Jews and Arabs in 1930s Palestine

Writing on theology and ethics and their application to politics and economics in An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, Reinhold Niebuhr runs the risk of fusing the respective domains, which I maintain are qualitatively different, and thereby minimizing or losing outright what is unique to each domain. Besides occasioning category mistakes, such as in labeling divine love as ethical rather than as distinctly theological, overreaches from one domain onto another even at the expense of the other’s own criteria can occur from the underlying error. Besides being extant in Niebuhr’s text, the conflation of distinct domains and the related overreaches of their respective criteria has exacerbated the long-standing conflict between the Jews and Arabs in what was Palestine when Niebuhr was writing his book on Christian ethics in which he discusses the sheer intractability of the conflict.

The full essay is at "Jews and Arabs in 1930s Palestine."

The E.U. as a Mediator between Russia and Ukraine: A Conflict of Interest

To be a neutral arbitrator of a conflict between two other countries, a government cannot favor one of the two; otherwise, the veneer of neutrality is undercut by the interest of preferring one position over the other. The duty to act neutrally, which the role of arbitrator includes or implies, can be exploited by the subterranean—or even explicit!—non-normative, private-benefits interest to support one of the two sides. To put one’s own private interest above a broader-benefitting interest, such as in entailed in a duty to act neutrally, is to exploit a conflict of interest. Governments can exploit conflicts of interest. With regard to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the E.U.’s foreign minister (or de facto commissioner) disabused the public of any thoughts that the E.U. could, and thus would, be a neutral arbitrator between Russia and Ukraine. Such transparency lies in stark contrast to the illusory impression by the U.S. that it was in any position to arbitrate between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in Gaza, for the U.S. was firmly on the side of Israel.

As Russia was bombing civilian housing in Kiev, Kaja Kallas, the E.U.’s federal foreign minister, explicitly ruled out a role for the E.U. in arbitrating negotiations between Kiev and Moscow. “One thing is very clear: Europe will never be a neutral mediator between Russia and Ukraine, because we are on Ukraine’s side and we are defending our own security interests,” Kallas said toward the end of May, 2026.[1] To mediate between two parties requires being neutral as to both sides and their respective positions; otherwise, credibility is zerstoert from day one of any negotiation session. To pretend to be neutral even just by assuming the air as a mediator, such as the U.S. had done not only with regard to Russia and Ukraine, but also, albeit to a lesser extent, to Israel and Gaza, is to exploit a conflict of interest, which is unethical. That proposals by the U.S. in either conflict would be regarded as credible requires a naivety that is itself enabling as to the exploitation. In its direct conflict with Iran, at least the U.S. was not pretending to be a mediator, for surely a direct combatant in a conflict cannot possibly be neutral.

Therefore, Kallas did the world a service in explicitly stating in regard to the Russian-Ukrainian War, “We can’t be neutral, treating them equally, because we have been clearly on Ukraine’s side.”[2] Such transparent frankness may seem unnecessary; however, given the attempts by the U.S. to claim neutrality in conflicts in which the Americans have hardly been neutral, Kallas’ statement is of value. The E.U. need not have assumed neutrality to be of assistance to Ukraine. That country’s foreign minister, Andrii Shyiiba, said that “the E.U. should focus on ‘precise, doable steps,’ such as the demilitarisation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and the establishment of humanitarian corridors.”[3] Therefore, Ukraine was not calling on the E.U. to be mediator. That the E.U. could not be; unfortunately, even helping Ukraine was a tall order—a needlessly difficult chore for the E.U.

To the extent that the U.S. was in favor of Russia gaining Ukrainian territory even though by illegal invasion, Shyyiiba’s instance that the E.U. “must represent one united European voice,” given the direct federal role of the governors of the 27 E.U. states in foreign policy, was important. Put another way, to the extent that the U.S. leaned toward Russian President Putin’s position that a land-grab is de facto valid internationally (possession being nine-tenths of ownership), Ukraine desperately needed the E.U. to take difficult decisions resulting in specific federal policies helpful to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. The reason for the difficulty can be tied to the requirement in the European Council (and the Council of Ministers), which represents the states (as the U.S. Senate represents states), that decisions on policy and law be unanimous. Just imagine if every U.S. senator could wield a veto on behalf of the residual sovereignty of one’s state!

Unanimity is inconsistent with the dual (or split) governmental sovereignty that is characteristic of early-modern federalism, as distinct from confederalism in which the states retain full sovereignty (nonplena foedus, as per Althusius’s 1603 theory of federalism). Whereas Althusius saw only the alternatives of full and not-full federalism—wherein the federal head or the states enjoy sovereignty, the American compromise of dual-sovereignty “split the atom” of unitary governmental sovereignty and the E.U., but not any of its states, is based on that compromise, rather than either of Althusius’ types of federalism.

With regard to the Russian-Ukrainian war, the foreign minister (i.e., Secretary of State) of the U.S., Marco Rubio, said, “The US stands ready and prepared to help to do whatever we can to help facilitate the end of this war, and hopefully the opportunity will present itself at some point.”[4] However, offers to facilitate, a word that connotes neutrality, do not usually stand back, waiting for an opportunity to arise. Such a tenuous position may implicitly say that the U.S. would step into a facilitating role whenever Putin, rather than Zelensky, wants it. Kallas’ position that the E.U. would complement the role of the U.S. not only is in tension with the E.U.’s partiality toward Ukraine, but also assumes that the U.S. was sufficiently neutral to have credibility in facilitating negotiations between the warring countries, but at least Kallas was transparent as to the stance of the E.U. being pro-Ukrainian—something from which the U.S. could take a lesson.

