Hopeful
I’ve been pretty miserable this year. At the same time I have also experienced an enormous amount of joy. As a rule and practice, I make it a point to find joy every day. I find it really helps to keep me hopeful. But, why have I been so miserable?
I’m absolutely horrified that I live at a time where so many children and other innocent people are killed daily in Gaza for over a year while Western governments that for my entire life have proclaimed to be beacons of diplomacy and protectors of human rights have not only not intervened to stop it, but have been complicit. Then there is the Russia/Ukraine war that has been going on for almost 3 years with an estimate of a million killed. A war that could have ended a month after it started thanks to diplomacy but Western governments prevented it. This year marked half a century since I’ve been alive so this isn’t unfortunately the first genocide I’ve witnessed. There were the genocides in Darfur, Rwanda, Bosnia and Herzegovina. There also have been a few wars too, Afghanistan, Iraq, Congo, Syria etc… Nor am I unfamiliar with Western governments’ foreign policy record of initiating, financing and participating in wars and destruction of countries in the global south. Knowing this doesn’t make me feel better, in fact, it has made me feel worse. Don’t we know better? I’ve been wondering why we still have wars and genocides?
“There is a powerful fantasy of progress that lurks beneath the surface of contemporary culture, a fantasy to which we have all subscribed in some form or another. While scientific and technical advances over the last two centuries have greatly improved the comfort and length of our lives, they have facilitated no comparable moral progress.” (Hollis, James. Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up (p. 207)).
“Over the last several million years, our brains grew and grew, tripling in size from those of our chimpanzee cousins. But for the last two hundred thousand years or so, our brains have stayed the same size. This has led evolutionary psychologists—people who focus on how the human psyche has changed over vast time scales—to conclude that “our modern skulls house a Stone Age mind.” (Klaas, Brian. Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How it Changes Us (p. 71)).
Based on the above quotes, psychologists and psychoanalysts believe we don’t in fact know better. Nevertheless, there is data to suggest that we are less violent than before. If you look at the rate of intentional homicide globally it declined from 6.93 per 100,000 in 2000 to 5.20 per 100,000 in 2023 (you can filter to see per region and country, as well as data on other types of violence here). In terms of conflicts, the number of direct deaths (excluding diseases and famine caused by war) from state-based conflicts for both civilians and military personnel decreased from about 550,000 in 1950 to under 100,000 per year for most of the period from 1990 to 2021. This figure rose to 276,000 deaths in 2023. The current conflicts in Gaza, Syria, Sudan and Ukraine will most likely nudge this figure up even further. Another unfortunate upward trend is that the number of violent conflicts (violent crises, limited war and war) have increased since 2005. In 2023 there were 22 wars, 21 limited wars and 177 violent crises, compared to 2 wars, 26 limited wars and 90 violent crises in 2005.
We may be less violent in the aggregate sense but the impact of our violent conflicts are greater. Brown University’s Watson’s Institute of International Affairs notes: “The U.S. post-9/11 wars have forcibly displaced at least 38 million people in and from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya and Syria. This number exceeds the total displaced by every war since 1900, except World War II.” And “more than 7.6 million children under five in post-9/11 war zones are suffering from acute malnutrition.” Further, the UNRA (United Nations Refugee Agency) estimated that at the end of 2023 117 million people were forcibly displaced. This constitutes a rise of 8 per cent or 8.8 million people compared to the end of 2022 and continues a series of year-on-year increases over the last 12 years. Other detrimental impacts include “scholasticide”, put simply, is the systematic destruction of educational infrastructure and institutions (see here for full definition). It is estimated that nearly 90% of schools have been destroyed in Gaza since October 2023. And there is trauma you are left with if you’ve experienced and/or witnessed wars, genocide and displacement, which can last generations.
Our Stone Age mind
For most part of this year I felt pretty down on humanity. I hated that humanity could cause so much pain and havoc. Knowing that I was part of humanity, and that there was nothing I could do to prevent this suffering made me really miserable and despondent. Speaking with a friend of mine a couple of months ago, I expressed how sad I was that I live in a world where you can commit and livestream genocide for over a year without any repercussions, and that I have lost faith in humanity. She reminded me that there is a huge gap between the ruling and media class and ordinary people. That she actually has a lot of faith in the people because the more they see what’s happening the more they don’t want to support it. It’s just these entrenched interests are really entrenched. To hear this from a person, a long time foreign correspondent in the Middle East, and who has witnessed some pretty gruesome and inhumane acts to be still so hopeful, made me feel a bit better. It is true the vast majority of ordinary people I know are against genocide and their governments using their taxes to fund wars and genocides hence why many people (including my friend) all over the world are risking their lives and livelihood to speak out. But there is this nagging question (intensified by this year’s US presidential election) I have, why do ordinary people keep electing and/or following these leaders? Leaders can’t be leaders without followers. And in a democracy you can’t be an official without people electing you. As I wrote before, I personally don’t vote as I can’t bring myself to vote for any of these politicians. This is one of the key questions Brian Klass addresses in his book Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How it Changes Us.
