"The deeper issue"

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Feb 7, 2012 at 19:28

Peter Herz ,

> I have a fear that they're probably wrong--and that human nature will remain as intractably violent even with worldwide democracy.<

If I may make a little comment , then periods of peace and stability are well-documented in human history (e.g. during the Roman Empire), so 'intractably violent human nature' is not a sufficient explanation for today's and especially tomorrow's inflationary anarchy and chaos. "Worldwide democracy" is also a tricky thing. It has hardly anything to do "peace and stability" as its absolutely undemocratic economic principles and realities make 90-95% of a democratic country's wealth get controlled by 10-5% of its population with the automatic power shift favoring the undemocratic few at the expense of the democratic many. No country living by these economic principles can enjoy peace and stability within,so how can it be peaceful and stable without ? And what applies to a particular democracy, applies to worldwide democracy as well.

The mystery of how peace is achieved and what causes anarchy are not so hard to see, I suppose. Peace may be achieved in three ways.Either 1/ there is someone so powerful that he imposes peace upon the rest of us. Or 2/ there is a balance between different centers of power which makes war too risky to start. Or 3/ all love and respect each other so much that nobody even thinks of doing something wrong to anyone else. To the first category belongs the Roman Peace.To the second the peace we enjoyed in Europe between 1945-1991.The third rare category is observed in Scandinavia.

Now the sad thing about our age is that peace through balance of power was destroyed in 1991 with the demise of one superpower.The remaining superpower due to its hedonism, economic bankruptcy and a few other reasons is quite unable and unwilling to impose the Roman Peace. And to have the Scandinavian peace you need Scandinavians with their culture, history and geopolitics while what we have in the world nowadays in terms of culture and humanity and ambitions looks ,alas, like the very opposite to them.

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