“To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;” – Article 1.1 UN Charter

Signatories to the UN Charter are bound by international law to settle disputes peacefully and only resort to force when all other avenues for dialogue, diplomacy, negotiations and other means to settle disputes have been exhausted. The language of the UN charter is, in and of itself, profound in its implications yet fails miserably to live up to its own standard; needless to say this is a function of the member states and not the organization itself – yet the organization lacks the means to hold its members accountable for breeches of this fundamental.

One of the major flaws of the structure of the United Nations is that it is in fact not a united nations at all – it is a group of states – and does not have any body that represents nations of peoples. If the settling of disputes were left to nations, be they ethnic groups or imagined groups, I think the world would be in a much better state than it is now – where our collective fate is determined by a global corporate mafia that call themselves governments.

For starters, most normal members of civil society know how to party in the tradition sense as opposed to the sense implicit in the phrase “political party.” People would settle their disputes through drinking – which could lead to sex, sleep, vomiting, brawling and brotherly love; a far cry from settling disputes with bunker busters, tear gas, white phosphorous, hellfire missiles and the be-all-that-ends-all: nuclear war.

Sports are a very physical way to incorporate competition with cooperation with some minor injuries and the occasional fatality though nothing like that of war. The Olympics are a perfect example of settling disputes by peaceful means; may the best person/team win based on their dedication, discipline and an intelligent strategy.

The arts are also a wonderful means by which people can explore their differences. The display and performance arts are a great playground for our commonalities as well as our differences: theater, dance music, painting, sculpture, and so on are a great way of exploring differences in culture which offer an opportunity for appreciation rather than disdain.

The culinary arts, too, should not be underestimated as a means by which nations can settle disputes. Exploring flavors – what could be better.

If music is the universal language of humans then numbers are the universal language of nature. Why are there so many languages and only one set of numbers (except for the Romans)? We all speak the same numbers and live on the same planet with the same paragon of flora and fauna. Why do we not learn to play peacefully with numbers to explore the vast realms of organic organization. This would keep us busy for a long while – as it has.

We don’t see too many natural scientists and mathematicians calling for war, going into battle, or bludgeoning each other in the streets. Similarly, short of a battle of the bands, musicians tend to be a peaceful lot not smashing in each others skulls and taking fingers as trophies. Chefs, dangerous as they may seem, are clearly out for the betterment of society providing blood and soul sustenance. Similarly, athletes are all about the competition and victory but most sporting events tend to end with fewer deaths than wars.

The world needs to be run by an organized civil society transcending the idea and reality that nation states have been able to muster in terms of creating a peaceful planet devoid of blood lusting greedy murderous corporate fascist war mongers: megalomaniacal psychopaths. When the United Nations becomes a forum for the united nations of peoples from the respective civil societies of what are now nation states perhaps the prospects for human peace will be realized. I’m sure our plant and animal sisters and brothers are longing for the day when they are no longer subject to our collective insanity.

A recent example of this, it has been argued, is the Occupy Wall Street movement – which, for its potentially dubious origins, lack of organization and overall ineffectiveness did exemplify the potential power of a semi-organic movement coalescing, organizing and beginning to define itself. It was, in a sense, a parthenogenic disturbance: an unfertilized embryo destined to spontaneously abort with no potential of becoming viable. In any case, perhaps a better and more appropriate terminology to express the intent and sentiment of the occupiers would have been to call the movement “inhabit wall street” or “cohabitate wall street” indicating something more in line with what was being sought – equality and justice. This one word switcheroo is a total game changer and has profound implications, speaking volumes to the very fundaments and intentions of the collective and definitely redirecting the strategy. It includes all stakeholders as having a valid claim in a shared space and demands dialog, listening and, as Freire called it, a dialogical conscientiazation. It is, in essence, the knowledge that is gained and shared through learning about others’ capacities and interpretations of reality; it is learning empathy.

