It is a fundamental human problem that our most cherished beliefs can diverge from reality. This gap becomes a chasm, however, when an idea is sustained not merely by longevity and cultural inertia but by significant economic incentives.

Probably we can all think of many striking examples - particularly as regards the “economic incentives”. As Upton Sinclair wrote a century ago,

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

This is particularly so in today’s huge, complex societies where having a belief is often hard to distinguish from seeking to persuade others of its truth. It has even been suggested that some people try to convert as many others as possible to a theory of which they themselves are unsure, on the shaky principle that if a lot of people believe something it must be true - and therefore they themselves are safer believing it!

If anything is to be accomplished by teamwork, it seems obvious that we must be able to rely on what others tell us. Today there is (or ought to be) a huge crisis of confidence brought about by the systematic lying of everyone from heads of state to business leaders, scientists, and even doctors. (Advertisers, PR people, salesmen and such are generally expected to lie so they don’t really count). Bullshit, as defined by Professor Harry G. Frankfurt, consists of saying things without regard for their truth or falsity, merely in order to bring about desired results. Most of us can immediately think of examples of this, too.

Therefore it seems useful to distinguish between people who value truth and those who do not. Let us focus on the former, who are clearly the only hope for humanity. Even a person who sincerely wishes to be completely truthful may say things that are not true, if his thinking is faulty. His beliefs, as Mr Bystrianyk observes, may diverge from reality.

One of the oldest and central aims of philosophy has always been to eliminate such erroneous thinking. That was one of the goals of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and others. But the ancient Greeks and Romans were severely handicapped by their ignorance of how the mind works - something which has been clarified by modern psychology and neuroscience. Although psychology was in its infancy and neuroscience almost unknown a century ago, a handful of bold pioneers were already able to lead the way. Mental discipline, intellectual integrity, and mathematical insight helped to compensate for the lack of neuroscience, molecular biology, CT and MRI scanners, electrophysiology, electron microscopy, neuroimaging, computers, and many other devices and techniques.

One distinguished researcher aimed at nothing less than a new discipline of thinking based on the latest understanding of science and the nervous system combined with philosophical approaches such as epistemology and phenomenology. Alfred Habdank Skarbek, Count Korzybski, was born in Warsaw on 3rd July 1879 and died on 1st March 1950 in Sharon, Connecticut. In his last 30 years he wrote two important books, gave innumerable lectures, and founded the Institute of General Semantics which still operates today. His influence was widespread but mostly subtle; in some ways it has not really made itself felt yet. But he impressed and helped many in all walks of life: scientists, doctors, philosophers, and even science fiction writers.

The passages cited in this essay are taken from the 1970 revised edition of the science fiction novel “The Players of Null-A”1 by Alfred Elton van Vogt. Previously published as “The Pawns of Null-A” (1956), this story had originally appeared as a 4-part serial in “Astounding Science Fiction” from October 1948 to January 1949. It was the sequel to “The World of Null-A” (1948), the novelised version of a 3-part serial published in “Astounding” during 1945.

Van Vogt, who was 33 at the time, had recently taken up writing SF and entered the field with a bang at about the same time as Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein.2 Inspired by John W. Campbell's classic novelette "Who Goes There?" (later adapted into The Thing from Another World and The Thing), he submitted two classic short stories, “Black Destroyer” and “Discord in Scarlet”, which editor Campbell snapped up and published as cover features. They were later to comprise the first half of the fix-up novel “The Voyage of the Space Beagle” (1950), named for Charles Darwin’s famous biological research expedition aboard HMS “Beagle”.

The two “Null-A” stories sprang from van Vogt’s interest in Korzybski’s General Semantics. They are a fascinating and ambitious attempt to combine a galactic space opera with Korzybski’s ideas about how humans could think more clearly and effectively. Like many of van Vogt’s projects, this one was not wholly successful; the story goes that he sent copies of the two Null-A books to Korzybski, who said that he had tried more than once to read them but had failed utterly to understand what they were about. It seems unlikely that the middle-aged Polish aristocrat had any interest in SF, and the plots of the Null-A books must have seemed juvenile and outlandish to him - as they did to many seasoned SF fans, writers, and critics. On the other hand, the books were credited with creating the French SF market single-handed, which may tell us something about French readers.

Many not only enjoyed the “Null-A” books but felt a powerful desire to learn more about General Semantics. I was one of them, although I was only beginning to read SF when “The Pawns of Null-A” was published in 1956. Sublimely unaware that it was a sequel, I plunged in and simply accepted every unexplained event and character as just another aspect of van Vogt’s mysterious style. The fast-moving plot kept me glued to the page, but I noticed that every chapter was introduced by a short section entitled “Null-Abstracts”. These are condensed snapshots of Korzybski’s insights and recommendations.

It seems astounding indeed that stories written during WW2 can contain - or at least point the way to - wisdom most humans today have no inkling of. Yet that seems to be the case. How often have the most valuable inventions and discoveries come long before their time!

Van Vogt chose to begin the book with the following admonition:

In order to be sane and adjusted as a human being, an individual must realize that he cannot know all there is to know. It is not enough to understand this limitation intellectually; the understanding must be an orderly and conditioned process, “unconscious” as well as “conscious”. Such a conditioning is essential to the balanced pursuit of knowledge of the nature of matter and life.

Like most of the tenets of General Semantics, this sounds almost offensively obvious. How could anyone possibly “know everything”? Well, I was to learn from personal experience how that works! Having read those words as a pre-teen, I had the chance to live their truth when I entered Cambridge University aged 18 to study history. It hit me when I first walked into the University Library, a “copyright library” entitled and obliged by law to hold a copy of every book published in Britain. Until that moment, I suddenly understood, I had vaguely believed that I could soak up all the history that was worth reading. To see the huge sections of shelving laden with books and receding as far as the eye could see sobered me up and in an instant changed my whole attitude. Now I saw that, rather than “mastering” history, all I could hope to do was to nibble a little bit of it here and there.

It was as good an opportunity as any to learn something that teachers of General Semantics always stress: it is not just a philosophy but a discipline. Like yoga or Zen, you can read about it and think “that sounds right”; but you don’t really get much benefit until you assimilate the principles and turn them into habits.

Working in the first half of the 20th century as he did, Korzybski missed out on more recent developments in science, so that some of his statements sound old-fashioned nowadays. Neuroscience - the study of how the brain is structured and how it works - was in its infancy, leading to generalisations like this:

A child’s mind, lacking a developed cortex, is virtually incapable of discrimination. The child inevitably makes many false evaluations of the world. Many of these false-to-facts judgments are conditioned into the nervous system at the “unconscious” level, and can be carried over to adulthood. Hence, we have a “well-educated” man or woman who reacts in an infantile fashion.

Although that passage was written by van Vogt, its tone is recognisably Korzybski’s. Typically, he reaches a correct conclusion although his premises are outdated. While it is true that the cerebral cortex goes on developing until the age of 30 or so, even an infant has a functioning cortex. The “many false evaluations” are more likely to be due to limited experience. Nevertheless it seems that we do preserve and carry forward into adult life mistaken or limited evaluations formed during childhood. It has often been observed that education requires continual unlearning as well as learning.

One of Korzybski’s bugbears was “identification”, in the special sense that General Semantics gives to that word. We call it “stereotyping”, “over-generalisation”, and other things. Since general intelligence consists to a great extent of recognising similarities between different things, even the cleverest are prone to identification and can benefit from learning to avoid it. It is one of the causes of persistent racism and other prejudices, as young children hear remarks by their parents and other adults which reflect views that are now outdated and considered wrong. As always, recognising that is only the first step; it is then necessary to train oneself into a more enlightened way of thinking. For example, consciously noting people of different race who are intelligent, civil, kind, competent, helpful, etc.

Children, immature adults and animals “identify”. Whenever a person reacts to a new or changing situation as if it were an old and unchanging one, he or she is said to be identifying. Such an approach to life is Aristotelian...

We all abstract continually; it is one of the main features of language, and a very useful one. But surprisingly many people don’t recognise when they abstract, and tend to believe that abstract notions are in fact real, concrete things. Most of the words and phrases we use are abstract to varying degrees; only terms denoting specific physical objects are “concrete”. Of course, the words “abstract” and “concrete” themselves are abstract…

In making a statement about an object or an event, an individual “abstracts” only a few of its characteristics. If he says, “That chair is brown!” he should mean that brownness is one of its qualities, and he should be aware, as he speaks, that it has many other qualities. “Consciousness of abstracting” constitutes one of the main differences between a person who is semantically trained and one who is not.

Abstracting simply means “taking away”. Saying “That chair is brown!” amounts to abstracting the quality brown colour from everything else about the chair: its size, shape, position, degree of comfort, the material of which it is made, etc. It classifies the chair as a member of the set of brown things, and ignores everything else about it.

Even the word “chair” is an abstraction: it denotes a certain kind of furniture item, of which there are an immense number of different types , from a milkmaid’s stool to an imperial throne. By using that exact word, we declare that it is only (or mainly) the object’s “chairness” that interests us.

To get the most from our ability to abstract, we need to use it appropriately - but also to be aware that we are abstracting. Many people seem to think that “goodness”, “evil”, “optimism”, “necessity”, etc. are real things - but they are not. They are abstractions: extremely useful, but in an important sense purely mental phenomena. You can’t buy a tin of goodness, and the ancient Greeks to the contrary notwithstanding, there is no lady called Ananke.

In a recent Substack article, Tom Murphy writes:

While it’s true that ice cream might win hands-down against steamed cabbage in a taste test—even among adults—you won’t see (healthy) adults adopt a diet exclusively built on ice cream, or even ice cream plus cake for variety. The adults have figured out that there’s more to life than deliciousness.3 Narrowing one’s focus to a single quality—or even a few—is a recipe for unfortunate consequences, out of balance in a more holistic assessment.

“Narrowing one’s focus to a single quality - or even a few” is a perfect description of over-abstracting. One may reasonably concentrate for a moment or even a few minutes on the sheer deliciousness of ice cream - while eating it, for example - but it is vital to know the whole story. The great guitarist Jerry Garcia, lead singer for the Grateful Dead, nearly managed to kill himself by reportedly consuming nothing but ice cream and heroin for months on end. True, Ben and Jerry’s named one of their flavours “Cherry Garcia” in his honour, but that was probably insufficient compensation for falling into a diabetic coma and dying prematurely 11 years later, aged just 53.

Aristotle’s formulations of the science of his time were probably the most accurate available during his lifetime. His followers for two thousand years subscribed to the identification that they were true for all time. In more recent years, new systems of measurement disproved many of these “truths”, but they continue to be the basis of the opinions and beliefs of most people. The two-valued logic on which such folk-thought is founded has accordingly been given the designation aristotelian – abbreviation: A – and the many-valued logic of modern science has been given the name non-aristotelian – abbreviation Null-A.

Korzybski and van Vogt focused on Aristotle’s logic, which was “two-valued” in the sense that it assumed a choice of “either/or” with no other alternatives. Black or white, true or false, alive or dead, male or female, fact or fiction, deliberate or unintentional, complete or incomplete… the dichotomies go on for ever. Including such formulations as “You are either with us or against us”, which are obviously unfair and misleading, and which aim at forcing hearers to make premature choices. In formal logic, this principle is expressed in the Law of Excluded Middle.

Since the 19th century, various types of multivalued logic have appeared, mostly based on probabilities rather than the assumption of certainty. Fuzzy Logic is a good example.

Don’t believe anything. Regard things on a scale of probabilities. The things that seem most absurd, put under ‘Low Probability’, and the things that seem most plausible, you put under ‘High Probability’. Never believe anything. Once you believe anything, you stop thinking about it…

Following Korzybski, I put things in probabilities, not absolutes... My only originality lies in applying this zetetic attitude outside the hardest of the hard sciences, physics, to softer sciences and then to non-sciences like politics, ideology, jury verdicts and, of course, conspiracy theory.

- Robert Anton Wilson

Although Korzybski relentlessly disparaged Aristotle’s logic and its assumptions, there are other important differences between his methods and those of modern science. Like almost all the ancient Greeks, he preferred to think deductively rather than inductively. They would decide how the world must be - logically, as they thought, or rather intuitively - and then accept all the consequences of such a priori beliefs. For example, Aristotle thought that things fell because they were compelled to seek their proper place in the world, not because all objects with mass attract one another, as Isaac Newton postulated. And it was generally agreed that everything in the heavens must move in circles, as that was the “perfect” shape.

About two millennia later, when Newton published his laws of motion - including the inverse square law of gravitation - he was building on half a century of grinding hard work by Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler. Tycho and his assistants were the first to make accurate, detailed observations of planetary positions for years on end. Kepler tried to fit every conceivable variant of circular orbit to Tycho’s data before finally making the breakthrough: planetary orbits are elliptical, not circular! Suddenly the orbit of Mars was a perfect fit, and Newton had the basis for his laws of motion and universal gravitation. Truly, as he said, he had stood on the shoulders of giants; but giants who believed in the empirical method - observing the world to see how it behaved, rather than guessing how it “should” behave. Even Newton was non-aristotelian to that extent!

Much of General Semantics relates to accuracy and precision of speech. Mental vagueness and opacity often contribute to identification and unawareness of abstracting. Korzybski had some specific suggestions for attaining precision. For example:

For the sake of sanity, DATE: Do not say, “Scientists believe...” Say, “Scientists believed in 1956...” “John Smith [1956] is an isolationist...” All things, including John Smith’s political opinions, are subject to change and therefore only be referred to in terms of the moment.

This habit looks awkward at first, but is well worth cultivating as it saves us from woolly, confused thinking. In 1976, aged 27, I was thrilled by the Raid on Entebbe and thought Israel the greatest country in the world and Moshe Dayan the greatest hero. Not long after, I was gulled into believing that red meat and animal fat were unhealthy, and that I should eat lots of “healthy whole grains”, and polyunsaturated oils instead of cream, butter, and cheese. (It said so in “New Scientist” and “Scientific American”!) Today I see Israel as a criminal conspiracy and believe that red meat is the ideal food for humans, while grains are harmful and seed oils dangerous. Although both of them like running, whisky, and SF, Tom Welsh [1976] is decidedly not Tom Welsh [2026]. It would be worrying if he were!

The habit of dating helps us to avoid unfairly criticising others for inconsistency or shifting their ground. As John Maynard Keynes is said to have remarked, “When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?”

For the sake of sanity, INDEX: Do not say, “Two little girls...” unless you mean, “Mary and Jane, two little girls, different from each other, and from all the other people in the world...”

Like dating, indexing is an automatic habit that reminds us of the differences between people and things. We all tend to organise our knowledge by arranging things and events in categories. That is well and good; but the category into which we place something or someone cannot tell us everything about them. It is in fact an abstraction: we are thinking “those people or things have such-and-such in common”. Fine - but they also differ in many ways! Korzybski encouraged literal indexing with superscript numbers: e.g. “tiger¹ is ferocious, but tiger² is (relatively) approachable”.

For the sake of sanity, use ET CETERA: When you say, “Mary is a good girl!” be aware that Mary is more than “good”. Mary is “good”, nice, kind, et cetera, meaning she also has other characteristics. It is worth remembering, also, that modern psychology – 1956 – does not consider the placidly “good” individual a healthy personality.

Writing in the 1940s, van Vogt - although perhaps not Korzybski - still had old-fashioned ideas about women, which can be glimpsed here. (And perhaps about psychology, too). But the central point remains true and extremely important: whatever you say about a person or thing cannot describe them completely. There is always much more. Thus Korzybski and his followers would warn, “Whatever you say something is, it is not” - in the sense that it is also much more.

For the sake of sanity, be careful not to LABEL. Words like Fascist, Communist, Democrat, Republican, Jew refer to human beings, who never quite fit any label.

In the same vein as dating, indexing, and “etc.”, labelling is a runaway kind of abstraction - and, as such, should always be used in full awareness of abstracting. Which is to say that a Communist or a Buddhist has many other characteristics - some of which might surprise people who automatically identify communists with cynical violence or Buddhists with unworldly benevolence. Indeed, as of 2026 quite a lot of the world’s most successful business entrepreneurs are Chinese communists! And Buddhists have fought wars against one another and against Taoists - another religious group often assumed to be peaceably inclined.

For the sake of sanity, use QUOTATIONS: For instance, “conscious” and “unconscious” mind are useful descriptive terms, but it has yet to be proved that the terms themselves accurately reflect the “process” level of events. They are maps of a territory about which we can possibly never have exact information. Since Null-A training is for the individual, the important thing is to be conscious of the “multiordinal” – that is the many valued –meaning of the words one hears or speaks.

Thus Korzybski and van Vogt show that, even before WW2, they had adjusted their thinking to accommodate the huge leaps in scientific knowledge that were to come.

Anyone who participates in discussions often hears listeners misunderstand what has been said, because they assume a particular meaning which is not the one intended. One has only to think of booby-trapped words such as “liberal” or “conservative”.

For the sake of sanity, learn to evaluate an event in terms of total response. Total response includes visceral and nervous changes, and emotional reaction, the thought about the event, the spoken statement, the action repressed, the action taken, et cetera.

This is a very farsighted observation, which leapfrogs the understanding of most scientists and intellectuals even today. The mind is not just a collection of neurons sending electrical signals to one another. Even those signals are chemically propagated; and the endocrine system of glands, hormones, and neurotransmitters interacts with the brain in sophisticated and complex ways.

For the sake of sanity, be aware of SELF-REFLEXIVENESS. A statement can be about reality or it can be a statement about a statement about reality.

Korzybski was one of the very few people who made a point of actually reading and understanding the work of philosophers such as Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, as well as the older classics. This maxim hints at Russell’s Theory of Types, introduced to avoid paradoxes such as whether the set of all sets that have themselves as members has itself as a member. Of course, a statement that is not directly about reality involves abstraction. (And the Theory of Types entails a lot of it).

For the sake of sanity, remember: “The map is not the territory, the word is not the thing it describes”. Wherever the map is confused with the territory, a “semantic disturbance” is set up in the organism. The disturbance continues until the limitation of the map is recognised.

This aphorism is perhaps Korzybski’s best-known, although few who quote it appear to know his name. (He would no doubt have been satisfied to be anonymous as long as his idea is understood).

Whenever I see that statement my mind goes back, for some reason, to a story I heard long ago, of a child who declared that “Pigs are called pigs because they are such dirty animals”.

It is remarkably how many clever, highly educated people continue to ignore the distinction between map and territory. Politicians, bureaucrats, and lawyers, for instance, who seem to believe that a law or treaty is instantly and completely implemented as soon as it is signed. Or those who evaluate capabilities of various types according to the amounts of money spent on them.

It is not enough to know about Null-A training techniques. They must be learned on the automatic, that is, the “unconscious” level. The “talking-about” stage must give way to the “doing” stage. The goal is flexibility of approach below the verbal level to any event. General semantics is designed to give the individual a sense of direction, not a new set of inflexibilities.

There is no “high road” to mastering General Semantics. The recommended way is to read Korzybski’s magnum opus “Science and Sanity” (982 pages in the 6th edition). It is not an easy read, as Korzybski assumed a considerable level of intelligence and education in his readers, not to mention commitment. What’s more, he insisted that it should be read twice, as the first reading was necessary to understand the second!

On the other hand, what is the value of being able to think and communicate clearly? Obviously great - although much greater when others have the same skills too.

General semantics is a discipline, and not a philosophy. Any number of new Null-A oriented philosophies are possible, just as any number of geometrical systems can be developed. Possibly, the most important requirement of our civilization is the development of a Null-A oriented political economy. It can be stated categorically that no such system has yet been developed. The field is wide open for bold and imaginative men and women to create a system that will free mankind of war, poverty and tension. To do this it will be necessary to take control of the world away from people who identify.

The world is still waiting. Any takers?

Xi added a point he has been recording for American audiences since 2015. “Can China and the United States overcome the Thucydides Trap,” Xi told Trump, “and create a new paradigm of major-country relations? Can we meet global challenges together and provide greater stability for the world? Can we build a bright future together for our bilateral relations in the interest of the well-being of the two peoples and the future of humanity? These are the questions vital to history, to the world, and to the people. They are the questions of our times that the leaders of major countries need to answer together.”

Xi was opening the Thucydides Trap for Trump as if Xi believes both of them believe it.

But he had closed the trap in the US in 2015. “There is no such thing as the so-called Thucydides Trap in the world,” Xi had said in a Seattle speech on September 23, 2015. “But should major countries time and again make the mistakes of strategic miscalculation, they might create such traps for themselves.”

“We must read each other’s strategic intentions correctly. Building a new model of major country relationship with the United States that features non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation is the priority of China’s foreign policy.”

What is this “Thucydides Trap”? It’s a fine example of that modern phenomenon, the hand-crafted meme - an idea or image that “goes viral”, infecting readers’ imaginations and being eagerly picked up and passed on. Unfortunately, in this case it is rank nonsense masquerading as academic wisdom; absolutely typical of today’s Western culture, in which emotional impact goes hand in hand with intellectual superficiality to maximise “outreach”. Even Wikipedia opines that “scholarly opinion on the value of the Thucydides Trap concept—particularly as it relates to a potential military conflict between the United States and China—remains divided”. Coming from a source that can usually be counted on for uncritical admiration of anything emanating from the US government or its tame professors and “think tanks”, that is shockingly faint praise.

The phrase “Thucydides Trap” was coined by the US “political scientist”1 Graham Allison in 2011. He followed up in 2017 with a book entitled “Destined for War”, in which he asserts that “Thucydides's Trap refers to the natural, inevitable discombobulation that occurs when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power… the resulting structural stress makes a violent clash the rule, not the exception”.

As a general statement about international relations, that is self-evident to the point of banality. (And rendered even more so by the amusingly self-indulgent word “discombobulation”). As Max Weber wrote in 1919, “a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory”. That being so, overlapping claims to resources of any kind are bound to bring states into competition, which often turns violent. So the general case of Dr Allison’s proposition is nothing more than a political tautology. One could even say that the main purpose of states is to back up claims to resources with organised violence - i.e. war. That is an obvious motive for the West’s repeated efforts to overthrow national governments - Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Russia, and now Iran and China - so that Western corporations can loot their resources without meeting organised legitimate resistance.

The matter becomes interesting only when we zoom in on the specific instance to which Dr Allison seeks to apply it. Since it is the gist of his thesis that concerns us, here is Wikipedia’s summary:

Seizing on an observation by Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War that "it was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable"^[7] (or, in the translation by Richard Crawley, "The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon [Sparta], made war inevitable"),^[6] Allison used the term to describe a tendency towards war when a rising power (such as Athens) challenges the status of a ruling power (such as Sparta). Allison expanded this significantly in his 2017 book Destined for War, in which he argued that "China and the US are currently on a collision course for war".^[8][3] Though Allison argues in Destined for War that war between a "ruling power" and "rising power" is not inevitable, war may be very difficult to avoid and requires extensive and intensive diplomatic attention and exertion in the case of a "Thucydides trap".^[8]

The thread goes back to 16th April 1980, when the novelist Herman Wouk addressed the US Naval War College on “Sadness and Hope: Some Thoughts on Modern Warfare”. In his unexceptionable speech (apart from its complacent US and Israeli chauvinism), Wouk invoked the memory of Thucydides - but in a sense very different from the one Allison was to conjure up. He said, quite rightly, that “In the pages of the first and greatest of historians, Thucydides, we find men and nations behaving just as we do now”, and that “The present relevance of his account of the Peloponnesian War is almost scary”. True enough, and Wouk concluded that “… more than two [millennia] later we still seem trapped in Thucydides’ world”. He proceeded to contrast that world of treachery, violence, and destruction with the prophecy of Isaiah, 250 years earlier, “And they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, nation shall not lift up its sword against nation, no will they learn war [any more]”.

When he said that we “seem trapped in Thucydides’ world”, Wouk was referring to the ubiquity of murderous violence and the cynical opportunism which gives rise to it. He mentioned only that, after the Persian invasions had been repelled, Athens and Sparta were “two great adversaries” that were dragged into direct conflict after their lesser allies or satellites clashed. Although he referred once to “this Thucydidean trap”, he meant by that the state of endemic warfare caused by unchanging human nature. While insisting that the advent of nuclear weapons made all-out war between the USA and the USSR unthinkable, the only way he could suggest of breaking out of the “trap” lay in the religious visions of Isaiah - inspiring but hardly practical. (Israel, today’s national heir to the wisdom of Isaiah, shows no interest in pursuing his ideal of peace - on the contrary, it is assiduous in stirring up war).

Various historians and philosophers have pointed out that the temptation to draw historical parallels, while strong, is usually deceptive. The past has much to teach us, and the wise pay careful attention to its lessons. But it is vital not to draw the wrong lessons!

So far from being overwhelmed by the accumulations of history, the fact is that mankind has never consciously carried enough of its past along with it. Hence a tendency to stereotype a few sorry moments of the past, instead of perpetually re-thinking it, re-valuating it, re-living it in the mind.
- Lewis Mumford

The “Thucydides Trap” is a perfect example of shallow stereotyping based on a breathtakingly superficial understanding of history.

The great German philosopher Hegel put the matter neatly.

We learn from history that we do not learn from history.
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

And A.J.P. Taylor, one of the best English historians, explained why it is that we do not seem to profit from the lessons of history.

Men learn from their mistakes how to make new ones.
- A.J.P. Taylor (The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848-1918)

That is what is in danger of happening if decision-makers take the Thucydides trope seriously. Dr Allison and others would have them study the Peloponnesian War for guidance, but that would be a grave mistake because the two sets of circumstances are almost entirely different.

Another of Taylor’s epigrams perfectly describes the risk of insisting that the USA is bound to go to war against China.

Once men imagine a danger they soon turn it into a reality.
- A.J.P. Taylor (The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848-1918)

For those unfortunates who share Dr Allison’s Thucydides trip, because Sparta went to war with Athens it follows that the USA must go to war with China. Many others would see that as a consummation devoutly to be wished; the arms manufacturers, for instance, and the believers in “Manifest Destiny” who see China as the next great target for conquest and exploitation. But it ain’t necessarily so.

Between Wouk’s speech and Allison’s popular meme there is a great gulf fixed. By the “Thucydidean trap”, Wouk meant only the perennial human propensity for treachery and violence - which he himself had witnessed during the Pacific War. Allison repurposed the term to denote “a tendency towards war when a rising power (such as Athens) challenges the status of a ruling power (such as Sparta)” - and then took it still further to suggest that the USA is currently the ruling power and China the rising power. That seems wrong in several important ways.

1. While Athens may have been a “rising” power, its foreign policy was blundering, foolish, and self-defeating - mainly because it was a democracy in which a single vote of all the citizens was enough to start (but usually not to end) a war. In any case, Athens was no upstart; it had been one of the most powerful city-states for centuries.

2. Sparta was by no means a “ruling power”; while formidable in war, it much preferred to mind its own business and made few efforts to extend its rule beyond the Peloponnese. Its army was relatively small and its wealth slight.

3. To the small extent that the analogy can be applied to the present day, it is not China but the USA that is the young, arrogant, thrusting new power corresponding to Athens. China is one of the oldest civilisations in the world and - like Sparta - prefers peaceful industry and trade to foreign conquest.

4. Inasmuch as there was any inevitability about the clash between Athens and Sparta, it arose mainly from the relatively minor frictions between their colonies, and the inevitable hostility between oligarchs and democrats within each city-state. Neither of these phenomena have any close equivalent in China or the USA today, although it is true that China is somewhat hemmed in by US client nations.

5. Dr Allison’s analogy assumes (among other things) that the outbreak of war is a major event and to be avoided. But in classical Greece war was endemic; most of the hundreds of city-states were at war at any given time, with alliances continually shifting as advantage dictated.

6. There is a huge difference between war in the ancient world, with armies of a few hundred or thousand men wielding spears and swords, and modern war involving millions of soldiers, salvoes of hugely destructive missiles, and potentially weapons of mass destruction.

Let’s examine those misconceptions a little more closely. First, the relationship between Athens and Sparta.

Athens has been continuously inhabited for at least 5,000 years, and from about 900 BC it was a prosperous trading town. After a succession of kings, democracy was introduced by Cleisthenes in 508 BC, leading to the high drama and tragedy of “classical Athens”. In spite of the famous victories of Marathon and Salamis, the city was twice captured by the Persians, who sacked it thoroughly before concluding their “punitive expedition”. There is a more detailed account of the lead-up to the Peloponnesian War (with a map) in my article “The Melian Dialogue”. But that period of history is so complicated - almost fractally - that any brief account is bound to be oversimplified.

Sparta’s origins, too, are hidden in prehistory. In Homer’s “Iliad” (about 1,200 BC) both Athenians and Spartans are listed among the Achaeans who sailed to attack Troy and recapture Helen. Helen was the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta and brother of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, who led the Achaeans. Homer credits the Athenians with 50 ships and the Spartans with 60, whereas Agamemnon brought 100 and the Argives and Cretans 80 each. In those days, if Homer is to be believed, Athens and Sparta were of approximately equal strength and importance.

At the time of the Persian invasions and the later Peloponnesian War, the Spartans were the most feared soldiers in Greece. Spartan boys and men were expected to dedicate themselves to military training and to excel in strength, toughness, and endurance. That was possible because the Helots, a subject race, did all the physical and menial work such as farming. Although the Spartans were brave and skilful fighters, there were never very many of them and they tended to stay close to home in the Peloponnese. According to Wikipedia,

At its peak around 500 BC, Sparta had some 20,000–35,000 citizens, plus numerous helots and perioikoi. The likely total of 40,000–50,000 made Sparta one of the larger Greek city-states;^[43][44] however, according to Thucydides, the population of Athens in 431 BC was 360,000–610,000, making it much larger.

Whereas the Athenian character cited by Thucydides looks strikingly modern, the Spartans were almost exactly opposite. Conscious of their lack of numbers and apprehensive of a rebellion by the far more numerous Helots, they preferred to stay close to home - although that did not keep them out of frequent wars against neighbours such as the Argives, Achaeans, Messenians, and even far-distant Thebes, a good 230 km (140 miles) away. (Greece is a small country!)

Contrary to popular belief then and now, the Spartans were not brainless thugs dedicated only to killing.

The Spartan public education system, the agoge, trained the mind as well as the body. Spartans were not only literate but admired for their intellectual culture and poetry.

It is true that Thucydides wrote, in chapter 1 of his great work, that "The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made war inevitable".

But in the following comparison of the Athenians with the Spartans, which sound to you more like modern Americans, and which more like today’s Chinese?

