Before Guru leaves on his flight around the world, mariner asked him for a few markers that may be too imminent for a long study of the world’s circumstances. He commented on a few while he dressed in his flight suit:

It was Hugh Kingsmill who said, “A nation is only at peace when it’s at war.” In history, most top-of-the-bunch empires felt this way. With luck, world wars could be behind us as globalism evolves. Nevertheless, today there is a heightened spirit in the world community that longs for a war to resettle things. Clean the closet of old rivalries and international unrest due to major errors in the past similar to the Sykes-Picot treaty that ignorantly redefined borders in the Middle East in 1916. Donald and Kim are a test case to determine whether war is still needed to resettle things.

Around the world, wealth and economic wellbeing are available to fewer and fewer. From somewhere, humanist behavior must readjust the phenomenon of money, how it is assimilated, leveraged, and distributed. This is a looming threat to the United States and other nations where governments turn their head to allow oligarchical culture.

In the long history of Homo sapiens sapiens, an element of tribal sharing has waxed and waned: are all humans worthy of their birthright? Are they to be cared for during stressful times? Conservatives say no and liberals say yes. This is an unresolved philosophical point that may in its own right supersede nationalism, authoritarianism, capitalism and socialism as a form of survival. Today, September 24, 2017, there are 842 million individuals around the world who suffer from malnutrition. That’s 12.5% of the world’s population. We have witnessed the results of prolonged hunger in Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Chad, and more; it leads to war and destruction of any capable government. Recovery does not follow.

As the world moves toward a new global reality, opportunity will exist to pursue both avarice and restitution. The news media does not cover the issue of sharing as a political philosophy but it is a real war of its own.

The last comment from Guru dealt with the role of the United States in the world:

For nearly 200 years, the United States has speculated on similarities with the Roman Empire. Now it is time to speculate on similarities with Ancient Greece as it mastered esoteric reality but simultaneously fades as Rome becomes dominant.

Ancient Mariner

Having Donald in one’s life is like having fleas. Donald is similar to fleas because he is everywhere, in everything, constantly irritating, and a handheld disinfectant is too little too late – that is, erase one flea and two dozen take its place. Consider the content of national news . . .

Also similar to fleas, Donald is a carrier of serious disease. At the moment, a sign of a worldwide contamination is visible. Unfortunately, Donald is like the boy in the plastic bubble, a movie made in the 1970’s about a boy with no immune defenses. Donald’s damaged psyche, racist proclivity and his propensity for immoral behavior are protected from outside criticism by a steel ego and, importantly, by any need for compassion.

Also unfortunate, Donald has become President at a moment when the entire world’s politics, economies, international ethics and order of national prominence all are at a crossroad. Donald, with immense damage to the United States across the board, has pulled the nation out of the world contest and back into an era of nationalism and racism reminiscent of colonialism if not the Civil War itself – in less than 200 days in office.

The effect of Donald for those who want broad perspective on the state of nations and economies is a disabling storm cloud that prevents a view of the horizon. Mariner has commissioned Guru[1] to hire a U2 spy plane to fly at altitudes where fleas cannot survive. What is the state of world humanity vis-á-vis politics and economy? Future posts may dabble . . .

Ancient Mariner

[1] To new viewers, mariner is a composite of three alter egos – Chicken Little, who is frightened by everything; Amos, a permanent critic of everything; and Guru, a futurist and generalist of immensely broad interpretations of everything.