Within and around Iran, conflict seems a state of affairs, but the form conflicts take today — sub-state, transnational, highly technological — is very different from anything experienced ever. No one has to assault or bomb anything IF it can shut down computing operations, electrical feeds, satellite signals, etc., or otherwise interfere with arming or delivery paths.

We may be entering an energy age involving both fragile and extremely dangerous technologies — solar farms (easy to bomb or disconnect) and nuclear power stations (real ones involving fires we don’t know how to put out when their cooling systems fail) — and IF we wish one another to live well and prosper (so the Jews meet Star Trek), our ability to dispel, manage, or quell political and social chaos and violence comes to the fore. Basically: we can’t produce a higher global standard in quality of living if we cannot curtail the behavior persistent at the other end of the lifestyle and governance spectrum.

The problems have to dispense with arms.

We’re going to have a lot of arguments.

We do not want to have a lot of accidents.

I’ve counseled for a universal basis in values “compassion, humility, inclusion (very important), and integrity.  The world’s at a crossroads and will go forward, but whether it strives to do so today and gets a grip on itself or painfully scrapes through 400 more years to get to about the same place, I don’t know.

I do feel certain that to that to produce a sufficient global distribution in end-user resources to forestall or ameliorate conflict, disease, economic suffering — real suffering — and starvation wants for greater global cooperation and a steep reduction in the kind of human wildcards that spoil everything for everyone.

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