User Profile

Your Myers-Briggs Type is:
INFJ
Introverted 67% Intuitive 100% Feeling 38% Judging 1%

Approximately 1.5% of the U.S. population is INFJ

Kippurbird: One final point. Eragon hides his knife under his mattress. What sort of moron hides his knife under the mattress. You're supposed hide your money under the mattress and your knife under your pillow.

The problem of globalization: The world is rapidly becoming a smaller place thanks to huge advances in communication and transportation technology, yet narrow, almost provincial or tribal identities are still clung to tenaciously by the citizens of the globe. Increased interaction between many strong regional and national identities who have been forced to deal with each other more often in this suddenly crowded planet leads to the conclusion that we are on the cusp of the next level of spiral dynamics...will we adapt and raise ourselves to the next level of identity, a global identity, or will we fail to do so, and holding on tightly to our identities and defending them fiercely, dissolve into sectional violence and collapse?

Who else is for resolving international tension by cultivating a mass movement of global identity brought about by providing the general public various paraphanelia as a framework for them to structure their identity upon? Not only will this encourage global identity to the point where we may consider our nations to be as secondary as we consider our states today, which will ease tensions brought about by the present rampant nationalism and basically create world peace, but the masses, operating naturally from the global scale will then percieve a global federalism as inevitable, and so create a sprawling, incompetent, and deeply ingrained global government that will be too busy tripping itself up and taking up huge amounts of space with its bureaucracy to have time and efficiency enough for more direct forms of possible global government, such as totalitarianism or dictatorships, which should be prevented from coming to pass regardless of how much any child wants to grow up to be an evil overlord.

Identities are odd. Speaking primarily from a first-world perspective, we never attack as a body others of our own country, in the NAME of our own country, because somehow we're all brothers and sisters of our country and in it together and we will band together and fight and blah blah blah. We can count on our fellow citizen to back us up in a fight against those people in that other country...which is weird. You have no reason to trust that guy next to you in the gas station any more than you have to trust a random guy in Russia...they're both strangers to you, you might even have more in common with the Russian, you might even like him more...yet somehow, we can turn in battle AGAINST strangers, fighting WITH strangers. And what determines who's on what side? What country they were born in? Who determined the boundaries of the countries? What if they were suddenly moved outwards? Or inwards? What happens to the identities of the people who suddenly become citizens of another country? Do they consider themselves citizens of their new country, or citizens of their old country? They only thought of themselves as citizens of their old country because they were born there, lived there...but if where they were born and where they live is now another country, why don't they switch their identity? The first one is as arbitrary as the new one! The best example I can think of is Medieval Times, where people will cheer and hoot ferociously for "their" knight, who happens to be wearing the same color that was assigned to the person as they entered the building. There was no merit involved, nothing. It was completely arbitrary, a person could have easily ended up with any other color, but because they had THAT color flag and THAT color paper crown, they shouted and cheered with others who shared their random assignment, and booed against others who did not.

What if they had all had the same color? What if they all identified with the same knight, same team, same flag, same color?

There would be no adversity amongst them. They would band together to cheer on their knight, although they would still need to be rallying behind him against an enemy...survival against some adversity is why people form social identities and groups in the first place. So set up an artificial enemy, ideally an idea or concept that can fought violently (and by banding together) without ever being pinned down specifically or losing its potency, and against this idea, made of air and nothingness, rally all the people together under one banner...and there will be peace amongst human beings.

Of course, this only will work for first world countries, as they have the money, energy, and interest in that sort of enterprise. Let's face it, capitalism and our whole wonderful society runs on the creation and marketing of identity, rather than utility. But post-British Empire, the gap between third world and first world countries has been widening, largely due to the lack of investment of money, resources, and people from the British Empire. First world countries trade among themselves, and third worlders among themselves. But of course creating global (or heck, even national) identities in third world countries or areas with strong factions, political or religious or both, is KEY in creating global peace.

Following spiral dynamics, however, it's clear that creating new identities and getting them to release old ones will not happen until they have acheived economic stability and ceased being third world countries. It's awfully hard to glom on to ideals and shining futures and the global perspective if you're wondering where your next meal is coming from and what you're going to do about the job you just lost and so on - which is why this bombing and fighting and destabilization in the Middle East can't possibly be bringing democratic values to the people there. Terrorism in particular is rooted in those old identities and values that economic success and the ensuing abundance of newly available creative energy would be able to finally phase out, and terrorism is also largely rooted in the fundamental economic poorness of the regions in which they exist...because they're an organization and because they recieve funds, they're able to engrain themselves into the countries societies, developing a favorable working relationship with and blurring the line between the organization and the community and civilians (which is the situation in Lebanon with Hezbollah). In an economically and thus politically healthy society, there is no need to accept a terrorist organization since it's the only large organized group that can provide for the people, because the healthy government and commercial system is in the place the terrorist organization would be. It's much the same technique they use with antibiotic-free livestock - to prevent a bacterical infection, they feed the animals beneficial bateria to take root in the gut, so there is no place for the disease bacteria to get a good grip on. Of course, the Middle-Eastern countries gave up their posperity and advancement when their scientific discoveries and progress began to contradict their religion (identity), so it's somewhat circular, but exposure to the bounties of economic success will hopefully inspire them to make the choice to continue to make small improvements, and so ensure survival and safety at the environmental level, remove the economic need for organizations that also have a separate violent goal, and relax people enough to free up creative philosophical energy, and to slowly begin the cycle of transforming the society through changing its values. This process equally applicable to the poor and turbulent African countries and Asian countries. Once they reach first world level the current first world countries should have created enough of a global identity that solidarity should come naturally. All of this is why economic viability and success in third world countries is so vital to global peace. It is crucial, in fact, considering the focus of this day and age on the militaristic concerns of third world countries (hopefully Russia and China won't get together and decide first world countries need a little action too). Eventually all major conflicts around the world will be acted out economically or with the protests of special interest groups, and we truly will have relative world peace, the situation of the globe and its nations comparable to that of the US Federal government and its states, although hopefully with proportional representation, allowing more than two major political parties. Obviously there are more details to it than that, more loose ends, more things to consider, but if followed with regulation, intelligence, and good conscience, it can be done. So, how can economic stability be created in a third-world country? That's the absolute hardest problem at this point, although it too can be done.