The Global Civil War: The Enlightenment, Nationalism, Anger, Inequality, IS, and Trump

 

Age of Anger: A History of the Prestent by by Pankaj Mishra, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.

Why is the world so angry?

These three programs from CBC Ideas help weave together the threads that reveal the answer.

Tuesday April 18, 2017

Globalized Anger: The Enlightenment's Unwanted Child

 Listen to Full Episode 54:00

Trumpism. Hindu nationalism. ISIS. Chinese expansionism. People everywhere seem fed up with the status quo, and their anger and intolerance are finding political expression. But why? Pankaj Mishra believes that the current unrest isn't about any so-called "clash of civilizations" between the enlightened and unenlightened. He thinks the globalized anger is the legitimate offspring of the Enlightenment itself. He speaks with Paul Kennedy about his provocative book, The Age of Anger: A History of the Present.

"We should really look at the modern world as constituted by sameness and similarity rather than religious, cultural, theological difference. Obviously, people make all kinds of claims for their cultural and theological differences, whether it's members of Islamic State, or whether it's Christian fundamentalists or white nationalists, who are very insistent that their, race their religion, their nation, is unique and they are speaking on behalf of that -- on behalf of a particular tradition.

But I think the task of the interpreter is to go beyond these statements, not take them at face value. And to see what are the ways in which these supposedly disparate and diverse peoples are connected. What is the experience they are responding to, and what is their worldview, their particular makeup? And this is where I think terrorism, for instance, has always been a universal phenomenon. And behind that lies the temptation of violence as a kind of aesthetic, as a kind of existential experience -- and you see that right from the 19th century onwards, as a way of asserting your individual self, as a way of empowering yourself. And we see that again and again in modern terrorism, whether it is the man, Omar Mateen, who in Florida was constantly Googling himself, even while he was killing people: he was trying to see what people were saying about him. This kind of exhibitionism -- this is an attempt to find yourself, and to become famous, and to be celebrated by other people.

Terrorism, in almost all cases, is not separate from the way we live our lives today, in the ways in which we think of ourselves and the wider world. And I try to make this clear in a variety of ways, including describing this friendship that sprung up between Timothy McVeigh and Ramzi Yousef, the first man to try to blow up the World Trade Center. They found themselves in adjacent cells in a supermax prison in Colorado, and discovered that they had far more in common with each other than with anyone else around them. In fact, Yousef is on record as saying that: 'I've never met anyone who was more like me.' And this is a man who had spent most of his life moving through networks of various fanatics and radical Islamists. So it's really important to see how there are all these psychological affinities, emotional makeup, that connect these diverse figures --  and how this experience of powerlessness, experience of humiliation, the desire for vengeance connect all these different sorts of figures.

We have to move away from thinking of terror or violence as being specific to a particular religious community, or a particular part of the world. We have seen this over and over again erupt in all parts of the world. And we have to locate the sources of this violence in specific social, economic factors: we cannot really bring in religious scriptures, or indeed stereotypes about religious communities into our frameworks of analysis. If we do that, we are making a huge mistake."


​Pankaj Mishra is a London-based Indian writer and thinker who has written widely on history, politics, and literature. Age of Anger: A History of the Present is his ninth book. It's published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.

Further reading:

• America At War With Itself by Henry Giroux, published by City Lights Books, 2017.

• The View From Flyover Country by Sarah Kendzior published by Amazon Digital Services LLC, 2015.

• How Will Capitalism End?: Essays on a Failing System by Wolfgang Streeck published by Verso, 2016.

**This episode was produced by Naheed Mustafa.

Wednesday April 19, 2017

Drone Warfare: Is Killing Terrorists Legal?

An MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft (RPWolfgang Streeck on the various ways citizens living in the post-capitalist interregnum will behaveA) flies by during a training mission at Creech Air Force Base on November 17, 2015 in Indian Springs, Nevada. The Pentagon has plans to expand combat air patrols flights by remotely piloted aircraft by as much as 50 percent over the next few years to meet an increased need for surveillance, reconnaissance and lethal airstrikes in more areas around the world. (Photo by Isaac Brekken/Getty Images)

Listen to Full Episode 53:57

On 30 September 2011, American military drone operators at an Air Force base in Nevada spotted Anwar al-Awlaki in northern Yemen. The radical Muslim cleric -- and American citizen -- was in a desert more than 13,000 kilometres away, sitting near an SUV. Awlaki spotted the drones and ran to the vehicle. Back in Nevada, an operator clicked a button. And within seconds, two Hellfire missiles blew the SUV to smithereens. In Objective Troy, Scott Shane examines the rise of an American radical cleric and President Obama's decision to have him killed.  **This episode originally aired May 11, 2016.

  "This is part of a generational conflict between the US and the West - and Canada - and a certain strain of Islam. And I think it is going to play out for many years to come. I wouldn't have said this a few years ago, but I think with the rise of ISIS and the tentacles of ISIS turning up in Western Europe, and indeed in Canada and the US, that we are in for a long drawn out conflict. And I think that Anwar al-Awlaki will remain a central figure, a central propagandiste all over the English-speaking West, and indeed since many of these videos are now put up in translation in many other languages as well." -- Scott Shane

Objective Troy: A Terrorist, A President, and the Rise of the Drone is published by Tim Duggan Books.

Scott Shane is awarded the 2016 Lionel Gelber Prize for his book "Objective Troy: A Terrorist, a President, and the Rise of the Drone"

Scott Shane covers national security issues for the New York Times and is this year's winner of the prestigious Lionel Gelber Prize. The award is given to the world's best non-fiction book in English on foreign affairs.
The Lionel Gelber Foundation awards the prize in partnership with Foreign Policy magazine and the Munk School of Global Affairs, at the University of Toronto.

• Read a chapter from Objective Troy: A Terrorist, A President, and the Rise of the Drone
   
• Watch the webcast of the Lionel Gelber Prize ceremony

** This episode was produced by David Gutnick.

Thursday February 09, 2017

Surviving Post-Capitalism: Coping, hoping, doping & shopping

Listen to Full Episode 53:59

The signs are troubling: the ever-widening chasm between the ultra-rich and everyone else. Mass protests. Political upheaval and social division. It looks as though the rocky marriage between capitalism and democracy is doomed, at least according to Wolfgang Streeck, who directs the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany, where he is also a professor of sociology. In conversation with Paul Kennedy about his book How Will Capitalism End?, he makes the unnerving case that capitalism is now at a point where it cannot survive itself.

(Verso Books, 2016.)

According to Streeck, capitalist societies are entering an interregnum -- a pause or suspension of normal governance -- as the system of capitalism collapses in on itself. In the absence of countervailing forces to keep it afloat, capitalism has essentially devoured itself. One consequence is a loss of state solidarity citizens in western countries have become used to. Streeck points to Italy, Greece and Spain, countries where young people can't get find jobs; where fewer people can live on their own; and where marriage and birth rates are declining. People everywhere are now trying to protect what little they have left.

Wolfgang Streeck sees day-to-day life in the interregnum in stark terms: coping, hoping, doping, and shopping. He says that when it comes to the harsh realities of the interregnum, those who cope well will wear their stress as a kind of badge of honour. Those who cope poorly will mask their inability with drugs and mindless consumerism.

Democracy vs. Capitalism

"Democracy was always a problem in a capitalist society. There's an enormous inherent tension between the two. Democracy is inherently egalitarian because every citizen has one vote. And the rich also have one vote but the rich are only five percent. Whereas in the market, every dollar has a vote. And the capitalist economy in particular functions according to -- I think it's [the Gospel of] Matthew -- where it says he who has will be given [more]. And he who has [little] will have even what he has taken away...

And where you have capitalism and democracy at the same time, you have a contest between these two principles of distribution: egalitarian versus inegalitarian. This is why democratic politics have always tried to intervene in the markets and tried to contain the "Matthew effect". You can also call it cumulative advantage if you want a more elevated term. So, where you have democracy in the form of trade unions, centre left political parties, sometimes centre right political parties, Catholic parties, and so on -- they look at the market and what comes out of the market and then they become concerned both about their capacity to get re-elected and about principles of justice which, in a democracy, are principles of social justice, not market justice."