The Athenians are addicted to innovation, and their designs are characterized by swiftness alike in conception and execution; you [the Spartans] have a genius for keeping what you have got, accompanied by a total want of invention, and when forced to act you never go far enough. Again, they are adventurous beyond their power, and daring beyond their judgment, and in danger they are sanguine; your wont is to attempt less than is justified by your power, to mistrust even what is sanctioned by your judgment, and to fancy that from danger there is no release. Further, there is promptitude on their side against procrastination on yours; they are never at home, you are never from it: for they hope by their absence to extend their acquisitions, you fear by your advance to endanger what you have left behind. They are swift to follow up a success, and slow to recoil from a reverse. Their bodies they spend ungrudgingly in their country’s cause; their intellect they jealously husband to be employed in her service. A scheme unexecuted is with them a positive loss, a successful enterprise a comparative failure. The deficiency created by the miscarriage of an undertaking is soon filled up by fresh hopes; for they alone are enabled to call a thing hoped for a thing got, by the speed with which they act upon their resolutions. Thus they toil on in trouble and danger all the days of their life, with little opportunity for enjoying, being ever engaged in getting: their only idea of a holiday is to do what the occasion demands, and to them laborious occupation is less of a misfortune than the peace of a quiet life. To describe their character in a word, one might truly say that they were born into the world to take no rest themselves and to give none to others.
- Speech of the Corinthian spokesman, Thucydides “Peloponnesian War”, Book III

And that is how a Corinthian - a bitter enemy of the Athenians - described them! As I wrote in my article “The Melian Dialogue” a year or so ago,

Athens came to have the most powerful navy in the Greek world. Just as NATO became a politically acceptable mask for American policies, the Delian League was a thinly disguised Athenian empire pretending to be purely defensive. And like NATO, it almost immediately started to behave in expansionist and even hostile ways.

The parallel between Athens and the USA could hardly be more obvious. Hubristically proud of its democracy; keen to colonise under the colour of evangelising; owner of a mighty fleet and a powerful army; more or less insulated from attack by the sea and its naval power... and so on.

Extending this comparison, the Sparta of today must surely be Russia. Considered invincible in war, but peaceful by nature – almost to a fault. Disdained by the Americans/Athenians as unenterprising, backward in culture, technology, almost everything. But a very bad people to underestimate, because – like the Russians – the Spartans did not usually start wars; they finished them.

At the risk of pushing the resemblance too far, China might eventually turn out to be Syracuse. It fits the bill, and if the Americans try to attack it their fate may be similar to the Athenians’.

Although he had been an Athenian general in the early stages of the war, Thucydides adopted an admirably impartial outlook when writing his history in exile. It is full of warnings such as this:

Abstinence from all injustice to other first-rate powers is a greater tower of strength than anything that can be gained by the sacrifice of permanent tranquillity for an apparent temporary advantage.
- Thucydides “Peloponnesian War”, Book I, 1.42-[3]

Aiming to expand its area of dominance, Athens all too often behaved most unjustly - siding with rebels here, sending an expedition there, slaughtering the Melian men after they surrendered, and selling the women and children into slavery - until eventually it found itself in a full-scale war against Sparta and its allies. Until then, Athens and Sparta had usually stayed cautiously out of each other’s way, preserving a rough balance of power. Athens broke that balance by creating the Delian League and building up its powerful navy; but the Spartans still could - and did - walk right up to the walls of Athens whenever they liked. It was the classic deadlock of sea power against land power, just as with the British Navy and Napoleon or Hitler, or the US Navy and Russia.

So what did the Athenians do? Why, naturally they sent a big fleet and a correspondingly large army to attack Syracuse, a Greek colony and the second greatest democracy in the known world. Followed by another fleet and another army. Both of which were trapped and wiped out by the Syracusans, who were advised by the Spartan general Gylippos.

When you get into trouble 5,000 miles from home, you’ve got to have been looking for it.
- Will Rogers, as quoted in Sanity Is Where You Find It : An affectionate history of the United States in the 20’s and 30’s (1955) edited by Donald Day, https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Will_Rogers

Syracuse is only about 1,000 km (about 620 miles) from Athens by sea, but it’s a long way to row. (At least they didn’t have to row back, being dead). The Athenians had been looking for trouble far from home ever since the Persian Wars, suffering heavy defeats in Cyprus and Egypt among other places. But they never learned. Can it be coincidental that Athens and the USA, the ancient and modern states most given to bragging and self-congratulation about their democracy, immediately began to throw their weight around using naval power, and bullied weaker peoples until they eventually met with crushing defeat at the hands of tougher though more peaceably inclined states?

With the catastrophic defeat at Aegospotami (405 BC), Athens lost its last fleet and surrendered in 404 BC. Some of the Spartans and their allies, such as Corinth and Thebes, were for total destruction of the city; but eventually the Spartans were content with levelling its walls. Soon the balance of power was restored, and the Theban victory at the battle of Leuctra (371 BC) marked the end of Sparta’s hegemony. In classical Greece, no single city-state was ever supreme, as alliances kept shifting and there were few, if any, permanent attachments.

As Thucydides predicted, the Peloponnesian War set the pattern for future conflicts, because human nature does not change even over millennia. The following quotations make that crystal clear.

Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defence. The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries…

Oaths of reconciliation, being only proffered on either side to meet an immediate difficulty, only held good so long as no other weapon was at hand; but when opportunity offered, he who first ventured to seize it and to take his enemy off his guard, thought this perfidious vengeance sweeter than an open one, since, considerations of safety apart, success by treachery won him the palm of superior intelligence. Indeed it is generally the case that men are readier to call rogues clever than simpletons honest, and are as ashamed of being the second as they are proud of being the first.

- Thucydides “Peloponnesian War”, Book III, 3.82-[4]

Very familiar indeed - but where do we see and hear such behaviour today? From Western governments and their media; from Ukraine, from Israel… certainly not from Russia or Iran, still less from China.

Meanwhile, the “trap” trope has escaped and is running wild through the political and media classes. Just the other day, one might read:

“Israel must break out of the Iranian trap”.

Nahum Barnea, writing in “Yediot Ahoronot”, as quoted by Alastair Crooke.

Some “trap”! On 28th February 2026 Israel and the USA launched an undeclared, unprovoked attack against Iran, murdering its top leaders (and a couple of hundred schoolgirls, teachers, and others); and now an Israeli journalist complains that Israel is in a “trap”. What this really means is that they made a cynical, opportunistic decision to stab a neighbour in the back, and it has turned out badly for them. There is something about that in the Bible:

15 He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made.
16 His mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing shall come down upon his own pate.

- Psalms 7, 15-16.

To complain and lament about such a self-wrought predicament requires real chutzpah.

Another important aspect of classical Greek politics that is rarely if ever mentioned by the purveyors of Thucydides tripe is the role of colonisation. While space does not permit me to say much about it here, it’s impossible to understand the Peloponnesian War without taking into account the incessant and keen struggle to establish and maintain colonies. Greece is a small country, and its habitable area in ancient times was even smaller, consisting mainly of fertile valleys between mountain ranges. Each valley would support one or more city-states, and the most successful cities were those that occupied relatively wide plains where crops could be grown and animals grazed.

Population pressure drove incessant wars, and some cities set up colonies to relieve overcrowding at home and, where possible, to send back food supplies. This was very much the case with Athens, whose powerful navy served to protect the sea routes that brought, for instance, grain from the Black Sea. Sparta, much smaller and more self-contained, needed to import little food and had few colonies.

How does the “Thucydides Trap” idea fit in with these facts?

The USA was established by colonists from Europe, who soon drove the indigenous peoples out into desert areas or exterminated them; so in a sense the USA itself is an enormous colony. Although it has not needed to export surplus population - quite the opposite, although that may be changing - it now imports more food than it exports.

In contrast, China has not gone in for overseas colonisation, although many Chinese people have emigrated successfully all over the world. Its reliance on imported food is much greater than the USA’s, and though suppliers are diverse enough for reasonable security, the USA is still one of the main sources.

So we can conclude that the influence of colonies is another significant difference between ancient Greece and the modern world. Athens’ efforts to create and nurture its colonies, and to harm or acquire those of others, contributed to its increasing unpopularity and the developing risk of war with Sparta and its allies. On the other hand China, designated by Dr Allison as Athens’ modern counterpart, is in no such situation. Indeed it is the USA, which is supposed to be Sparta’s equivalent, that has been doing everything it can to stoke up conflicts and create enemies near and far. (As Sparta never did).

The Spartans were among the most conservative and religious of Greeks, and - like China and Russia - valued stability. The Athenians, on the other hand, saw themselves as exceptional: energetic, ambitious, ingenious, and favoured by the gods. In his account of the siege of Melos, Thucydides gives the Athenian herald the following speech:

"Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can. And it is not as if we were the first to make this law, or to act upon it when made: we found it existing before us, and shall leave it to exist forever after us; all we do is to make use of it, knowing that you and everybody else, having the same power as we have, would do the same as we do".

There is every reason to believe that those words, while perhaps no better than third-hand, represent exactly the mood of the Athenian citizens at the time. Thucydides was still one of them, and had led one of their armies not long before.

It is remarkable how closely the Athenian speech mirrors the assumptions of today’s US leaders and citizens. Thanks to technological advances they no longer need to invade and occupy foreign lands; instead they can take over the commanding heights of economies and governments by shrewd manipulation and social engineering, while the 11 mighty carrier task groups cruise menacingly, shark-like, round the world.

Neither the Spartans nor today’s Chinese (or Russian or Iranian) people would agree with the Athenians. While well armed and ready to meet force with force if absolutely necessary, their preference was and is for peaceful trade and negotiation, respecting the rights and wishes of all parties.

There can be no doubt which is the civilised, rational, humane policy. Nor which is more likely to be successful. The Athenian herald’s words are the epitome of what the Greeks called “hubris” - overweening pride, ignoring the natural order established by the gods. And hubris traditionally led to “nemesis” - retribution (literally, “giving what is due” - a concept very much like “karma”). The sequence of hubris inviting nemesis was central to Greek tragedy, precisely because human beings find it so hard to avoid. Today the USA and its allies are so advanced in hubris that it seems nemesis cannot be long delayed; indeed, it may already have struck, unnoticed by all but a few.

What then remains of the “Thucydides trap”? Dr Allison’s thesis compares the USA to Sparta as the incumbent ruling power, and China to Athens as the rising challenger. As we have seen, that is impossible in several different ways. On the contrary, the resemblance between the USA and Athens is overwhelming. While Sparta was such a unique and extreme society, it certainly had more in common with calm, thoughtful nations such as China, Russia, and Iran than with any Western country. In any case, Athens and Sparta had always been of roughly equal power and influence, Sparta being acknowledged as the greater military force while Athens was more populous, wealthier, and far more open to the outside world.

After the Persian wars, Athens and Sparta tried repeatedly to come to terms, but were always frustrated by clashes on the periphery into which they were drawn - Athens usually being the instigator and Sparta, with its allies, reacting in an attempt to avoid losing ground. Eventually the Athenians succumbed to the temptation of creating a naval empire and “ruling wherever they could”; and that forced the reluctant Spartans to come out fighting. In a few years they matched the Athenian navy and then defeated it, after which Athens itself fell and was occupied by Spartan soldiers.

None of that is remotely compatible with the idea that China is a latter-day Athens or that the USA has anything in common with Sparta. What it does show is that scholars unfamiliar with the intricacies of a given historical period can always “go fishing” and dredge up some fanciful parallels that - if the entire historical context is ignored - can be somehow hammered and chiselled into a shape that suits a political agenda.

But that is not how history should be used. To borrow a thought from Tom Lehrer, if people are unable to make sense of history then the very least they can do is to thuc off.

Zelazny wrote that he got the basic idea for the series while wandering around Baltimore on foot. He wondered: what if it were possible to find any place one could imagine, just by walking and focusing the mind? In his fictional universe, all places are “shadows” of the one entirely real city, Amber. The further away from Amber one travels, the more the shadows depart from its ideal perfection. (Our own Earth is one among the infinite shadows, flanked by myriads of other Earths that are almost, but not quite, the same).

Only those of the blood of Amber - direct descendants of its founder, Oberon - can “walk in shadow”, gradually conjuring up whatever surroundings they can envision. It is uncertain whether they actually create their own worlds, or merely find worlds that already exist. As the narrator Prince Corwin reflects, there is no practical difference.

At the far end of the universe is Amber’s opposite pole, Chaos. Whereas Amber is the embodiment of perfect order, Chaos defies all the laws of nature that we take for granted. Light comes and goes, gravity is variable and sometimes absent or inverted; the weirdest creatures out of fantasy abound; instead of blood, the people and animals of Chaos have fire running through their veins; and the Courts of Chaos, the polar opposite of the palace of Amber, hang poised above a bottomless abyss. In Amber, laws and rules of conduct are generally obeyed although feuds and wars occasionally erupt; but in Chaos there is a state of continual violent anarchy that would make Machiavelli feel at home.

It’s one instance of a theme that recurs over and over in literature and philosophy. Amber is very much like Plato’s concept of heaven where the ultimate exemplars of everything are to be found. The ideal chair, the ideal table, the ideal house, and perhaps even the ideal horse and the ideal person. Zelazny’s shadow worlds are like the material objects that Plato saw as shadows of the ideal objects in heaven, and depicted in his metaphor of the cave.

Jorge Luis Borges revisited Plato’s theme with his “Total Library”, which in principle contains every possible book.

“Everything would be in its blind volumes. Everything: the detailed history of the future, Aeschylus' The Egyptians, the exact number of times that the waters of the Ganges have reflected the flight of a falcon, the secret and true name of Rome, the encyclopedia Novalis would have constructed, my dreams and half-dreams at dawn on August 14, 1934, the proof of Pierre Fermat's theorem, the unwritten chapters of Edwin Drood, those same chapters translated into the language spoken by the Garamantes, the paradoxes Berkeley invented concerning Time but didn't publish, Urizen's books of iron, the premature epiphanies of Stephen Dedalus, which would be meaningless before a cycle of a thousand years, the Gnostic Gospel of Basilides, the song the sirens sang, the complete catalog of the Library, the proof of the inaccuracy of that catalog. Everything: but for every sensible line or accurate fact there would be millions of meaningless cacophonies, verbal farragoes, and babblings. Everything: but all the generations of mankind could pass before the dizzying shelves – shelves that obliterate the day and on which chaos lies – ever reward them with a tolerable page”.

Anyone who has even a nodding acquaintance with mathematics can see that, amusing as it is, Borges’ “Total Library” has no practical meaning. The numbers are not, as the cliche has it, “astronomical”; they are of an order of magnitude that makes all astronomical numbers virtually indistinguishable from zero. In his book “The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges’ Library of Babel”, W. L. Bloch explains that “[I]f each book were the size of a grain of sand, the entire universe could only hold a fraction of the books in the Library. Indeed, if each book were the size of a proton, our universe would still not be big enough to hold anywhere near all the books”.

One of the many clever ways in which Zelazny renders his universe credible is that, to borrow from computer jargon, the shadows of Amber are content-addressable. Rather than having to know the “route” to a desired reality, the walker among shadows merely keeps firmly in mind an image of the place where he wants to be. Bit by bit, his surroundings change - like a jigsaw puzzle as pieces are added - until the final piece is locked into place, and the journey is complete.

Similar visions have inspired other writers; in the world of SF, for instance, Robert A. Heinlein’s “World as Myth”. In books such as “The Number of the Beast”, Heinlein’s characters visit the Land of Oz, chat with Lewis Carroll, and land on the Barsoom (Mars) of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Typically, Heinlein the engineer’s technique for moving between universes is mechanical, employing a simple extension of the gyroscope principle, whereas the more poetic Zelazny has it done purely by mental effort.

Mulling over the fictional Amber and Chaos, it seems to me that they have their close reflections (shadows?) in our own world. China, which values order and propriety, is somewhat like Amber in that respect; whereas the USA, which nowadays seems to have no rules at all, must represent its opposite - Chaos. These are not mere superficial fancies, either, but alternate realities that spring from the radically different ideologies of the two countries. Admittedly, it is somewhat simplistic to suggest that each has but one overriding ideology; but the approximation, though crude, is “good enough for government work”.

It is often said that modern China, which has made such astonishing material and social progress since the Communists took over during WW2, owes its success to a unique blend of Marxism and Confucianism. Both of these, properly understood, have paternalistic leanings which make a better impression than the “dog eat dog; everyone for himself” ethos prevailing in the West. China seems flexible, pragmatic, and happy to accept compromises such as “Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics”. Always in the background is the legacy of two millennia of Taoism and Buddhism. Everyone who studies or visits China is bound to notice its strong social tradition: the individual is expected to defer to the family, the family to the local community, and the community to the state (which represents the interests of the people at large). Respect for constituted authority, elders, and the past is normal and taken for granted, which helps a vast and complex society to run smoothly.

Another aspect of China that Westerners have trouble grasping is its general aversion to violence. Whether due to the cumulative effects of thousands of years of civilisation or to other factors, most Chinese people prefer to live peacefully and productively. Industry and trade, rather than war, are their centre of gravity. In stark contrast to Japan and the West, soldiers have always had low status; centuries ago, the ruling authorities concluded that armies tend to be used sooner or later - often sooner - so that it is better for a state to do without them as far as possible. This tendency to pacifism was unfortunately taken too far, at the very time when endemic wars and rivalry between states led to Europe making rapid progress in the technology of exploration and war.

Three centuries ago China and India were by far the wealthiest and most productive countries in the world; but first India was conquered by the British, and then in the 19th century the British, Americans, Europeans, and Japanese intruded upon China and subjugated it in the “Century of Humiliation”. Ironically, the Chinese had possessed huge warships, guns, rockets and even perhaps flying machines back in the 13th century; but they chose to suppress all such engines of destruction, not dreaming that one day the foreigners would steal a march and leapfrog China in military power.

Ironically, WW2 and the Japanese invasions were to free China’s hands and set it on the path to national recovery. In the Darwinian struggle of war, the Communist Party proved strongest and emerged in 1945 as the de facto and then de jure government. Mao Zedong and his supporters set hugely ambitious long-term goals, which astonishingly were reached and surpassed within 70 years. Whatever the exact causes of the huge death toll that ensued, China emerged by 2015 as the world’s most productive, advanced, and autonomous nation. Today it is also the wealthiest, with the lowest incidence of severe poverty and the highest level of satisfaction with government. Obviously, the Chinese have hit upon some kind of Philosopher’s Stone - a combination of means and structures that enable a people to give of its best and profit enormously.

As Godfree Roberts explained last November,

Next week China’s smartest 3.4 million university graduates, average IQ 114, will take the three-day guokao, the national civil service exam, competing for 39,700 jobs. Their IQ puts them in the top 15–20 % of the entire population and among them 40,000 have genius level IQs above 140. At the extreme right end of the curve, 650 of them will have super-genius 160 IQs, compared to just 220 such age mates in the US and EU combined.

The 39,700 who pass do not simply get a job; they enter a decades-long performance tournament. Their careers are tracked, the best are relentlessly promoted, the rest are sidelined. By their forties, the top percentile will govern provinces larger than France or Spain; by their fifties, some will reach the Politburo. China is systematically identifying the highest-IQ, most productive fraction of 1.4 billion people, stress-testing them under conditions of extraordinary competition and giving them real, long-term power. The best and brightest from the demographic that built Huawei, CATL and the HSR are funneled directly into the bureaucracy.

Although there is much talk about the influence of “neo-Marxism” in the USA, and in spite of its undeniable Christian traditions, surely today’s USA is above all the home of rugged individualism. Although much of the individualism and self-reliance seems to be involuntary. As Gloria J. Maloney reports on her Substack (my bolding),

This morning on Wendell Potter’s Healthcare Uncovered Substack, I saw a YouTube video of last night’s 60-minute segment, which was filmed in the dead of winter at Remote Area Medical’s (RAM’s) annual clinic in Knoxville.

Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes told the story of Sandra Tallent, who drove 200 miles from Alabama and slept in her car for 2 nights to reach a dental appointment. A man named Dave Burge had spent the night wrapped in four layers (it was 27 degrees), waiting for dentures. He’d lost his teeth twice — first in a head-on crash caused by a drunk driver that left him with $140,000 in medical bills, then again in a construction accident. “They (RAM) hand you your life back,” he told Pelley. “I could be a normal human again.”

This is shameful! The US is a country with the most billionaires, almost 1000, who together have 55 trillion in assets, and yet the people are desperate for healthcare, a basic human right. The US also has one of the highest levels of inequality in the world.

Hua Bin does a very good job of explaining China’s ideologies and traditional beliefs in a reasonably short read:

Confucius was born in 551 BCE, about 80 years before Socrates. He lived during the Warring States Period. Confucius’ core belief is virtue, very similar to Socrates’ own belief. He believed achieving virtue is the highest aspiration in private and public lives, especially for leaders (i.e. emperors in his day).

Confucius believed that the welfare of a country depended on the moral cultivation of its people, beginning from the nation’s leadership. He believed that individuals could begin to cultivate an all-encompassing sense of virtue through ren (mercy), and that the most basic step to cultivating ren was filial piety – primarily the devotion to one’s parents and ancestors.

He taught that one’s individual desires do not need to be suppressed, but that people should be educated to reconcile their desires via li, rituals and forms of propriety, through which people could demonstrate their respect for others and their responsible roles in society. Confucius also believed that a ruler’s sense of de, or ‘virtue’, was his primary prerequisite for leadership.

Godfree Roberts explains how China’s practical democracy turns out to be more responsive to the people’s wishes than the slow, clunky, awkward Western system.

China has upgraded democracy from a ritualistic, elite-captured spectacle to a participative, responsive system that seeks everybody’s opinion on every major decision (and a multitude of smaller issues). The Chinese are the most surveyed people on earth—not for show, but because the government genuinely adjusts course to stay in sync with public sentiment.

From Mao’s mass line through Deng’s village elections to Xi’s digital round tables, policy emerges from below: petitions, hotlines, online forums, and big data analytics capture millions of voices annually: when zero-COVID fatigue peaked in 2022, protests were heard and policy pivoted within weeks. When inequality threatened “common prosperity,” tech tycoons were reined in. This is participative democracy at scale—constant, granular feedback loops that keep the state aligned with the people’s lived reality.

Which would you rather have - elections every 4 or 5 years, with carefully selected candidates who ensure that policies never change? Or a one-party state that pays close attention to the wishes and feelings of the people, and responds to them rapidly?

There could hardly be a better example of the power of ideology than the contrast between today’s China and today’s USA. China has been in existence for thousands of years, and has by some informed estimates produced as many useful inventions and innovations as the rest of the world combined. The USA was founded 250 years ago as the culmination of European migration to North America that began nearly 300 years earlier. Its population has grown from about 2.5 million in 1776 to more than 340 million today, making it the third most populous nation after India and China. Resource usage has grown even faster, reflecting one of the highest standards of living in the world. As a result some natural resources are already becoming scarcer and more expensive, leading corporations and governments to seek them abroad. That leads to friction and war, as foreigners increasingly object to seeing their countries’ resources being drained away for the benefit of Americans.

In 1948 George Kennan, the US State Department’s Director of Policy Planning, wrote:

We must be very careful when we speak of exercising “leadership” in Asia. We are deceiving ourselves and others when we pretend to have answers to the problems, which agitate many of these Asiatic peoples. Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives.

Right from the earliest days of European colonisation in the 16th century, North America developed along the lines of the Wild West. Some of Europe’s most energetic, courageous, and unscrupulous people found themselves in a land of almost unlimited wealth; the only question was who could grab most soonest while keeping rivals at bay. That story would take a large book to recount, so it is lucky that Gustavus Myers wrote such a book: “History of the Great American Fortunes”.

Myers relentlessly hammers home a single message. The great American fortunes were created by men who were all of strikingly similar character and methods – ruthless, single-minded, and focused with white-hot intensity on the accumulation of money, usually to the exclusion of almost everything else. Some began life rich, most poor; but once they started to pile up the cash, it seems to have become almost like a game of Monopoly to them. (Although unlike the game, every dollar they got was stored away and thus denied to the legions of poor who were desperate for decent food and drink, clothes, housing, health and education). Cheating seems to have been their chosen sport: cheating the public, the government, their competitors, even their partners. As a result, government was thoroughly corrupt right from the very start. In that respect, nothing has changed in the past 400 years.

Myers wrote of the famous John Jacob Astor (July 17, 1763 – March 29, 1848):

“In the wilderness of the West, Astor, operating through his agents, could debauch, rob and slay Indians with impunity. As he was virtually the governing body there, without fear of being hindered, he thus could act in the most high-handed, arbitrary and forcible ways. In the East, however, where law, or the forms of law, prevailed, he had to have recourse to methods which bore no open trace of the brutal and sanguinary. He had to become the insidious and devious schemer, acting through sharp lawyers instead of by armed force… The result was precisely the same as in the West, except that the consequences were not so overt, and the perpetration could not be so easily distinguished. In the West, death marched step by step with Astor’s accumulating fortune; so did it in the East, but it was not open and bloody as in the fur country. The mortality thus accompanying Astor’s progress in New York was of that slow and indefinite, but more lingering and agonizing, kind ensuing from want, destitution, disease and starvation”.

That long quotation is most important, because today - in the world of 2026 - hardly anything has changed. Exactly the same combination of methods is employed by men and women of exactly the same hard-driving, ruthless stripe.

So bitingly relevant is the whole of Myers’ book that I want to quote it all! But, at the risk of straining your patience, the following sums up the game that began in the 17th century and is still being played today.

“In fact, many of the great landed fortunes were inseparably associated with the frauds of the banking system; money from land was used to bribe legislatures, and money made from the banks was employed in buying more land…

“Were the bribers ever punished, their illicitly gotten charters declared forfeited, and themselves placed under the ban of virtuous society? Far, very far, from it! The men who did the bribing were of the very pinnacle of social power, elegance, and position, or quickly leaped to that height by reason of their wealth… Their success as possessors of riches at once, by the automatic processes of a society which enthroned wealth, elevated them to be commanding personages in trade, politics, orthodoxy and the highest social spheres. The cropped convict, released from prison, was followed everywhere by the jeers and branding of a society which gloated over his downfall and which forever reminded him of his infamy. But the men who waded on to wealth through the muck of base practices and by means of crimes a millionfold more insidious and dangerous than the offense of the convict, were not only honored as leading citizens, but they became the extolled and unquestioned dictators of that supreme trading society which made modes, customs and laws…

“It was a society essentially built upon money; consequently he who was dexterous enough to get possession of the spoils, experienced no difficulty in establishing his place among the elect and anointed. His frauds were forgotten or ignored; only the fact that he was a rich man was remembered. And yet, what is more natural than to seek, and accept, the obeisance lavished upon property, in a scheme of society where property is crowned as the ruling power?”

That is the essence of the USA: a quintessential plutocracy built upon the worship of money and the power it brings. Above all, a nation where older and sounder values were swept away by the belief that human beings are interchangeable, with hard cash the only differentiator and mark of honour. Very much the mark of Chaos, to my mind.

In China those older and sounder values survive, resulting in a society that recognises that we humans are intrinsically social animals; team-workers; as much cooperative as competitive. The secret of China’s success lies in its ability to harness the power of opposites, individual enterprise and communal organisation, and thus to surpass competitors who reject cooperation in favour of a Hobbesian war of all against all.

It’s not exactly as if there were no permanent or continuous policies. Mr Putin and others have often observed of the USA and NATO that “Presidents come and go, but the policies never change”. Those policies, however, are not constructive or useful. They are usually designed to further the ends of corporations and oligarchs who have taken control of the state apparatus for their own ends.

No one in our “democracies” takes responsibility for designing policies intended to benefit the nation and all its citizens in the long run. Instead we see a bewildering alternation of parties, each trying to con the voters for long enough to get into power and hold it for a while, and each blaming its predecessors for everything that goes wrong. And for every sensible program that a ruling party adopts, it enthusiastically pursues a dozen wrong-headed and disastrous ones. We are condemned to live through a political random walk.

The experience, for those with the leisure and knowledge to interpret it, is like being passengers on a great ocean liner ploughing rapidly through the sea. We look out from time to time and see, through the enshrouding fog, towering icebergs float by. But we don’t worry too much; we are quietly confident that the captain and his officers are in full control and know what they are doing.

But in reality there is no one on the bridge. The steering wheel stays more or less centered, occasionally swinging a little one way or the other. The engineers down in the machine room watch their gauges and dials, making careful adjustments to keep pressures within tolerance. Everything proceeds as usual; we are all calm. But that can’t go on indefinitely. Sooner or later a crisis will arise; something that demands quick and correct decisions that are immediately carried out.

No such crisis has occurred within most people’s memory, so it seems as if we can go on cruising aimlessly for ever. But the world, pleasant and innocuous as it usually seems, is nevertheless a dangerously unpredictable place - as we are about to find out.

Ever since 1945 we have lived in fear of nuclear war. Or biological war, a global pandemic, a natural disaster, death by pollution… Meanwhile, a more insidious danger has been creeping up in plain sight. We pride ourselves on our “high technology” and the industrial civilisation that has been created with its help. The “Green Revolution” of the 1970s is credited with allowing the human population to grow by 5 billion; Professor Norman Borlaug, its most famous advocate, is said to have saved 1 billion people from starvation by his innovations.

Maybe.

Looked at another way, the Green Revolution encouraged population to grow by another few billion - as long as all its requirements were met.

“The basic approach was the development of high-yielding varieties of cereal grains, expansion of irrigation infrastructure, modernization of management techniques, distribution of hybridized seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides to farmers. As crops began to reach the maximum improvement possible through selective breeding, genetic modification technologies were developed to allow for continued efforts”.

Apart from genetic engineering, all of those ingredients rely on oil. And oil supplies are limited, appear to be slowly decreasing - and are extremely vulnerable to unwise applications of military force.

If you haven’t been listening to Stanislav Krapivnik, you should start doing so right now. An ex-US Army officer, he also knows a lot about supply chains and the energy industry, so he is an authoritative source for the consequences of Mr Trump’s current war of choice. Since the war began four weeks ago, I have watched and listened to several interviews about it every day; but I can safely say that the interview linked to above teaches as much as everything else I have learned in the past month put together. Combined, perhaps, with one or two of Professor Sayed Marandi’s interviews - which explain the Iranian background and point of view - you can be up to speed in half a day, and streets ahead of almost everybody else.