Similarly, the entire world has been duped into accepting the United Nations as a collective of states organized to contract and execute international norms regarding war and peace: international human rights law, international humanitarian law, international criminal law and others. That in and of itself is a seemingly noble cause save the fact that the United Nations is a collection of states and nations are collections of peoples of a common culture: an ethnic community (with a slightly political bent – a meaning the term has evolved to include). States haven’t been around that long historically. Before that it was empires, dynasties, monarchies and the like: colonialists at heart and in practice. The idea that states should represent the will, desire, expectation and needs of a nation is also a noble prospect yet, historically, this is not the case. To expect a United Nations of united states to carry out the will of a united nations of peoples is seemingly absurd. Perhaps this is why the United Nations is fundamentally dysfunctional. The representatives at the UN are not necessarily representing the will of the nations of peoples whom their respective governments send to deliver the message of the nation; that is, the message of the nation at the United Nations is the message of the state and even in the glorious western democracies the likelihood the will of the nation and the will of the state coincide is slim.

Let’s call it what it is or, better yet, create what it should be. A true United Nations of united nations of peoples coming together and doing what the states are unable or unwilling to do because they are inept or have dubious intentions. Those among us who have traveled to other lands and met other peoples – physically or astrally – understand that the common ground for our humanity is vast yet the establishment of the foundations for equality and peace are outside of the purview of many of the member states of the United Nations and, as a functional organism, the United Nations is incapable of carrying out its mandate because it is structurally compromised – as its name indicates.

A viable solution which would respect the human rights of all concerned and which would solve the problem of borders and resources, as well as demographics and the right to return for all peoples, Palestinian and otherwise, would be to declare the geographic boundaries defined by the Palestine Mandate as terra nullius – no one’s land.

Since this “disputed” land (annexed and occupied by the UN and Israel and the US and others by proxy) is really the last great colonial product of the British Empire – now perpetuated by the US and the other former colonized British states – let it be the first place on earth where there is no state control based on any discriminatory factor, where no one owns the land and where all people are seen as equal under the moral code of the nation as determined by what could be a stateless nation with a constitution (not defining a government structure, per se, but defining a moral code analogous to the Bill of Rights in the US and other international declarations based on equality, peace, justice, liberty, freedom, truth, dignity, trust and the rest of the virtues.

Such a move will require a great deal of courage from the United Nations organs and member states who are willing to uphold the law through their words and actions, an organized popular resistance from Palestinian civil society – and potentially the PA (as, say, exhibited in Abbas’ speech at the UN (in 2011 I think it might have been), and the international solidarity movement through BDS and other means of non-violent popular struggle.

The UN, in order to overcome the inertia of the security council and other organs that prevent the UN organizations – as an expression of its member states – to carry out its functions as prescribed by international law, the UN will likely need to change the structure since the current structure is not properly carrying out its function. The possibility and effects of a Second UN Charter convention should be seriously contemplated by the General Assembly and other appropriate bodies of the UN. Primarily, a restructuring or elimination of the Security Council, the veto, or how it can be used needs to be evaluated and the creation of some body representing civil society needs to take place – a people’s parliament.

In a Newtonian sense, when there are forces acting on a body creating a certain trajectory, in order to alter that trajectory and get it to go in the direction of an international law and human rights based system, the right actions need to take place from the right forces. In this case, as history has shown, there is no political will or skill from the main stakeholders to change the trajectory, so the Palestinian civil society and the respective civil societies of the world need to learn the principles and practices of non-violent popular struggle – which has shown, historically, to be a much more effective means of conflict transformation. It is not the military might that will win the struggle for legitimacy, it is the struggle for equality and justice from international solidarity with the Palestinians that will usher in a durable peace.

Further, we want to live in a state where no animals are cruelly treated: used in factory farming or raised as commodities for human benefit; used in testing for the safety of human ego glamor products; used to test farmaceuticals to cure the ills that humans bring upon themselves from poor attitudes, bad diet and a disconnect from the very land which gives them life.

Vegans deserve a place where they don’t have to put up with inflated vegetable prices resulting from farm subsidies to the animal slaughter industry. Vegans don’t want to smell the burning carnage billowing out of restaurants as they walk down the streets of their communities. Vegans don’t want to have to breath in the dead skin cells of the omnivorous counterparts and would like to bring that cell count to a minimum.

For our homeland we propose that we create a state within a state within a state – we can be given land in Israel – perhaps the Golan Heights, southern Lebanon, Jerusalem or maybe somewhere in the Negev since they were going to take that place form the Bedouins recently.

We choose this place because we, as vegan Essenes, follow the same beliefs that Jesus did – according to the dead sea scrolls Jesus was an Essene and therefore a vegan. Since Jesus was a Jew, since an entire religion created in his name, and since that is where the 3 or so major religions claim as there homeland, we feel we should have a homeland too.

