In my recently published article, I spoke about the historical debate between the concepts of "the power of logic" and "the logic of power", which characterized human interactions, from their first simple beginnings, until they became complex and reached the levels that we see and witness today, and I said that we must always "think - As individuals or as states - by possessing power, but at the same time there must be a logic that governs and rationalizes it, for power without logic is tyranny, tyranny and violence, and logic without power is helpless and targeted.” between them properly. In fact, I did not write that article about mere intellectual luxury with the intention of theorizing or preaching, as it is far from that or any form of dreamy utopia, and I still affirm that the sway in favor of “logic of power” as opposed to “power of logic” reaches enormous limits. What we are witnessing today puts the whole world in grave danger.
I learned from philosophy that becoming rules the world as an eternal and indisputable law, animated by the constant struggle of opposites. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus more than 2500 years ago was able to talk about the permanent flow of things, as a basis for development, expressing the theoretical and practical dialectic through his sayings about change and the struggle of all against all. And if philosophy is the rational explanation for existence, then political philosophy is the theoretical reading of the experiences of practical reality, and setting standards and guarantor principles to direct change towards promoting justice and truth, and not towards grave danger, as is the case today in the face of the absence of sane voices that re-right the course of humanity away from wars, hostility and unjust conflict. Finished.
 |
| from the Ukraine War. (Archives) |
war infection
War has spread in most countries of the world as an inevitable contagion, wars here and conflicts there, and the voice of wise people, whether politicians, university professors, or people with a human tendency that glorifies values and morals, and prevails over material values that are leading the world today to an unknown, may be a global war, has disappeared. A third does not exclude anyone and its results cannot be predicted. Where are the wise men in politics, religion and humanity? Did everyone abandon his moral responsibilities and engage in a game of conflict? Or did he remain silent and preferred to retreat in the face of the indifference of decision-makers and the interests of the major powers and the noise of the unrelenting weapons?
So, conflict and conflict in its various forms are raging in every part of the world today, and at all levels, and while Heraclitus was of the opinion that "conflict does not lead to the annihilation of things but to their establishment and making them possible to exist", this conflict now emerges taking on a new dimension as a war between annihilation and survival. The inevitability of human development has clashed severely with the intensification of competition between groups in order to control the present and the future. In the world it is this: “No one waits. If I can get what I want with one fell swoop, why should I draw distant plans for him while my enemy is at my door?” Thus, the "gun on the table" is always present, and the sound of war, threats and threats rise, and no other sound can be heard.
The era of speed...no time to think!
After two world wars, many thought that the world had learned the lesson, and it seemed that everyone had rushed to resort to international law and walked under the leadership of an organization concerned with the protection of human rights in a way that prevented the tragedy from recurring for the third time. This was the perception of the tendency of the ideal school in international relations, which saw That cooperation for the peace and development of peoples is what will be the feature of the next stage, while a second “realist” school has emerged that clearly saw that the interests of the major powers will rule the world, where only the law of “power” rules, and therefore conflicts will continue and expand and take different forms. Over time, we do not need to indicate the correctness of this trend I think!Where the data indicate the development of the geography of physical and geopolitical conflict since the end of World War II, and the increase in the average duration of civil wars from five years in 1950 to fifteen years by the year 2000, in parallel with the increase in the number of armed conflicts from less than 20 before 1950, to The 52nd peak in the post-World War II era, generating new patterns of violence, according to the Carnegie Middle East Center publication.
During the Cold War, the great powers were very careful about sharing areas of influence between them through the ideological struggle between capitalism and socialism. Conflicts fell below 35 in the early 2000s, to rise sharply after 2011, and the number of combat deaths around the world increased fourfold. So, the picture today seems completely upside down, as the deadly war machine precedes any dialogue or negotiations, so conflicts occur first, then the understanding begins on the basis of the winner and the loser, as there is no time for anyone to think!
Despite all the promises of technical and technological development and the progress of science to improve human life, this development, on the other hand, created an increasing demand for the basic resources of industry, and with the increase in the world's population, the need to accelerate production increased, which created and strengthened competition between countries for resources and the expansion of areas Influence, the latest manifestations of this competition are manifested in the race between Europe, America, Russia and China to share lands in the Arctic Ocean, which foreshadows devastating and catastrophic coming wars, the effects of which no one will be able to predict.
It is therefore clear that the human side has begun to retreat in front of the material other in international relations, a retreat that carries a fundamental contradiction. Instead of production and development taking place in response to human needs, we find that they have become its first victims, and while the rich and powerful countries increase in strength and wealth, the areas of graves for the dead increase. Starvation or as victims of wars in poor countries, which also confirms the correctness of the words of the English philosopher Hobbes: “Man is a wolf to his brother.”
Has the world always decided to go to war?
In the face of this “wolfishness” in human relations, most of the means and efforts of crisis management and resolving disputes between countries by peaceful means, or even if they attend, quickly seem useless in front of the language of war, or the threat of war, as a method of dealing between different groups, as it only requires That politicians throw accusations and exchange escalation of matters. What is happening today, after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war, is a good example of the exacerbation of this escalatory pattern in international relations. The option of war has become one of the usual political options, and waging it is no longer a serious matter, and resorting to it is easily done, even before thinking about less catastrophic solutions, such as negotiation, mediation, and others.
Russia escalated, so the West escalated, and the mutual provocation continued until Putin made the decision to war, which I see as a major strategic mistake, forcing the West - and through Ukraine - to invest in it to weaken Russia and deplete its capabilities. Entire. I do not think that the end of the fighting in Ukraine will mean the end of this type of war. The situation in Taiwan is on the brink of a pit of fire, and the escalation may increase at any moment to turn into a war with China, and any of these wars - in light of the massive polarization that the world is experiencing today - is qualified At every moment, it becomes a global war that includes all countries from the east to the west.