Remarkably, most Westerners have not yet realised that there will be any consequences for them. Like all the previous foreign wars, this one has seemed to be a distant spectacle that is exciting, inspiring, depressing, or tragic as the case may be. But I imagine far fewer than one in 100 Westerners have any inkling of how hard - and how soon - the vultures will come home to roost. A terrible awakening lies in store.

This recent cartoon does homage to the fighters of Hezbollah and their success in destroying Israeli Merkava tanks (over 100 in a fortnight). But, whether intentionally or not, it applies equally to the effects of President Trump’s unprovoked war of aggression against Iran. Treading all unaware in the footsteps of Croesus, the legendary king of Lydia, Mr Trump indulged in what at first looked like just one more instant victory. But exactly as Croesus was warned by the Delphic Oracle, Mr Trump may already have "destroyed a great empire” - his own. The crowning beauty of this historical echo is that Croesus and Trump ignorantly rammed their heads against the same stone wall: Persia. Still there after more than 2,500 years - during which it defeated both the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, bringing down no fewer than four emperors and the Republican leader Crassus - Iran is one of the world’s oldest civilisations, with a tradition of military strength.

Unfortunately, as George Santayana observed,

“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.

It may seem unduly harsh to describe the USA and its government as incapable of retaining experience and living in a state of perpetual infancy. But reality is ineluctable: if the cap fits, we must wear it. After all, Santayana himself was a US citizen.

Another amusing thread running through history is how billionaires have deluded themselves into thinking that their wealth could defeat Persia’s austere self-discipline. Croesus was proverbial as the world’s richest man; Marcus Licinius Crassus, who sought, too late in life, to add a military triumph to his immense wealth, found that all his money availed him nothing against the Parthian mounted archers; and now we see Mr Trump racing down the hillside in hot pursuit of the other gold-plated Gadarene swine.

Returning to Stanislav Krapivnik’s latest interview, at about 15 minutes he starts to explain the immense damage that the Gulf fighting has already inflicted on the global economy. It’s unobvious - so much so that most of the world’s media and even analysts have not understood it - but the logic cannot be gainsaid. Why have the media and the analysts not understood? Because the basic facts are obscure, boring, and little known.

Stanislav begins by laying out the figures: how much equipment is in a refinery, how much of it has been damaged or destroyed, what the lead times are for ordering replacement pipes and vessels (some of them up to 78 metres long), the difficult logistics of transporting large amounts of such objects over long distances, the need for thorough pressure testing before installation, and the fact that industry has never before been faced with such a huge demand for replacements at one time. Valves are mass produced, but no one ever expected to need enough valves for a dozen refineries at one time.

Then there is the bottleneck of steel manufacture. It takes 4-6 weeks just to get steel through a mill once production has begun, and there are only three countries with enough capacity to be of any use: China, the USA, and Russia. (Europe has no capacity, mainly because it has no spare gas; and drilling new wells takes several years).

The next stage, Stanislav warns, is starvation; “That’s coming by midsummer… prices are going to skyrocket”. And then there’s fuel. “It’s planting season in southern Europe”, and in northern Europe within a few weeks. In today’s farming industry, planting season requires tons of artificial fertiliser and gallons of diesel to power the machinery. Farms have slashed the number of workers by relying on tractors and other machines. Without diesel, none of it works; and there are not nearly enough labourers to do the job manually. Europe produces no fertiliser and little diesel, and it won’t be getting any from Russia, while the USA will be focused on keeping enough for its own needs.

Stanislav cites an Italian friend who says that poor people in Italy already go hungry in the last week of each month, when they run out of money. When food becomes scarce and expensive, some people will begin to starve. Then winter will come.

It could be still worse. If some of the oil and gas wells have been thoroughly destroyed, it could take years to get them back in working order. In some cases, that will be impossible, requiring new wells to be sunk. Meanwhile there will be a serious labour shortage, as the whole Gulf area is now a war zone and qualified workers will not be keen to risk their lives or those of their families. It’s even possible that some of the ruling oligarchies might sell up and head for safe refuge.

Iran retains escalation dominance. It could, for example, destroy the desalination plants which supply most of the Gulf states with drinking water. Iran itself gets only about 3% of its water from desalination, so could survive any symmetrical retaliation. Whereas the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, are essentially synthetic communities as fragile as spun glass, Iran is a tough nation well fitted to survive. Stanislav describes it as “the biggest fortress in the world”.

Mr Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, recently declared that WW3 has already begun.

Stanislav concludes that Mr Trump is both stupid and ignorant, with a frighteningly short attention span. There is a story that the only briefings the Pentagon can get him to attend to are 3-minute video clips of the US armed forces blowing things up. No wonder he believes the USA is winning!

Stanislav diagnoses that Mr Trump has only one great asset: he is a skilled marketing man, with the ability to make people like him. He got into the White House by winning a popularity contest - but then what? That question is almost a direct reference to the 1972 movie “The Candidate” starring Robert Redford as a man running for President. The action focuses on the highly competitive race to win the election, and ends abruptly just as Redford’s character becomes President.

‘McKay wins the election. In the final scene, he escapes the victory party and pulls Lucas into a room while throngs of journalists clamor outside. McKay asks Lucas, “What do we do now?” The media throng arrives to drag them out, and McKay never receives an answer’.

“Who gave Palestine to the Zionists?

“UK!”

I should admit that I am British, as were my parents and three grandparents. (The odd one out was legally Irish although his family had previously migrated from Scotland to Northern Ireland). While uncomfortably aware of the many bad things British people have done down the centuries, I accept no personal responsibility for them, and I weigh them against the positive side of the account. I am far from being an unthinking chauvinist, but I think it right to be fair - even to my own people).

My immediate reaction to the comment quoted above was: “That is not strictly true at all. The British did not “give” Palestine to the Zionists. The British government were the only people who had a hand in the matter, and they did not intend to give Palestine away or to betray the Palestinian people. Rather, they were driven out by vicious, carefully calculated, violence. At the time there was no way of foreseeing the appalling events, amounting to deliberate genocide, that were to follow.

Moreover, the great majority of British people knew little (and admittedly cared less) about what happened in the Near East (or Middle East, as it is often called nowadays). They had their hands full recovering from the destruction, death, and hardship of WW2. Rationing of meat and other foods continued until 4th July 1954, and coal was rationed until July 1958. Unlike most countries, conditions in “Austerity Britain” were at least as bad as they had been during wartime.

The history of Palestine and the creation of Israel is quite complicated, so the best course for anyone who wants to understand it would be to read some of the excellent books that have been written on the subject. A few of the best are:

• “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine” by Rashid Khalidi,

• “Against Our Better Judgment: The hidden history of how the United States was used to create Israel” by Alison Weir,

• “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” by Ilan Pappe,

• “1948: A Soldier’s Tale - The Bloody Road to Jerusalem” by Uri Avnery,

• “The Case Against Israel” by Michael Neumann,

• “Prelude to Israel: An Analysis of Zionist Diplomacy, 1897-1947” by Alan R. Taylor,

• “A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East” by David Fromkin.

For a start, it’s essential to grasp the timeline. The state of Israel was founded in 1948, with the blessing of the UN - but Zionism had been percolating and developing since the 1880s or earlier. Zionism began among extremist Jews who were aghast at the idea that Jews would be assimilated into the nations where they lived, and become “just” adherents of a religion like any other. Following exactly the same 19th-century doctrines that led to Nazism, they argued that the Jews were a people with distinct and perhaps superior “blood” (nowadays we would probably say “genes”) and therefore that they needed a “homeland”. According to this theory a Jewish homeland would be owned and run by Jews for Jews, with little room or tolerance for anyone else. Just as, they reasoned, Germany was just for the German (Aryan) race, France for the French, China for the Chinese, etc. Pretty old-fashioned and fusty, right?

For centuries Palestine had been part of the mighty Turkish Ottoman Empire, and had no autonomy or self-government at all. Indeed, looking back through history there had never been a single state resembling Palestine. Over 2,000 years ago there were just a collection of tiny kingdoms, and then the area was conquered by a series of empires: Roman, Iranian, Arab, Turkish. For all that time people of various ethnicities and religions lived side by side in Palestine, mostly at peace with one another. Especially after the Turkish conquests, wars tended to stay outside the imperial borders. Inside, everything was usually quiet to the point of stagnation.

Then, with WW1, the Ottoman Empire was defeated and dissolved. Suddenly huge areas had no government at all - and, as the Europeans and Americans saw it, were up for grabs. At exactly this time, the Europeans and Americans became thirsty for oil (and later gas). What could make better sense than to establish control over those rulerless zones that had oil? At Versailles in 1919 the British and the French, with US approval, divided up the ex-Ottoman territories. With the authority (fig leaf) of the League of Nations, they created new “artificial” nations including Syria, Iraq, and Palestine. Having no single ethnic identity and no tradition of unitary government, those nations proved fragile and prone to civil war - which suited the colonialists’ purposes admirably. They had far more trouble with Iran, an ancient civilisation that had repelled Roman invasions and ended the lives of four Roman emperors.

Crucially, while there were vague intentions to create a proper state apparatus, these were never fulfilled in the case of Palestine. So it remained a country without a government - a situation which, bad as it was, by no means amounted to what the Zionists claimed: “a country without a population”. While it is true that the population was quite small in 1919 - an estimated 700,000 - it had risen to 1,900,000 by 1948, of whom 32% were Jewish.

During the 1920s, while the British - nearly bankrupt after WW1 - strove to keep order, anger and fighting increased as more and more Jews immigrated to Palestine. Following the Zionist plan, they were not content to live in peace with the existing inhabitants, but made no secret of their ambition to take over the whole land. Here is Wikipedia’s account of what came next. If you think it seems long and involved, bear in mind that it is the very simplest version of events you can find. (Note that the Palestinian “Arabs” so often referred to by Westerners were - and still are - a mixture of different ethnic groups speaking different languages and practising several religions. By no means all were Arabs, although most did speak Arabic).

“The 1930s witnessed the outbreak of the Arab Revolt, as Arab nationalists demanded an end to Jewish immigration and the establishment of an independent Arab state. In response to the Arab Revolt, the British deployed military forces and implemented stringent security measures in an effort to quell the uprising.

“Arab nationalist groups, led by the Arab Higher Committee, called for an end to Jewish immigration and land sales to Jews. The issuance of the 1939 White Paper by the British government aimed to address escalating tensions between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. This policy document imposed restrictions on Jewish immigration and land purchases, with the intention to limit the establishment of a Jewish state. Met with strong opposition from the Zionist movement, the White Paper was perceived as a betrayal of the Balfour Declaration and Zionist aspirations for a Jewish homeland.

“In response to the White Paper, the Zionist community in Palestine organized a strike in 1939, rallying against the restrictions on Jewish immigration and land acquisition. This anti-White Paper strike involved demonstrations, civil disobedience, and a shutdown of businesses. Supported by various Zionist organizations, including the Jewish Agency and the Histadrut (General Federation of Jewish Labor), the anti-White Paper strike aimed to protest and challenge the limitations imposed by the British government.

“In the late 1930s and 1940s, several Zionist militant groups, including the Irgun, Hagana, and Lehi, carried out acts of violence against British military and civilian targets in their pursuit of an independent Jewish state. Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, who later became Prime Ministers of Israel, were behind these terrorist attacks. In 1946, a bombing orchestrated by the Irgun at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem resulted in the deaths of 91 people, including British officials, civilians, and hotel staff”.

So the rough sequence of events was as follows:

1. The British government accepted a League of Nations Mandate to govern Palestine until a government could be formed.

2. During the 1920s and 1930s Jewish immigration to Palestine increased, in spite of British attempts to stem the tide. Many of the newcomers were Zionists, who openly aimed to set up a Jewish state with no room for non-Jews of any kind.

3. This disruptive and often violent Jewish influx upset the Palestinians, who complained to the British. There were outbreaks of fighting, sometimes lethal.

4. The British government took steps to restrict Jewish immigration and land purchases, causing indignation and protest by Zionists.

5. The British deployed soldiers to put down the Arab Revolt, which was aimed at stopping the Zionist takeover of Palestine.

6. The Zionists staged a strike, then during WW2 took every opportunity to learn military tactics (and steal weapons) from the British. After WW2 they adopted terrorist methods, killing hundreds of British and Palestinian soldiers, officials, and civilians. Two future Israeli Prime Ministers, Menachem Begin and Yirtzhak Shamir, led terrorist groups and planned murderous attacks.

7. The British government, seeing no way to impose its authority, withdrew from Palestine and gave up the Mandate. Shortly after, the Zionists proclaimed the state of Israel and had it recognised by the USA, the UK, and the UN.

The British did NOT “give Palestine to the Zionists”. They occupied Palestine during WW1 while fighting the Turks. After WW1 they were asked by the League of Nations to administer Palestine, which they did as best they could. Eventually they were driven out after suffering many deaths by Zionist violence.

The first I heard of today’s outbreak of unprovoked aggressive war (the supreme international crime) was this admirable video by Rachel Blevins. Although speaking from Texas in the small hours she was clear, concise, and intelligent. Soon after I caught a longer interview with Professor Marandi, who is actually in Tehran as far as I know, by Professor Glenn Diesen.

For some time commentators and analysts have debated whether Mr Trump would be foolish or rash enough to resort to military force against a nation that is so admirably equipped to resist and fight back. Now we know. Israel in in for it; the USA stands to take a pasting; and, if it tries to escalate, it has China and Russia to reckon with.

I was immediately reminded of something I once read in the great historian Arnold Toynbee’s book “War and Civilization”.

“The disaster in which the Assyrian military power met its end in 614-610 B.C. was even more overwhelming than those which overtook the Macedonian phalanx in 197 and 168 B.C. or the Roman legions in 53 B.C. and A.D. 378 or the Egyptian Mamluks in A.D. 1516-17... the disaster which was the end of the Assyrian military power capped the destruction of the Assyrian war-machine with the extinction of the Assyrian state and the extermination of the Assyrian people. In 614-610 B.C. a community which had been in existence for more than two thousand years, and had been playing an ever more dominant part in South-Western Asia over a period of some two and a half centuries, was blotted out almost completely”.

- Arnold Toynbee, “War and Civilization”

Since everything happened much more slowly in those days, when horses and sailing ships were the fastest means of transport, it’s not surprising that the Assyrian reign of terror lasted for centuries whereas the USA’s still falls well short of a single century. But there are startling similarities. Not to mention the odd startling contrast: for instance, the Assyrians attacked and brutally conquered the Jews, whereas Mr Trump is gambling the fate of his country for the sake of supporting insane Zionist dreams of dominating the very region where once the Assyrians rampaged.

I am reminded of the fate of certain dominant chimpanzees, as described in Richard Wrangham’s “Demonic Males” and elsewhere. They get more and more bossy and violent until one day a coalition appears which overthrows and sometimes kills them. Napoleon, the Nazis, and today’s Washington provide similar scenarios, apparently driven to attack more and more nations until they were fighting almost everyone.

“At the time when the Mamluk and Roman and Macedonian war-machines each met with its fatal accident they were each of them long since static, hopelessly obsolete, and shockingly out of repair. On the other hand the Assyrian war-machine, which is singled out by the completeness of its final disaster, is also distinguished... by the efficiency with which it was being perpetually overhauled and renovated and reinforced right down to the day of its destruction”.

It seems likely that Toynbee wrote those words before the end of WW2, in which the German war-machine gave a most creditable impression of the Assyrian one. Indeed its very efficiency, far exceeding that of any other nation, seems to have led inevitably to its own destruction because the more successful it was, the more Hitler’s ambition grew. Or perhaps, after the successes of 1940, there was no way to avoid eventual doom. The USSR threatened and so must be attacked pre-emptively; that alone led to disaster. Perhaps it is a rule of aggression that, sooner or later, success breeds failure.

“In the first place the policy of the unremitting offensive, and the possession of a potent instrument for putting this policy into effect, led the Assyrian war-lords in the fourth and last bout of their militarism to extend their enterprises and commitments far beyond the limits which their predecessors had kept”.

That looks, today the 28th of February 2026, from here in England, very much like the fate that Mr Trump has brought down on the American empire (1945-2026).

(“One should aim not [just] at being possible to understand, but impossible to misunderstand”).

- Marcus Fabius Quintilianus  [c. 35 – c. 100 AD], “De Institutione Oratoria” (c. 95 AD) Book VIII, Chapter II, 24

Not long ago I posted a comment

To this someone replied:

Nevertheless it is a generic word now.

Similarly, “decimated” no longer means one in ten died.

Rather a non sequitur, as I had said nothing about the meaning of the English word “armada”. I was making a point about the historical precedent, and Mr Trump’s apparent ignorance of history. If he had known what happened to the original Spanish Armada, he might have chosen a different term to describe the US task force.

The two propositions interest me, though. Hence this essay.

1. “Armada” is a generic word now.

2. “[D]ecimated” no longer means one in ten died.

Referring (rather guiltily) to my dictionary, I found that “generic” means “referring to a class or group; not specific”. So he probably meant that whereas “armada” was once used to refer to a specific Spanish fleet, nowadays it means any fleet or group of ships.

Very well; indeed, “armada” (literally “armed”), now as in the 16^th century, is the ordinary Spanish word for “fleet of warships”. But surely that doesn’t render the original English meaning obsolete. I am prepared to accept equably, even cheerfully, that Mr Trump was not wrong in his choice of words. But that does not mean that I was wrong to remind everyone of the historic parallel.

My collocutor’s statement about “decimated” is rather stronger, and uncalled-for. After all, I never mentioned the word. Perhaps he assumed that I am the kind of person who gets het up about others’ choice of words; a “grammar Nazi”, as they say. Well, yes and no.

He seems to claim that one may no longer use “decimated” to mean that “one in ten died”. I am aware that many people – indeed, perhaps most people – employ the word as a synonym for “massacred”, “annihilated”, “wiped out”, etc. They may even think that is the only thing it means. But there are practical consequences.

If I say that “the battalion was decimated”, I mean that one in ten were killed; and there is a possibility that they were formally executed. That was the original meaning of “decimation”: a traditional Roman punishment for a unit that had failed egregiously. “Pour encourager les autres”, as Voltaire sardonically explained the execution of Admiral Byng.

But if a different person says that “the battalion was decimated”, they may mean that half of the soldiers were killed, or even that every single one perished.

How is the reader to know what the expression means? Did one tenth of the battalion die, or all of them, or some intermediate number? It’s quite unclear, isn’t it?

There is no lack of synonyms for “kill”, “massacre”, “exterminate”, etc. in English. Doesn’t it seem rather pointless to add “decimate” as yet another alternative, at the cost of losing its original precise meaning?

Stephen Fry has a typically amusing and learned rant about this. He makes a lot of good points, perhaps the most powerful of which is that Shakespeare was enormously innovative and added hundreds of new words and phrases to standard English. Hence the joke about the old man who has never seen a play, but is taken to a performance of “Hamlet” as a special treat. Afterwards he is dismissive. “It’s nothing but a string of clichés!”

But I notice two things about Mr Fry’s tour de force. First, he is very much on the side of the big battalions – the linguistics professors and, I suspect, a majority of people under 50. Second, although his arguments are convincing, his tone of voice sounds angry and sneering; full of suppressed contempt for those who disagree.

His vigorous attack is entertaining and thought-provoking. But I disagree with his thesis. It appears to contravene Postel’s Law, often cited as “Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send”. It’s all very well for Stephen Fry to be liberal in what he accepts - and very civilised - but that doesn’t relieve him (and others) of the duty to be reasonably conservative in what they send. Unless we all want to go through life misunderstanding each other.

While it is certainly true that people can understand what you say in spite of a good deal of incorrect usage, bad (or no) punctuation, and odd choice of words, that doesn’t mean one should habitually speak or write that way. Most people can understand a sentence from which all the vowels have been removed, or in which the words are randomly placed. But that doesn’t mean we should encourage those practices!

Good speech and writing maximizes the margin for error (the signal-to-noise ratio, so to speak). It conforms to Quintilian’s maxim that “One should aim not [just] at being possible to understand, but impossible to misunderstand”.

Of course no one likes a “grammar Nazi”; language is our common heritage and possession, and is so essential to everyone’s life that it can feel very personal. That’s perhaps why so many people nowadays insist on their right to express themselves in whatever way they like.

Theoreticians distinguish different types or modes of speech, with widely differing purposes. For instance, speech may be informative, persuasive, entertaining, or demonstrative. Those categories are very rough, and fail to consider, for example, exclamations, lamentation, cursing, vituperation, speaking to oneself, etc. But most normal speech or writing falls into one or other of the four main types.

People who advocate less formality in speech and writing – for instance less concern about exact “dictionary” definitions and “schoolroom” grammar – may be more interested in their own freedom to express themselves uninhibitedly than in making sure that others can understand what they are trying to convey. That is OK in persuasive or entertaining speech, where precise meaning is less important than the overall sense and emotional power. (Although some comedians, George Carlin for instance, have used language most exactly to great artistic effect). Mr Fry waxes lyrical about the poetic uses of English, implying that anyone who prefers “proper” speech or writing must be a dried-up, joyless pedant. But this is flogging a dead straw man. Of course one can have tremendous fun with words, and few do so more effectively than Mr Fry himself. And he is, originally at least, an entertainer at heart. (Who can forget his definitive Jeeves, for instance?)

We often get a powerful sense of relief and satisfaction from blowing off steam, and at such times there is no need for exactitude. We are all too familiar with the dull, stupid flow of obscenity and blasphemy that serves some people for emphasis. Such cursing reveals a lack of vocabulary and imagination, exposing the speaker to the contempt or pity of others. With a little trouble it is possible to convey anger and scorn much more colourfully and imaginatively. English literature is a treasure house of curious and memorable invective, and Shakespeare set new standards in this direction too.

“A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition.”

King Lear (2.2.14-24)

Also https://www.reddit.com/r/shakespeare/comments/8cn6o4/your_favourite_shakespearean_insult/

https://www.thoughtco.com/shakespearean-insults-741386

Persuasive speech, too, often dispenses with exactitude. One of the most disheartening experiences I ever had was being told by a public speaking instructor just how little a typical audience is influenced by the actual content of a talk. He said that about 80% of the impression conveyed is of the speaker’s appearance – height, bearing, good looks or otherwise, clothing, hair, teeth, voice, etc. – another 15% or so by her apparent confidence and dominant behaviour or otherwise, and only a few percent by what she actually says. No wonder so many of us turn to writing instead! If even the general ideas that a lecturer tries to put across are so often misunderstood or completely missed, what chance do individual words and phrases have?

It cuts both ways. Political and business speakers can achieve remarkable results with persuasive speech, especially if they appeal to emotion and instinct rather than reason. The great speeches that have come down to us through history are mostly untypical, because they have been written down. Thucydides and many subsequent historians were accustomed to invent the words they put into the mouths of real people; after all, they had only second- or third-hand accounts to go by. We have no way of knowing what Pericles said in his famous Funeral Oration; only the version given by Thucydides, which at best conveys similar thoughts in different words.

Stephen Fry berates those of us who distinguish between “uninterested” and “disinterested”, or between “infer” and “imply”. He suggests that anyone of normal intelligence should be able to deduce what a speaker means simply from the context, or by observing such obvious clues as their age. But while that may work for conversations or lectures, how about radio? Or writing? And why should the listener have to go to such trouble – with the added possibility of getting it wrong sometimes, and then being unfairly blamed for the misunderstanding?

When we turn our attention to recent speeches, though, we may begin to regret having exact transcripts. It is notorious that inspirational orators like Tony Blair and Barack Obama hold their listeners spellbound, and send them away full of admiration and convinced that they have heard the most wonderful thoughts ever spoken. Yet when one reads the actual words they uttered, the overwhelming impression is of their emptiness. That’s readily understandable in the light of George Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language” (1946), in which he states that:

“Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”.

Of course, when Orwell refers to “political language”, he is thinking of persuasive speech – with perhaps a dash of the “entertaining” variety, which, like Mary Poppins’ spoonful of sugar, “helps the medicine go down”. From start to finish, “Politics and the English Language” is a plea for honest, straightforward communication. But even he admits that when the purpose of political speech is to deceive, it cannot be transparent or honest. One is reminded of Immanuel Kant’s bitter remark, “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made”.

One of my favourite examples is the phrase “Manifest Destiny”, which I learned about at school, and which seems to jibe very closely with Mr Trump’s view of the world. If you turn it over in your mind, it is virtually meaningless, in the sense of having no objective referent. Basically “we are the best because we are who we are”.

Wikipedia explains that ‘This painting shows Manifest Destiny, the belief in westward expansion of the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. It was widely distributed as an engraving called “Spirit of the Frontier”. Settlers are moving west, guided and protected by Columbia, aided by modern technology like railroads, and driving Native Americans and bison into obscurity. Columbia represents America, dressed in a Roman toga to represent classical republicanism, and brings the enlightened east to the darkened west’.

I don’t think the flying lady would be well advised to come down to earth in that outfit. The rough miners, ranchers, farmers, and railway workers might get carried away and forget that she is essentially allegorical. Although in reality they were quite prepared to follow her to the Pacific and kill anyone who got in their way. The Native Americans and the bison were not driven “into obscurity”, but into the grave.

Lewis Carroll, a keen student of logic and language, obviously understood that words can be instruments of power. In “Through the Looking Glass”, he has Humpty Dumpty spell this out to Alice.

Humpty Dumpty took the book and looked at it carefully. ‘That seems to be done right —’ he began.

‘You’re holding it upside down!’ Alice interrupted.

‘To be sure I was!’ Humpty Dumpty said gaily as she turned it round for him. ‘I thought it looked a little queer. As I was saying, that seems to be done right — though I haven’t time to look it over thoroughly just now — and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents —’

‘Certainly,’ said Alice.

‘And only one for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!’

‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory”,’ Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t — till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”’

‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument”,’ Alice objected.

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything; so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. ‘They’ve a temper, some of them — particularly verbs: they’re the proudest — adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs — however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!’

‘Would you tell me please,’ said Alice, ‘what that means?’

‘Now you talk like a reasonable child,’ said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. ‘I meant by “impenetrability” that we’ve had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you’d mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don’t mean to stop here all the rest of your life.’

‘That’s a great deal to make one word mean,’ Alice said in a thoughtful tone.

‘When I make a word do a lot of work like that,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘I always pay it extra.’

By Humpty Dumpty’s rules, other people cannot know what he means unless he chooses to tell them. In other words, the power is his and they must beg to be let in to his secrets. That must be very gratifying to his ego, but it’s hardly a recipe for swift and accurate communication. In fact, it’s the very opposite.

Humpty Dumpty is so determined to have his own way, to demonstrate his superiority, that he doesn’t care at all about making his meaning clear to others. As an egg balanced on a wall, that’s all very well; he apparently has no aims or goals in life, no duties, and no occupation except to amuse himself. But ordinary people do need to communicate regularly and unambiguously. Which, of course, is the point of Carroll’s joke.

Professional linguists, notably David Crystal, have argued that since English is a living, dynamic language, it is natural that some words and expressions fall out of use, while others crowd in. Moreover, it is urged that such continual change is a good thing, and to be encouraged. In one of his books, Crystal has an instructive passage several pages long (which I will spare you), tracing the standard warnings about the decay of language from Cicero and earlier down to the present day.

The worst mistakes hinder or prevent understanding. However I find that even slight departures from what I consider “correct” English distract and delay me, breaking up the experience of flow that is so helpful to fast, smooth reading.

Panagiotis Theodoracopulos, nicknamed “Taki”, is an excellent writer whose energy and culture bely his age (he is 89). Yet, perhaps writing in too much haste, he produced the following sentence.

“The anti-cop zeitgeist by the media and BLM has succeeded in turning the police into the bad guys, and those who flaunt the law into the good ones”.

Taki perpetrates a common blunder, confusing “flaunt” with “flout”. In this case it’s not too hard to see what he really means, but of course it is possible to “flaunt the law”, so one has to stop and think about it.

Sports writers are not usually known for their elegant style or clarity of expression, so this is typical:

“Murray may have broken Federer for a 2-0 lead in the fourth set, but narrowly missed a forehand down the line, which he hit on the run”.

‘ATP Staff’ 8/7/2012

What was meant, of course, was “Murray might have broken Federer…” - although, in fact, he didn’t. As written, the words suggest that it’s possible he did, but curiously no one knows.

I think my current favourite may be this one:

“But now, surrounded as we are by this ‘invisible enemy’, all too often hope has been substituted for fear, even terror”.

Either the writer doesn’t know how the word “substitute” should be used, or – more likely – he gets it the wrong way round. In either case, he causes serious confusion for the reader who initially thinks, ‘Wait a moment! “Hope has been substituted for fear…”? But wouldn’t that be good, not bad?’ Etc. Eventually, depending perhaps on how primed you are for such blunders, you work out what the author (probably) meant. But it doesn’t increase either your confidence in what you are reading, or your respect for the author.

Even a very experienced and accomplished writer like James Howard Kunstler could pull this boner:

“Some pieces of the bill are just plain tragic, like the effort to prop up mass motoring by switching out electric cars for the old gasoline-powered cars that have ruled the land for a century”.

“Switching out…”? Reading on, one eventually sees that what Mr Kunstler really meant was “bringing in electric cars to replace the old gasoline-powered cars…”

That’s the sort of total confusion that can result from a failure to reread what one has written and check that it makes sense.

The word “immigrant” seems to have been excommunicated of late; no one dares to say it any more. Instead, they always write or say “migrant”. But the two words have different meanings. My dictionary, which is only about 25 years old, defines “migrant” as “a person who moves from one place to another so as to find work” and “immigrant” as “a person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country”. There is obviously a big difference, but today “migrant” is used to mean both, and “immigrant” is a non-word.

Ignorance of some words and their proper – yes, proper - meaning is harmless in some situations, such as the following.

“Samsung SA says that the aim of the technology is to mitigate against the creation of secondary markets linked to the sale of illegal goods, both in South Africa and beyond its borders”.

More and more people are unaware of the distinction between “militate” and “mitigate”, most often using the latter when they mean the former. No big deal, you may think; as Stephen Fry suggests, the context probably leads you to the intended meaning.

But sometimes it is a very big deal indeed. Provoking resentment and anger; even job-losing. “Niggardly” has caused serious political trouble, simply because some people did not know its meaning.

‘Marcus Marshall, 22, a black employee in a sporting goods store, said Howard deserved to lose his job. “I don’t agree with him saying that kind of word. He should be punished because it’s so close to... a degrading word.”

‘Dictionaries define “niggardly,” a word with Scandinavian roots, as miserly or stingy, and attribute no offensive connotations to it.

