I recently visited an eye doctor for a consultation about my eyes or more specifically what to do about cataracts. He asked how I was managing, to which I replied quite well, the cataracts were a minor impediment but that was about it. To which he replied that I was not aware how limited my vision had become.
There was something in that comment. We are adaptable creatures and tend to get used to most given situations. That is a useful trait much of the time. However sometimes adaptability can lead to lethargy and lack of belief that things could be better.
From which I come to the present geopolitical situation which for the most part is largely depressing. I am perforce highly aware of that, living in Israel which has been in a state of war for the last 3 years , overshadowed in the last few days with the active war vis a vis Iran. Not very pleasant to hear missiles and explosions and not knowing what the next day will bring. I have now been living in Israel close on forty years. There have been relatively calmer periods, but as a whole I have not experienced genuine and stable peace here.
The world as a whole is unstable and for the most part news from other regions is also depressing. This may have something to do with our inherent interest in calamities of one sort or another. We can learn something from tragedies of one sort or another. Passing a crash site on the road, we have to slow down and try and understand what happened. Anyone following the recent crash of the Air India plane can put two and two together and deduce that it is worth paying extra for a seat next to the emergency exit.
Still even taking into account our fascination with the tragic, my impression is that genuinely bad and sad news is all too prevalent. While it is easy and for the most part correct to apportion some blame to certain national leaders, limiting ourselves to handing out black stamps is really too simplistic. If one sees a garden being dominated by weeds, one has to ask where is the gardener ? Where are the positive forces ?
In the aftermath of the two world wars in short succession, similar questions were asked. One of the conclusions that was drawn by some was that the structure of the global politic based on sovereign nation states was fundamentally flawed. For every nation put its interest first and hence was largely blind to the interests of others. Each nation had its own story and justification for its actions. When those stories and justifications clashed war, death and destruction was the inevitable result.
Different solutions were proposed and adopted in the aftermath of the World Wars. The United Nations was set up as a means to unify the nations of the world. Unfortunately the various compromises which were made in setting up the U.N rendered the organization largely ineffective in achieving its core objective, global peace.
The European Union was also set up in the aftermath of WWII . The motivation for setting up the precursor to the EU
