***
Something I’ve done in the past is to draw connections between the desire of individuals to feel good about themselves, and a similar sentiment in groups - up to and including nations.
There is, indeed, a valid need for a healthy self-esteem for the well-being of both individuals and groups (I wrote about a version of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs for nations here). Where that is problematic is when it goes beyond constructive measures to boost one’s own (whether individual or group) sense of self to doing so at the expense of others. Examples of that sort of abuse include: those flawed or disturbed individuals who need to dominate other individuals and/or groups, such as the bully (whether on a schoolyard or in a boardroom), the unhealthily fanatical and obsessive sports fan, the despot, and psychopaths; intolerant religions; and colonial / imperialistic nations.
In a healthy individual (and healthy groups [including nations] ), there exists a state of balance:
- yes, they make reasonable provision for the
future, as in the “plan for a rainy day” sense, but they don’t focus on the
future at the expense of living in the present - a mistake made by some individuals
who work long hours on the basis of being able to, say, live a flashy or opulent
lifestyle (i.e., lording it over others) in the future.
In the case of groups, healthy and balanced groups make reasonable plans for the future - including: succession planning (elections in a democracy are actually an example of this), nations having “future funds” (provided they have enough common sense and ethics to use those funds when needed - sovereign wealth funds would be a similar [sort of] example), and they ensure that their “members” can also have a reasonable future.
In the case of nations, ensuring that “members” (citizens, or tax payers, or possibly residents) can have a reasonable future (in the long term personal sense) was originally by a retirement pension, although the first such scheme was established on the basis of allowing access only for the highest 1% of life expectancies. Later, as governments became addicted to not-governing and outsourcing-responsibility-to-private-industry, they chose not to take the option of investing money as a way of funding retirement (the proportion of people living to older ages increased, and thus paying for an old age pension by increased taxation was seen as a threat to re-election) and shifted that responsibility onto individuals who were compelled to use private industry (thereby losing a portion of their funds in the case of for-profit versions of such enterprises), and in the process giving right wingers a chance to perpetuate a very false myth that government investment was somehow “inherently” different to - and less efficient than - private industry investment (a myth that has been exposed by the very existence of futures funds, and by appalling performance of some private superannuation funds).
Healthy and balanced nations also ensure that they do not rob future generations of resources by either consuming everything now, failing to get an appropriate return for the consumption of resources now, or consuming resources in a way that denies future generations - the most notorious examples of the latter being exacerbating climate change, and war (especially nuclear); - similarly, individuals have a healthy focus on
the past - they learn from the mistakes of themselves and others (especially
in regards to planning for the future), they make apologies and provide
restitution where they should, but they don’t become obsessive about the past
at the expense of living in the present (e.g., by trying to recreate a
mythological “golden era” distortion of the past).
Companies that use “just-in-time” approaches (I won’t call it planning) are failing to learn from the past - which has shown that prudence is well merited.
Nations that become obsessive about avoiding acknowledgement or making restitution for past wrongs, sometimes on the pretext of “legal advice”, are showing themselves to be profoundly immoral; - money is seen as an enabler, not an end in
itself. The healthy individual is free of the taint of addiction to social
status, and, whether they know the term or not, makes decisions on the basis of
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs - i.e., giving equal weight to emotional, mental,
and spiritual matters, as well as genuine physical needs, as
opposed to wants.
Wants come at the expense of others; needs will generally only create impingements on others’ needs in situations where overpopulation is a problem.
This aspect shows in healthy nations by a focus that goes beyond economic to emotional and mental wellbeing - even happiness, which at least one nation actually measures.
Unhealthy nations are focused on the flawed (inaccurate - especially regarding unpaid work) GDP, and look for all the world like misers, to me.
And now I want to look at the aspect that led me to plan this post: violence and war.
Now, to state the obvious: individuals do better in a world of peace.
Violence - whether physical, emotional, mental or spiritual (the latter three forms of violence can all be manifested through various forms of coercion) - limits the ability of victims to thrive, and are a moral stain on the soul of the perpetrator. It is a scar on the perpetrator’s heart, mind and soul.
On the other hand, peaceful situations still involve challenges / quests / chances to be “noble”, opportunities for growth & learning, and deep, lifelong & meaningful ties of siblinghood or whatever other attributes some people misattribute to violence and war.
Of course, this world still is imperfect, and thus it still also needs measures to protect individuals against violence in the sense of crime, including abuses - especially by the powerful against those who are not. That can be a problem when the supposed defenders of citizens, residents & visitors do not do their job - e.g., if they are biased or even bigoted.