We hope the state of Israel, created as a homeland for an oppressed, persecuted and dispossessed peoples, will understand our plight and will give us a piece of the land that was given to them by the former empires of the world on a land where other people were living. They should be able to relate to that and empathize with us.

We will soon be petitioning the UN for the right to legal veganhood and seeking funding through the Vegan Defense Fund. We shall soon be publishing a complete manifesto of how we shall go about funding this large scale emigration, assimilation into the existent community and security concerns.

Trying to reduce a complex social interaction to a general theory, as Dahrendorf states, leads to empty generalizations or to empirically unjustifiable oversimplifications. With this in mind I limit this discussion of social conflict in the United States, specifically from the beginning of the Bush Jr. Administration, noting that an analysis based on Huntington’s theory – largely the disposition of the Neoconservative agenda, which I will discuss in more detail – would make for an interesting discussion. As I hope to show, the social structure of the US closely resonates with the key points highlighted in Dahrendorf. Additionally, while I do believe there is valuable information to be obtained through a psycho-social analysis of this, or any social structure, I think Dahrendorf’s limitation on endogenous conflicts as “the task of sociology to derive conflicts from specific social structures” points out most of the main functional relationships of the two dichotomous models of society along with the principle of authority and authority structures. These aspects of the Conflict Theory model and, what I would call the general tendency toward a neo-totalitarian state are the main points of my argument.

An important aspect, and precondition, of the Conflict Theory model is that it is intended to be ‘crafted’ to suit the needs of a particular conflict and therefore avoids generalizations and oversimplifications. Further, it considers the trajectory of the system and therefore,  through empirical research, attempts to establish a reasonable set, or multiplicity, of parameters to evaluate the system and the relative intensity of each parameter in the specific context. As Dahrendorf points out, “it is erroneous to assume that a description of how elements of a structure are put together in a stable whole offers, as such, a point of departure for structure analysis of conflict and change .” Such an approach can tends to eliminate many of the assumed structural and functional relationships that may lead to incorrect interpretations of empirical data and eliminates the difficulties of distinguishing between intended and unintended outcomes and relies more on the scientific method of matching empirical evidence with stated hypotheses.

II. Critical Evaluation of Key Points

I will highlight the key points of Dahrendorf’s Social Conflict Model as presented in lecture at the World Peace Academy by Dr. Jürgen Endres.1 Beginning with dichotomous models of Integration and Conflict, as listed in Table 1, it is important to note that these
two contrasting models form what I would consider to be a canonical set of mutually induct and mutually restrictive pairs. This is to say that these two aspects of society are, in the case of the Unites States at least, intertwined and are the impetus for change itself.
There is always a very progressive element of society which is met with a more conservative element and the more, for example, the indicators of Conflict become dominant, the more their tends to be a reaction by the more conservative elements of society. This explains the oscillation from Democratic to Republican parties controlling the three branches of government. However, there is an added layer which, according to Dahrendorf, would be the real progenitor of the social dynamic – namely, that the real holders of authority in the United States take advantage of the Conflict/Integration dichotomy as a strategy to divide and conquer the US population while the laws and regulating freedom, liberty and justice are slowly manipulated and normalized into totalitarian state.

This authority structure is perhaps most apparent when one investigates the changes in US domestic law since 911 as well as the   gregious violations of international and domestic law that largely went unchallenged regarding the invasions of Iraq2 and Afghanistan and the case of Guantanamo which, of course, did not go unchallenged but still remains a functioning entity of a rogue state in violation of the principles of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In fact, it was the largely under published challenges to these violations which show how subtle yet powerful the authoritarian structure is. In fact, that several congressional representatives even made attempts to impeach George W. Bush3 indicates that there was a clear understanding of what was going on within the ranks of the government. Still, after 911 there was a rapid decent into a security state which was highlighted by the Patriot Acts I and II, the Homeland Security Act, the Defense Intelligence Act, and numerous other legal maneuvers that were designed to obscure or circumvent international and domestic law. At the same time the penal codes were reflecting a crack down on civil liberties, the presence of armed police and military started to become common place and normalized in major cities and even in small villages outside of metropolitan areas.