Coping to Death

"Coping is an attitude or an activity whereby people who lack traditional support -- either from families or from social services -- work very hard to cope with increasing pressures on their everyday life.

And you can observe this in lots of studies on family life in the United States and Europe, where two people work full-time, they try to raise two children, they live a very sort of regulated, exhausting life in order to meet all the contingencies that hang together with competing in the labour market -- caring for others, caring maybe also for their parents, in a world in which external help is increasingly less available.

Now what I observe in ethnographic studies is that people actually can become proud of their ability to exhaust themselves in this struggle. So that they say we are coping, we're good, and others are less good or bad at coping. So it becomes a matter of pride to subject yourself to this rigid discipline imposed on you by the market."

Nuclear-Proof Apartments

"[In] The New Yorker, there was an article on survivalism among the American very, very rich. In my book, I envisage a situation in which inequality becomes so big that something happens that has never happened in society before in the history of human societies. That is, that the elites of society lose interest in the society as a whole because they can survive on their own.

Someone, for example, buys the silo of an intercontinental missile which is hardened against nuclear attack, and deep in the ground builds apartments that he sells within a matter of a few weeks to New York financial billionaires, tech billionaires from California, who all buy one of these apartments because they are afraid of the breakdown of social order, and of people taking guns and trying to go after them.

I think these people are not so unrealistic. I don't think they are obsessed. They see better than most others the decaying body of a system that can no longer keep itself together. I take this as a very interesting example of what I thought when I looked at the increase in inequality in our societies that we could be facing the moment when those who absorb and extract all the resources from these societies begin to think that they can dissociate themselves from it and live their own lives."

**The New Yorker article: "Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich"

The Coming Age of Uncertainty

"As a sociologist, I think we have to think very seriously about transitions in the structure of our societies. I happen to have come to the conclusion that we are facing a fundamental transition in modern societies, modern capitalist societies. And I feel that these societies have exhausted the capacity to build a framework, a social framework, around the hot core of capitalist profit-making -- so that we will see signs of social disintegration all over the place in unexpected, surprising ways, in a period in which we lose control and governance and orientation, and we'll live in an era of great uncertainty."

Further reading:

• How Will Capitalism End? by Wolfgang Streeck, published by Verso Books, 2016.
   
• PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future by Paul Mason, published by Allen Lane, 2015.
   
• The End of Alchemy: Banking, the Global Economy and the Future of Money by Mervyn King, published by W.W. Norton, 2016.

Related websites:

• Wolfgang Streeck
  ​
• Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies 

**This episode was produced by Naheed Mustafa.

Canada ISN'T Superior, Just a Little Safer and Much Colder

Adventures In Running

 This isn’t an attempt to wag a Canadian finger, just a wish to share what might be a “best practice” with our troubled, but closest, elder sibling in the North American family.

Canada has always punched above its weight, helping to beat the bullies when at our best. This might be because we don’t reach first for a gun. We don’t depend on weapons and violence as solutions. In Canada, as far as I know, you can get a gun if you want one. They aren’t outlawed. Handguns, automatics, and military grade weapons are restricted. For hunting weapons, you need to take a safety course and get a certificate of acquisition. Restricted weapons required further qualification and certification. That’s hardly the government taking away guns. We just try to make sure that gun owners are responsible and minimally educated in safety.

We don't tend to turn to conflict as an answer. We seem to resist turning on each other in a crisis, most of the time. I have never heard of looting occurring during disasters. Probably happens, but rarely. We try to pull together. We screw up a lot and in major ways, but life is a bit more safe, peaceful, and reasonable compared to what’s going on next-door. When you live in cold like ours, you have to huddle together for warmth. That’s why we’re so polite. It keeps us from strangling one another. Most of the time.

 It's just my opinion, but it seems like allowing anti-government, anti-law, and antisocial, organizations and "militias" t have large numbers of military-grade weapons is a recipe for civil war, or at least bloody revolt, seeing as the government has satellites and drones listed among the least destructive of its armoury. You might describe America's gun violence as an ongoing civil war among individuals.