‘But a new reference work, A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, leaves open the possibility of confusion. While the word has no connection to the racial slur, the book says, “some speakers and writers have come to shun it just to avoid misunderstandings.”’

If the precedent is set that words and phrases must be avoided if there is any chance that someone might misunderstand them, huge holes could be ripped in the language. Count Alfred Korzybski had a formula for such situations:

“I have said what I have said. I have not said what I have not said”.

One of the oldest and best definitions of good manners is “always putting other people at ease”. It is excellent advice, but it has its limits. How can you avoid using a word that someone else might wrongly mistake for a quite different word? How can you know which words to avoid?

As it happens, I have recently been reading two books by linguists, both of which conform closely with the fashionable dogma: John McWhorter’s “Doing Our Own Thing”, and Harry Ritchie’s “English for the Natives”.

McWhorter writes that “Language changes whether we like it or not”. But he does not say who is the arbiter of how and when it changes. Certainly we can be democratic, and claim that whatever the majority say is right by definition. That’s fine, but it does leave open the possibility that some people will not be able to understand one another.

Ironically, McWhorter uses many long and esoteric, even recherché, words in his writing. Although this book is obviously meant for a general audience, he still comes across as an academic – even if an academic who is trying to sound folksy.

Ritchie, a former literary editor of the “Sunday Times”, goes a lot further. Right up front, he says,

“The sorbet-spoon school of traditional grammar has always been very keen to tell people just how mistaken and rubbish their language is. But with precisely zero foundation. Actually, we are not mistaken or wrong in any aspect of our language, and we are all absolute experts - no, beyond experts; we are geniuses - at English grammar. Unless you are suffering from severe neural damage or you are drunk or drugged enough to make walking in a straight line quite a task, you as a native speaker of English do not make mistakes when you speak”.

(But what does he really think? I get the impression that Mr Ritchie had bad experiences with at least one English teacher, back in the day).

Is it odd that Mr Ritchie tells us that we are never wrong in our use of English grammar - and then goes on to declare that anyone who disagrees is… wrong? Doesn’t that simply face us with the need to define what we mean by “right” and “wrong”?

In a much more conventional vein, Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” begins thus:

“Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language – so the argument runs – must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

“Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts”.

Orwell speaks of “the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes”. Today, however, it has become the ruling dogma of linguistics and of opinionated lay people like Mr Fry and the person who took me to task for my pedantry.

It’s all very well, but there are times and places when precise, accurate language is of the essence. One could liken a certain mode of speech to impressionistic painting: instead of sharp, accurate details and colours, there is just a vague, suggestive wash of colours. Such a picture may convey feelings, but not facts. It is appropriate in many situations, such as poetry or song lyrics, but it detracts from the value of any writing that has to convey exact meaning.

A tide of such vague, suggestive, emotionally loaded language is sweeping across our world, devaluing what is said in politics, business, schools, universities, the media, and most recently even medicine and science itself. The first step toward reversing that trend is identifying and recognising its symptoms – and being careful to say and write what we mean, and not something else.

All animal bodies are basically BOWAANAFOCAM: bags of water, amino acids, nucleic acids, fatty acids, other chemicals, and minerals. The “other chemicals” bit covers everything else apart from the main ingredients.

To a first approximation, a person is just a bag of sea water. The adult human body contains about 65% water by weight, ranging from as much as 75% in a newborn baby to as little as 45% in an obese person. Two thirds of the water in an adult body is inside the cells; the rest is extracellular. An adult human body contains about 12 litres (2½-3 gallons) of extracellular water, in the blood and interstitial fluid. So the people one sees out for a walk or a gentle jog do not really need the bottles of water they often carry, unless they are in a very hot, dry place such as the Sahara desert. Even the bushmen of the Kalahari desert can run for hours without drinking, as Dr Alice Roberts graphically shows in her BBC video (20 minutes in).

Arthur C. Clarke explained the large water content of human beings. “We seldom stop to think that we are still creatures of the sea, able to leave it only because, from birth to death, we wear the water-filled space suits of our skins”. That’s how evolution normally proceeds. It doesn’t exclaim, “Alas and dammit, this way of doing things really doesn’t work. Let’s scrap it and try a different approach”. That’s impossible because all the creatures that were born with that particular mechanism need it to stay alive. So, even if it’s far from ideal, they and their descendants are stuck with it. When the first fish left the sea to live on dry land, they faced a very difficult problem indeed: to keep their bodies from drying out and dying. Having a watertight skin was the answer – it allowed almost everything inside to remain unchanged. Good engineering!

Amino acids are the components from which all proteins are built up. As its name implies, protein is the primary material of living tissues, and it is certainly ubiquitous in all organisms. Muscle, skin, bone, tendons, and all the organs are largely made up of protein.

The nucleic acids DNA and RNA maintain the genetic information that codes for protein formation and a great deal more. What has been called “the central dogma of molecular biology”, published in 1957 by James Watson, is “DNA makes RNA, and RNA makes protein”. That catchy formulation has turned out to be not exactly true, but it’s still a useful introduction to the topic. One can think of protein as the structure, and nucleic acids as the form. The chromosomes in every cell of the body are made up of very long chains of DNA, arranged in a structure known as the double helix.

And although fat has been given a bad name, it too is indispensable for life. Even the leanest of bodies needs a certain quota of fat to survive; and the nervous system, including the brain, is largely made up of fat. Anyone who calls someone else “fathead” is demonstrating his own ignorance, as without fat nobody could survive, let alone think or accomplish anything. Although over half of the brain’s weight is water, its solid parts are 60% fat, making it the fattiest organ in the body. In a talk he gave to boys at his old school, Sherborne, Alan Turing compared the brain to a bowl of fatty porridge.

Most of the body consists of those four ingredients: water, amino acids, nucleic acids, and fat. According to Wikipedia, which tends to be quite reliable about non-controversial matters, an average human cell contains 65% water (by mass), 20% protein, 12% lipids (fats, sterols, fat-soluble vitamins such as vitamins A, D, E and K, monoglycerides, diglycerides, phospholipids, and others), 1.0% RNA, 0.1% DNA, 0.4% other organics, and 1.5% other inorganics. Amusingly, if we count molecules instead of weighing them, the cell is 98.73% water! (Because water molecules are so much smaller than organic ones).

The amount of DNA and RNA is tiny, but without them the body would be nothing but a heap of rotting organic matter; a striking illustration of the vital importance of order.

Some other chemical substances are necessary, such as the glycerol (a sugar alcohol) that binds three fatty acid molecules into a triglyceride ready for delivery through the bloodstream, and the ketone body by-products of fatty acid “burning”, which themselves constitute a useful “fuel”. Nitric oxide is also important.

“Years ago I read a fascinating book… called ‘The healing sun’ which looked at how the sun was used to treat many illnesses. Often with impressive results. It certainly awakened my interest in the area. And, because I have an obsessive interest in heart disease, I focussed on nitric oxide (NO), which is synthesised when the skin is exposed to the sun. [This is not the only way NO is created in the body, but it is important].

“Nitric oxide is a molecule that is now understood to be critical for cardiovascular health, although it was not known to have any role a hundred years ago. Until recently it was not known to exist inside the body. in fact, the idea that such a highly reactive compound could have a positive role to play was considered bonkers. Super-reactive – and damaging.

“I would like to point out that sunlight does many more things than create nitric oxide and, of course, vitamin D. Mostly good”.

- Dr Malcolm Kendrick, https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2026/01/17/disruptive-science-part-two/

And there is one other category of vital material: minerals. Some in relatively gross, everyday quantities: calcium, phosphorus, and magnesium. Your body contains a little over 1 kg of calcium, 99% percent of it in bones, which act as a reserve from which it can be withdrawn in case of deficiency; for while bone formation is its most obvious role, calcium is also vital for nerve function. Phosphorus and magnesium also tend to live in bones, but both are essential for many of the enzymes (catalysts, mostly proteins) that drive body chemistry. Other minerals that the body needs are classed as “trace elements”, including chlorine, chromium, copper, iodine, iron, potassium, selenium, sodium, sulphur, and zinc. Chlorine sounds alarming at first sight, but we eat it as sodium chloride (table salt). And it is essential for producing the hydrochloric acid that the stomach needs to digest food. Curiously enough, most indigestion and heartburn is caused by a lack of acid, not by too much of it; it is now believed that eating too little salt is far more dangerous than too much.

Wikipedia states that “The average 70 kg (150 lb) adult human body contains approximately 7×10²⁷ atoms and contains at least detectable traces of 60 chemical elements. About 29 of these elements are thought to play an active positive role in life and health in humans”.

The body contains between 2x10¹³ and 10¹⁴ (20 - 100 trillion) cells, depending on age, size, and weight; and about the same number of bacterial cells – perfectly normal and acceptable passengers and co-workers, without whose chemical assistance we would die. Between them, the bacteria have about 2 million genes, about 100 times the number of human genes. For no obvious reason, but nevertheless in a satisfyingly symmetrical way, the number of human cells in the body is roughly the same as the number of atoms in the average cell.

The scientific study of how the body works embraces many disciplines, but at the most fundamental level it all boils down to biochemistry. Just as the workings of the whole universe are theoretically reducible to physics – although we are very far from explaining everything purely in terms of physics, and perhaps never will – advances in biology consistently explain previously mysterious phenomena in terms of chemistry. From skin to gut – which have much in common – every organ and function in the human body works as it does through amazingly complex biochemical systems, systems of systems, and systems of systems of systems. Moreover, the principle of reuse – which is important in engineering – runs through everything in biology. If a chemical is found to play a part in one system, it will usually turn out to have a number of other roles in different systems.

Thinking this over, it seems to me that no conceivable designer could have devised (or solved) a multi-dimensional puzzle with so many variables and relationships. That is not to say that I reject the possibility of an intelligent designer. It’s just that I can’t begin to imagine a mind that could keep track of so many different substances, functions, and interrelationships.

However – and this is what I find most interesting – I can imagine an evolutionary process, such as Darwin sketched in rough outline, gradually producing the whole set of living things known to us, including ourselves, by iteration. There was no need to do it all in one gigantic leap. Instead, evolution starts with a few organic compounds and works its way to viruses, archaea, bacteria, and thence to ever more complex forms of life. True, there are gaping holes in the story so far, particularly at the very beginning when DNA and RNA had to appear fully-fledged in order to be able to reproduce themselves, let alone build anything more ambitious. But even here progress is being made, as vividly described by such authors as the British biochemist Dr Nick Lane, whose books I heartily recommend to anyone interested and willing to put up with a minimum of technical details.

The delightful thing about evolution is that it explains how every living thing came to be the way we see it today. If a given organism did not work perfectly – or nearly so – all the time, its distant ancestors would not have survived and it would not exist. Of course, evolution’s criteria of “perfection” might strike us as rather crude: all it demands is that an organism survive until it has offspring that in turn can survive and have offspring. Then it can fall apart or be eaten, and evolution won’t give a hang. Luckily evolution seems to have taken pains to endow us humans with a luxury “build quality”, so that we sometimes survive to see not only our grandchildren but even our great-grandchildren. Perhaps it has something to do with handing down knowledge and skills; I shall be writing about that soon.

From the very first person to wonder about the nature of thought, memory, feelings, and the remarkable fact that each of us has his own internal life, the only available methods were introspection and observing other people and animals. Hippocrates, Plato, and Galen were inclined to locate the seat of intelligence in the brain, but Aristotle, whose influence was greater and longer-lasting, put it in the liver, with the brain merely a radiator to dissipate excess heat. (He wasn’t entirely wrong, as about a third of the body’s heat loss is through the head. And the liver is extremely clever, although not conscious as far as I know).

Meanwhile philosophers practised introspection, looking within themselves in an effort to intuit the nature of reality. All sorts of abstract castles in the air were built, with Plato claiming that everything in the world around us is merely a faint shadow of the ideal forms that exist only in heaven. Idealist philosophers such as Descartes, Kant, and Hegel went to great lengths to deduce what each of them saw as the way things must be – like Plato, relying far too much on logical reasoning from the shakiest (and often obviously false) premises. The resulting systems of metaphysics are still of interest today, but not for any practical reasons.

Occasionally a hard-headed thinker would barge into the rarefied atmosphere of the academy, disrespectfully remarking that the idealist emperor was stark naked. One such was the Scot David Hume (1711-1776), a poor boy without rich “connections” who chose to pursue truth regardless, and ended up comfortably well off, and famous to boot. “Hume denied that people have an actual conception of the self, declaring that they experience only a bundle of sensations and that the self is nothing more than this bundle of perceptions connected by an association of ideas”. The great Immanuel Kant credited Hume as the inspiration that had awakened him from his “dogmatic slumbers”’. In this sort of relentlessly honest writing, Hume anticipated 20^th century philosophy, especially existentialism.

But the big breakthrough could not come until the discipline of neuroscience was born. Shortly after Hume’s death, Luigi Galvani discovered that he could make a dead frog’s leg twitch by touching it with an electric spark. A century later the invention of the microscope and techniques for staining biological tissues made it possible to discern the fine structure of nerves and the brain. Meanwhile scientists began the long and difficult task of mapping the brain’s regions and their main functions by observing animals and people who had suffered brain injuries. The different types of neurons were catalogued and studied, and it began to be understood that neurons communicate with one another by sending electro-chemical “action potentials” along the slender axons and the synaptic gaps that interconnect them.

“The human brain alone contains around one hundred billion neurons and one hundred trillion synapses; it consists of thousands of distinguishable substructures, connected to each other in synaptic networks whose intricacies have only begun to be unraveled. At least one out of three of the approximately 20,000 genes belonging to the human genome is expressed mainly in the brain”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience

Even a layman like me can now understand that he sees because photons of light enter the retina of his eye, which is actually the end of the optic nerve, and which passes on the images on the retina to the visual cortex at the back of the head. Some of the neurons in the visual cortex are so specialised that they can detect, unassisted, patterns such as stripes – a “tiger” early warning system? From the visual cortex signals are propagated to many parts of the brain, including the amygdala which broadcasts fear or disgust if appropriate, the hippocampus which stores and recalls memories, and the prefrontal cortex which is in charge of high-level decisions and impulse restraint.

The more one learns about the brain, and the nervous system of which it is a part, and the body of which that is a part, the more astonishing is its complexity, sophistication, and completeness. Whatever a person says, thinks, feels, or does – consciously or unconsciously – neuroscientists can give some account of which brain regions, and even which individual neurons, are responsible for each action.

So that today, when I – like Hume – look inside myself, I see nothing resembling a “soul”. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines “soul” thus:

soul

 noun

1 the spiritual or immaterial part of a person, regarded as immortal. a person’s moral or emotional nature or sense of identity.

2 emotional or intellectual energy or intensity. soul music.

3 a person regarded as the embodiment of a quality: he was the soul of discretion. an individual. a person regarded with affection or pity.

As to the first meaning, there seems to be no way for any of us by our own efforts to know whether we have a “spiritual or immaterial part, regarded as immortal”. If we choose, we can believe others who say that we do; but it appears to me that we cannot know either way from direct experience.

And “a person’s moral or emotional nature or sense of identity” is no longer so mysterious that it must be attributed to an immaterial entity. On the contrary, neuroscience and other studies have gone a long way to explain the moral sense in humans and other animals. Emotions, too, are fairly well understood; they are a product of neural activity modulated by hormones and chemical neurotransmitters such as glutamine, dopamine, and serotonin.

Until the rise of science in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, and especially the development of neuroscience in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, almost all of the nervous system’s activities were inexplicable, shrouded in mystery. Naturally enough, they were lumped together and attributed to the “soul”, which was believed to survive death and sometimes to reappear in the form of a ghost. Similarly, everything important that men did not understand about the world was attributed to God, or the gods.

As time went by, philosophers and other inquiring minds found natural explanations for more and more phenomena. Thunder and lightning were not signs of divine anger; they were caused by massive electrical discharges in the sky. Earthquakes were the result of huge crustal plates scraping and riding up over one another. Eclipses were simply one celestial body hiding or casting a shadow over another. And so sceptics began to speak of “the God of the gaps”, who was invoked to account for whatever was inexplicable; but the number of such things was steadily shrinking.

In his famous book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, Thomas H. Kuhn wrote about scientific paradigms: more or less rigid mental frameworks within which new ideas are welcome, but which tend to constrain thought within their limits. He proposed that a new paradigm cannot be accepted until the older one that it replaces has proved thoroughly inadequate. It has often been suggested that, so profoundly are some scientists and other thinkers committed to the paradigms in which they were taught that they can never give them up. Max Planck observed that

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it”.

Max Planck, Wissenschaftliche Selbstbiographie. Mit einem Bildnis und der von Max von Laue gehaltenen Traueransprache. Johann Ambrosius Barth Verlag (Leipzig 1948), p. 22, as translated in Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, trans. F. Gaynor (New York, 1949), pp. 33–34 (as cited in T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions).

Perhaps it was because I was born after World War 2 that, in spite of a Presbyterian upbringing, I found myself unable to believe in the God of the Bible after the age of 13 or so. (Bertrand Russell, a far more powerful and principled thinker, had a similar experience at about the same age, 78 years earlier).

On the one hand there were too many inconsistencies and impossibilities associated with religion; on the other, it seemed all too easily explained as having arisen from primitive beliefs and superstitions combined with political interests and the pursuit of personal advantage.

Once again, I do not claim – as some enthusiastic atheists do – that God does not exist. I have no way of knowing. But on the balance of probabilities I suspect not; and, as Laplace unfortunately may not have said to Napoleon, “Je n’ai pas eu besoin de cet hypothèse” (“I didn’t require that hypothesis”). So I am guided by Occam’s Razor “Entia non sunt praeter necessitatem multiplicanda” (”of two competing theories, the simpler explanation of an entity is to be preferred”).

What has this talk about God and the soul to do with philosophy and neuroscience? Well, just as I cannot look into myself and see a “soul”, I cannot see a “self” either. I am proud to be able to report the same observation as my famous compatriot Hume; but I say it only because it is true.

In my last year at school, in summer 1966, two of our teachers introduced my class to philosophy. They gave us a gentle overview of epistemology and phenomenology, and I also read Jean-Paul Sartre’s “La Nausée” (“Nausea”), “Les Mouches” (The Flies”), and “Huis Clos” (“No Exit”). Epistemology is sometimes called “theory of knowledge”, and examines what we can know and how. Phenomenology studies the nature of subjective, conscious experience and world-disclosure. Clearly, in spite of the scary Greek names, those two branches of philosophy are very natural and intuitive, the sort of thing any intelligent, inquisitive child might be interested in. “Mummy, how can we know anything?” “Daddy, how can you be positive about anything when there are so many feelings and illusions and prejudices to mislead you?”

Sartre was my gateway to existentialism, which emphasises that each of us must live his own life and make his own choices, always accepting responsibility; and that no supposedly all-encompassing explanations of everything are worth the paper they are written on. In “L’être et le Néant” (“Being and Nothingness”) he wrote:

“As soon as a man apprehends himself as free and wishes to use his freedom, a freedom, by the way, which could just as well be his anguish, then his activity is play”.

That may sound like nothing more than academic word salad, but it actually does have very deep meaning. The key is freedom, and what we mean by it. Everyone is, indeed, free to choose actions, feelings, and thoughts; but how do we choose? What (or who) is it that does the choosing?

A couple of years later, browsing a bookshop in Lisbon, I picked up an interesting though offbeat-looking little paperback called “An Anatomy of the Mind”, by Dr. J. Paul Rader M.D. Right on the front cover, its message was blazoned:

“Every act that each of us commits is determined, not by our minds, but by the sum total of all activities taking place in the nervous system at any given moment”.

And:

‘This book explains why such concepts as “Will-Power” are among the greatest wrongs ever perpetrated by man’.

Trained in psychology, neuroscience, and surgery, Dr Rader had a compelling idea: that consciousness is not a “working part” of the nervous system, but more of a side-effect. After 150 pages he concludes that:

“We have seen that consciousness is the passive by-product of brain activity, the result of such activity. It is, therefore, unnecessary to invoke consciousness in an attempt to understand human, or any other behavior; just as physics discovered, a century ago, that the so-called ether, which was thought essential for the propagation of light through space, was really dispensible [sic], that light managed to move from one place to another without it.

“Similarly, we maintain that if consciousness alone could be selectively suppressed, without in any way altering underlying brain function, an individual’s behavior would not change one iota”.

It’s interesting to try it out for oneself. As far as possible without tying yourself in self-conscious knots, notice for a while what you think, feel, say, and do – and try to decide whether the conscious self is making decisions, or just noticing what happens. After all, when you want to say something, do you consciously work out each word, one after another, and consciously craft every sentence? Or do you just feel a kind of inner pressure, which builds up until suddenly speech issues forth?

The novelist E. M. Forster was clear about the matter:

“How can I know what I think till I see what I say?”
- E. M. Forster “Aspects of the Novel” (1927), chapter 5

As in the case of Hume, I believe that Dr Rader was way ahead of his time, although his conclusion was based not just on introspection, but on experiment and observation of others.

Following the wise advice of William of Ockham, Henry David Thoreau, and Albert Einstein, I try to sweep away everything that is not essential in order to see more clearly.

“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify”.
- Henry David Thoreau

(Ralph Waldo Emerson replied, “One ‘simplify’ would have sufficed”).

In order to understand as much as possible about the world and ourselves, I think it useful to sweep away ideas of God, the afterlife, angels, spirits, demons, the Devil, ghosts, sin, luck, the luminiferous ether, phlogiston, mind, free will, ego, superego, id… and everything else that is metaphysical, hypothetical, or over-abstract, and focus on what is real and definite, and at least fairly probable.

“Don’t believe anything. Regard things on a scale of probabilities. The things that seem most absurd, put under ‘Low Probability’, and the things that seem most plausible, you put under ‘High Probability’. Never believe anything. Once you believe anything, you stop thinking about it”.
- Robert Anton Wilson

This is not to say that no one must think about metaphysics or subjective matters; that would be ridiculously arrogant. It’s just that I personally feel the need to “clear the decks” of everything inessential or distracting. There is also the consideration that our relationships with others can be seriously harmed or distorted by dogmatic ideology. Think back through history to all the wars and persecutions caused (or at least justified) by appeals to ideology and religion. (Yes: religion is a type of ideology). It’s still going on today, at this very moment; just stop and think of all the aggression and killing that arises from some people’s feelings of intrinsic superiority to others.

Several great thinkers foresaw the need for purely humanistic ethics centuries ago. As far back as the French Revolution we find writers like Voltaire and Condorcet calling for humans to stand on their own feet, use their own brains with confidence, and make their own choices. Later, in the 19^th century, Dostoyevsky’s Ivan Karamazov says, “If God is dead, then everything is permitted”; and Friedrich Nietzsche pursued a similar line of thought in several of his books. (Of course, Ivan Karamazov’s complaint is not the last word: obviously the rejection of divine law makes an enormous difference, but in practice most law has always been of human origin anyway).

Thoughtful scientists have expressed similar opinions.

“The development of biology is going to destroy to some extent our traditional grounds for ethical beliefs and it is not easy to see what to put in their place”.
-Francis Crick

Not easy, of course. But necessary – and possible. And in fact it is our next big challenge as a species.

The core principles, in the words of the Athenian herald as recorded by Thucydides, are:

1. [R]ight, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

2. Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can.

Referring to the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians, MK Sensei wrote:

That is almost identical in meaning to the Athenian formulation, as only the strong who believe they have no equals in power can act with impunity. Something is always liable to be lost in translation, especially between three languages as disparate as Greek, Arabic, and English; but the ideas look clear enough. Indeed, the word “impunity” is key to the operation of the Melian Dialogue throughout history. It implies that the strong can do whatever they will, without fear of consequences. Consequently, as the old saying has it, “Might is right”. Of course that makes nonsense of centuries of “political science”, “international law”, treaties, “human rights”, and quintessentially futile organisations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations.

To avoid needless repetition and save your time, let me refer you to the first three articles which explain most of the background:

“The Melian Dialogue”

“The Melian Dialogue (2)”

“The Melian Dialogue (3)”

After a quiescent and almost inactive first year in office, the Trump volcano has erupted in the Caribbean and now threatens most of Latin America. Although he has repeatedly claimed to be “the peace President” and to have ended numerous wars, it is now obvious that Mr Trump is the most shameless war criminal to occupy the White House for over a century. One has to go back to Theodore Roosevelt and some of his predecessors such as Andrew Jackson and James Polk to find such high-handed and unashamed reliance on brute force. And even they tried to disguise their arrogant exceptionalism by pseudo-scientific narratives about how “primitive” and animalistic their victims were. Today such nonsense has long been exploded, and Mr Trump and his accomplices stand revealed in their open (and even proud) contempt for law and morality.

As American military and naval forces massed in the Caribbean Sea near Venezuela last year, commentators were unsure what to predict. Surely even Mr Trump would not dare to launch an all-out war of unprovoked aggression against a near neighbour, especially for such transparently self-seeking motives. On the other hand, he could hardly order the scores of warships and other “assets” to go quietly home again without doing anything except murder a few dozen helpless locals in motor boats. That would smack too much of

“The Grand Old Duke of York;
He had ten thousand men.
He marched them up to the top of the hill
And he marched them down again”.

The biggest surprise has been how the American operation succeeded smoothly and without the slightest resistance, as if on oiled rails – very different from the many fiascos of the past. Some analysts explain it by a massive campaign of all-encompassing bribery by the CIA; others, such as Andre Martyanov, to the chronic unreliability and incompetence of Latin Americans. It matters enormously which was the case: if some key commanders were bribed, they are traitors and the country can still resist; but if no one was willing to defend Venezuela and its president, Mr Martyanov is right and no outside help can make a difference.

Judging by the words and acts of Mr Trump and the US government, it looks as if the second scenario is correct. Venezuela has turned out to be a pushover, and the Americans will now be able to call the shots and take over the government and the nation’s natural resources.

The “international community” has reacted in the usual way: by doing a lot of deploring and condemning, and absolutely nothing else.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of nearby Brazil, a BRICS founder member, “condemned” the strikes and the reported capture of Maduro, which he called “an unacceptable affront to Venezuela’s sovereignty” and declared that it set a dangerous precedent for the international community.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said, “China is deeply shocked by and strongly condemns the U.S.’s blatant use of force against a sovereign state and action against its president. Such hegemonic acts of the U.S. seriously violate international law and Venezuela’s sovereignty, and threaten peace and security in Latin America and the Caribbean region. China firmly opposes it. We call on the U.S. to abide by international law and the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, and stop violating other countries’ sovereignty and security”.

In an even more low-key response, the Russian Foreign Ministry remarked, “In view of the confirmed reports about Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his spouse being in the United States, we strongly urge the US leadership to reconsider their position and release the legitimately elected president of a sovereign country and his spouse.

“We highlight the need to create conditions for resolving any existing issues between the United States and Venezuela through dialogue”.

The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres claimed to be “deeply concerned that the rules of international law have not been respected”. He was “deeply alarmed” by the strikes, which set a “dangerous precedent”.

Standard crocodile tears, signifying nothing at all. If Mr Guterres even consents to convoke the Security Council to discuss the matter, it will be about as far as he is willing to go. And of course the UNSC is deadlocked by the vetoes of the USA and the UK.

The governments of Cuba, Colombia, and Mexico vigorously condemned the US attack on Venezuela. Mr Trump’s reaction was to warn them all that they could easily be next in line for the treatment.

Perhaps the most coherent and forceful criticism of Mr Trump’s naked aggression came from Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico. “The US military action in Venezuela is further evidence of the breakdown of the world order created after World War II… International law does not apply, military force is used without a UN Security Council mandate, and everyone who is big and strong does whatever they want in promoting their own interests”, he wrote on social media.

A simpler and clearer restatement of the Athenian policy could hardly be imagined.

It is very hard to assess the actions of Mr Maduro and his supporters in the government and the armed forces. On the face of it, they crumpled like wet tissue paper when they might have given a good account of themselves. It seems that Mr Maduro and his wife were snatched out of bed after they had retired for the night. The overall outcome seems spookily similar to the almost bloodless overthrow of Mr Assad in Syria last year. (In the sense that nobody seems to have shed blood defending Mr Assad, although the headchoppers who took over in Damascus have been busily shedding lots of it ever since). I also detect faint overtones of the alleged murder of Osama bin Laden in 2011, years after he had probably died of kidney disease.

The Venezuelans had, and still have, good enough weapons to give the Americans a bloody nose. It has been remarked that the operations involved many US helicopters flying above Caracas, including Chinooks. I often see Chinooks flying over my home in England, and they are ideal targets for even hand-held ground-to-air missiles such as the old Soviet Igla. (Just as aircraft carriers are ideal targets for hypersonic missiles and modern torpedoes). Yet there was apparently not a single shot fired against the attackers, although Venezuelan authorities reported that “At least 40 people, including civilians and members of the Venezuelan military, were killed in the attack”.

Needless to say, no one has shed any tears for those innocent victims of US militarism – they never do. Even the BBC has published photos of ruined buildings and charred vehicles.

Mr Trump said that the US will “run” Venezuela “until we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition”.

‘President Donald Trump said Saturday that the US is “going to run” Venezuela indefinitely in the aftermath of the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

‘“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” he said during a press conference from his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. “We don’t want to be involved with having someone else get in, and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years. So we are going to run the country.”

‘Trump added that he determined the US should take charge of Venezuela to ensure that the eventual next leader has the “good of the Venezuelan people in mind. But he offered no timeline for how long such a transition of power was expected to take.

‘“We’re going to stay until such time as the proper transition can take place,” he said.

‘Trump also said he planned to authorize US oil companies to take over Venezuela’s energy infrastructure, asserting that the corporations would “spend billions of dollars” on the project.

‘“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” he said’.

Mr Trump seems very confident that from now on events in Venezuela will follow the course he chooses. Especially, he assumes that elections will be held and will produce the “right” results.