This political and military strategy of co-opting the relatively liberal democratic institutions of the US government was no secret. It was openly published by the major players of the neoconservative think tank The Project for the New American Century – the board of which were the major players in the Bush Jr. cabinet and high ranking political and military officials. In the document “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”4 published in September of 2000, this group openly discussed the main impediments to the political and military strategy of hegemony in the middle east and central Asia required as being the fact that congress controlled the ability to declare war and controlled the ability to fund wars. These two principles were of the major ideologies being argued for at the inception of the United States. There were basically two camps vying for political power: the Hamiltonians who basically wanted to continue the British system but without the British; the Jeffersonian/Franklin camp who were much more interested in the inalienable rights of humans beings – and protecting those rights. This is important to note because this was essentially the struggle between Conflict and Integration writ large and played out, historically through the evolution of the US political body – with the winners ultimately being those of the colonialist mindset.

Understanding this explains how the political apparatus was able to use 911 as a radical and catalyzing event to enact security measures along with slowly infusing new laws changing the penal landscape regarding what the government could and could not do to US citizens domestically and abroad. If it was 1776 and these laws were being passed there would be a revolution in the US. The political apparatus relied on the fact that the average US citizen did not know his/her rights. To this end, the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the War Powers Act, the UN Charter, numerous security council resolutions, the Hague Conventions and the Nuremberg Conventions were all violated and the rights of US citizens were slowly stripped away regarding habeus corpus and the right to redress any accusation for a crime.

Thus, one very clear co-ordinated group exists – those with political power and those without political power. Those with political power rely on the ignorance and lack of will and organization to maintain this power relationship. As noted, this distinction was really built into the inception of the United States via the two political camps and can, therefore, considered to be a part of the structure itself.

It can be argued, then, that the two main political parties – the Democrats and Republicans – are really quasi-groups (Conflict/Integration) with somewhat unique attributes but largely manufactured interests and agendas which are played and preyed upon by the power elite – in this case referring specifically tot he Neo-conservative take over of the Executive branch of government.

This dichotomy of power relations between the Executive (and to a degree the Legislative and Judicial) branch and the Democratic/Republican quasi-groups is not the only form of power relation and dichotomy in the US. In fact, the political dichotomy is intimately intertwined with issues of economic class, religion, education and race – to name a few. Due to the scope of this paper I only mention that these would be interesting subjects for further evaluation.

III. Conclusion:

As Dahrendorf notes, if the Conflict Model is made precise enough to reduce the structural analysis of a given conflict, the theory must then answer these three questions:
1. How do conflicting groups arise from the structure of society?

2. What forms can struggle among such groups assume?

3. How does conflict among such groups effect a change in the social structures?
Regarding the first question, it was argued that the very power dynamic that existed at the beginning of the United States set the stage  or what took place after 911. Additionally, since there was already a great degree of inequality in the political and economic arenas as a result of early colonialism, slavery, labor struggles and a political division between the right and left, the structure of the US society on political and economic levels is largely responsible for the current functionality of a government that is tending towards totalitarian control – a slow, methodical and normalized process. The basic forms of struggle are a manufactured struggle between political right and left as well as a class struggle which was perhaps best illustrated by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Additionally, there are satellite struggles based on fundamentalist ideologies such a abortion and homosexual rights that are often used as divisive tools to set people at odds. The conflicts generated and maintained by the quasi groups mask the real struggle which is between the average middle class and poor US citizen and the political and economic power elite which obscure the illegality and immorality of their actions under the shroud of the ignorance of the electorate such that the real change effected in the social structure is a tendency towards a totalitarian state in which the rights of citizens are slowly stripped from them in plain sight and, all too often, with their approval.

1. Notes from PowerPoint Presentation by Jürgen Endres at WPA in April 2013

2. http://www.globalpolicy.org/political-issues-in-iraq/international-law-aspects-of-the-iraq-war-andoccupation.

html

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efforts_to_impeach_George_W._Bush

4. http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

Probability is always just around the corner. Step out into the street, and only certain things will probably happen to you. You may be run over by a car, but you will not likely be kissed by a frog 30,000 kilometers away from you. You can’t, really, because it is not in the mix of probabilities. It is very much like a magic hat that has only a limited selection of things you can pull out of it; maybe it is only a partially magic hat. You can’t retrieve or conjure what is not there and what it can not produce. From a quantum mechanical perspective, the probabilities for spectral composition of wave to particle are limited in scope – your canvas is not unlimited in potential. However, it is possible to add ingredients to the probability mixture and increase the number of items that you can pull out of the vortex of the mad hatters wares.