Maybe the attitude difference  toward guns comes from the fights that helped form, unite, and define our countries in our own eyes. America was born in a violent revolution against an empire and then further defined by civil war that split it in half. America fought, won and defends personal liberty. Canada draws more identity from the two World Wars during which we came to the aid of a later version of the same empire and its allies. Our wars spilled none of our own blood on our own soil, the death an evil far from our shores afflicting our friends and the innocent. We gained our real independence by helping others regain their freedom. The only country that has even attacked us is you, before we became Canada, and we kissed and made up long ago. We have never attacked another country on our own or conquered land by armed force, only by dishonouring treaties and then civilizing away culture, health, sanity and life with educational abuse for generations. Far more polite than all that shooting and scalping.

We also tend to settle in groups rather than alone or as isolated families. Safety in numbers reduced the number of guns required per individual and the threat of exile into the big, cold, empty, wilderness kept most in line most of the time. Our struggle with a separatist region stretched on for decades of endless insults, claims, arguments, threats, pleas, and negotiations. There was one death by a few terrorists that cause a an overreaction of a brief period of martial law in the province of Quebec, but the fight eventually ended when the second vote came very close to separation. So close that the people who flocked there to express the rest of Canada's affection and plea for unity might have actually have pushed the thing over the finish line. The the next generation most got tired of hearing about it and the whole thing has faded into the background for now.


Maybe Canadians are tend less toward violence because it is really hard to swing and do damage with both combatants cocooned in heavy winter clothing. If you try to wrestle you can't reach around yourself to grab and  you bounce off. You can conceal a weapon inside easily, but pulling off mittens, the  unbuttoning, unzipping, and digging through pocketed layers to find your gun in a useful amount of time is a bit tricky. You may have to take a seat while you do. The gunfight starts at noon, which could be dark, and goes until dusk (maybe only a few hours later), when neither can feel their fingers any longer. Then they run inside to get warm and drunk. After a wile, we just decided to condense the process into hockey at the rink.

Also, it's hard to hurl insults when you're shivering and your teeth are chattering. Keeping warm and  just moving around in the snow and ice  takes too much energy to have any left for street violence. You just want to get off the street, inside, and drunk. Politeness and a  mild manner take so much less energy. It's a long winter and we need to conserve food, brew, daylight, and strength. Everything is far apart, so we need to be cooperatively self-reliant to make do. Necessity and Laziness are the parents of invention and efficiency, and we play them against each other whenever required, or really bored. Keeps the neck free of fingers.

Canada isn't superior, just a little safer because it's too cold, and we're too lazy, even to strangle each other. Thankfully there are no convenient killer remote-controls. If you have to get up first, you might not bother, you might not be so quick to turn someone off with a twitch. That someone might be you. Most civilian deaths by firearms are accidental or self-inflicted. The fear of making things worse with a botched suicide attempt goes away as soon as that cold hard barrel touches your head. So quick there's no time to turn back and it's painless, at least for the one pulling the trigger. It blows everyone around them away, or, if they can't pull the trigger, they go out in a "blaze of glory" that  does the same in order to force their final shot, or the cops'.

There is no "glory" in senseless death and wasted life, only dehumanization.

Only compassion defeats dehumanization.

Everything is always in process
Only compassion defeats dehumanization.

Bullying is Rape, Rape is Bullying

Bullying and rape will never be ended by general education programs alone. These are violent acts of domination, degradation, and gratification. They are committed by predators who, in the proper circumstances, become brutal tyrannical dictators like Assad. These are evil acts committed by those who don't care about education, civility, respect, rights, or the law. Predators live for the hunt and the kill using these restrictions as tools and cover, often doing it their damage precisely because it is unacceptable and they can get away with it.

You need a lot more than a few education programs and media campaigns appealing to people's better natures. Once evil roots and starts to grow, especially if water and fertilized with praise and privileged, it sneers at the better nature as the weakness of prey. You have to dig up the roots and cleanse the soil.

Some predators are born with psychopathy, others develop or learn it, but many choose it.

Bullying is not only a form of rape and rape a form of bullying, they are the same, as demonstrated perfectly in pedophilia, prison, and war. Often committed by those held up as heroic or leaders, this predation damages and destroys lives for pleasure. Be it subtle or gross, it's textbook evil.

