. Only one survives, and that is rent with its own bitter fruits. In philosophy, we started with the iron in the soul of nihilism and its anarchy, then logical positivism and post-modernism. All now seen as flawed and discredited. Religion is widely seen as palliative and preservative, rather than as binding and driving, except by the dedicated and by fanatics. Where it fills the aching void in the young left by lack of adventure or oppression by the unjust, it is a useful crutch to manipulators. Current religion has thus far had little to say on the slaveries around and in us, perhaps because the freedom argument frees too many from attendance and observance, or more likely because the real rulers of the planet – our old friends, Vidal’s interlocking network of family trusts and their bean-counters – use Aunt Sallie’s as distractive sideshows when needed. Protectivism.

These circular arguments, and their equivalents in ethics, social psychology, education, medicine etc may be just useful labels. More likely, I hope, is that they will yield ground to predictive evolution, where perhaps we can nudge progress and limit disaster within the constraints of the laws of unintended consequences, human frailty, and cold but lucrative physical science.

In this I follow Soros’ Open Society ideals. And suspect that internetworking will bring them about, hopefully faster than our democracies have to date.

PS with hindsight, I was a little unkind to European socialism, but would have included it in the list of partial failures. Asian and African socialisms are still young and very vulnerable to hijack, except perhaps Botswana, and the southern Americas have poverty zones that offer little hope as yet. Would it were otherwise.



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