The same applies to nations - they, and their citizens, thrive best when they do not have to rebuild from destruction, heal or tend for life those who have been scarred or wounded, and focus on anything other than a better world and life for their people.
Nations can also benefit from measures to protect each other that are, in essence, similar to those used for individuals - which is where international law comes into consideration.
Unfortunately, how effective that is currently is limited by the greed, distrust of others, and desire to dominate (i.e., “be bigger than” others - which is not better) of nations. In many ways, the international community of nations strikes me as being, at times, like a group of traumatised animals that have reluctantly joined up, realising they have a better chance of surviving the world together than alone, but are being held apart by old habits of “attack first and cooperate later” - and greed and the desire to dominate.
There have often been encouraging exceptions to that - moments of genuine altruism. In fact, the community of nations has slowly improved as, much as individuals can learn, grow, & develop, nations have started to realise a few points such as:
- their views on “what is in their best interest” may actually be harmful to themselves, their citizens or the people and community of nations of this world;
- human rights abuses for personal power is, in effect, a war of powerful individuals against their own nation, and that can infect other nations’ peoples and thus spread like a contagion.
War - violence between nations - is, as already stated, destructive in so many ways. Very, very, VERY few wars are worthwhile or justifiable. The war against the evils of naziism was one war that was - once aggression had started, war against that aggression and the associated abuses became essential and thus justifiable. Genuine defence is also justifiable, but the world would be better off if nations didn’t need to defend themselves against others in the first place. That, as already hinted at, requires better views on what genuinely constitutes national interest - it must be more than money, the convenience of social elites, or maintaining electability (especially if that electability is based on duping voters).
It also requires better individuals - which requires better education in particular, education which includes a focus on emotions so nations don’t get emotionally incompetent people like POTUS45.
At end of World War (part) Two nations knew the importance of peace - a lesson that seems to have been subsequently forgotten by people like Nixon, Reagan, Bush the Lesser, and Putin.
I’ll come back to Putin, but let’s consider war a little more.
As stated, defence is likely to be a valid need for the foreseeable future. Thus, an appropriate commitment of resources (which is more than just expenditure) is justifiable - but when that consumes resources beyond the genuine short-, medium-, and long-term need, it is robbing the nation’s future.
Also, the nation-state of Australia has mostly focused on, in my words, chumming up with the biggest bully in playground, in hopes that said biggest bully will defend us against 2nd and 3rd biggest bullies . . . Thus, defence planning is based on providing resources the biggest bully can use - i.e., what would curry the most external favour, rather than what we would genuinely need to defend ourselves. The massive expenditure on nuclear powered submarines is an example - quiet submarines of the type Sweden has would be better (and certainly more cost-effective) for our needs, based on close-in defence. Nuclear submarines enable defence in depth (i.e., taking action at a distance from our coastlines, before an enemy’s ships get close enough to attack our territory or ships), but we don’t have enough to do that effectively (thus the chumming up I referred to above to gain access to a bigger nation’s resources to provide what we lack in the sense of military numbers).
I have also written, decades ago, to several of our governments about citizens defence, and got a dismissive and utterly nonsensical reply - which is being shown as such by the current defence of Ukraine, which includes such citizens defence measures as removing street signs.
This brings me back to Putin.
Putin and his cronies’ (I dispute it is Russia’s, because of the clearly expressed will - despite the massive misinformation campaigns - of a significant number of the Russian people not to invade [just as I dispute that decisions of Xi’s CCP are decisions of China] ) invasion of Ukraine is, as well as being obviously damaging to Ukraine: robbing Russia of its future, robbing Russia of resources that should have gone into constructive solutions to Russia’s current problems, and damaging Russia - both physically (through Russian deaths, injuries, scars and trauma, and loss of other resources), and morally (including by creating a future guilt as Putin and his cronies continue to be bad ancestors).
Apart from the obvious damage and the immorality, war is bad governance on all counts - it is like a child refusing to go to the next class so that they can attack another child and stop the second child going to their next class simply because they don’t like some trivial detail of the victim . . . or an adult not going to work and thus losing their job, family, and home, so that “adult” can attack a neighbour for the purpose of stopping the neighbour going to work because they think, say, the neighbour drinks tea that is too strong . . . or a company taking over an adjoining business that works in a different area and sacking everyone and destroying the building because the first company thought the building shadowed too much of their lawn.
War is illogical, unreasonable, and downright stupid.