I don't say this as a privileged white man, but as an autistic with personal experience of these things.  Abuse is abuse.

#Debunking #Terms of #Oppression

"There are no people who actually have true black, white, red, or yellow skin."

 Everyone has the right to choose a word as a name to help define themselves. Please be careful which word you pick. Don't pick words like "garbage", "object", "tool", "resource", "victim". or "Hitler". The weight of prior associations may keep you down. Trying to change "Hitler" to define "goodness" may require far too much struggle, time, and blood, to be worth it. Choose a less tangled word or create one that helps point to your individuality, uniqueness, or common humanity.

The following is from HUMAN BIOLOGICAL ADAPTABILITY: An Introduction to Human Responses to Common Environmental Stresses

Skin Color Adaptation

Human skin color is quite variable around the world.  It ranges from a very dark brown among some Africans, Australian Aborigines, and Melanesians to a near yellowish pink among some Northern Europeans.  There are no people who actually have true black, white, red, or yellow skin. These are commonly used color terms that do not reflect biological reality.

Skin color is due primarily to the presence of a pigment called melanin , which is controlled by at least 6 genes.  Both light and dark complexioned people have melanin.  However, two forms are produced--pheomelanin , which is red to yellow in color, and eumelanin, which is dark brown to black. People with light complexioned skin mostly produce pheomelanin, while those with dark colored skin mostly produce eumelanin.  In addition, individuals differ in the number and size of melanin particles.  The latter two variables are more important in determining skin color than the percentages of the different kinds of melanin.  In lighter skin, color is also affected by red cells in blood flowing close to the skin.  To a lesser extent, the color is affected by the presence of fat under the skin and carotene , a reddish-orange pigment in the skin.  Hair color is also due to the presence of melanin.

Created and maintained by Dr. Dennis O'Neil
Behavioral Sciences Department, Palomar College, San Marcos, California
Copyright © 1998-2013 by Dennis O'Neil. All rights reserved.

Paleness isn't a blessing that signifies superiority but a curse that renders sunlight painful and dangerous to eyes and skin. I'm practically vampiric myself. White superiority may be similar in some ways to penis envy, hatred self weakness transposed upon the truly superior adaptation of the visible other, as well as resentment of their purity, when you think of Africans as being the original and pure homo-sapiens, lacking other genes and influences. We're all their descendants.

The institution and protection of power and privilege through division, exploitation, and oppression are universal corrupting evils within and between groups regardless how they are defined. Skin colour is the simplest visual division, false like most excuses, but effective as a uniform that draws justified hate away from those deserving of revilement rather than profit. 

Humans are earth-toned. We're ALL brown.

Race and Class are invalid concepts created by those trying to use them to support their claims of quality of a higher nature than that of those they oppress. The idea of Race was created by racists, Class by the privileged, both used to convince the oppressed that they deserve and can't change it. Both create "natural orders", levels of privileged infantilization that provide the oppressed the change to oppress those below them in the tradition of bullying. Bullies blame their victims.

Class may be correctly used to describe quality of behaviour but not person. Race more closely describe the differences between homo sapiens and neanderthals than among homo sapiens.

We are variations of one race, one colour, our actions determining our class. The rest is ethnicity, culture, and opportunity. We must reject the divisive false labels of oppression and its false benevolence. We don't need them. Their privilege can't exist without us. Its is our power that they wield, our wealth that they enjoy. They stand on our backs telling us to be grateful for the employment. Regardless of appearance, gender, sexuality, location, belief, background, or work, the oppressed are the oppressed. We are legion. We are one.

Class and race aren't separate, they are a continuum, a spectrum, a hierarchy, created to protect the privilege and control of the few.  Class creates false division within a group, race is the class applied to outsiders. Once some consider the English, French, and Germans to be separate "races". Race is the class lower than the lowest, beyond untouchable. Sub-human. By extension, the middle-class are sub-human compared to the so-called upper-class, who consider themselves to be the only pure/quality humans. Women have long been oppressed by the concept of purity and viewed as lesser humans.