How can he be so sure? True, there is a substantial Venezuelan upper and middle class that has always been bitterly opposed to the socialist reforms of Mr Hugo Chavez and Mr Maduro. Many of them would be delighted to participate in a takeover of the government, throwing all of Messrs Chavez’s and Maduro’s socialist reforms into reverse. In 2002 an actual coup was attempted, and for some time appeared to have succeeded. Even the notoriously pro-Washington British media freely admitted that “The failed coup in Venezuela was closely tied to senior officials in the US government”.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies have written an excellent detailed account of the many “colour revolutions” stirred up and supported by Washington – not least in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Ukraine. Another fine article is Caitlin Johnstone’s take:

Caitlin’s Newsletter

They Kidnapped Maduro Because The World Is Ruled By Unaccountable Tyrants

Reading by Tim Foley…

Read more

8 months ago · 491 likes · 301 comments · Caitlin Johnstone

Why do the Chinese and the Russians, as well as the many other nations threatened and harmed by Washington, not take more positive action to restrict American sedition and violence? The default explanation is simply that those nations have their own interests to consider, and that they cannot risk an open challenge to the USA. True, Russia and China, and possibly Iran, have enough military strength to defeat the Americans if attacked in their own countries. But only the USA has the ability to “project force globally”, whether through conventional invasions such as those of Afghanistan and Iraq, by “covert” methods – a polite name for terrorism – or more subtly by exploiting its control of the world’s financial organisations. Even Russia and China, the argument goes, have their work cut out to survive the sustained pressure of sanctions, sponsored terrorism, and “soft power” such as propaganda. They have no resources to spare for helping friendly countries that come under American attack.

The long-standing belief in US military power is no longer justified, although well-staged theatrics like the lightning attack on Caracas serve to shore it up a little longer. The BBC informs (or rather misinforms us) that

The US is the most powerful military nation on the planet and through its military the US wields great international influence.

In 2022 [sic], the US remains the world’s only military superpower:

- It spends over one third (39%) of the total world’s defence spending.

- US defence spend in 2022 was $877 billion which was more than the defence budgets of the next 10 countries combined.

- Although the US spends by far the most on defence in billions of dollars, it does not spend the most as a percentage of GDP which is only around 3.1%.

The US has the largest naval fleet in the world with the most advanced technological hardware. The scale of the US navy allows it to have a military presence anywhere in the world.

It should be noted that the amount of money spent has no necessary relation to the actual military power obtained. No one disputes that US military spending, at more than $1 trillion a year, far outstrips that of other nations. But China and Russia get far more “bang for the buck”, and their weapons systems are better than the more expensive US ones.

As for the vaunted US fleet, its claim to supremacy is largely derived from its 11 huge aircraft carriers and the task forces required to protect them. Yet since the advent of hypersonic missiles and modern torpedoes, those carriers are nothing more than enormous lumbering targets, each representing an investment of many billions and carrying over 4,000 helpless hostages. See, for example, this example of Chinese carrier-killer capability.

A less biased and more accurate evaluation comes from “USA Military Power Ranking 2025” which ranks the USA third behind Russia and China. “MPR evaluates real-world warfighting capability, not just military spending or tech development”.

Perhaps the least prominent theory about how the US government’s designated “antagonists” are dealing with it is that they are giving Washington all the rope it needs to hang itself. It is often said that Lenin wrote, “When it comes time to hang the capitalists, they will vie with each other for the rope contract”. Like so many colourful quotations, this one seems unlikely to be genuine. But it does make a valid point: that capitalists (such as today’s billionaire oligarchs) are not long-term thinkers, and are quite capable, in their headlong pursuit of immediate profit, of making blunders that will be deadly in the long run.

The US government’s national debt is currently over $38 trillion, and heading rapidly toward $40 trillion. As Michael Hudson noticed back in the 1960s, the extent of the US government’s annual deficit – the sum of which deficits is the national debt – was almost exactly accounted for by foreign military expenditure. That has continued to be the case. Recent budgets have allocated nearly $1 trillion a year to the Pentagon, and if some items were not deliberately excluded the cost would already be above $1 trillion.

“Interest expense on the public debt was approximately $678 billion in FY 2023”. We see stories such as “Interest Costs Surpass National Defense and Medicare Spending”.

If the US government can be induced to keep spending heavily on military adventures, its over 800 bases around the world, and enormously expensive new weapons systems, it is very likely that the national debt will soon grow unsustainable. If interest payments were suspended, the US government’s financial credibility would be fatally punctured and its most powerful weapon – the financial one – would disappear. The dollar, too, would be seriously devalued.

No one wants to see such a “doomsday scenario”, which would cause great harm worldwide. But its threat may be enough to restrain hot heads in Washington.

On the other hand, it may inflame them further – in which case we are in for a rough ride. Much more hangs on events in Venezuela than meets the eye.

One type, personified by the “ideal” scientist or doctor, “cannot tell a lie” for two reasons: first, truth is ethically mandatory; second, truth is necessary to get reliable results. Such reasoning assumes that the good of the whole community is paramount. It is identical to the principles of the honest scientist as described in my last essay, and for the same reasons: people who wish to cooperate effectively must be scrupulously truthful with themselves and others.

The opposite type makes an opposite assumption: “It’s me (or me and a small group of friends, relatives, or associates) against everyone else”. That leads to opposite behaviour: lying, bullshitting, manipulation, persuasion… in short, sales talk. There is much evidence1 to suggest that deception and manipulation are embedded very deeply in human nature, and may even have been the primary application that caused our brains to grow so big and powerful.

In my previous essay, I outlined the need for honesty and trust in cooperative endeavours such as science and medicine. Unfortunately, in the great scheme of human affairs those are of secondary (if that) importance. Primary are politics, religion, business, and personal relationships – in all of which manipulation and trickery seem to be inextricably entwined. These are primary, to put it bluntly, because they are ways of getting stuff that we need or want.

Lies come in various shapes and sizes, and are used for different purposes.

There are lies that are meant to be believed – for a while, at least. They don’t have to hold up for long to be effective, as has always been understood. It’s the initial impact that counts.

“It often happens that, if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it”.

- Jonathan Swift, “The Examiner”, 1715.

Especially with the aid of the media, a lie can be given wide publicity and then buried, leaving 99% of those who saw it believing it for the indefinite future. The Internet lends itself to this technique, as removing a link or page hides it forever from the great majority who don’t know about the Internet Archive.

Then there are lies that are not intended, or expected, to be believed. Tyrants have always known that forcing people to subscribe to, and repeat, an obvious untruth helps to break their will and render them unthinkingly obedient.

Bullshit, as defined by Professor Harry G. Frankfurt in his brilliant little book of that title2, is distinct from lying in that the bullshitter does not care (and may not even know) whether what he says is true. All he cares about is that it is believed, and thus serves his purpose. Bullshit is arguably worse than lying, as it outright rejects the concept and value of truthfulness. Conscious lying shades into bullshit when the liar is at pains to make himself believe his lies. When Tony Blair said that God told him to invade Iraq, can he possibly have believed that to be true? He had the useful precedent of Oliver Cromwell, who would retreat to his tent or his room for hours, to emerge later when he claimed to have ascertained God’s will. When powerful people or governments come to believe their own propaganda, there can be dreadful consequences.

“All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out”.

- I. F. Stone

In this essay I shall set forth some specific instances. Most of these will be familiar to everyone; but I hope their sheer quantity and the dishonesty and self-deception involved will make it plain that we face a really serious problem with our society.

In what follows there is less certainty, because politics is, above all, the realm of bullshit. Often one cannot be sure what really happened; but one can often be pretty sure that the official story is false. In such cases one must follow Robert Anton Wilson’s advice:

Don’t believe anything. Regard things on a scale of probabilities. The things that seem most absurd, put under ‘Low Probability’, and the things that seem most plausible, you put under ‘High Probability’. Never believe anything. Once you believe anything, you stop thinking about it.

While harder to carry through, that seems more effective (though more trouble) than Claud Cockburn’s maxim: “Never believe anything until it has been officially denied”. Wilson added:

My only originality lies in applying this zetetic attitude outside the hardest of the hard sciences, physics, to softer sciences and then to non-sciences like politics, ideology, jury verdicts and, of course, conspiracy theory.

Perhaps the best jumping-off point for our discussion of truth and falsehood in human affairs is the following (now notorious) rant by a White House aide back in 2004.

The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’

- Ronald Suskind (American journalist) reporting the comments of a White House aide (later identified as Karl Rove) [”Without A Doubt” by Ron Suskind, The New York Times Magazine, 17 October 2004].

“We create our own reality”. Just swirl that around your mind, and let it sink in. Those people were – and are – so entitled and arrogant that they believe they can create their own reality. Of course there is some truth in it. The immense influence of American propaganda and other forms of soft power does, in a sense, mould and distort the world as very many people see it.

There is also the technique that so many famous people use to generate conviction in others: making themselves believe the message they want to put across. Creating reality in their own minds. In the shape of method acting as taught by Stanislavski, it has produced striking effects on stage, film, and TV. A businessman, religious leader, or politician who does this may end up honestly believing very dubious, or flatly untrue, claims that he himself originally dreamed up. And many have.

There is an ominous downside, though.

But remember the idea that perception is reality is a force to be reckoned with in that perception not only deceives but can create a temporary self fulfilling prophecy. This is the very basis of the danger of perception. For it is perception of thick ice that leads us to the middle of the lake but reality that takes us to the bottom.

- Thad Beversdorf, Chief Global Economist for ABX

How many people recognise that the standard of truth in politics is very much lower than in ordinary life, let alone than in science and medicine? And – ideally – schools and universities? Should this be so? And if so, should the standard of truth be levelled up or down? Is honesty even an important value in democratic politics? Or should we agree with Colonel Nathan Jessop (played by Jack Nicholson) in the movie “A Few Good Men”, who, when challenged, shouts angrily “You can’t handle the truth!”

Jessop’s case is that most citizens are unable to understand the threats facing them, and that they should therefore acquiesce in allowing “a few good men” to repel those threats by illegal methods of which the citizens remain blissfully ignorant. This is the same argument that Ian Fleming made for James Bond’s extralegal activities, including his “licence to kill”. It is a tough question in ethics, and most people’s way of dealing with it is to ignore it. Ignore the wrongness, and then ignore the fact that you ignored it. Forget it. Put it all right out of your mind. Assume that the government knows best, and will do whatever is right; then you can read the newspaper and listen to the TV news with complacent equanimity. “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain”. As Harold Pinter said in his Nobel lecture (2005):

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.

Fleming was writing in the 1950s, and his moral beliefs reflected the English establishment ethos of the 1930s. Bond’s commander, M, gives him the carefully limited authority to break certain laws under specified circumstances – on the strict understanding that, if caught, he is on his own. The government will not lift a finger to help him, and will deny all knowledge of his activities. So Bond is expected to sacrifice his own moral character for the public good; a sacrifice he is willing to make if necessary, although Fleming implies that it means more to him than life itself. It was understood that Bond would never dream of taking unfair advantage of his privileges, especially for personal advantage. As an officer and a gentleman, although cynical and sometimes cruel he could be trusted to conduct himself disinterestedly and gallantly.

Of course Fleming, who was perhaps not always as scrupulous as his hero, was writing escapist fiction. He must have been well aware that a government that allows its employees to break the law with impunity is stepping onto the slipperiest of slopes. Whatever the actual deeds of our designated enemies, the “good guys” have done very wicked things since then. Almost as soon as the CIA was set up in 1947, it began plotting to get rid of inconvenient individuals, and as it grew more ambitious graduated to murdering – or trying to murder – heads of government. As far as I know, Mr Obama was the first President to exult publicly in his power to “finger” anyone anywhere in the world – even a US citizen – and order him or her to be killed without being convicted, tried, or even arrested. Of course that is contrary to US and international law, but in such cases the US government recognises no obstacle to the exercise of its power. (In accordance with the Melian Dialogue).

Last month Mr Trump did it again three times, permitting if not ordering the unprovoked murder of several people in speedboats near Venezuela.

”The strike resulted in 11 terrorists killed in action. No U.S. Forces were harmed in this strike,” Trump said the first time. He added that the U.S. military had identified the crew as members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which the U.S. designated a terrorist group in February. He repeated allegations that Tren de Aragua is being controlled by Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, accusations that Caracas denies.

Although it was a relatively bijou atrocity for Washington, this episode illustrates perfectly the theme of this series of articles. Mr Trump and his employees and associates deliberately and directly denied reality and refused to accept that they are bound by US and international law. As Reuters reported, ‘”’Being suspected of carrying drugs’ doesn’t carry a death sentence,” said Adam Isacson, Director for Defense Oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, in a post on X’.

Deadly as that was, it was only the final and least addition to a mountain of propaganda and deception heaped up by Washington. Mr Trump dredged up a little known and vaguely defined drug smuggling group called “Tren de Aragua” [“Aragua train”], which he blamed for smuggling drugs into the USA. And he accused Nicolás Maduro, the constitutionally elected President of Venezuela3, of being associated with Tren de Aragua or actually directing it.

According to NBC in May 2025, “A declassified memo says Venezuela’s government isn’t orchestrating the gang’s operations in the U.S….”

Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard, whose office had released the memo, ‘then said that the news media is “twisting” and “manipulating” intelligence assessments about foreign criminal gangs operating in the U.S. “to undermine the President’s agenda to keep the American people safe”’.

‘The Office of the DNI later issued a statement saying it “fully supports the assessment that the foreign terrorist organization, Tren De Aragua, is acting with the support of the Maduro Regime, and thus subject to arrest, detention, and removal as alien enemies of the United States”’.

It looks as though Colonel Gabbard, like previous DNIs and other officials, yielded to political pressure and chose to override - or not even consult - most of the 16 or 17 intelligence agencies that would usually contribute to such an important conclusion.

Something similar happened in 2018 when DNI James Clapper presented a report by “hand-picked analysts” from the CIA, FBI, and NSA purporting to show that President Trump was a “Russian asset”. As ex-ambassador Jack Matlock put it, “If you can hand-pick the analysts, you can hand-pick the conclusions”.

Former CIA officer Ray McGovern, who in the 1980s chaired National Intelligence Estimates and participated in preparing the President’s Daily Brief, explained further:

“Clapper played a key role in the bogus Iraq-WMD intelligence when he was head of the National Geo-spatial Agency and hid the fact that there was zero evidence in satellite imagery of any weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq invasion. When no WMDs were found, Clapper told the media that he thought they were shipped off to Syria”.

Perhaps the worst politically-motivated misrepresentation of intelligence work was Prime Minister Tony Blair’s interference in the UK Joint Intelligence Committee’s assessment of the threat from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD). It was widely believed that, after US President George W Bush resolved to invade Iraq, “the intelligence was created around the policy” instead of the other way around. This led in the short run to the death of Dr David Kelly and in the longer run to the deaths of over 3 million Iraqi citizens4, as well as uncounted others who were maimed, bereaved, and rendered homeless or stateless.

As Tarak Cyril Amar warns (on RT, which many Westerners cannot even read because their governments have blocked Internet access to it),

“The West has a big problem: it can’t stop lying. Even to itself”.

Just the other day we were told that

[I]t was widely reported that a private jet ferrying Ursula Von Der Leyen to Plovdiv in Bulgaria was subject to “GPS interference”, and had to navigate using paper charts for the final part [of] its journey.

This was quickly blamed on Russia, a supposed attempt to assassinate, or at least intimidate the EU chief, and the reactions kicked into high-gear almost instantly.

Soon, however, the story collapsed abjectly when FlightRadar24, which monitors air traffic GPS and telemetry data for flights all over the world, tweeted a refutation.

According to their data, far from being an hour late (as some stories reported), the flight was delayed by only nine minutes, which is pretty standard in terms of air travel. And the data shows it maintained transponder signal throughout its journey.

In short, there’s nothing in the data to say the flight was anything but completely ordinary.

For aficionados of this kind of blatant lying, there was a powerful echo of Hillary Clinton’s tall tale of running for cover under sniper fire. When confronted by the embarrassing fact that the whole episode had been recorded on camera, revealing that there was never any shooting and that she had walked calmly across the tarmac, Mrs Clinton replied that “I did mis-speak the other day. You know this has been a very long campaign [laughs] so occasionally I am a human being like everybody else”.

It has become standard operating procedure for any important person caught out in a flagrant lie to claim that they “miss-spoke”. That meaningless expression extends a cordial invitation to any listener who does not wish to think badly of the speaker to dismiss the lie as some kind of confusion - which many seem ready and willing to do.

As Dr Amar warns,

“Power and truth are not natural allies. Indeed, every person and institution – be it a government, a company, a university, or a “think tank” – tends to lie more as they become more powerful. And those who stay weak – have no illusions – must lie, too. Otherwise they’d get trampled even worse by the powerful. The truth may well set us free, as Christ told us. But then, hardly anyone is free in this world”.

There seems to be an analogue of Gresham’s Law - that bad money drives out good - in that lies drive out truth. All too often honest people are hopelessly outgunned when attacked by lies and bullshit.

The ruling elites of the USA still believe that it is the dominant economic and military power in the world – which is no longer true. (Financial, perhaps, for a while yet). Every day we see Western delusions of superiority and supremacy. “Exceptionalism”, “indispensability”, uniqueness, the “rules-based order”… All these castles in the air lead to countless examples of deliberately ignoring reality. Are they aware that they are deluded? Or have they gone so far that they have even fooled themselves, as Dr Richard Feynman warned us not to do?

The other day Alexander Mercouris of The Duran spoke of “the extraordinary escape from reality” that has been taking place in Europe. He is a generally level-headed, quite conservative commentator who does not say such things lightly or frivolously

What motivates the deliberate defiance of reality? Well, since modern society is (relatively) safe, we don’t risk much by pretending that things are other than they are. On the other hand, there may be much to gain – usually by simply falling in with the professed beliefs or ideology of the powerful. Or by merging with the herd. In the country of the blind, as Wells remarked, the fully sighted man is detained, diagnosed as mentally disturbed, and has his eyes surgically removed to cure him. The huge advantage he expected to enjoy – the ability easily to dodge and escape the blind – doesn’t materialise. Partly because he is outnumbered a hundred to one, partly because the blind people know their valley like the palm of their hand, and partly because they know they are right.

What it boils down to is one choice. Do you really want to know the truth and share it with others? Or do you prefer to be safe and popular? Pick one.

In PKD’s 1959 novel “Time Out Of Joint”, the protagonist Ragle Gumm has a disconcerting experience.

The soft-drink stand fell into bits. Molecules. He saw the molecules, colourless, without qualities, that made it up. Then he saw through, into the space beyond it, he saw the hill behind, the trees and sky. He saw the soft-drink stand go out of existence, along with the counter man, the cash register, the big dispenser of orange drink, the taps for Coke and root beer, the ice-chests of bottles, the hot dog broiler, the jars of mustard, the shelves of cones, the row of heavy round metal lids under which were the different ice creams.

In its place was a slip of paper. He reached out his hand and took hold of the slip of paper. On it was printing, block letters.

SOFT-DRINK STAND

Turning away, he unsteadily walked back, past children playing, past the benches and the old people. As he walked he put his hand into his coat pocket and found the metal box he kept there.

He halted, opened the box, looked down at the slips of paper already in it. Then he added the new one.

Six in all. Six times.

That is quintessential PKD. One feels that it is just because he is so comfortable playing with alternative realities, ways in which what a person senses and believes turns out to be deceptive, that he understands – as most of us never do – how precious a possession reality is. And how important it is to keep a firm grip on it.

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind/ Cannot bear very much reality…

- T. S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton”

Some people can face reality, in varying degrees. Only a few can face raw unshielded reality without flinching. Others are in the habit of deluding themselves about many things. Often they tell themselves that if something is disagreeable, it is safest not to think about it at all. Perhaps we all have a few things we make a point of never allowing into consciousness, or at least dwelling on.

The German-American philosopher Eric Hoffer, a most perceptive critic of modern life, remarked that

The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.

Recently we seem to have vast numbers of souls so weak that almost everything important must be kept from them. They go to school where they are fed the officially-approved pabulum and reproved if they ask awkward questions or think originally. Then they go to university but, rather than taking advantage of the chance to explore stimulating and controversial ideas, demand “safe areas” and “trigger warnings” to shield them from the impact of reality. What they presumably want, instead of education, is a diploma that more or less guarantees them a “good job” – meaning one that “generates a reliable income stream”. If they think that systematic cheating through the use of LLMs will help, with an acceptably low risk of punishment, they will cheat unhesitatingly. After all, “everyone else does it”. And it’s the end that matters, not the means.

George Bernard Shaw wrote the play "Man and Superman" in 1899-1900, with the idea of updating the Don Juan story to make sense of the new thinking about evolution, ethics, God, and the purpose of life. Instead of a carefree, immoral seducer, Shaw depicts his modern Don Juan (in the character of John Tanner) as a dedicated, almost puritan, philosopher striving desperately to maintain his focus on “the Life Force” in the face of temptation by women who want him to marry and “settle down”. In the optional act “Don Juan in Hell”, which is the key to the play, Don Juan explains that everyone has been completely mistaken about the true nature of heaven and hell.

Do you suppose heaven is like earth, where people persuade themselves that what is done can be undone by repentance; that what is spoken can be unspoken by withdrawing it; that what is true can be annihilated by a general agreement to give it the lie? No: heaven is the home of the masters of reality: that is why I am going thither… hell is the home of the unreal and of the seekers for happiness. It is the only refuge from heaven which is, as I tell you, the home of the masters of reality, and from earth, which is the home of the slaves of reality.

This is not the place for a proper discussion of the challenging ideas bubbling under the surface of “Man and Superman”. Suffice it to say that Don Juan’s diatribe against life on earth as commonly lived, and in hell (which according to him is just like earth except that everyone is immortal), stands up very well today. If anything it has gained additional force. It should be worrying that such a perceptive thinker as Shaw could suggest that only in heaven can thought finally be free and undistracted by unreality and dishonesty. He was proposing that, given a choice between the life of the mind and the pleasures of the body, almost all of us would choose the latter. Whether he was right in believing that an eternity of contemplation would be desirable, or even bearable, is unclear.

We have to guide us the words of a few wise people. Perhaps the best-known and most respected is the Nobel prize winning physicist Dr Richard Feynman. His words are canonical - they could not be bettered.

If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science…

…It does not matter who you are, or how smart you are, or what title you have, or how many of you there are, and certainly not how many papers your side has published, if your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is wrong. Period.

What Feynman is saying is, quite simply, that you must always respect reality. You may have all sorts of clever ideas and theories, but if their predictions don’t agree with what actually happens in the real world, you must give them up.

What’s more, if you are not absolutely sure of your facts, you must say so and remain content with not knowing for the time being. As Socrates famously declared nearly 2,500 years ago, someone who knows that he is ignorant knows more than someone who wrongly believes that he knows. That at least gives you a solid starting point. Whereas once you accept wrong beliefs, from then on you are building on sand.

The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.

Now, we scientists are used to this, and we take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure, that it is possible to live and not know. But I don’t know whether everyone realizes this is true. Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question — to doubt — to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained1.

Unfortunately, taking care not to deceive others is the easy part! As Feynman was perceptive enough to see,

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

Virtually the same principle is embodied in the Royal Society’s motto, adopted almost three centuries earlier:

Nullius in verba2. (“Accept no one’s word”)

Feynman’s principles are not just for white-coated scientists experimenting with sub-atomic particles or biochemical reactions. They apply to the supremely practical world of medicine, and ideally to everything we do that matters. In the words of (now retired) GP Dr Malcolm Kendrick,

Science can never be about acceptability – which is, too often, the purpose of peer-review. It is about the truth. Or reality, or whatever term is the best description to use. Science is about rocking the boat, and upsetting the established views, and informing ‘experts’ that they are talking rubbish.

As Richard Feynman said. ‘Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.’

Peer-review achieves the exact opposite of what we should want from science. It cements the power of experts. It acts as a brake on progress. It rewards those who maintain the status-quo. It helps to ensure that acceptable papers are published, and unacceptable papers are not3.

One of the most important reasons for always sticking close to reality and truth is that people are so very reluctant to admit that they have been wrong. Once we accept a belief, it gets terribly painful to give it up - if only because that means admitting that we were wrong. No one likes to be wrong, and some of us cannot accept that they are ever wrong. In his book “The Demon-Haunted World”, Dr Carl Sagan warned that,

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back4.

Of course, all this is - if possible - even more applicable in the field of politics, where truth is seldom as cut and dried as it is in science. Alexander Hamilton, one of the USA’s Founding Fathers and a consummate master of “the art of the possible”, wrote:

In common life, to retract an error even in the beginning, is no easy task. Perseverance confirms us in it, and rivets the difficulty; but in a public station, to have been in an error, and to have persisted in it, when it is detected, ruins both reputation and fortune. To this we may add, that disappointment and opposition inflame the minds of men, and attach them, still more, to their mistakes5.

If this article has consisted mostly of quotations, that is because so many great minds have come to similar conclusions; and there is no point in my trying to cover the same ground, because I couldn’t do it as well. Besides, they are the ones who deserve the credit.

I have already presumed on your patience to read thus far. So the many recent examples of people trying to ignore or twist reality will have to wait for my next article, which should follow shortly.

1. ‘The fact that Israeli violations of international law in Gaza are continuing despite the International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant for the country’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year is a sign of the court’s “weakness,” the attorney insisted’.

2. ‘The pursuit and arrest of former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte on an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant proves that the Hague-based court is a “weapon of Western influence,” Duane Dizon, a geopolitics and economics expert at BRICS TV and the Russian journal Contemporary World Economy has told RT’.

3. ‘Claudia Major, a lunatic political scientist suffering from a surfeit of estrogen and a deficit of neural matter, deplored Trump’s “preference for Russia” and his “preference for autocracy.” She said it was outrageous that great powers like the United States and Russia could just sit at a table and “clarify the important questions” while all others have no role to play at all and are reduced to the status of mere “bargaining chips.”’

4. The Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 was supposed to “outlaw war”. What? How? Huh? Eh? Most of the major nations signed it, but it didn’t prevent WW2. How was it to be enforced? Well, the word “enforced” gives a clue. The only way any rule can be enforced upon national governments is by force. In other words, by war. But how can you prevent war by waging war? After WW2 the Kellogg-Briand Pact was used very selectively as an excuse for executing the leaders of the losing nations (mainly Germany and Japan). In other words, what was proved was that the Melian Dialogue still ruled. “It has been ridiculed for its moralism, legalism, and lack of influence on foreign policy. The pact had no mechanism for enforcement, and many historians and political scientists see it as mostly irrelevant and ineffective. Nevertheless, the pact served as the legal basis for the concept of a crime against peace, for which the Nuremberg Tribunal and Tokyo Tribunal tried and executed the top leaders responsible for starting World War II”.

   Since 1945, military action by Western nations (mostly the USA) has killed literally millions of innocent civilians; and not a single person has been indicted on that basis. Vae victis!

5. ‘Way back when my daughter was a toddler, one evening I ran her a lovely, warm, bubbly bath. I got her ready for it; then, with not a stitch on, she announced: “I don’t want a bath”.

   ‘I said: “But it’s bathtime.”

   ‘She said: “You can’t make me”.

   ‘I said: “Well, actually, I can,” and I picked her up and put her in the bath’.

This is the third in my series of articles about the Melian Dialogue of 416 BC and how its simple, merciless axioms have prevailed throughout history since then.

"[R]ight, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must".

That is the exact principle that applies in every one of the five cases cited above. From the absurd attempt to “outlaw war” right down to the little girl’s wrong belief that her mother could not make her have a bath, the decisive factor was power. The ICC has no real power; whatever it accomplishes in the real world is done by states that approve of its rulings. The US government decrees, for reasons of its own, that Mr Duterte must be arrested and remain in custody pending trial. The same government decrees that the ICC has absolutely no authority over the Prime Minister of Israel. It is glaringly obvious that, whatever controls the outcome of the ICC’s proceedings, it is neither law nor justice.

In fact the Melian Dialogue applies in two very different spheres: between nations, and within them. While its most obvious relevance is to international relations, it also governs – even more strictly – what goes on within nations. In this context, the state is the strong that does whatever it will, while its citizens are the weak who do what they must. In so-called democracies, it is true, from time to time the ruled are given an opportunity to vote and thus to permute those who appear to rule them. But even those “rights” are in fact privileges, granted by the state and subject to being withdrawn by it at any time and for any reason or none. And most states devote much attention and money to “educating” their citizens in acceptable beliefs and values.

‘Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. Note that 'territory' is one of the characteristics of the state. Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it. The state is considered the sole source of the 'right' to use violence. Hence, 'politics' for us means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state’.

- Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation”

Our “criminal justice system” is really nothing but the Melian Dialogue on a grand scale. The authorities promulgate laws and regulations, and undertake to punish anyone who breaks or ignores them. As the Athenians did at Melos, they use their vastly greater strength to enforce their will. Unlike the Athenians, they usually try to disguise their reliance on brute force with all manner of sweet talk about honesty and morality. But what it boils down to is, “Do as we say or you’ll be sorry”.

To the average citizen on an average day, the law may seem to sit lightly on her shoulders. That is a matter of habit; she has got so used to doing as she is told and obeying the rules that she believes she is free. Yet let her decide not to pay her taxes, or even some proportion of them – for whatever reason (such as disapproving of a war). Presently the state will garnish her income; or, if that is not possible or convenient, the police will call on her. Should she choose not to receive them, and lock her doors and windows, they will break in. If she defends herself they will overpower her; and if she takes up a weapon, they are quite prepared to kill her, and unapologetic for having done so. That is the reality that stands behind law: quite literally “your money or your life”.

The state, then, is “the strong” that does whatever it likes. But the state is an abstraction – an idea, without physical reality. In practice, its embodiment consists of human beings, each with his or her own personal interests and aims. And those people – or at least those who occupy the most powerful positions – are engaged in a perpetual and complex struggle to get what they want in ways that are superficially in accordance with laws and regulations. The key word here is “superficially”. So great is the respect given, in our culture, to the rich and famous that even a gossamer-thin veil suffices to save their blushes. Sometimes, indeed, the emperor needs no clothes at all.

“The secret of a great fortune made without apparent cause is soon forgotten, if the crime is committed in a respectable way”.

- Honoré de Balzac, Le Père Goriot (1835)

Machiavelli has got a very bad name for his exceptional frankness in discussing such matters.

“But if you will take note of the mode of proceeding of men, you will see that all those who come to great riches and great power have obtained them either by fraud or by force; and afterwards, to hide the ugliness of acquisition, they make it decent by applying the false title of earnings to things they have usurped by deceit or by violence. And those who, out of either little prudence or too much foolishness, shun these modes always suffocate in servitude or poverty. For faithful servants are always servants, and good men are always poor; nor do they ever rise out of servitude unless they are unfaithful and bold, nor out of poverty unless they are rapacious and fraudulent. For God and nature have put all the fortunes of men in their midst, where they are exposed more to rapine than to industry and more to wicked than to good arts, from which it arises that men devour one another and that those who can do less are always the worst off. Therefore, one should use force whenever the occasion for it is given to us… I confess this course is bold and dangerous, but when necessity presses, boldness is judged prudence; and spirited men never take account of the danger in great things, for those enterprises that are begun with danger always end with reward, and one never escapes a danger without danger”.