On the other hand, what reinforces the world's tendency towards armed conflict to solve its problems quickly is the entry of artificial intelligence algorithms into the military field, which many believe will be more lethal compared to a nuclear missile, and experts describe it as the third revolution of wars after gunpowder and nuclear weapons, as it allows identifying Specific targets (may be a single person) outside the borders of states, and accurately destroying that target without the need for human intervention, and one AI specialist believes that the cost of a swarm of 10,000 drones capable of annihilating half a city is now less than 10 Millions of dollars, which means we can get an accurate political killer that costs no more than a thousand dollars! All this happens today with the lack of confidence in relying on the moral responsibility of politicians or decision-makers to discourage them from using these technologies in the worst possible ways and without controls.
Any adventurous or reckless politician who has filled the world arena in recent decades can take a quick decision on a war of annihilation without anyone being able to deter him. Who guarantees - for example - that North Korea, which conducts successful missile tests on a frequent basis, and threatens its southern neighbor Constantly, who can guarantee that it will not launch this war at any moment? Especially since the madness of displaying arms appears as a contagious scourge that has become fueled by the willingness of everyone to engage in this catastrophic game, in a way that has become out of control and has allowed even the smallest extremist groups anywhere in the world to possess lethal weapons that threaten the internal and external security of countries, and impose themselves as active forces in the inflamed international scene. , especially when the forces supporting it use it when they want to wage war here or create chaos there.
The second basis on which the escalating international tension rests after the development of weapons is the media. The whole world lacks a media that pushes for peace or promotes it. On the contrary, media machines rush to fabricate and distort facts and systematically incite different groups and groups against each other, taking advantage of the tremendous development that made these machines accessible to every hand, to exploit this to ensure The continuation of the existing conflict and the creation of new conflicts in societies as well as between countries. Despite the media's ability to play the exact opposite role, of course, if the will of those who control it is available, the media's appeal to political interests will necessarily impose its values and laws on it.
What the major powers have been doing in making and managing wars with this intensity recently confirms that the world that built its hopes on their rationality when making them responsible for “international security” and its decisions, and when it dreamed of achieving a balance that would avoid wars after World War II, had made a great mistake in its calculations. It seems that the current international system is absolutely incapable of maintaining international peace and security, especially with the widening range of wars and the multiplicity of their fronts.
This is a brief overview of the current international behavior, which is reflected in economic crises and bottlenecks that do not exclude anyone. The quantities of energy offered in the markets are shrinking, production costs and prices are rising all over the world, so that many countries are facing an increasing deficit in food and securing the necessary needs, and this in turn will lead to More internal wars under different names, and in essence they are nothing but a struggle for survival that makes the change we talked about start moving in one direction: more war, killing and poverty threaten entire nations that once placed their trust in those who abandoned their responsibilities before their interests.
Where are the sane people of the world?
If politicians are like the coachman who drives the world's vehicle, then we have the right to ask where will they lead us? Who guarantees that the bridle will not slip at some point? Personally, I do not think that the world has been devoid of wise men, whether in the fields of politics or philosophy, whose counterparts in the past had a decisive role in making and directing countries’ policy, as they provided through their work adequate answers to the basic issues in the organization of societies, the distribution of power, and criticism of forms of government and institutions. They determined the best forms of relationship between the individual and others based on the study and understanding of the nature of man as a "social and political animal." Committed to humanitarian standards and ethical controls.
However, what we notice today is the widening of the gap between these wise men and politicians, and this is primarily due to the politicians’ claim that the wise people offer ideal solutions far from reality, and that they - that is, the politicians - are the most capable of assessing the course of things and the interests of the people. And limiting their work to theorizing, which does not reach the leaders’ ears and does not care about it if it arrives, and although this distance is not new in politics, it has not witnessed such a rupture before, and all of what I mentioned about the world’s tendency towards successive wars is the main cause of the exclusivity of politicians ( who are driven primarily by their interests) by laying down laws and making important decisions.
Today, we need, without delay, to rationalize politics, and to have wise men who are able to extrapolate solutions from political reality, away from excessive idealism and from limiting talk to “what should be,” and move us to making the possible. These voices should not remain faint, as we urgently need to get rid of the medieval mentality based on hatred and war, and this ideological pattern must be moved from the area of religious, ethnic and sectarian discrimination, to a more open and contemporary mentality, which sanctifies the human being, eliminates differences and eliminates “lupus”. In human relations to replace them with principles of cooperation and partnership rich in spiritual dimensions and ideal human values.
On the other hand, the world needs to reform its institutions and organizations and direct them in the service of humanitarian issues more than before. It also needs to think carefully and work hard to restructure the international organizations controlled by the great powers, emphasizing the need to activate the role of poor and marginalized countries - the first stakeholder. In peace - at the core of his decisions, they may be more effective in these organizations than the great powers that have been blinded by power and dominated by the material dimension that controls the behavior of their leaders.
If change is inevitable, it must be to support humanity and not to destroy it. In this context, energies and capabilities must be directed and the tremendous development in all its dimensions and forms in the service of issues of health, education, development and combating violence and terrorism, and also directed to help poor peoples to live in dignity.
In order for these great hopes to come true, they urgently need a meeting of the wise men of the world on one goal, which is to weave and strengthen peace in the whole world, and to consider this goal the goal of all and the condition of preserving their interests without conflict. In order for these hopes to be realized and for international peace to prevail in the world, it is necessary to adhere to Heraclitus' saying of the necessity of listening to the Logos or the voice of reason!
05-08-2022 | 19:56 Source : website
Add Comments