Ongoing crises in the news make my immersions in value theory seem foolish: as if care for principle, better distinctions, and compassionate reasoning can have effective merit. Nevertheless, I trek onward.
Here’s a comment I posted tonight at the NY Times article by UN General Secretary Guterres (quoting some key phrases he uses):
If global society will make and keep real that there must be an “international community” (not just global society alluding to the notion)—if We will hold sacred “each other’s humanity”—then we can make “UN resolutions” and “international law” effective, by demanding that our national leaders make the UN an effective institution during crises.And I added, at Tom Friedman’s article on the conflict:
Collaborative political leadership can cause “our common humanity” to lead regional conflicts toward equitable prosperity on shared grounds.
But it calls for citizens to elect enlightened leadership, and for leadership to educate citizens adequately about how the world really works, such that We can work well only if respect for each other’s humanity is sacred.
All developed nations are partly responsible for the interminable struggle of Palestinians to have their own state.
Israel must show leadership which makes constructive relations with Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations work for a durable two-state solution, led by Palestinians and Israel in partnership. And the solution must honor the idea of the UN as beacon of human rights and humanity.
Humanity will not survive—and can indeed disappear!—without a principle-based international order which works. (This, by the way, is why Putin must lose.)
There can be no security for our children’s futures without effective democratic authority by reason of the principle-based international order that is really effective.
A partnership of Israel, Arab nations, and Palestinians in their new state can altogether re-build Gaza to make it a jewel of the Middle East, while the medieval theocracy in Iran shrivels away due to the Iranian people's securing of democracy.
And Vladimir the Great is forgotten. Democracy prevails in China. The UN Security Council prudently uses military force to protect developing nations' paths to democracy.
Global warming is reversed. Fusion power makes prosperity flourish in harmony with biodiversity....
This is how it must be. Our heirs deserve it.