- Niccolo Machiavelli, “Florentine Histories,” trans. Laura F. Brandel and Harvey C. Mansfield (Princeton: Princeton, 1988), III 13, p. 123.

A similar state of affairs prevailed in the early days of the USA and in many other countries and times.

“Through all of these pages have we searched afar with infinitesimal scrutiny for a fortune acquired by honest means. Nor have the methods been measured by the test of a code of advanced ethics, but solely by the laws as they stood in the respective times. At no time has the discovery of an ‘honest fortune’ rewarded our determined quest. Often we thought that we had come across such a specimen, only to find distressing disappointment; through all fortunes, large and small, runs the same heavy streak of fraud and theft, the little trader, with his misrepresentation and swindling, differing from the great frauds in degree only”.

- Gustavus Myers, “The Great American Fortunes”, p.503.

Indeed, so universal is the equation of might with right that if the state does not exercise it, someone else does – usually more locally. Historically, only the state could define or grant rights through its laws and institutions. The concept of “human rights”, as distinct from legal rights, sprang from religions that attributed human dignity to man’s creation by God. By the time of the Enlightenment (18^th century), many intellectuals were espousing the cause of human rights while paradoxically rejecting religion and belief in God. Thus “human rights” were left in mid-air, with no visible means of support. As Jeremy Bentham memorably put it,

“That which has no existence cannot be destroyed — that which cannot be destroyed cannot require anything to preserve it from destruction. Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts. But this rhetorical nonsense ends in the old strain of mischievous nonsense for immediately a list of these pretended natural rights is given, and those are so expressed as to present to view legal rights. And of these rights, whatever they are, there is not, it seems, any one of which any government can, upon any occasion whatever, abrogate the smallest particle”.

- Jeremy Bentham (“Anarchical Fallacies”, 1843)

Today we have landed in an indescribable chaos of imaginary rights and ideals, while in practice the principles of the Melian Dialogue hold more undisputed sway than ever. Governments and even judges issue diktats which are usually enforced immediately and energetically by the police and other executive agencies. During the Covid-19 “pandemic”, British police lorded it over citizens in unrestrained fashion, claiming powers that have since been shown to have no basis in law. Although it is increasingly hard to tell what is or is not permitted by law, since so much law nowadays is “administrative”, laid down by regulations rather than statute.

Medical staff exercised unprecedented powers of life and death during the “pandemic”, issuing “Do Not Resuscitate” notices without let, hindrance, or review. If “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”, as Alexander Pope warned, a little power is liable to go right to the heads of petty functionaries and cause them to behave with outrageous disregard for morality and law.

In the USA the confusion is still worse. Mr Trump’s threatened tariffs are apparently unconstitutional, as only Congress has the authority to impose taxes – and tariffs are certainly taxes. But whether they will be enforced regardless is uncertain. The world’s financial markets have been thrown into turmoil, suggesting that traders expect serious disruption to ensue. Even the mighty dollar has fallen significantly in value. Conflict is everywhere, with the contending parties using every trick of politics, propaganda, and “lawfare” (cynically using the law for partisan ends).

We are living in dangerous times. As always, the Melian Dialogue sets the ground rules: the strong do what they will, while the weak do what they must. But the fog of war clouds everything, so it’s hard to make out who actually is strong and who is weak. In the days of the Peloponnesian War 2,400 years ago, at least men spoke clearly and unequivocally. When it comes to the dominant role of violence in human affairs, nothing has changed in reality; but our rulers have become far more willing to lie and deceive on an industrial scale.

Given the narrow, selective way in which history is taught in the West these days, even the intelligent and educated are likely to find the ghosts of Hitler and Chamberlain taking shape in their minds. No one wants to be Chamberlain, fatuously waving a sheet of paper and declaring, “Peace in our time”, while a chuckling Hitler tells his entourage, “An elderly gentleman asked for my autograph, so I gave it to him”.

The popular wisdom insists that the way to keep the peace is to be armed to the teeth and ready to give any aggressor a good thumping. As Teddy Roosevelt liked to say, “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far”. Most of the characters played by John Wayne and Clint Eastwood would emphatically agree. While it’s not always possible to prevent others from engaging in violence, a man armed with a Colt Magnum – “the most powerful handgun in the world” – may be able to dissuade them, or failing that at least kill them.

So there is a widespread belief that preparing for war is the best way to avoid it. On the other hand, what should you do if you wish for, or plan, war? Obviously – you would prepare for war.

The logical conclusion is, “Utique para bellum”. (“Prepare for war, regardless”). It’s not entirely clear that this is sound advice, because when both (or all) sides singlemindedly prepare for war, war is what they are likely to get sooner or later. If your potential enemy prepares for war, you must do so as well or be left overmatched and vulnerable. That is the classic prescription for an arms race. Naturally, the armaments industry and all who profit from it will do everything they can to encourage and accelerate such a race.

One plausible theory of how WW1 began is that nations like Germany, Austria, Russia, France, Italy, and Great Britain built up stronger and stronger armed forces in a kind of vicious circle. Since the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, it had been well known that railways and their timetables would be crucial for mobilising huge armies in case of war. Germany, Austria-Hungary, and France had standing armies of 3 or 4 million, which could be doubled or tripled on mobilisation. Russia had 6 million, with another 6 million ready to be called up. With each train carrying at most 3,000 soldiers, it would take thousands of trains to get a modern army to the front ready to fight, even if all civilian traffic were cancelled. Arriving late, to find the enemy in control, was not an option. Getting the British army to the Continent was an even harder problem, involving ships and trains at both ends.

Governments and their general staffs were like runners nervously crouched on the starting line of a sprint race where a fast getaway might be decisive. Eventually nerves gave way, mobilisation was ordered, and the plans once committed could not be rolled back without loss of face and possible military disaster. In this account, the armies of the great powers were leaning in toward one another and, at some point, lost their balance and fell into battle. Far from preserving peace, universal preparation for war had brought about the greatest and bloodiest war ever.

After four years of unremitting warfare, the Versailles Treaty of 1919 was so unfair to Germany that it inevitably brought about WW2. (Austria-Hungary was completely dissolved, so it was no longer able to have an opinion, but its successor states have had many territorial and nationalistic quarrels). The French Marshal Ferdinand Foch observed at Versailles, “This is not a peace, it is a 20-year truce”. He was precisely correct, to the year. Rather than a separate war, WW2 is best seen as the “second half” of a single world war from 1914 to 1945, with that 20-year armistice serving to bring up a fresh generation of young men for cannon fodder. Since WW1 precipitated the Russian Revolution and thus the USSR, it should be clear that the events of 1914 determined the whole history of the 20^th century: both world wars, Nazism, Communism, Fascism, and the Cold War. They may also have brought forward the probably inevitable development and use of nuclear weapons.

Preparing for war didn’t prevent, or even delay, it in 1914. It’s far from clear that it has ever done so. Moreover, if those who aim for peace and those who intend to wage war behave in exactly the same way, what can others do but assume the worst? Especially when those who aim for war speak with forked tongue, and are lavish with assurances of their good intentions.

Many other factors must be taken into consideration, as well as the military strength and readiness of nations. Even those can be thoroughly deceptive. It is not sufficient to count soldiers, tanks, aircraft, and warships. France alone had more of all these than Germany in 1940, and yet it was overrun in a few weeks. History is full of cases where apparently weaker armies and states beat stronger ones.

There are also factors such as the power and accuracy of weapons; the morale of soldiers, sailors, and airmen; the public mood; industrial power; finance; military training and doctrine; and the quality of officers, from the commanding general to the corporal in charge of a dozen men.

In 1500, the rulers of the Aztec and Inca Empires would have believed their armies fully prepared for war. Yet they were rapidly conquered by tiny handfuls of unwashed, smelly Spaniards who had nothing on their side but – to quote the title of Jared Diamond’s famous book – “Guns, Germs, and Steel”. Horses also deserve some credit; the vision of an armoured Spanish soldier galloping forward, swinging a sabre of Toledo steel, must have terrified Aztec infantrymen armed with wooden weapons and protected by quilted cotton armour at best. Then there were the Europeans’ microscopic allies: countless Amerindians died from smallpox, influenza, measles, malaria, chickenpox, yellow fever, and other European diseases.

Whereas such plagues were an unexpected ally of the conquistadores, today science is able to produce tailored biological weapons that complement guns, bombs, and missiles – or even render them unnecessary. It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that some national governments are investing heavily in such illegal means of destruction because they cannot attain their ends by conventional military methods. Since the tightest secrecy is of the essence when practising proscribed and covert means of aggression, it’s extremely difficult to learn anything about them or even whether they are being used at all. It is interesting, though, that as early as 1962 Alistair Maclean’s thriller “The Satan Bug” convincingly described two different biological warfare agents and their frightful power:

The story revolves around the theft of two germ warfare agents, botulinum toxin and the indestructible "Satan Bug" (a laboratory-conceived derivative of poliovirus), from the Mordon Microbiological Research Establishment (similar to Porton Down). There is no vaccine for the "Satan Bug" and it is so infectious that any release will rapidly destroy all human life on Earth.

How far have we got? If you want peace, prepare for war. If you want war, prepare for war. It looks as though everyone must prepare for war, while doing all they can to avoid it. Because war is bad for everyone. Isn’t it?

Well… Not really. As already mentioned, war is very good indeed for arms manufacturers. Also many other suppliers of goods and services that are necessary in war. And officers who crave glory and promotion. The other main category of people who think they can gain from war is, of course, politicians. When things are going sour at home – as in the UK today, to pick an example entirely at random – rulers have always tended to talk up foreign enemies and the dreadful threats they pose to everyone.

In his famous interview with Gustave Gilbert in prison, Hermann Goering put it like this:

We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country”.

Every word has the highest relevance today, especially the final paragraph. (The part about how only Congress can declare war is ironic, as the USA has not once declared war since 1945, while fighting dozens of wars and killing as many as 20-30 million foreigners).

Today, a number of nations have expressed powerful determination to prepare for war and, perhaps, to wage it. Various motives have been inferred, mostly based on the hope of material gain. It seems that we are approaching the end of the “American century” – if we haven’t already reached it. China is now the world’s greatest industrial power and Russia its strongest military power. The USA’s main claim to parity is that it, too, can initiate nuclear war and thus wipe out all human life.

In the 1990s, some Americans may have believed that Russia had been conquered and that its wealth of natural resources could be plundered at will. Mr Putin and his associates put a stop to those hopes, but the Ukraine project was nevertheless launched in 2014 in a last-ditch effort to exhaust Russia and overthrow its government. Similarly, in the 1990s many Americans and Europeans were sure that China could never become a first-rate power. It population was too vast and too poor; its fields were surely exhausted after millennia of harvests; and as everyone knew, the Chinese had no creativity and could invent nothing. (Dr Joseph Needham and his collaborators to the contrary notwithstanding).

Yet the US government kept spending more and more on advanced weapons and its global network of more than 800 military bases. It’s hard to believe that such gigantic investment was defensive; the USA is hardly threatened with attack, and any aggressor would have a hard time of it. As Abraham Lincoln declared, in thrilling words which remain valid today,

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

- Abraham Lincoln; The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume I, "Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum,of Springfield, Illinois (January 27, 1838), p. 109.

Quarter of the way through the 21^st century, it seems that the human race has wedged itself into a predicament where everyone who can afford to must build up armaments, but nuclear powers must never fight one another in earnest lest everyone die.

Is there a way out of this predicament?

In the United States, the National Arbitration and Peace Congress of 1907, presided over by Andrew Carnegie said:

These vast armaments on land and water are being defended as a means, not to wage war, but to prevent war... there is a safer way ... it requires only the consent and the good-will of the governments. Today they say ... If you want peace, prepare for war. This Congress says in behalf of the people: Si vis pacem, para pactum, if you want peace, agree to keep the peace.

The foremost responsibility of any government is to keep its people safe, and this is usually taken to mean being armed to the teeth so as to deter aggression. History, however, shows that this really does not work. Probably the only exception is “Mutual Assured Destruction” (MAD) through nuclear weapons. Today Russia and the USA each have over 1,700 warheads ready for use and over 3,000 in reserve. The UK has 120 deployed; France 280; and China 24. Israel neither admits nor denies its possession of 90 or more warheads, whose status is obviously unknown.

If there existed any authority that could speak for the human species as a whole, it would undoubtedly insist that nuclear warheads be reduced to a tiny fraction of the current number, so that even an all-out exchange would not be an extinction event. It should also be possible to negotiate the destruction of most of the world’s conventional weapons, from handguns and mines to submarines and bombers. The resources and manpower saved could accomplish extraordinary things, and the return of peace would save lives and transform the existence of vast numbers of people.

I will write about the practical obstacles to disarmament in one or more future articles. It’s a topic more concerned with psychology and propaganda than with logic or feasibility.

1. f4 e6
2. g4 Qh4#

Thus I inadvertently rediscovered Fool’s Mate, countless centuries after the first hapless twit. The shortest possible game of chess, which requires the active cooperation (and utter chess-blindness) of White.

On one such occasion, goaded beyond endurance, I grabbed the edge of the board and tipped it and all the pieces onto the floor.

My brother remained seated. After a few moments, gazing at me calmly, he said in a normal tone of voice: “If you ever do that again, I will not play chess with you any more. Do you understand?”

When I nodded mutely, he added: “Now pick up the pieces and put the set away neatly”. Then he got up and walked away.

It was a valuable lesson for me. And perhaps it was understandable, if not forgivable, in an angry, disappointed 8-year-old. Perhaps for the first time, I was made to understand that there are some rules that cannot be broken, or bent, with impunity, no matter how one feels.

Spassky was renowned for his “poker face”; his opponents often admitted that they never had any idea what he was thinking or feeling. Not only tactically advantageous, but very much in the true sporting spirit.

Unfortunately, a similar state of affairs exists with respect to thermonuclear weapons. The nations and alliances of the world are continually engaged in playing games of diplomacy, economic competition, and war in their perpetual quest for advantage. In some ways it resembles chess; in others Monopoly.

In either of those games, if one player becomes exasperated he can upset the board and thus end the game for everyone.

In real life, however, soldiers and others who are killed cannot be restored to life for another game. And if anyone upsets the board, it is the end for all human life and probably many other species. Possibly all life as we know it, except for some bacteria and viruses that seem to be almost indestructible.

The equivalent of upsetting the board is thermonuclear war.

Get the in-joke? Of course, if you play a game of Global Thermonuclear War, there will be no “after”. Not for anyone.

Politicians are asking one another for thermonuclear weapons, for all the world as if they were harmless status symbols. But thermonuclear weapons are hideously destructive, and they are absolutely not “defensive”. They can only destroy and kill, so their only mode of use is either “first strike” or “counterstrike”. And any first strike will inevitably elicit a counterstrike. Welcome to the Escalation Tango!

As Professor Theodore Postol explains in the talk linked to at the end of this essay, the mathematics of the scenario mean that as soon as an enemy launches a thermonuclear missile, the only response is to launch an all-out attack on them. Otherwise your side simply loses. So the first launch essentially ends life on Earth.

Any ethical person is going to stop at that point and think long and hard. Even if an enemy has already ensured my death, does that justify me in bringing all life to an end? Or would it better just to fold one’s hands and compose oneself for death? These questions, it seems to me, are equally inevitable for Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhist, Hindus, agnostics, and atheists.

However, soldiers are trained not to stop and ask those difficult questions. On the contrary, they are trained to obey orders immediately and unquestioningly. Although they have not always done so.

So it seems inevitable that when the first nuke is fired, we all die. That being so, it’s desirable to make sure it isn’t fired.

So much for the naive reasoning of a simple human being. It seems that politicians and generals do not think like that – at all. From what they say, some of them at least believe that it’s possible to fight and win a thermonuclear war. If you are unsure about that, please watch Professor Postol’s video which is linked to at the end of this essay. You will not like it, but it will be good for your soul - and make you a better informed citizen.

Why my sudden interest in thermonuclear war? Well, we are probably closer to it than ever before. Much closer even than during the “Cuban Missile Crisis” of 1962. Familiarity does breed contempt, and many of us have become so accustomed to thermonuclear weapons that we don’t worry - or even think - about them any more. Maybe we are physically incapable of worrying about even the deadliest of threats for too long – adrenal exhaustion or whatever.

Apparently Poland, which already spends over 5% of its GDP – more than any other NATO member – on “defence” (i.e. armaments) wants US nukes to be based there. ‘When asked how the presence of nuclear weapons would make Poland safer, [President] Duda said it would deepen America's commitment to Polish security.

‘"Every strategic kind of infrastructure, American and Nato infrastructure, which we have on our soil is strengthening the inclination of the US and the North Atlantic Alliance to defend this territory."’

Luckily for us all, US Vice-President J. D. Vance said that

“I haven’t talked to the president about that particular issue, but I would be shocked if he was supportive of nuclear weapons extending further east into Europe”.

And at least one politician is proposing an unprovoked attack on Russia.

‘That’s why some of our countries are asking, ‘Why don’t we attack Russia now, instead of sitting waiting for it to attack us?’” an unnamed “prominent Eastern European politician” said, without elaborating’.

Why attack Russia if it is not threatening us?

Ah, but Russia – and perhaps China and Iran and a few others – are always a threat! Much better to destroy them before they have a chance to attack us.

Such thinking – if that is the right word – is insane. If Eastern European nations attack Russia, they will be in roughly the position of a family of squirrels deciding to attack a bear. Obviously they would be quickly and decisively defeated. The only conceivable object of such an exercise would be to drag the USA in, as the Kiev regime has been trying to do for years. It doesn’t seem at all likely that any US administration would start a shooting war against Russia. Even Mr Biden made it plain that he would never permit that.

Meanwhile Canada may ask for European nukes as “protection” against US aggression.

‘Chrystia Freeland, former deputy prime minister under Trudeau, warned that Trump poses a direct "threat" to Canada's sovereignty by saying that the country could potentially become the 51st U.S. state.

‘Trump has said that Canada is "not viable as a country" without U.S. trade.

‘Freeland proposed forming stronger defense ties with France and Britain, as their nuclear arsenals could aid Canada "at a time when the United States can pose a threat"’.

French President Emmanuel Macron has floated the idea that, if Mr Trump is unwilling to commit the US armed forces to fight Russia as part of NATO, France could fill the gap with its 290 thermonuclear nuclear warheads, which are manufactured, maintained, and operated independently of the USA.

"It is completely sovereign and entirely French," Macron said. "However, in response to the historic call of the future German chancellor, I have decided to open the strategic debate on the protection of our European continental allies through our deterrence".

‘"Now the question would be, 'Would a French president or British prime minister actually risk Paris or London for Tallinn, [Estonia], for example? That's the real challenge," says David Blagden, professor in international security and strategy at the University of Exeter in England’.

Blagden questions whether allies could rely on the French thermonuclear “umbrella”, since getting involved in a nuclear exchange would probably risk the destruction of Paris and other French cities, with enormous loss of life.

Professor Theodore Postol explains some basic facts about thermonuclear weapons:

Glenn Diesen’s Substack

Striving for Nuclear Armageddon

MIT professor and former Pentagon advisor Theodore Postol is a renowned expert in nuclear weapons systems, ballistic missile defence, submarine warfare and disarmament. Prof. Postol presents the growing threat of nuclear war that is increasingly ignored. Prof. Postol will soon travel to Europe to give lectures warning about dangerous nuclear development…

Read more

a year ago · 51 likes · 6 comments · Glenn Diesen

“…his main evidence for this premise being that fabulously wealthy Premier League footballers seem to have no problem integrating and that the King’s coronation was a ‘multifaith’ event”.

Two examples which serve perfectly to point up the superficiality of Nelson’s thinking. Soccer, while it has long been promoted as the new “inclusive” national religion, is after all just a game - if one that is capable of stirring up powerful emotions. And the coronation was the acme of illusion and pretence. No one, surely, believes that the monarch wields any power or even influence; so no one had any reason to object to an event that combined the maximum of empty symbolism with an absolute absence of any serious meaning. It was an opportunity for the great and the good to parade their importance before the eyes of most of the world.

More to the point, McGrogan is sceptical about

“…Nelson’s insistence that since ‘Britishness’ is only ‘a set of values that anyone can adopt’, there is absolutely no reason to be concerned about net migration figures of, say, a million a year, nor any reason to be anxious about whether all these people can successfully integrate into British society”.

There are at least two vital issues here:

1. Is it really so easy for immigrants to “adopt” British values, as one might put on a suit of clothes? (Even if they want to “adopt” those values, which Nelson does not doubt).

2. Are current immigration levels sustainable, regardless of the origins or cultural background of the new arrivals? This is not really a political question at all, but a scientific one concerning the carrying capacity of the UK’s land area during the next few years and decades. I intend to devote a forthcoming article to the matter, which has the gravest implications for us all in the UK.

Nelson recently recorded a video interview with Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster of Triggernometry that you can watch and listen to on Youtube. McGrogan refers to that interview, but unfortunately you can see only the first part of his article unless you are a paid subscriber to his Substack. Those few paragraphs, however, are enough to get a clear picture of his thoughts about Nelson.

Listening to Nelson’s pleasant, reasonable tones as he explains how ‘Britishness’ is only ‘a set of values that anyone can adopt’, it all sounds so straightforward. How could anyone disagree? Unlike almost all the great and the good who routinely invoke and praise “British values”, he is able and willing to give a tolerably full list of them.

In typically British fashion, he cannot get under way without some self-deprecating prefatory remarks. “What is the concept of Britishness?.. It’s almost impossible to define…” But then he goes swiftly up through the gears: “Multi-ethnic state… liberty and democracy… rule of law… tolerance… defending liberty… freedom of speech… you can make whatever you want of your life… common sense… shared values”.

For someone speaking without notes, that is a decent stab at an answer - or at least a good start. I could think of several other British values, such as the primacy of the individual, sympathy for the underdog, fair play, kindness to animals, distaste for fanaticism of any kind, pragmatism as opposed to idealism, dislike of regimentation, and the belief that a nice cup of tea goes a long way toward healing any hurt. (Just kidding about the tea). Oh, and the knowledge that “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me”. Quite important, that.

Nelson’s values seem to me to fall into four categories. The first, and apparently most important, has to do with “liberty and democracy”. He also mentions “defending liberty”, “freedom of speech” (often said to be the fundamental freedom on which all others rest), and “you can make whatever you want of your life”. This last is really nothing more than an explanation of what “freedom” and “liberty” mean.

Unfortunately for the advocates of “liberty and democracy”, the two are incompatible, as H. L. Mencken pointed out.

“Men in the mass never brook the destructive discussion of their fundamental beliefs, and that impatience is naturally most evident in those societies in which men in the mass are most influential. Democracy and free speech are not facets of one gem; democracy and free speech are eternal enemies”.

Admittedly that tough-minded judgment is irrelevant to societies like the UK and the USA, as neither of them has ever had proper democracy or uncensored free speech. And, as has often been remarked, limited free speech is like limited virginity. Mark Twain summed up the reality in his usual pithy way:

“It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them”. - Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XX

The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines “democracy” as

“…a form of government in which the people have a voice in the exercise of power, typically through elected representatives.
- a state governed in such a way.
- control of a group by the majority of its members”.

That is a wise and accurate definition; having a voice in the exercise of power does not imply having a decisive voice. Nohow and contrariwise. Neither in Britain nor in the USA are elected representatives responsive to the wishes of the voters. Benjamin I. Page and Martin Gilens proved conclusively that average U. S. citizens have little impact on public policy; the case is hardly different in the UK. Their book provides masses of detailed evidence.

In the interview, Kisin points out that most of the values named by Nelson are actually being extinguished by the UK government. As well as demanding rights, he suggests that immigrants should be held to certain duties… apparently forgetting that most people in Britain today consider “duty” a dirty word. Yet rights and duties are inseparable, as one person’s right implies other people’s duty to accord him that right.

And this seemingly trivial incident illustrates perfectly that, while continually praising “freedom and democracy”, British authorities go in perpetual fear of them and do whatever they can to discourage them. The police officers who “called on” Mrs Jones were perfectly ready to admit that she had committed no crime. They went round to put the frighteners on her at the behest of some contemptible local official who didn’t like being criticised on social media. But such criticism is not only the right of every free citizen; it is the lifeblood of democracy. Those who try to prevent or discourage it are the enemies of freedom and democracy, no matter how much they prate about them.

The other “British values” that Nelson cites are the “rule of law”, “tolerance”, and “common sense”. The last two, while vague, have been characteristic of British opinion down the centuries. Unfortunately, they are absolutely contrary to recent government policies. For years we have been hectored about the importance of tolerance by politicians, civil servants, and celebrities who themselves are frighteningly intolerant. As for common sense, if the difference between today’s Britain and its past could be summed up in four words, they might be “lack of common sense”. Many volumes of instances could be compiled, but you will certainly have your own list. (Does the name “Miliband” ring a bell, for example?)

“The rule of law” is intriguing. Of course, most of us would agree that civilised society depends on the existence and enforcement of appropriate laws. Such laws should go with the grain, so to speak, of people’s moral beliefs and assumptions - otherwise the laws are apt to be resented and ignored, leading to consequences ranging from disorder to the breakdown of society. That is a problem in today’s Britain, which contains so many people with different cultural, religious, and even linguistic backgrounds who have radically different - and even opposite - moral beliefs and assumptions. To take just one of the most glaringly obvious examples, the rule of which law? British common law, statute law, European law, international law, U. S. law (don’t laugh - it was, and still is, no joke for Julian Assange)? Or, as many would desire, Sharia law - which is directly and radically incompatible with all the others?

As for “shared values”, it has a nice ring to it - but actually it is directly incompatible with freedom of thought and conscience. Among the British values overlooked by Nelson, dislike of regimentation seems to me fundamental. Every single one of the great blows for freedom that we read about in the history books stemmed from someone’s refusal to be bullied and ordered around. It wasn’t an idealistic love of abstract “liberty” that led to Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, the trial and execution of King Charles I, the Bill of Rights, and the great Reform Act of 1832. No, it was the anger of ordinary and middling people at specific acts of high-handed repression by the over-mighty. And one of the very worst of those is when they try to tell us what we may and may not think. In other words, when they attempt to impose “shared values” on us.

Have you searched online lately for “British values”? I hadn’t until today. And what do you think I found? Page after page of the same thing: the five (or four) “fundamental British values” that His Majesty’s Government is seeking to ram down our throats!

Here is a typical example:

According DfE [sic], ‘fundamental British values’ comprise:

- democracy
- the rule of law
- individual liberty
- mutual respect for and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs, and for those without faith.

In case you were wondering, the DfE is the Department for Education - which has apparently been given the task of stamping those five standard “British values” on the brain of every unfortunate pupil who passes though our schools and universities. A better demonstration of contempt for the individual and freedom of thought could hardly be imagined. We are all to have the same “shared values” - not because they seem good to us, not because we admire those who professed and lived according to those values, but because Big Brother says so.

The Web site The Helpful Professor (honestly!) features an article on “The 5 British Values – Explained for Students”.

Written by Chris Drew (PhD)

The article begins:

“In 2014, the UK Government created five fundamental values that it proclaimed were the unifying values that were fundamental to British society and cohesion”.

Clearly not over-burdened with modesty, the UK Government has apparently gone into the business of manufacturing “fundamental values”. Does the idea of a government taking it upon itself to “create” values send cold shivers down your spine? I know it does mine.

Next, we learn that

These are the 5 fundamental values that have been developed by the UK Government in an attempt to create social unity and prevent extremism…

The 5 Values were first outlined in the Prevent strategy of 2011.

The rest of the article continues in similar vein, but I hope these few extracts will be enough to convey its highly dogmatic and opinionated style. Verging on extremism, in fact.

You can find out all about Prevent on the UK government’s Web site, which offers voluminous “guidance”.

The aim of Prevent is to stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism.

The objectives of Prevent are to:

- tackle the ideological causes of terrorism
- intervene early to support people susceptible to radicalisation
- enable people who have already engaged in terrorism to disengage and rehabilitate

Apparently those objectives are too urgent to permit the use of punctuation. We also learn that:

The Terrorism Act 2000 defines terrorism, both in and outside of the UK, as the use or threat of one or more of the actions listed below, and [sic] where they are designed to influence the government, or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public. The use or threat must also be for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause.

The specific actions included are:

- serious violence against a person;
- serious damage to property;
- endangering a person's life (other than that of the person committing the action);
- creating a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public; and
- action designed to seriously interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.

That definition of “terrorism” seems to me to fit UK and US foreign policy and use of armed force like a glove. To quote from a source that used to be considered the highest possible authority,

Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

And if you would like to watch a short video about those same five (or four) “British values”, here is one. Apologies for the wooden diction and government-issue verbiage, which seem to go with the territory.

On mulling over Fraser Nelson’s remarks about “Britishness” and how it is nothing more than ‘a set of values that anyone can adopt’, I feel every bit as bewildered as Kisin, Foster, and McGrogan. One comment on the Youtube video reads, ‘The mental gymnastics this guy does around the "what it means to be English" issue are something to behold’.

Kisin points out that most of those values are in fact being extinguished by the government. He suggests that immigrants should be held to certain duties… apparently unaware that many, if not most, people in Britain today consider “duty” a dirty word.

I was born to Scottish parents in Rosario de Santa Fe, Argentina (birthplace of the more famous Che Guevara and Lionel Messi). As a result, I was given Argentine citizenship (with no choice in the matter), and my parents were obliged to choose a saint’s name for me according to Argentine law. I have not returned to Argentina since I was 7, and I have long lost fluency in the language. Yet according to Nelson, I am Argentine not British. By the same token Rudyard Kipling, George Orwell, and many other distinguished British people were in fact Indian, not British.

Seeking an explanation, it struck me that Nelson thinks environment (nurture) is all-important, and genetics (nature) is trivial in comparison. He speaks of “the British project” as if Britain does not yet exist, but is being brought into being by the efforts of Nice Right Liberals like himself. His tone of voice when he dismissively scoffs at “ethnic” considerations speaks volumes. Kisin’s incredulity is a treat to watch – for instance when Nelson insists that if his son had been born in Japan he would be Japanese.

