Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

 12 May 2012

It can’t be denied that since the days of homo sapiens human beings have made great progress in the fields of science and the arts. However, in politics we seem always to be stuck back at square one. When one looks around the world today, what do we see?  There are wars and threats of war in central Asia, the butchery of civilians in Syria, narco-wars in Latin America, the drumbeats of war in the South China Sea, dictatorships in most of the countries of Africa, the Middle East, central Asia, Russia and China….Capital punishment is widespread and, regardless of ideological differences,  torture is now respectable again everywhere (including the United States and Britain). Meanwhile, in the so-called western world we have replaced dictatorships with political duopolies in which power alternates between two differently named political parties which have virtually identical policies so that, whichever party happens to be in power, virtually nothing changes.  Meanwhile, as has happened since the beginning of time, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Not much to celebrate, frankly. And not much sign that things will get better in the future. In fact, with global warming and the depletion of natural resources, including water, things look set to get a good deal worse. And that’s an optimistic view.

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 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

 1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Das Vierte Reich/The Fourth Reich (6 Feb 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

5. What would Gandhi have said? (30 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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