If you accept racist-created categories to define yourself you help the oppressor by perpetuating the false divide. Divide and conquer. Turn the oppressed against each other. That's how 1% can control 99%. By definition, white and black are irreconcilable absolute opposites. One positive and one negative. Brown, as a third division has no relation to either as a colour. The acceptance of the division prevents any common ground. Focusing on differences, especially essentially minor ones, is the basis of discrimination. We all deserve basic respect.

Dehumanization is the universal evil whether you are reduced to a surface colour, facial features, a level of wealth, an accent, a religion, a consumer, a job, a market, an investor, a tax-payer, a gender, a sexual orientation a body size, or a medical condition. It has been the historical norm that anything we view as less than human gets abused, exploited, or destroyed. No one is less than human.

Facts are the only defense against false belief and lies. Fear always dehumanizes and division only makes it stronger.

We are all created equal and are stronger together. The struggle is ours, not theirs.

It is a fact that Black Lives Matter because all lives do, including those with mental or developmental disorders. We can't change history but we can make changes now. Or we can continue to let fear rule by division.

Ideas can have more power than the sun and be more destructive than a black hole. They are what makes us unique, as far as we know. But what do we really know? Facts are vital for survival.

The first act of war is dehumanization and the first casualty the truth.

The Privilege War began long before humans. Nature's laws make survival and mating privileges. Life only has the right to try.

Only we have the ability to make more compassionate laws than Nature. We have the Right, Reason, and Responsibility, to try. That's what makes us human.

Just as there are no such things as truly black or white humans, the idea of a "pure" human is absurd. The human body contain more microbe DNA than human. Each of us is a ecosystem, a diverse community working for the common good, when in healthy balance. Unbalanced, some work against the community and everything can break down. The body rejects its own parts as foreign and attacks itself. It's protection system kills it.

"Common sense" says that objects possess colour. Colours actually exist as frequencies of light that are either absorbed or reflected by pigments in the objects. The rejected frequencies are what we observe as an object's colour, when really it contains every colour except the ones visible. Black is produced by a total lack of light or its complete absorption. It contains no colour or all colour. Green pigments reject green light. White rejects all colours equally. Should we define ourselves  by what our skin rejects, by what we are not?  Then why not call ourselves Martian gods?

Colourblindness is a medical disorder usually created by a lack of colour sensors in the eyes or brain. We shouldn't be colourblind, but we should see the colours that are actually entering our eyes.

"Black" is darkness.  A "black" mood, experience, day, or life can only be negative, a deficiency, a void, an abyss.  Otherwise it is no longer "black". Light enters the darkness and we can see.

Symbols are what we define them to be. Colours are symbols, like stars. Some people claim to be blue (bloods), implying purity and quality of lineage. The only reason that we don't have purple people is that we haven't assigned a moral or social status to it beyond the clothing of Roman emperor. And that went out of fashion. Ultramarine blue replaced it as the colour of "nobility".

Facts are the only steady, real light we have in the darkness of ideology. Don't let them be filtered through a colored lens, particularly one created by those who are half-blind to humanity. Those unable to see a clear reality. A lens rarely provides better vision than its creator's. You come to see as they do and we tend to believe what we see.

We've become trapped in a shared illusion created with the darkest magic of the  mind. We need to see through the glamour to what's real. Change will appear impossible and nothing will seem to change until we BREAK the spell. We need to see what's real to take effective action and stop fighting ourselves.

According to existing, repeatedly verified, evidence, other races exist only in fantasy literature. Racism is a real ideology that devours everything it contacts. Evil is dehumanization.

Recognize it as what it is and call it such.

Their glamour is our nightmare .

Wake Up!

No one is less than human.

The problem with shouting "Black Lives Matter" at racists and a racist system is that they would largely agree. Except, they view blacks lives  as mattering no more than any subhuman animal, even though humans are animals. Another oppressive false division because we're not mineral or vegetables. To them you are saying that "black" lives matter more than theirs.They can only think in hierarchy. You have to stand on someone. As long as they fear being dragged down, Trey will punch down. The weight of oppression pushes down, each level upon the lower multiplying and building until it explodes upward. But, instead of destroying the hierarchy it is usually used to reorganize it.

Individualism and hierarchy have declared war on community and egalitarianism. If we don't try to establish a balance, it could destroy us all. Especially if we fight it for them. If we oppress ourselves. If we compete in a Oppression Olympics instead instead of recognize that we all have value talents and knowledge, and a role to play.
 