Arguably, my alleged axiom applies to all circumstances and all situations. This is good. It can be a proving ground for that thing some of you call hope. It can be a breeding ground for what some of you call fate. It will be, should you accept that there is a world of infinite probabilities for dreamers, healers, meta-physicists and magicians, an opportunity for the highly improbable to manifest.

This should come as no surprise, really, since the history of so called human progress is nothing less than the visions of dreams and dreamers becoming common place such that we take it all for granted. I can’t think of one thing that was made by the hands of human, that does not fit into this category (other than things like beer and cheese- which, by the way, happen on their own but required human acknowledgment to become fully orchestrated).

Certainly, the idea for and of god didn’t just pop out of the sky. The torque wrench is certainly a creation of magic that works magic – someone understanding the forces of nature and how to conjure and manipulate the long arm of influence to seemingly static objects. The atomic bomb and the breast pump, both – forms of magic – may be catalyst for the end of humankind on Earth (it is difficult to say at this point) and the oud and timpani definitely hold high ranks in the manipulation of mind over matter tending towards balancing the dramatic effects of climate change and the warring amongst sons, fathers and brothers.

If you believe any of this then you have freed yourself from the enchanted prison of ideas and ideologies. You accept and understand that you are free to dream, free to live in your dreams, free to pursue your dreams, because each time you do this you add to the probability mix of things that can happen. Once your dreams become thoughts become words become a part of the common knowledge and, potentially, the common wisdom of the culture of inhabitants of planet Earth – the common ground for all of humanity where our differences become a source of inspiration rather than a source of conflict, trauma, and the cycle and culture of violence, your thoughts become waves in the matrix of matter, accessible to any and all who surf the network.

I am told that my brothers and sisters in Syria, and I suppose this means parts and aspects of Arab culture in general, do not really have the ideas of non-violent means of armed resistance in their probability mix. Shall we acknowledge this and move on, complain, become polarized by this fact? Can we introduce these ideas into the probability mix; infuse the notions into the atmosphere; inject a new ideology under the skin of a culture steeped in violent resorts?

Of course. According to the axiom it is pointless not to.

It is time, dear friends, for the Jasmine Revolution >>

The basic premise I shall expound upon in this brief reflection paper is the notion that in order for human beings to live more sustainably with the environment they will have to ask all members of the five kingdoms of life, and the natural worlds provisions upon which they are reliant for their survival, what their interests are in the gross interplay of the dynamics of self-organizing organic systems.

To consider this idea immediately poses a problem for most modern civilized westernized cultures – which I shall refer to as occupiers; the situation is quite different for many indigenous cultures whose survival is intimately intertwined with the land they inhabit – thus, I shall refer to these people as inhabitants.

Since we can’t communicate directly to organisms other than humans in a language that is familiar to us we have decided to make decisions for them without asking them what they want. In the best case, we have decided to be the stewards of nature. In the worst case we have decided to consider other living organisms and the organic systems upon which they are reliant as resources for us.

This speciesist arrogance poses a severe problem for humans regarding their survival. Since the air we breath, the water we drink, the land on which we walk, and the atmosphere that protects us are all influenced by human activity and, for so long, humans have not considered the other than human living beings and the water, earth and sky’s needs for their health – if not happiness – humans are finding that the normal structure and function of the earth’s inhabitants and environment have been influence in a way that has not only harmed other organisms and the environment, humans themselves are suffering the consequences of their own actions. Perhaps the most noteworthy examples of the consequences of humans not paying attention to the environment is global climate change and the fifth mass extinction.

It makes sense, however, for an occupier to ask, “What should we do to find out what they want if they can’t represent themselves at a MSP party when we get together to determine how we shall exploit natural resources for benefit and profit?”

The answer to this questions is quite simple: ask them.

“How do we know what the answer to our questions are,” would be a next logical question?

As you might expect, the answer is quite simple: pay attention and listen.