There are exceptions to almost everything in human life. It is possible for the white child of British parents or the black child of Nigerian parents to be born and grow up in Japan, and to identify as Japanese. (With the approval of the Japanese government, of course, and provided she reads, writes and speaks Japanese, and otherwise assimilates the culture and laws). And perhaps the many people of obvious Asian and African provenance in our Western governments and other elites are really indistinguishable from those whose ancestors have lived in a country for generations. But there are grounds for doubt, on at least two counts: genetics and culture.

For the first 6,000 or so years of civilisation humans lived in well-defined nations, consisting of people with common genetic origins. “In Latin, natio represents the children of the same birth and also a human group of same origin”. That was inevitable, as the great majority of people lived in the same place from birth to death. Conquests either imposed a thin layer of rulers over the native populace, which soon absorbed them - as happened often in China and at least twice in England - or wiped out the defeated, who were then replaced by the equally homogeneous victors.

It was only with the age of European colonial conquests, starting in the late 15th century, that so-called “civic nations” arose. Whereas the traditional “ethnic nation” comprises people of common genetic stock, civic nations are united only by their governments and constitutions - the USA being the classic example. As the indigenous peoples had been virtually exterminated, the USA inherited a virgin continent and was able to take undisputed control of all its land. This was quickly populated by immigrants from Europe, and later from the rest of the world. In the past few decades the idea of mass migration has been widely accepted and even welcomed, on the assumption that the USA sets an example for all others to copy. Since the 1960s it has even come to be suggested that the world of the future will be “coffee coloured”, as all distinctive racial features will have been merged into a giant version of the USA’s famous “melting pot”.

That might seem desirable. When everyone looks, thinks, and feels the same, the reasoning goes, there won’t be any more wars caused by racial hatred or belief in the superiority or inferiority of particular groups. But there is a long way to go before all genetic differences could be ironed out. For a child to be conceived, two people must come together in the same place, barring some kind of global sperm donor delivery service. Moving billions around the world is not so easy.

In the meantime, it can’t be denied that different nations, peoples, or races continue to differ in important ways for both genetic and cultural reasons. It’s hard to mistake a Chinese person for a Kenyan, or a Native American for an Indian. (Although Columbus and his fellow colonists did).

And this is where a great divide opens up between the liberal who believes most human differences are due to environment, and the conservative who assigns more weight to heredity. That is perhaps why Nelson thinks that immigrants from anywhere in the world coming to the UK will fit in quickly and easily. All they need do is “adopt British values”, much as one might change licence plates on a car or learn to drive on the left (as if that were simple). True, one can learn to keep left after a lifetime of keeping right - until that morning when you forget and cause a head-on collision.

But many things in life are not under our conscious control. All animals are instinctively suspicious and wary of the unfamiliar, and most exhibit strong inclinations to defend territory. Even a pet dog or cat will react with hostility to a strange animal or human who invades its space. And it is well known that humans have the same unconscious reflexes - we are alive because millions of generations of our ancestors evolved them. Those that didn’t mostly died without offspring.

Scientists have studied people’s needs for “personal space” and come to some interesting and very important conclusions. This is Wikipedia’s summary:

Personal space is the region surrounding a person which they regard as psychologically theirs. Most people value their personal space and feel discomfort, anger, or anxiety when their personal space is encroached [on]. Permitting a person to enter personal space and entering somebody else's personal space are indicators of perception of those people's relationship. An intimate zone is reserved for close friends, lovers, children and close family members. Another zone is used for conversations with friends, to chat with associates, and in group discussions. A further zone is reserved for strangers, newly formed groups, and new acquaintances…

Personal space is highly variable, due to cultural differences and personal preferences. On average, preferences vary significantly between countries…

This may lead to discomfort and misunderstandings when someone from a country where people stand close together meets someone who is more “stand-offish”. It has been remarked that criminals often have unusually large personal spaces, suggesting that they may instinctively become violent when another person gets too close.

One of the practical drawbacks of the “melting pot” society is that people are thrown together with many others who may have different expectations of personal space - among other customs. What is just a pretty dress in one place may be an obscenely revealing one elsewhere. A friendly touch may elicit a knife thrust if misinterpreted. And so on. Chinese and Japanese people, in general, grow up accustomed to crowded environments; and that, as well as upbringing and education, makes them polite. On the other hand there is supposed to be an Afghan saying, "Me against my brother; my brother and I against our cousins; we and our cousins against everyone else". Very much the opposite of the polite city dweller’s policy, and no recipe for peaceful coexistence in crowded places.

As McGrogan reflects,

“Nice Right Liberalism is dying because the Nice Right Liberals are simply not equipped, precisely by dint of their backgrounds, to understand that human beings are always rooted in a place, a culture, a context, an upbringing, a class, and a circumstance - and that this informs how they see the world”.

And ex-London detective Dominic Adler has this to say about “diversity training in the Metropolitan Police. Yes, London. A truly, dizzyingly, cosmopolitan World City”.

Attending yet another finger-wagging diversity lecture, I’d sometimes wonder if part of the Met’s intractable problem with race was the sheer impossibility of wrapping your head around the mores and sensitivities of… absolutely everyone. You’d need a police force made up of cultural anthropologists.

Two and a half centuries after the USA was founded, during most of which the melting pot theory was generally accepted as a worthy aspiration, it’s time we questioned the whole idea. Science can be described as the process whereby plausible, comfortable narratives are subjected to the test of experiment. That is now happening to the belief that people of all races, countries, religions, and natures will get to know and accept one another if they are just placed in proximity for long enough.

Perhaps Fraser Nelson is wrong in thinking that ‘Britishness’ is only ‘a set of values that anyone can adopt’.

In the 1950s and 1960s, when I discovered Heinlein and eagerly read all his work that I could find, I was an SF enthusiast; and therefore a technology optimist. It was a time of Progress with a capital P. Technology led to higher standards of living, which made everyone better off, as well as better nourished, healthier, better educated, and both more likely to participate in public affairs and better equipped to do so effectively. That being so, how could the future bring us anything but continuous, if gradual, improvement in quality of life – including education, knowledge, sanity, and reasonable behaviour?

In most respects, Heinlein was as hard-edged, logical, and unemotional an engineer as ever graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. He made his reputation as “the Grand Master of Science Fiction” (barely ahead of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke) by two abilities, unusual individually and almost unique in combination. He had a talent for extrapolating engineering trends into the future, and imagining how real, everyday people’s lives would be changed by them. Other authors could explain how a rocket ship would be able to travel to other planets, or how slight the force of gravity is on the Moon. But they were hardly ever the same authors who could conjure up convincing men, women, and children, give them natural human motives, hopes and fears, and show their everyday lives in the world of the future.

Heinlein excelled at writing such stories, and this enabled him not only to break into the SF market at his first attempt, but to attain such consistent success that he felt able to tell John W. Campbell, editor of “Astounding Science Fiction”, that he would go on writing until one of his stories was rejected – and then retire. Many talented writers have gone for years without having a story accepted, so Heinlein’s attitude would have seemed arrogant if it had not been justified by success. (The resolution didn’t last for long, as inevitably he began getting rejections - but just sold the stories to other editors).

When his first story, “Life-Line”, was published by “Astounding” in August 1939, just before WW2 broke out in Europe, Heinlein’s reaction, gazing at the cheque for $70 (worth over $1,000 today), was characteristic. "How long has this racket been going on? And why didn't anybody tell me about it sooner?" He later admitted, “It took me four days; I am a slow typist”.

The original brief summary in Heinlein’s “Future History” chart assigned “The Crazy Years” to the period 1951-66.

“Considerable technical advance during this period, accompanied by a gradual deterioration of mores, orientation and social institutions, terminating in mass psychoses in the sixth decade, and the Interregnum”.

This was also a time of “… semantic disorientation and mass hysteria…” As John C. Wright speculates,

“While Heinlein (as far as I know) supplied no rationale for the advent and the recession of the craziness in the Crazy Years, A. E. van Vogt was freer with [his] speculations: insanity, either of individuals or of peoples, in van Vogt’s stories (and perhaps in the theories of [Count Alfred] Korzybski, who discovered or invented General Semantics) is caused by a fracture or disjunction between symbol and object. When your thoughts, and the thing about which you think, do not match up on a cognitive level, that is a falsehood, a false belief. When the emotions associated with the thought do not match to the thing about which you think, that is a false-to-facts association, which can range from merely a mistake to neurosis to psychosis, depending on the severity of the disjunction. You are crazy. If you hate your sister because she reminds you of your mother who beat you, that association is false-to-facts, neurotic. If you hate your sister because you have hallucinated that you are Cinderella, that association is falser-to-facts, more removed from reality, possibly psychotic”.

Robert Platt Bell notices a retrospective reference to the Crazy Years in Heinlein’s last novel, “To Sail Beyond the Sunset” (1987).

‘So many casual killings in public streets and public parks and public transports that most lawful citizens avoided going out after dark…

“Public school teachers and state university professors who taught that patriotism was an obsolete concept, that marriage was an obsolete concept, that sin was an obsolete concept, that politeness was an obsolete concept – that the United States itself was an obsolete concept…

“Cocaine and heroin called “recreational drugs”, felony theft called “joyriding” … felonious assault by gangs called “muggings”, and the reaction to all these crimes was “boys will be boys”, so scold them and put them on probation but don’t ruin their lives by treating them as criminals…

“Millions of women who found it more rewarding to have babies out of wedlock than it would be to get married or to go to work…’

In Heinlein’s novel “Stranger in a Strange Land”, the Secretary-General of the Federation High Council – effectively President of Earth – is manipulated through his wife’s astrologer, who persuades her that “the stars” command a certain course of action. Obviously a direct reference to President Ronald Reagan’s wife Nancy and Joan Quigley, her personal astrologer.

Except that Reagan became President in 1981, and “Stranger in a Strange Land” was published in 1961!

Fictional headlines from the Crazy Years in the USA (from Heinlein’s novel “Methuselah’s Children”, reproduced by “The Daily Kos”):

BABY BILL BREAKS BANK
2-year toddler youngest winner $1,000,000 TV jackpot
White House phones congrats

-----
COURT ORDERS STATEHOUSE SOLD
Colorado Supreme Bench Rules State Old Age Pension Has First Lien All State Property

-----
N.Y. YOUTH MEET DEMANDS UPPER LIMIT ON FRANCHISE

-----
"U.S. BIRTH RATE ‘TOP SECRET’”—DEFENSE SEC

-----
CAROLINA CONGRESSMAN COPS BEAUTY CROWN
“Available for draft for President” she announces while starting tour to show her qualifications

-----
IOWA RAISES VOTING AGE TO FORTY-ONE
Rioting on Des Moines Campus

-----
EARTH-EATING FAD MOVES WEST: CHICAGO PARSON EATS CLAY SANDWICH IN PULPIT
“Back to simple things,” he advises flock

-----
LOS ANGELES HI-SCHOOL MOB DEFIES SCHOOL BOARD
“Higher Pay, Shorter Hours, no Homework—We Demand Our Right to Elect Teachers, Coaches.”

-----

SUICIDE RATE UP NINTH SUCCESSIVE YEAR
AEC denies Fall-Out to blame.

Significantly, the “Daily Kos” article (published in 2021) then imagines some current headlines that the writers deem similarly deranged. But most of them are transparently pro-Democrat and anti-Republican! Matters are very much complicated by the way in which headlines that some consider crazy are in fact truthful – but sharply angled from a particular viewpoint – while others that are believed true may actually be quite false or misleading. All depending on the reader’s political, religious, or other slant. When Heinlein was writing, most people still felt fairly safe in trusting the mainstream media most of the time.

Recently Paul Craig Roberts published the following spoof headline:

“Breaking News! Elon Musk offers to purchase the FBI for $100 billion. No word yet if the Clintons are willing to sell”.

For all I know, there may be some people who take it seriously. If read as satire, however...

In other news, “Taxpayers should fund $300,000 UTERUS transplants to help transgender women get pregnant, suggests American Medical Association”.

“Taxpayers’ cash ploughed into wooden bottles in net zero drive”

“The Case of David Irving Shows that Nothing Is More Dangerous than Telling the Truth”

‘UK’s “Online Safety Act” OFFICIALLY grants MSM permission to publish lies’

“Wikipedia Suppresses Basketball Player’s Post-Vaccine Blood Clot Troubles”

“Germany Labels Journalist 'Criminal' And Seizes Her Bank Accounts For Reporting From Ukraine”
“They closed her YouTube channel, blocked her PayPal account, and sentenced her to three years in prison without trial for interviewing Ukrainian citizens in the Donbas”

“Wikipedia: A Disinformation Operation?”

“Are the Tech Bros Insane?”

“Number of Children Who Think They are Wrong Sex Surges 50-Fold”

“Climate Change Giving Meaning to Life”

“Google Gemini tells grad student to 'please die' while helping with his homework”

“‘Insane’: Boston Researchers Create ‘More Lethal’ Strain of COVID, Prompting Calls to Shut Down Risky Gain-of-Function Research”

Well, I could go on adding weird, crazy, terrifying headlines all evening – but that small sample should be enough to prove that we are still living through the Crazy Years. Like most SF authors, Heinlein actually pulled some of his punches.

Finally, recalling Wright’s thoughts about the prevalence of neurosis and psychosis:

Psychosis is a condition of the mind or psyche that results in difficulties determining what is real and what is not real. Symptoms may include delusions and hallucinations, among other features. Additional symptoms are disorganized thinking and incoherent speech and behavior that is inappropriate for a given situation. There may also be sleep problems, social withdrawal, lack of motivation, and difficulties carrying out daily activities. Psychosis can have serious adverse outcomes…

Psychosis may involve delusional beliefs. A delusion is a fixed, false idiosyncratic belief, which does not change even when presented with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. Delusions are context- and culture-dependent: a belief that inhibits critical functioning and is widely considered delusional in one population may be common (and even adaptive) in another, or in the same population at a later time. Since normative views may contradict available evidence, a belief need not contravene cultural standards in order to be considered delusional.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosis

As Julian Macfarlane observed recently,

“What he really wants are things he’s not bloviating about — like access to Canadian water for thirsty American states, bargains on all sorts of energy, and free access to rare earths and minerals necessary to American industry, especially the defense industry, with tax write-offs for American companies. Let’s just say he is trying to get control of Canadian resources as once the US did with Russian assets”.

It’s not just Canadian resources, though. Not by a long chalk. A similar story is emerging about Ukraine. ‘US Senator Lindsey Graham earlier warned that Washington "cannot afford" to allow Russia to achieve victory in the Ukraine conflict as this would mean losing direct access to vast mineral assets’.

As one reader commented [spelling tweaked], “You see the imperialists. One day they will tell African countries give us your resources or we invade your country. They are telling Panama to cede the canal to them or they invade it”.

According to Sputnik International, “Ukraine is endowed with $3-11.5 trillion in lithium alone, plus trillions more in silver, gold, uranium, aluminum, copper, iron, manganese, titanium, and hydrocarbons. It’s also got Europe’s biggest supply of rare earths, beryllium, niobium, and zirconium”.

Russia has recently captured two of Ukraine’s biggest lithium deposits, at Shevchenko and Krutaya Balka. The remaining two are west of the Dnieper, so temporarily out of Russia’s reach. To make matters worse from Washington’s standpoint, the world’s biggest reserves of rare earths are in China. It could be quite tricky, diplomatically, negotiating supplies of rare earths that you need to make weapons with which to attack the supplier of the rare earths!

“Besides lithium, the corrupt Kiev regime has lost control over reserves of coal, gas, oil, and rare earth metals worth a total of about $12 trillion”. It seems Senator Everett Dirksen didn’t really say, “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you're talking real money” – which is a pity. But these days the price has risen by three, count ‘em three, orders of magnitude. Now it’s “A trillion here, a trillion there…” And that, it seems, is eminently worth fighting for. But the question is: can the USA be sure of winning any more? Because fighting and losing could be catastrophic.

According to the Institute of Geology, Ukraine possesses rare earth elements such as lanthanum and cerium, used in TVs and lighting; neodymium, used in wind turbines and EV batteries; and erbium and yttrium, whose applications range from nuclear power to lasers. The EU-funded research also indicates that Ukraine has reserves of scandium, another scarce and valuable rare earth used to make lightweight aluminum alloys, particularly for aerospace.

As well as rare earths, Sputnik says that Ukraine possesses the following valuable elements:

• Lithium: Critical for batteries in electric vehicles and renewable energy storage.

• Gallium: Vital for semiconductors and photovoltaic cells in solar panels.

• Zirconium: Used in nuclear reactors, ceramics, and electronics.

• Beryllium: Essential for aerospace, defense, and telecommunications.

• Titanium: Used in aircraft construction, medical devices, and military applications.

• Manganese: Necessary for steel production and batteries.

Mr Trump’s take on those mineral deposits is this.

“They have very valuable lands in terms of rare earth metals, oil and gas. I want our money to be protected, we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars. And they may make a deal, they may not. They may become Russian someday, they may not become Russian. But we will have all this money, and I say I want it back. I said I want the equivalent of, say, $500 billion in rare earth metals. And they basically agreed to do that. So at least we don’t feel like fools.”

As well as Canada, Greenland, and Ukraine, the US government has openly cast envious eyes on the natural resources of Bolivia, Venezuela, Africa, and even Iran. (Not to mention Libya, Syria, and other “failed nations”. I wonder why they “failed”).

In 2020, “In response to the accusation that the US government organised a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia in order for Tesla to secure lithium there, Elon Musk tweeted".

‘We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it’.

It’s pretty clear that, when push comes to shove, the US government at least is quite ready to ignore international law, the “Westphalian System” (the principle that each state has exclusive sovereignty over its territory), and indeed the United Nations and its charter. President Trump has even proposed to sanction the International Criminal Court (ICC) after it issued arrest warrants for Israelis over the war in Gaza.

However, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov replied:

“The first step towards normalizing bilateral relations, meaning negotiations based on the principles of mutual respect and equality, should be taken by the United States. We are open to dialogue, ready to negotiate in a tough bargaining mode, taking into account the realities ‘on the ground’ and our national interests, predetermined by history and geography. So the decisions and choice are up to Trump and his team… Washington’s attempts to give Moscow ultimatums or to demonstrate the alleged ‘big favor’ in exchange for unacceptable U.S. demands are doomed to failure in the dialogue with Russia”.

In this dispute Russia confronts the USA as an “equal in power” and does not have to yield one inch in the face of American threats.

In my first article on the Melian Dialogue I explained the context of that famous exchange of views, and how when the Melians refused the Athenians’ demand that they surrender and pay tribute, they were mercilessly exterminated. It is the principles stated by the Athenians that we should study, because they highlight – with perfect clarity and without any of the hypocrisy and shamming that have become so prevalent today – the motives that really control humans in pursuit of power over one another.

Here are the key parts of the Athenian spokesman’s speech, as imagined by Thucydides.

Athenian: "… we hope that you… will aim at what is feasible… since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must"…

"Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can. And it is not as if we were the first to make this law, or to act upon it when made: we found it existing before us, and shall leave it to exist forever after us; all we do is to make use of it, knowing that you and everybody else, having the same power as we have, would do the same as we do".

The two core principles are:

1. [R]ight, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

2. Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can.

Have those rules always held good? Do they still, and do they look like continuing to? It certainly seems so, if we ignore the frenzied attempts of politicians and pundits to persuade us otherwise.

Logically, the Athenian principles imply that all considerations of “right” and “wrong” (ethics, law, contracts, promises, oaths, treaties, etc.) apply only “between equals in power”. In other words, they come into consideration only as a “tie-breaker” or “penalty shoot-out” when forces are balanced. Anyone who has the power to impose his will normally does so regardless. Is anything ever settled except by violence or the threat of it? (Or, occasionally, other forms of power such as religious threats, financial coercion, boycotts and “sanctions”, or social disapproval).

The second principle evidently applies only to a small minority of humans: those who hunger for power. But history suggests, and anthropology confirms, that such people are always to be found in any community, and will inevitably seize power by one means or another.

How true has this been since 416 BC (the year of the Melian Dialogue)? Generally, very consistently. Rulers have used (consciously or unconsciously) a kind of “ratchet” technique. As long as force serves them, they use it to increase their power and wealth. When they meet with serious resistance – as always happens sooner or later – they take legalistic measures to lock in what they have gained so far, and settle down to peaceful negotiation and diplomacy. But they are always alert for any chance to revert to violence if they believe it will succeed.

The Greeks and Romans made many laws and treaties, but typically broke them as soon as it suited them. As the great economist Michael Hudson explains,

“Rome’s richest and most powerful administered the courts in their own favor and simply ignored the laws, broke contracts and dodged taxes. Contracts were only for the weak”. [“The Collapse of Antiquity”, p424 footnote].

Rome carried out successive conquests of Italy, Carthage, Greece, the Middle East, Egypt, North Africa, Gaul (roughly France and Belgium), Spain, Britain, and other countries. As long as the potential antagonists were strong enough to defend themselves, Rome would hold back and deal with them diplomatically. But the moment they weakened, even briefly, the legions tramped in and another province was annexed. And rivers of treasure flowed back to Rome.

The Germanic “barbarians” behaved similarly, aided by their lack of formal hierarchy. A king might agree a treaty, but fail to restrain his followers – just as, over 1,000 years later, the US government made countless treaties with Native American tribes, but was somehow unable to restrain its individual citizens from infiltrating and homesteading in defiance of those treaties. Another, very effective, ratchet mechanism.

In medieval Europe a subtly different state of affairs prevailed. Everyone was bound by a dense network of traditional as well as legal and religious rights and obligations; but this was so complex that pretexts could be found for almost any desired act. A fine example was the contrived and disingenuous English appeal to the ancient “Salic Law” to support Henry V’s claim to the throne of France. Having won the battle of Agincourt, Henry forced the weak French King Charles VI to sign the Treaty of Troyes and let Henry marry his daughter.

When Henry died suddenly a few years later, his infant son Henry VI theoretically became king of both England and France. Ironically, he was too weak - physically and mentally - to hold either of the thrones that had been won by violence. The French threw the English out of their country, ending the Hundred Years War; and Henry was deposed by Edward IV, a tall, strong, self-confident man who was also a fine general. (He was so self-confident that he refrained from having Henry killed, as almost any other ruler of the time would have done). Yet again the principles of the Melian Dialogue triumphed: by force Henry V gained the right for his son to be King of England and France, but by his unwillingness to exercise force Henry VI lost everything that his father had won for him.

The middle ages saw many allegedly religious wars, usually fought for selfish reasons, such as younger sons of Norman nobles seeking land in Sicily and the Holy Land. King Richard I of England (“the Lionheart”) fought the great Muslim emir Saladin, but had to acknowledge him at least an equal in war and negotiated a peace treaty. Not long after, the Emperor Frederick II went on crusade, shrewdly assessed conditions, and met the Sultan al-Kamil to agree another reasonable peace, giving the Christians Jerusalem, Nazareth, Bethlehem, and a small coastal strip. The Pope was outraged at this most improper, bloodless way of conducting a crusade; but it was a greater success than most other campaigns in Palestine.

Occasionally, the middle ages saw an apparent exception to the Melian principles: religious power could trump secular. In 1077, after a climactic dispute between the Emperor Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII, the Emperor was forced to submit, reportedly waiting for three days and nights before the castle gate at Canossa while a blizzard raged. What irresistible weapon forced the supreme ruler of Europe to kneel before a mere priest? The Pope had excommunicated him, forbidding any priest to give him the sacraments of the Church, and potentially releasing all his subjects from their allegiance. In the face of this spiritual hydrogen bomb, the Emperor gave in.

Eduard Schwoiser’s painting vividly evokes the proud Emperor standing barefoot in the freezing cold, while the Pope looks down triumphantly from above.

Although this story looks like an exception to the Melian principles, it is really just a case of a uniquely terrifying threat: burning eternally in Hell. The Emperor Frederick II neatly sidestepped such religious sanctions; agnostic or atheist himself, he hired only Muslims, who cared nothing for the Pope, for his bodyguard.

European history after the middle ages is an endless tale of alliances, conquests, and rebellions. The continent was racked by continual wars as France, Spain, England, Austria, Russia, and even Sweden fought for dominance. (Italy was still a patchwork of small independent states). At one time Frederick the Great of Prussia was defending his fledgling country against Austria, France, Russia, Sweden, and the Holy Roman Empire simultaneously. Astonishingly, he succeeded. No wonder “Prussian militarism” became a cliché; without it, there could have been no Prussia.

The 16^th and 17^th centuries saw the colonial era go into top gear. Driven by the search for better trade routes to the wealth of the East, and then West, Indies, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, English, and French ships sailed to the ends of the earth: India, China, Japan, Indonesia, Africa, and the New World. The land routes across Asia were blocked by the Turkish Empire. As usual, the principles of the Melian Dialogue held sway regardless of the looters’ fine words and theories about civilisation and religion.

To follow out the echoes and implications of the Melian Dialogue through even European history would take a book – and a fairly hefty one. This article has already grown long enough, so I’ll resume the story in a third – and possibly final – instalment soon.

However, if you pay attention, after a while you begin to develop suspicions about some sources and relative confidence in others.

This morning I notice the following stories.

1. Lieutenant-Colonel Tulsi Gabbard, nominated by Mr Trump to be Director of National Intelligence, tells the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that RT (Russia Today) is a propaganda outlet of the Russian government. “QUESTION 107: What is your view of the reliability of information published on the Russian state-news site, Russia Today (RT)?”

   “RT News is a propaganda arm of the Russian state government and is not a

   reliable source of objective news reporting”.

   In fact, Lt-Col Gabbard was quite outspoken about her loyalty to the USA and her dismissive contempt for “Russian propaganda”.

2. The Senate Committee will probably vote on Lt-Col Gabbard’s confirmation today.

3. Lt-Col Gabbard has given disappointing replies to the questions of Senators and others. There is a Catch-22; if she maintains the positions she has voiced for the past few years, she will certainly not be confirmed. So to get the job she must start out either by performing smart 180-degree turns on most of the important issues or by lying. Ray McGovern thinks it unlikely she will succeed. He knows whereof he speaks, having spent 27 years as a C.I.A. analyst, leading the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch, and conducting the President’s Daily Brief. The mainstream media has indulged in heavy and one-sided criticism of Lt-Col Gabbard, accusing her of being open-minded, fair, and balanced.

4. Mr Zelensky claims to have lost $100 billion down the back of the sofa. He sounds hurt that anyone would ask him to account for it. “So unfair…” The US government says the cheque is in the post… Former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, now Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council, describes Mr Zelensky’s statement as “a brazen lie”.

5. Giacomo Lopresti, a British ex-MP, has gone to Kiev - presumably not to fight on the front line, as he is 55. ‘With prior experience as a corporal in the UK Army Reserve, Lopresti is “using his skills” to contribute to Ukraine’s war effort against Russia, the report said. He traveled to the country in November, months after the Tory wipeout in last June’s election, and has since joined Kiev’s International Legion, the military unit dedicated to foreign fighters.

   ‘His current duties reportedly include foreign relations and diplomacy, weapons procurement, and working with veterans and charities operating in Ukraine’.

Has the alleged disappearance of $100 billion ostensibly destined for Kiev anything to do with its attractiveness for people like Lopresti? Just asking. Otherwise it’s hard to understand the attraction of such a dangerous and corruption-ridden city.

One also wonders why the US Constitution requires a newly-elected President to get the Senate’s permission to appoint the officials he chooses. This provision allows the Senate to hamstring the President, for instance by denying him timely, truthful, and accurate information. What if the only candidates for DNI that the Senate will approve are such as can be relied upon systematically to misinform the President?

I find RT - which I have read selectively for many years - much more honest and reliable than any of the Western mainstream media. One of its greatest strengths is that it runs stories that are simply never mentioned in the West (Consigned to the notorious “memory hole”).

Please note that the URL rt.com is blocked in many parts of the world, but for some unaccountable reason swentr.site works so far. I have cited links with https:// (secure HTTP), but if they don’t work for you try http:// instead.

As Richard Wrangham has argued (with copious evidence and examples) in books such as “Demonic Males” and “The Goodness Paradox”, humans exhibit remarkably little “reactive aggression”. If you approach most animals too closely they become unsettled, warn you off, and eventually attack. We have been domesticated by millennia of living in society so that today we can live cheek by jowl with other people and rarely, if ever, even quarrel, let alone fight or kill.

But Wrangham points out that there is a different kind of violence that humans display more than any other animals except, perhaps, ants: “proactive aggression”. This is cold-blooded, planned, deliberate killing – often for gain, but sometimes apparently just for its own sake. It is the behaviour that leads to premeditated murder, war, and conquest. Significantly, it is also routinely manifested by chimpanzees, although somewhat less by our more peaceable cousins, bonobos. War, it seems, is inextricably woven into our genes and our instincts.

Throughout history (and no doubt prehistory) humans have resolved their differences through violence. There are two extreme opinions about this:

1. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has”. – Margaret Mead, “Male and Female” 1949.

2. “Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must". – Athenian spokesman, Melos, 416 BC.

If she really said it, Margaret Mead’s must be one of the silliest remarks ever uttered. What has changed the world most often has been large-scale, ruthless violence or the threat of it. As Al Capone remarked, “You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone” – in which case you may agree that the kind word becomes optional. I don’t know whether Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, or Timur Lenk (aka Tamerlane) consulted a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens before setting out on their campaigns of wholesale carnage; even if they did, most of us would not consider that the most significant fact about them.

The siege of Melos occurred during the Second Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) between the Greek cities of Athens and Sparta, supported by their allies. From start to finish it lasted 27 years: almost three times as long as both World Wars put together, and nearly as long as the ghastly Thirty Years War (1618-1648) that ravaged Europe and may have halved its population. The Peloponnesian War, as it is often called for brevity’s sake, was just as bloody and destructive, as we know from eye-witness accounts. Of these, by far the most comprehensive is that of the Athenian Thucydides, a disgraced general who took an extremely objective, dispassionate view of events. The full text of his book is available online or in several paper editions. Most historians and historiographers rate Thucydides as the first professional historian, and perhaps the equal of any since.

Some of us were taught ancient Greek history at school or university, and others may have read about it for its intrinsic interest. For the benefit of those who don’t have that background, or have forgotten it, the following paragraphs aim to give the gist. The map below (courtesy of Wikipedia1) shows most of the places referred to; some French has crept in, but the only important feature affected is the Aegean Sea (“Mer Égéé”). Greece is on the left and the extreme Western edge of the huge Persian Empire to the right; nowadays this is part of Turkey. The yellow areas – islands and coastal regions – belong to the Delian League, controlled by Athens, while the red zones are members of the rival Peloponnesian League headed by Sparta. Melos, a small island a couple of inches to the right of Sparta, is coloured red – a mistake, as although founded by Sparta, it was strictly neutral; a most important point in what follows.