If being "Black" means having an African ancestry, then we are all "Black". Humanity is ancient, ongoing African diaspora. We all descend from a small number of early humans. We're all cousins, or closer. dysfunctional, but a family by blood, relation. We're not strangers, just estranged. There are no "others", just "the othered", the disowned. We're teenagers forming cliques. 

We're just a large family competing violently over an inheritance that we all share.

The universal good is compassion. It's the basis for for human laws and really the only law we truly need. Goodness is compassion.

Dehumanization and compassion are black and white.

Humanity is not a privilege. It is our responsibility to be compassionate. Otherwise we are actually less than the other animals. They have no reason and no choice.
 
You cannot have effective communication without agreed upon, firm definitions as a beginning. Otherwise, you end up talking about two different things and there can never be agreement or negotiation, only confused disagreement and escalating anger. Both sides could be right or wrong but there is no way to tell. They're just throwing apples and oranges at each other. They aren't speaking the same language. Language divides as powerfully as it unites.

You aren't considered truly conscious until you define yourself as a self, forming a theory of mind to become a self-aware individual. Only then can you consider others. Language is how we form concepts and express them in life. If mind is a theory, it can be altered by additional concepts. A word can make all the difference. Ideas are harder to defeat than armies because they attack invisibly from within. They can become self-realizing and self-defeating. Defines are the basis of organized thought. Blueprints are definitions. Laws are definitions. Genomes are definitions. It is madness without them.

Colours mark, identify, protect, warn, attract, and confuse. They don't define. White, red, pink, yellow, and black roses are all roses.

That's just my view from the outside edge.

Mistaken Identities: Colour - Kwame Anthony Appiah argues for a world free of racial fixations

In Part 3 of 2016 BBC Reith Lectures, philosopher and cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah argues for a world free of racial fixations. (BBC Radio )

Listen to Full Episode 53:58

In the 2016 BBC Reith Lectures, philosopher and cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah considers Creed, Country, Colour, and Culture. He argues that we over-emphasize scripture in our view of faith; that our concept of nationhood is usually mythical and romantic; that race is 'something we make, not something that makes us"; and that the idea of "Western" civilization is far too limiting. But, he suggests, a broader perspective on all of these offers genuine hope for the world. Recorded in London, Glasgow, Accra in his native Ghana, and New York.

**Please note: This episode is not available to download. Streaming audio is available for listening until February 10, 2017

MORE: Listen to the The Reith Lectures on BBC Radio 4

What makes us who we are?  Is it our religion?  Our nation?  Our race?  Our traditions? None of these things? All of them?

(appiah.net/updates)

In the third of his Reith Lectures, philosopher and cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah argues for a world free of racial fixations.

He tells the story of Anton Wilhelm Amo Afer. He was 5-years-old when he was brought from the Gold Coast to Germany in 1707, educated at a royal court and became an eminent philosopher. He argues that this elaborate Enlightenment experiment illuminates a series of mistaken ideas , including that there is a "racial essence" which all members of that race carry. Modern science long ago disproved this, as almost all of the world's genetic variation is found within every so-called racial group.

The lecture is recorded in front of an audience at the British Council in Accra, Ghana. The series is presented and chaired by Sue Lawley.​
​
Kwame Anthony Appiah grew up in Ghana and in London, the son of a Ghanaian independence leader and an English mother. He's taught at some of the world's top universities, and has written extensively about ethics, honour, and cosmopolitanism.  He's also a novelist, and now teaches philosophy and law at New York University.

Related websites:

• Is there such a thing as Western culture? Sonia Sodha reflects on Kwame Anthony Appiah's fourth Reith Lecture, Culture

• The Identity Quiz: do you know who you are?

• Find out more about Kwame Anthony Appiah and his Reith Lectures - Mistaken Identities​

• Find out more about the Reith Lectures
   
• Kwame Anthony Appiah's website

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**The producer of the Reith Lectures for the BBC is Jim Frank.
**The producer of this episode for IDEAS is Dave Redel.

Everything is always in process

Only compassion defeats dehumanization.