Klass argues that our social world has changed but our brains haven’t changed since the Stone Age. We have learned to pick leaders for reasons that no longer reflect modern realities. “Evolution has burned into our brains a set of templates for selecting those who lead us, and these templates are activated whenever we encounter a specific problem requiring coordination (such as in times of war).” It’s one of the reasons that authoritarian-style strongmen (the term is no accident) gin up fear or provoke conflicts to consolidate power. They’re activating our hunter-gatherer instincts to turn to someone who seems strong when we perceive a threat” (Klaas, Brian. Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How it Changes Us (p. 76)). These templates make us have a strong bias for male leaders hence why the vast majority of heads of state and CEOs are men, and typically ones that are tall, as height would be of greater significance for a male hunter or warrior. Another hardwired bias is to prefer those who look like us and to distrust those who don’t. Back in the Stone Age, the likelihood of meeting different people from other parts of the world who were most likely of different racial groups was virtually impossible. However, this hasn’t been the case for hundreds of years but this fear has stayed with us. Hence, why racism is present even in the most diverse countries such as the US, France and UK. This distrust of others isn’t just limited to race, it also includes social class, religion and even which football club you support.
If there is indeed a huge difference between the ruling class and the ordinary people, from a social class perspective, why then do we trust them? By trust, I mean vote for and/or follow them. Unlike ants that use a pheromone system to coordinate and navigate their environment, we use hierarchy. The transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural society created settlements with bigger groups of people, which required coordination and collaboration for survival, which necessitated leaders and key decision makers. Hierarchy according to Peter Turchin brought us civilization. “Hierarchy is like fire. It can be used to cook food or to burn people” (Klaas, Brian. Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How it Changes Us (p. 36)). When used well hierarchy can cook up peaceful and stable societies. For example, countries that are regarded as some of the best governed such as Singapore, Switzerland, and Norway are also some of the safest and most affluent. On the Global Organised Crime Index these countries scored 3.47, 4.87 and 3.75 (out of a 10, being the highest of criminality) respectively. Poverty rate for these countries 12%, 14.7% and 12.7%. And when hierarchy is poorly executed it can have adverse impact. Countries with poor levels of governance such as Nigeria and Democratic Republic of Congo (the DRC) also have a high level of criminality at 7.25/10 and 7.38/10 respectively. They are also some of the poorest, with an estimated poverty rate of 40.1% for Nigeria and for the DRC it is 63.9%.
It occurred to me that perhaps fear of the ruling class is an important factor in why we follow them, especially when you take into account tools of control such as prisons and arms that have gotten more sophisticated and newer tools such as mobile and internet systems that can monitor our every step. It certainly isn’t because we believe in and trust them if you look at data on public trust in government. For the US the figure has been declining since the 1960s when above 77% of people in the US say they trust the federal government to do what is right ‘most of the time’ to currently only 22%. The figure is similar in the UK at 24%. And trust in the press in the UK is at 13%, while in the US it is currently at 31%, down from 68% in 1972.
Who rule us
If we do need hierarchy to run our large societies, why is it then that so many of the people who head our public institutions are dreadful? Klaas gives several reasons but I will highlight only a couple. The first, there is a high level of psychopathy amongst those who are drawn to power and acquire it. According to Kevin Dutton, a research psychologist at Oxford University and the author of The Wisdom of Psychopaths, the ten professions with the most psychopaths are CEOs, lawyers, TV/radio personalities, salespeople, surgeons, journalists, police officers, members of the clergy, chefs, and civil servants. (Klaas, Brian. Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How it Changes Us (p. 98)). It doesn’t mention politicians, but it does mention civil servants who are unelected government officials. Many US politicians are also lawyers. A Harvard Law Review article from 2015 laments the declining dominance of lawyers in the US Congress from 60-80% in the 20th century to 40% in 2015. A background in business or banking is the next most common background for US politicians. In the 114th Congress, 231 members of the House of Representatives had previous occupations that fell under the “business or banking” category. Furthermore, one study found that Washington, DC, has by far the most psychopaths per capita of any region in the United States (Klaas, Brian. Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How it Changes Us (p. 99)). The UK parliament also has a high proportion of lawyers. For example, the current Prime Minister, Keir Starmer was a human rights lawyer (how ironic!).
The second reason is what Klaas referred to as psychological distance, the length of proximity between the ruler and the ruled. For example, how far you are from the war you’ve initiated. It is easier to send other people’s kids, husbands and wives if none of yours are going. It is easier to drop bombs on people thousands of miles away that you don’t know. According to Klaas psychological distance is therefore a dilemma that can be solved by what social scientists call a Goldilocks solution. Anyone making tough and potentially damaging or deadly decisions needs to have just the right amount of emotional proximity (Klaas, Brian. Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How it Changes Us (p. 218)). When it comes to wars, unfortunately, this distance has been increasing thanks to technical advances in drones and missiles. Missiles can travel thousands of miles away with very little human involvement, just a couple of people to operate and without leaving their military base.
I end the year hopeful. Because as the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote, to be hopeful is to hold “a steadfast faith that there can never be a situation that is utterly, totally hopeless. To choose hope is to step firmly forward into the howling wind, baring one’s chest to the elements, knowing that, in time, the storm will pass.” (The Book of Joy, p.122). The current killing and destruction storm will pass. We humans are resilient, hence why we’ve survived this long. Also we have an innate distaste for injustice hence why so many ordinary people all over the world have continued to risk their lives to speak out against the genocide in Gaza and other atrocities.