So, for example, if you ask the diatoms in the oceans, which supply a majority of the atmospheric oxygen that people like humans need to survive, if they enjoy and appreciate the temperature changes and toxins we give them as a result of our activities if they are happy and healthy and then listen to the signs they are giving us we might quickly conclude that our actions, which will ultimately not benefit us, do not benefit them. If we ask the tens of thousands of species of amphibians who have gone extinct because of human behaviors which have caused changes in weather patterns and acidification of the rain and earths waterways what they want we shall see and hear no response. However, I speculate we can take their silence as a sign that they are dissatisfied with our selfish behavior. If we ask the river, who provides life for vast numbers of species in vast numbers of ecological niches, if the dam that was built by humans served the river well in providing for the welfare of the interconnected webs of lives, you might speculate that it’s diminished flow was simply a stream of tears from the sadness and humiliation it feels for not being able to provide for the lives of its inhabitants and for not being able to control its own destiny.

These words and thoughts should not be taken to imply that every species that becomes extinct and every diatom that dies is the result of human activity. Likewise, it is also clear that it is impossible to consult all beings of all species all of the time to determine if it is FOK to burn this tree for warmth or to kill this opossum for food. Similarly, there is no absolute proof that global climate change is the direct result of any and all human activities – as local, and even global, fluctuations are perhaps the result of other factors. There is no certainty in these areas. This, however, does not and should not warrant arrogance and ignorance of the lives of others and, of course, the organic systems upon which they rely for their survival.

It is, in my opinion, always better to error on the side of caution. Especially in cases where so much is at stake. If we consider the notion that ‘effectiveness is the measure of truth’ and we ask ourselves how it is that in the last 45 years approximately, since the publication of “Silent Spring”, so much environmental degradation has taken place and so many non-linear changes have taken place in the environment and compare that to, for example, some indigenous cultures of the North American continent who had lived for 12,000 years, sustainably, in their environment who did strange things like asking trees, snakes, spiders, lakes, rivers, streams, and even their dreams, what it is they wanted out of this shared existence – this co-existence – they might very well say something like this, “The same things you want: to be considered, to be cared for, to be loved, to control my own destiny, to provide for my basic needs, and to be happy – as a bare minimum.

The challenges for a culture of occupiers, who consider the earth’s inhabitants and systems as resources for exploitation, to transform their behavior to an inclusive disposition in a global multi-stakeholder process are significant but not, theoretically at least, impossible. In order for a change to take place such that there is a shift in the perceptions of humans to consider the welfare of other living beings and systems as being important to those living beings and systems (let alone important for the survival of human beings) there will have to be a change in the attitudes and behaviors of people and this can be achieved through education. This shift in attitudes and behaviors has certainly begun as it is obvious that there is great attention being paid to the earth’s inhabitants and organic systems by children, educators, scientists, politicians and even business persons for they/we all realize that everyone’s survival, ultimately, is at stake.

While the shifts in perceptions, knowledge, attitudes and behaviors is obvious, the question I have is is it still possible for this shift to be reinstated as a part of a culture of inhabitants in time for the general trends of species extinction, climate change, resource wars, and so on to be slowed down and/or reversed in their course. Clearly, an extinct species will not come back to inhabit the earth, but maybe the general trends of climate change can be affected by changes in human behavior. My knowledge and understanding as a scientist is that it is already too late for the general trajectory of environmental degradation to be changed. The human population is increasing. While first world nations are struggling to limit, not necessarily reduce, the greenhouse gas emissions they produce, the second and third world nations are struggling to exploit more resources and produce more waste.

There are many other impediments to this shift in attitudes and behaviors that prevent attention and energy from going to the dire environmental circumstances on earth that threaten human survival and, of course, the survival of all living beings and the organic systems upon which they rely. I argue that these impediments are largely based in issues of identity. For example, while people are busy with their gender identity, or their national identity, or their religious identity, or their personal identity as relates to things like styles of hair, clothes, shoes, nails, eyes, lips, money, etc, attention to the environment is reduced to a minimum or is simply not there at all.

Necessity is the mother of invention, it is said, and so, as it becomes more and more necessary for people to focus on survival, perhaps the attitudes and behaviors of humans will change such that they/we begin to take into account the needs, desires, wills and expectations of all of the stakeholders in this multi-stakeholder process of the large scale dynamic of life on earth (generally best referred to as either ‘survival’ or ‘reality’).