In 510 BC a revolution in Athens led to the overthrow of Hippias, last of the “tyrants” (monarchs). Coincidentally, this was about when the last king of Rome was expelled; so the Athenian and Roman republics began almost simultaneously. Provoked by the burning of his local capital of Sardis by angry Ionian Greeks in 498 BC, the Persian King Darius the Great vowed revenge and ordered a punitive invasion of Greece. A Persian army landed at Marathon near Athens in 490 BC, but was defeated in one of the most famous battles in history.

Darius’ son King Xerxes launched a second invasion in 480 BC, when after the one-sided fight at Thermopylae where Spartan King Leonidas and his men died resisting the Persians, the latter were decisively beaten in the sea battle of Salamis and on land at Plataea. They did, however, exact a measure of revenge by burning the city of Athens. After another 30 years of intermittent warfare, a rather fragile peace was finally agreed between Persia and the Greeks in 449 BC.

The alliance that became known as the Delian League, after the island of Delos where it had its headquarters, fought the Persian Empire to a standstill. The League was set up by Athens, with almost all of the Greek cities that felt threatened by Persia as members. (Coloured yellow on the map). Formally, it was an offensive and defensive alliance of autonomous states, somewhat similar in this respect to NATO. Just as NATO was supposedly instituted to defend against possible attacks by the USSR, the Delian League constituted a shield against the Persian superpower. Each member was obliged to contribute either cash or armed forces in the form of ships and soldiers, but as time went by almost all of them chose to pay – huge amounts of treasure that found its way into the Athenian coffers and helped to embellish the new city of Athens with immortal art and buildings like the Parthenon. Another result was that Athens came to have the most powerful navy in the Greek world. Just as NATO became a politically acceptable mask for American policies, the Delian League was a thinly disguised Athenian empire pretending to be purely defensive. And like NATO, it almost immediately started to behave in expansionist and even hostile ways.

The parallel between Athens and the USA could hardly be more obvious. Hubristically proud of its democracy; keen to colonise under the colour of evangelising; owner of a mighty fleet and a powerful army; more or less insulated from attack by the sea and its naval power... and so on.

Extending this comparison, the Sparta of today must surely be Russia. Considered invincible in war, but peaceful by nature – almost to a fault. Disdained by the Americans/Athenians as unenterprising, backward in culture, technology, almost everything. But a very bad people to underestimate, because – like the Russians – the Spartans did not usually start wars; they finished them.

At the risk of pushing the resemblance too far, China might eventually turn out to be Syracuse. It fits the bill, and if the Americans try to attack it their fate may be similar to the Athenians'.

Sparta had its own alliance, the Peloponnesian League (coloured red in the map), which was older than the Delian League and focused on the Peloponnese, the southern Greek peninsula where Sparta lay. It included other renowned cities such as Argos, Corinth, Mantinea, and Thebes as well as the districts of Arcadia and Achaia [aka Achaea]. Like Sparta, those were mainly land powers, and the Peloponnesian League’s original “minimum” purpose was to prevent hostile forces from invading the peninsula. That was facilitated by the narrowness of the Isthmus of Corinth, the only land bridge to the rest of Greece, which made it eminently defensible.

Heavy fighting broke out again around 440 BC, with the rebellion of Samos – supposedly an ally of Athens, but one that had begun to regret its lost independence. That revolt was crushed, but in 431 BC Sparta and its allies once again went to war against Athens. This time it was really serious, and Sparta eventually captured Athens itself in 404 BC.

For the purposes of this article I want to focus on a single event that took place in 416 BC: the siege and capture of Melos by the Athenians. After ten years of indecisive manoeuvring on land and sea, the Peace of Nicias (421 BC) ushered in a period of formal truce that was in some ways reminiscent of today’s world. The major powers refrained from attacking one another directly, but felt free to vent their hostility on lesser states – especially those allied with their main enemy. In 418 BC the Athenians invaded the Peloponnese – Sparta’s home territory – with support from Argos, Mantinea, Arcadia, and others, but they were defeated at the battle of Mantinea and thrown back with heavy loss.

That summer a sizeable Athenian fleet – sixty ships with 2,000 hoplites [heavy infantry] – paid a visit to Melos and invited the islanders to submit to Athens and join the Delian Confederacy. From behind their walls the Melians refused, and after a while the fleet sailed off in search of easier pickings.

Two years later, the Athenians and their allies were back – and this time they were not to be denied. Although he had no way of knowing exactly what was said, Thucydides – as was the custom of historians then and for centuries to come – simply made up speeches for the two sides to deliver. It’s likely that he captured the spirit of the dialogue and the main points. We can be sure that his version of the Athenian attitude is faithful, as he himself had been an Athenian general until disgraced and exiled.

Athenian: "For ourselves, we shall not trouble you with specious pretences—either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Mede [the Persians], or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us—and make a long speech which would not be believed; and in return we hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Spartans, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must".

Melians: "You may be sure that we are as well aware as you of the difficulty of contending against your power and fortune, unless the terms be equal. But we trust that the gods may grant us fortune as good as yours, since we are just men fighting against unjust, and that what we want in power will be made up by the alliance of the Lacedaemonians [Spartans], who are bound, if only for very shame, to come to the aid of their kindred. Our confidence, therefore, after all is not so utterly irrational”.

After a good deal of discussion, with the Melians arguing that they were firmly neutral and doing Athens no harm, and the Athenians relentlessly insisting that the Melians must surrender or die, Thucydides gives the Athenian spokesman this ringing speech:

Athenian: "Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can. And it is not as if we were the first to make this law, or to act upon it when made: we found it existing before us, and shall leave it to exist forever after us; all we do is to make use of it, knowing that you and everybody else, having the same power as we have, would do the same as we do".

Thucydides finishes the story – the merest incident in his grand narrative – briskly:

“Reinforcements afterwards arriving from Athens… the siege was now pressed vigorously; and some treachery taking place inside, the Melians surrendered at discretion to the Athenians, who put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves, and subsequently sent out five hundred colonists and inhabited the place themselves”.

The Melians were quite right in maintaining that the island would be of little value to the Athenians. At most, the latter had demonstrated that the Spartans would not risk a sea battle to rescue their long-established colony; and given yet another example of frightfulness, which cut less ice then than it would today. Killing enemies who refused to surrender immediately was common practice; and slavery was taken for granted everywhere in the known world.

With the vast irony that History sometimes exhibits, the very next year after the Melian episode saw Athens embark on a quite insane undertaking that was to lead, quite logically, to its downfall and occupation by Sparta. In 415 BC, egged on by demagogues and carried away with belief in their own power, the citizens of Athens voted to attack Syracuse – the most powerful city in Sicily, and the second largest democracy in the known world. After much political rivalry, scandal, and gossip, an expedition was sent under the command of the brilliant and popular young general Alcibiades. Then a fast ship was sent to arrest him and bring him back to Athens for trial on religious charges. Unsurprisingly, Alcibiades defected to Sparta, where he was able to help Athens’ greatest enemy with inside military and political information.

After a second expedition had been sent to Syracuse, both armies and fleets were annihilated except for a few who were enslaved and worked to death in the mines. Combining scorn with fine judgment, the Spartans sent a single man to help Syracuse – a general who showed them how to outwit and trap the Athenians. The city that had sought to rule the Greek world suffered a devastating setback, and in less than ten years had to surrender unconditionally and see its walls torn down – the Athenians were forced to do the work themselves – and submit to an oligarchy nominated by Sparta.

Many Athenians were terrified that the Spartans would treat them as they had treated the Melians. But the Spartans, pragmatic and conservative though often brutal, refused to destroy Athens – which even they saw as the greatest and most cultured city of Greece. Their religious beliefs led them to avoid what they would have seen as supreme hubris – overweening pride, thought to invite punishment by the gods. The more so as the Athenians had just given one of the best illustrations of hubris ever witnessed, with nemesis [divine retribution] following almost immediately.

Nowadays an idea has taken hold that the Greeks were cultured, civilised people, and rather soft compared to the violent, cruel, and ruthless Romans. Of course some of them were cultured and civilised; but they were definitely not soft. In his autobiographical book “American Values”, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. writes of his uncle, “Jack was determined that ours should be the exemplary democratic leadership of Athens, and not the martial plutocracy of Rome”. Educated and urbane though he was, President John F. Kennedy seems to have been deceived by the “democratic” label awarded to Athens. More citizens than in Rome may have shared in foreign policy and military decisions, but that did not make the decisions any sounder. It just spread the blame more widely. It’s hard to tell whether there was any real difference between the Roman system where aristocratic senators had the power and the Athenian one where a few thousand citizens in the ecclesia [assembly] voted under the heady influence of demogogues’ speeches.

The offer that the Athenians made to the Melians was one the latter could not afford to refuse – exactly like a protection racket. In fact, it was a protection racket, on an unusually large scale. When the Melians unwisely did refuse, the Athenians made an example of them just as the Mafia would. In return for a few months and a handful of their soldiers’ lives, the Athenians gained the whole island of Melos free and clear, without “sitting tenants”, plus the price of all the women and children sold as slaves. A profitable transaction. What’s more, they sent an unmistakable message to the world: we mean what we say; we are merciless; do what we tell you or else.

The Melian Dialogue tells us that military power is the only decisive factor: the strong do as they will, and the weak do what they must. That seems to be perfectly true right down to the present day.

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To my knowledge, no one has written about the siege of Melos and its ghastly aftermath. But I can heartily recommend three or four novels that will interest anyone who wants to get a clearer picture of the time. My favourite is Mary Renault’s “The Last of the Wine”, which really makes the agora and the trireme come to life. It is especially good on the Sicilian expedition as seen by those who stayed at home in Athens. (Unfortunately some fool of an editor required Miss Renault to cut a large part of this magnificent book, to meet a production rule; our loss).

Tom Holt wrote two fine novels: “The Walled Orchard” and “Goatsong”, which go into some of the grisly details of the Peloponnesian War. The title of the first refers to the place where the last remnants of the Athenian army in Sicily were massacred; the second to Aegospotami (Goat Creek), where the Spartans annihilated an Athenian fleet drawn up on the beach in plain view of the enemy while its soldiers and sailors enjoyed shore leave. Both disasters were due in large part to the Athenian democratic predilection for dividing military command.

Last but most provocative, “Creation”, Gore Vidal’s heroic story of Persia, India, China, and Greece in the times of Darius and Xerxes, takes a characteristically contrarian view of the Greeks, in contrast to the civilised Persians. Lying, cheating, treacherous, quarrelsome, incompetent, and unwashed – Vidal does a great job of balancing the uncritical admiration of Western civilisation up to now. Typically, his only mention of Socrates is as a shiftless and unskilled young stonemason whose cack-handed work leaves Cyrus Spitama, the Persian narrator, shivering in the draughts of his crude Athenian house. (The Spartans don’t come off any better – depicted as venal, coarse, and filthy since they disapprove of bathing).

Even if the story is not true, it ought to be.

There is something attractive about such a long view of history; it lends badly-needed perspective. Human beings, as a rule, are all too often rushing to accomplish their short-terms goals – to the detriment of mature consideration and evaluation. There is much to be said for the Chinese saying expressed, for instance, by Lin Yutang: “Those who are wise won't be busy, and those who are too busy can't be wise”. Unaccountably, the author of Ecclesiastes omitted the line, “A time to labour, and a time to think it through”.

For anyone who has seen “The Graduate”, the following dialogue should have acquired a distinctly sour flavour.

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean?
Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?

Much to his credit, young Benjamin Braddock (played by Dustin Hoffman) thinks about it for a second or two, and then forgets about it permanently. If only others had done likewise…

Among the many and varied types of pollution that ambitious business people have inflicted on our world and its biosphere, plastics have become newsworthy of late. Apparently there is a downside to materials that are cheap, versatile, and very, very durable. Who could possibly have foreseen that? Certainly no one who was interested solely in getting to market fustest with the mostest (to appropriate Nathan Bedford Forrest’s engaging words). It seems probable that the fictional Mr McGuire would be dead by now, along with many of those responsible for filling up our environment – the only one we have – with plastics that will outlive them by centuries, if not millennia, if not epochs or aeons.

As of today, it’s estimated that over 9.2 billion metric tons of plastic have been manufactured – just over 1 ton for every person currently alive. The production rate is currently running at over 450 million tons a year. And when we no longer need or want something made of plastic – why, we just get rid of it. It’s so convenient. What could be simpler? The trouble is that plastic is far from being a wasting asset. On the contrary, it is all too permanent. It may change shape or form, but it hangs around all the same.

In school, long ago, I learned about the various types of rocks. Igneous, metamorphic, sedimentary. Well, now there is a fourth type: plastiglomerate, formed usually when plastic refuse is heated by artificial or natural means. This charming stuff can be conjured up, for instance, if plastic rubbish is thrown into a bonfire or an industrial incinerator – or even by volcanic action on the seabed. And so far, it looks as if it is just about as durable as any other kind of rock.

By now almost everyone must be aware of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – the largest accumulation of ocean plastic in the world, floating somewhere between Hawaii and California. According to The Ocean Cleanup,

“It is estimated that 1.15 to 2.41 million tonnes of plastic are entering the ocean each year from rivers. More than half of this plastic is less dense than the water, meaning that it will not sink once it encounters the sea… Once these plastics enter the gyre, they are unlikely to leave the area until they degrade into smaller microplastics under the effects of sun, waves and marine life”.

The term “microplastic” typically means fragments 5 millimeters or smaller; particles smaller than 1 micrometer (1,000 nanometers, or 0.001 mm) are generally called “nanoplastics”. But it’s all plastic.

And, as we shall see, those microplastics and nanoplastics eventually get everywhere. Including inside your liver, kidneys, veins, arteries, and brain. Yes, evolution equipped us with the blood-brain barrier to protect our most sensitive and valuable tissues – but evolution is no match for Mr McGuire. Microplastics are also found in placental tissue – so unborn babies get their fair share.

The Guardian reports that “Researchers at the Pic du Midi Observatory found airborne microplastics in samples every week between June and October 2017”. That’s a cool 2,877 metres above sea level, in the Pyrenees. Over 9,400 feet up in the sky.

OK, so there are microplastics everywhere – including inside us. But that doesn’t mean they do us any harm, does it? Unfortunately that turns out not to be the case at all. A study from South Korea published in 2023 states unequivocally:

“In vitro experiments with human cells and in vivo data generated with mice showed that microplastics elicit adverse health effects mainly by causing inflammation, oxidative stress [increased reactive oxygen species (ROS) production], lipid metabolism disturbances, gut microbiota dysbiosis, and neurotoxicity”.

But surely recycling takes care of most of our unwanted plastic – doesn’t it? Not so much. In fact, really not at all. According to a Greenpeace report published in 2022, the amount of plastic recycled in the USA is as low as 5-6%. The UK does better – or does it? According to Greenpeace and the pressure group Everyday Plastic, 58% of all plastic waste in the UK is incinerated, 14% is exported to other countries and 11% is sent to landfill. Just 17% is actually recycled. And what becomes of all that plastic that is incinerated? The Law of Conservation of Mass assures us that the combustion products must go somewhere. As well as greenhouse gases, these include dioxins and furans—cancer-causing chemicals that you do not want in the air you breathe.

Greenpeace concluded that recycling is impractical, expensive and toxic, and that most of the plastic that people painstakingly put in their recycle bins winds up in landfill. If that is true in the world’s wealthiest nation, what can the situation be like in poorer countries? According to Environmental Health News, “Two-thirds of all plastic ever produced remains in the environment”. That would be about 6 billion tons.

There are about 40,000 different types of plastic polymers, which cannot be melted together for recycling. Broadly speaking, each type has to be processed separately; and even then recycling is difficult, expensive, and dangerous. Workers are exposed to toxic chemicals and microplastics which get into the air – and everything else – and are discharged into the environment.

“In addition to the chemical byproducts in producing or incinerating plastic, there are harmful additives, such as bisphenol-A (BPA), metals such as cadmium or lead, flame retardants, perfluorinated substances (PFAS), phthalates, and other chemicals. Many of these are known endocrine disrupting compounds that alter our hormones, and have been linked to a variety of health impacts including cancers, heart problems, obesity and diabetes, birth defects, and impacts to the reproductive, immune and nervous systems”.

Just making new plastic is cheaper, easier, and far less complicated and risky. So that’s what is generally done. After all, consumers, governments, and industry like “cheap” and have mastered the fine art of not thinking about nasty things.

The generic name PFAS embraces a huge family of chemicals that exploit extremely strong bonds between carbon and fluorine atoms, which can result in very strong and durable materials. The best-known example is Polytetrafluoroethylene – PTFE to its friends (trade name Teflon).

On 17^th January 2025, the Guardian headlined “Revealed: drinking water sources in England polluted with forever chemicals… Water industry calls for PFAS ban after analysis of sampling data shows contamination across country”. Why this sudden concern? “There has been an astounding decline in guideline values for PFAS in drinking water in the last 20 years,” says Ian Cousins, lead author of the study and professor at the Department of Environmental Science, Stockholm University. For one well-known substance, the “cancer-causing perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA)”, water guideline values have declined by 37.5 million times in the US. “Based on the latest US guidelines for PFOA in drinking water, rainwater everywhere would be judged unsafe to drink”.

Accordingly, ‘The European Commission intends to propose a ban on the use of PFAS, or "forever chemicals", in consumer products, with exemptions for essential industrial uses… EU Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall told Reuters in an interview’. Naturally, the PFAS industry is lobbying against any such legislation; and so far the UK government has announced no plans to follow the EU’s (theoretical) example. The defence, as usual, is “We had no way of knowing… nobody told us… we acted in good faith… All we wanted was to make money”. (I made the last bit up).

Residents of the island of Jersey are being advised to consider bloodletting (seriously) as a way of getting accumulated PFAS out of their bodies. For years, it turns out, drinking water supplies were polluted by the frequent and lavish use of firefighting foams containing PFAS at the airport. Astonishingly, Jersey’s government signed a confidential deal with 3M, the manufacturer, as long ago as 2005, which not only lets 3M completely off the hook for any compensation but actually commits the government to helping it in any future legal claims. It seems that Jersey even needs 3M’s permission to conduct blood tests as a means of screening for PFAS. Perhaps it’s true that some corporate lawyers practice black magic!

And there lies the heart of the problem: products such as the more than 10,000 types of PFAS in use are recklessly employed long before any proper understanding of their dangers is reached. What kind of excuse is it to say, “Oh, we didn’t know how dangerous they were, so we just went ahead anyway”? Not so much any kind of “Precautionary Principle” as the good ol’ “What – Me Worry? Principle”.

In marked contrast to this type of recklessness, the science fiction author Larry Niven consistently attributes certain traits to his Belters (people who live and work in and around the Asteroid Belt); they are neat, conscientious, and safety-aware in the extreme. SF writers often stress that anyone who lives in an environment surrounded by vacuum will be either obsessively careful or dead in short order. (The same applies to people living under the sea).

Niven’s characters often advise others to “Think it through”. This is particularly advisable for anyone whose ideas tend to be dominated by comforting narratives, rather than hard, unyielding facts and figures.

For those who live in a more forgiving environment, such as the surface of the planet where humans evolved, there may be reasons other than stupidity or laziness for taking a short-term view. One of the most powerful has always been religion: “God will provide”. (To which someone retorted, “But you won’t like what He provides”). Another is pragmatism: corporations notoriously look one quarter ahead at most, because they are evaluated by their quarterly numbers.

The great economist Michael Hudson emphasises that everything in the USA is short-run. In the short run, he says, the USA always wins, but the long run is another matter. The US strategy depends on making sure everyone goes on thinking short-term, which leads to chaos. In 1950 the USA had 80% of the world’s gold, complete freedom of action, control of the IMF and World Bank – even the UN – and huge natural resources of its own. Yet today, through policies of resolute and principled selfishness, it has hit the skids. Human beings did not evolve to be individually selfish, but to cooperate. Exceptionalism is ultimately self-defeating.

Even the carefully engineered Ukraine and Syrian wars are of questionable value to the West; the contemplated war against China would be utterly disastrous. They haven’t thought it through.

The current Los Angeles wildfires have been very destructive, claiming at least 27 lives. J. P. Morgan has estimated the insured losses from the fires at more than $20 billion. Of course recriminations are flying around like white-hot sparks, but it seems clear that almost everyone was remiss in underestimating the risks and the precautions needed to deal with them. It’s always the same: when a danger has not manifested itself for long enough, people begin to act as if it had gone away forever. When in fact the intelligent response would be to expect it soon. Human colonisation did not necessarily tip the balance against sustainability in the area; the Native Americans managed rather well for thousands of years. But when the European colonists flooded in and started building houses, factories, skyscrapers, shops, and roads everywhere, they severely distorted the ecology and may have placed too great a stress on it. Although it’s a touchy subject, there can be no doubt that Californians have been using too much of the state’s limited fresh water; aquifers are getting low, and in the foreseeable future some may dry up altogether.

According to Earth Overshoot, the USA is at “Sustainability Grade D” (“Below Average”) with about 355 million inhabitants while it could sustainably support no more than 167 million. The Global Footprint Network is broadly in agreement.

Almost all the really serious problems we face are either caused or exacerbated by overpopulation. However there is a consensus among political and business elites that this fundamental issue should never be given its due importance or even admitted to. We are told that there is plenty of room; just look at all those open fields and hillsides! That there are simply too many people on Earth is “an inconvenient truth”, if only because so far no one has come up with a politically correct and feasible way of dealing with it. Obviously, when a politician comes up against a problem that he doesn’t know how to solve, the first thing he does – as a matter of urgency – is to claim that it doesn’t exist. The tried and tested “ostrich policy”.

Jon Austen explained this basic fact in simple language two years ago.

“Eight billion people alive today is a milestone in human history. We accept this figure as though it is normal: a minor news story, nothing to worry about. But it is the most dangerous place we’ve been in the history of civilization. In only eleven years, one billion people have been added to our numbers; a number that’s still rising, and not set to peak before the end of the century. Eight billion people on the planet. It is unprecedented and unsustainable. Unsustainable, meaning logically that it will fall. But how and when it will fall is not discussed as it means facing an inconvenient truth”.

Politicians do not rise to the top or stay there by drawing attention to inconvenient truths, still less by trying to do something about them. We are all passengers on a bus that is heading straight for a cliff edge, driven by a bunch of lunatics and blind men. Once we go over the edge and find ourselves in free fall, it’s a safe bet they will say, “Well, could you do any better? Go on – you take the wheel!”

Five years ago, Kevin Casey hit the nail on the head.

“Climate change is not the biggest threat to the world’s environment – we are. The world’s rivers and seas aren’t choked with floating piles of rubbish, toxic chemicals and plastic waste because of climate change. They’re that way because we have 7.7 billion people crammed onto a planet that’s dying under the pressure of our greedy, selfish abuse. Two decades from now, the earth’s oceans are on target to contain more plastic in them (by weight) than fish. Climate change didn’t do that. Way too many people did that”.

No one in power likes to mention overpopulation - the T. Rex in the room - because they don’t have a plan to deal with it. Ordinary citizens don’t like to hear about it, either – understandably enough. And they at least have the excuse that “if it were a problem, our leaders would have told us”. (Poor deluded fools). Yet the consequences go on piling up: pollution, resource shortages, disease, war, and plain overcrowding. The only slight disagreement I have with Mr Casey is that he writes, “In hindsight, we should have addressed rampant overpopulation shortly after WW2, when the global population was still around 2.5 billion…” In my humble opinion, about 1900 would have been a better time.

Yet another way in which humans can benefit from foresight is to learn from the experience of others – even other species. Consider, for example, the alarming implications of John B. Calhoun’s attempts to construct a “rodent utopia” in 1947.

‘Using a variety of strains of rats and mice, he… provided his populations with food, bedding, and shelter. With no predators and with exposure to disease kept at a minimum, Calhoun described his experimental universes as “rat utopia,” “mouse paradise.” With all their visible needs met, the animals bred rapidly. The only restriction Calhoun imposed on his population was of space – and as the population grew, this became increasingly problematic.

‘Dominant males became aggressive, some moving in groups, attacking females and the young. Mating behaviors were disrupted. Some became exclusively homosexual. Others became pansexual and hypersexual, attempting to mount any rat they encountered. Mothers neglected their infants, first failing to construct proper nests, and then carelessly abandoning and even attacking their pups. In certain sections of the pens, infant mortality rose as high as 96%, the dead cannibalized by adults. Subordinate animals withdrew psychologically, surviving in a physical sense but at an immense psychological cost. They were the majority in the late phases of growth, existing as a vacant, huddled mass in the centre of the pens. Unable to breed, the population plummeted and did not recover’.

Does that behaviour remind you of anything you have seen (or read about) lately? Granted that adults are not eating children – yet – the rest sounds like a description of what goes on in our worst city centres. Some of us subordinate animals have withdrawn quite a long way already, and who knows what would have become of us were it not for the Internet and other such technology? (Although the refuge of one’s study and computer may lead us, in the end, to the equally dire fate of E. M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops”).

Contemplation of Calhoun’s rats brings us to Donald Trump, who certainly likes to behave like a super-dominant alpha rat. Recently he observed blandly that only 40,000 or so people live in Greenland and that he would be willing to give each of them $1m (of U.S. Taxpayers’ money) to buy their votes. In return the USA would get untold natural resources. (Rather drolly, one Danish MP suggested appealing to Russia for protection!) Canada is in a similar position. When resource hunger becomes powerful enough, no laws or agreements mean anything. Dr Hudson remarks that, especially in drought-stricken regions such as Panama, water is becoming more valuable than oil.

“You can see that Trump is looking for choke points. A choke point is, as we said, trade with the United States, that’s a choke point that can be turned off with tariffs, whether it’s Canada or the EU, canal and transportation, that’s a choke point. Energy, oil and gas, that’s a choke point, which America [has] solved by its actions in Syria, Iraq, all throughout the Near East”.

Up till recently, population could be left to take care of itself because there were still “underpopulated” areas – thanks mostly to hunter-gatherers and nomadic herders who spread themselves very thin. Ironically, future generations may thank the USSR for having preserved some wilderness and natural resources, which weren’t plundered the way North America’s were – largely because the USSR did not attract hordes of immigrants. Today there is precious little space left for expansion, or even for emergency evacuation. The Rev Dr Malthus was dead right: given time, exponential increase will always overtake linear increase.

H. Sapiens may have been near to extinction 60,000 years ago, and came through probably by sheer dumb luck. If the worst came to the worst, we could easily afford to slim down to a few million again – increasing population is the easiest and most natural thing in the world (and great fun, too). The question to ask of people who worry about shrinking population is “why?” Two of the main reasons for wanting a growing population (or copious immigration) have traditionally been to provide a pool of unemployed labour, driving down wages; and to provide cannon fodder. Neither is very creditable – or, nowadays, necessary.

Statesmen should have been thinking hard about tapering off population by 1900 at the latest, instead of presiding over a century of viciously destructive wars, mostly to shore up their weak egos. Now they are complaining about low birth rates and “demographic crises”, when actually Russia is right in the sweet spot (thanks to its vast almost unpopulated areas). The UK is 4.5 times overpopulated – and reacting by inviting in as many new inhabitants as possible while slashing domestic food production. (It now imports well over half its food).

It boils down to a question of individual decision-making versus community or species decision-making. So far there is absolutely no one making decisions for our species as a whole, or even gathering data impartially to support such decisions. Why is this? Well, hardly anyone has any motivation to act altruistically. At best, a few act in the interests of their nation, race, religion, etc.

At the moment, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar provide at best something like half of the UK’s electricity needs. No matter how many windmills and solar farms are built, they won’t generate much more electricity than that when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. (And at worst, they manage a pitiful 10% or less of what is needed: “Between Thursday and Saturday, 55% of electricity came from gas and just 11% from wind and solar. The output from Britain’s nuclear reactors hummed along at 4.7GW, but at 10% of total output it only touches the sides of Britain’s baseload thirst”).

There is, however, a possible answer: reduce the population by more than half. For the benefit of those arrogant dogmatists who can’t stand the sight of “Malthusianism”, that doesn’t mean shooting or poisoning two out of every three people. For the UK it would have to be done gradually, by ending immigration and repatriating people who have come in recently. Then, if the birth rate remains lower than the death rate, nature can take its course. Other nations could choose policies that suit their particular circumstances.

The legends of Midas and Tithonus demonstrate that the ancient Greeks clearly understood the necessity of foresight and, failing that, a reasonable modesty. They have marked resonance today, when one continually sees examples of hubris, impulsiveness, and failure to think things through.

In his “juvenile” SF novel “Time for the Stars” (1956), Robert A. Heinlein proposed a “Long Range Foundation” with just one fundamental principle.

“It wasn’t enough for a proposed project to be interesting to science or socially desirable; it also had to be so horribly expensive that no one else would touch it and the prospective results had to lie so far in the future that it could not be justified to taxpayers or shareholders. To make the LRF directors light up with enthusiasm you had to suggest something that cost a billion or more [over $11 billion in 2025’s devalued dollars] and probably wouldn’t show results for ten generations, if ever…”

With perhaps a touch of technologist’s over-optimism – after all, it was science fiction and the LRF was important for the book’s plot – Heinlein depicts the LRF as desperately struggling to get rid of all the money that piles up as its disinterested projects persist in raking in huge profits. The idea behind it is interesting: that the best investments ever made have been in fundamental research that looked quite useless in practical terms. The work of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, Newton and others in basic physics. Euclid, Archimedes and others who laid the foundations of mathematics. Darwin’s theory of evolution, complemented by Mendel’s humble but critical work breeding pea plants. Faraday’s experiments with electricity and Maxwell’s equations explaining them. Turing’s “universal computing machine”, originally a conjecture in pure mathematics. Many other examples could be added to the list, starting with fire, the wheel, writing, and the number system.

Indeed, it’s arguable that major breakthroughs have been coming more slowly since the 1940s because science has become an industry, and scientists are now treated as fungible workers and measured by results. Measured so precisely and continually, with such serious consequences for those who fall behind, that they no longer have time to think or create anything important. They are forced to jump so many hurdles on the way to success that cheating and faking have become endemic. Perhaps when it comes to science, the rule should be “You get what you don’t measure”.

Looking at China’s immense achievement over the past 45 years, one suspects that the West could do with a few more people of Chou Enlai’s stature and vision.

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