Just as a person who already has a girlfriend or boyfriend and is doing that one’s bidding should not be assumed to be neutral with respect to a potential usurper’s interests even though that new connection represents a potentially deeper flame of romance, President Trump’s “bromance” with Putin (and Netanyahu—irrespective of what the International Criminal Court had to say about those two “bad boys”) should not have been lost on Zelensky in his endeavors to influence Trump to distance himself from Putin and come closer to Ukraine’s side. Even the promise of a ring made of rare earths could not be assumed to be enough for the gold-loving Trump. If the proverbial card deck is stacked in favor of the existing relationship, the newcomer should look elsewhere for love, especially once he or she sees that the preference and indeed the loyalty of the person being sought lies with someone else who is actually calling the shots behind the scenes. “Distance yourself emotionally and physically from the potential usurper!” an existing boyfriend or girlfriend might say during a visit. From that point on, the usurper is easy prey, being emotionally vulnerable to the new beloved, and should flee from that person, who is actually an agent, to higher ground with haste. Hence, Zelensky turned to the E.U. from having beseeched the U.S. in vain. That deck had already been stacked in favor of Putin, so Zelensky didn’t have a chance. Go to Putin; he is your type, Zelensky could have told Trump before closing the door; I’m going to Von der Leyen. That she and her foreign minister had trouble getting the E.U. to speak with one voice at the federal level is thus truly a hindrance (but Trump would be jealous anyway). Too bad; you had your chance. You’re stuck with the other guy, who holds you at a distance as a trophy, Zelensky could have told Trump harmlessly from a distance. I believe the actual term in the Castro is trophy whore. The pains of hell await anyone who falls in love with such a creature; Zelensky was too smart for that. But enough of subterranean homoeroticism applied to politicians on the world stage; I'll leave to the reader the matter of whether the term translates over to Trump's wives.

Meanwhile, Ukraine and especially Gaza were being ravaged by hostile aggressors with impunity and perhaps too much testosterone. Of course, Nietzsche claims that our natural instincts are best suited to the state of nature—that our species is “well adapted to the wilderness, to war, to prowling, to adventure” but that within society (and a world order), those instincts have been “disvalued and ‘suspended’” such that “all those instincts of wild, free, prowling man” have been “turned backward against man himself.”[5] Perhaps Nietzsche would applaud the collapse of the post-World-War-II world-order, with the reversion back to Hobbes’ state of nature being accomplished as if by fiat by aggressor states, for Putin, Netanyahu, and even Trump himself doubtlessly felt no “bad conscience” in having commenced unprovoked military maneuvers in the 2020s ironically amid the progress of the species technologically and thus in a narrow sense. Nietzsche would be the first to point out that human nature has not changed, and that our artificial societal/cultural cages are a problem rather than the solution; indeed, they have made humankind into a problem as externally-oriented instinctual urges have been turned inward. But what of the instinctual urge to be humane? What of that of compassion? What of love? Are these instincts not native to our species too? If so, why not restrain military aggressors from being free-wheeling actors jumping into the power-vacuum left by the impotent UN and ICC? Must life be short, nasty, and brutish, as it was for too many people in Ukraine and especially Gaza even when Kallas was making her statement in 2026 after having just met with divided state-level officials in the E.U. on Ukraine?

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “E.U. Will Never Be a Neutral Mediator Between Ukraine and Russia, Says Kallas,” Euronews.com, 28 May, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Trans and Ed., Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 1968), Second Essay, Sec. 16, pp. 520-21.

Guidelines Puffed Up as Law: Should under the Subterfuge of Must

During the coronavirus pandemic (2020-2022), Arizona’s Ducey administration allowed bus and light-rail employees to go maskless even though they were in close contact with the public. Bus drivers were even getting sick. The “rationale” of the Phoenix transit authority was that the federal regulation is “just a mandate.” Because the word mandate means “an authoritative command,” the rationale that being a mandate renders a law or government regulation as optional can only be spurious at best; this is a case of arrogant ignorance that can’t possibly be wrong about itself in the member-state that ranked 49^th out of 50 on public education. As an authoritative command, a law, even as implemented in regulations, has what Kant called necessity in that law itself cannot be bent; it stands firm in itself as law. In contrast, a guideline connotes flexibility rather than necessity. It follows that enforcement must pertain to laws (including regulations) but not to guidelines. I contend that what are commonly referred to as international laws are actually international guidelines. Such “laws” lack viable enforcement mechanisms and thus are actually guidelines for governments engaged in international relations.

Calls that governments need to respect international law even though no enforcement mechanism exists are actually expressions of a moral desire that such “laws” should be respected in the international arena. That what is actually a should is typically expressed in terms of must by government officials around the world only adds to the mistaken belief that a viable world order exists and thus that aggressors such as Russia’s Putin, Israel’s Netanyahu, and America’s Trump—all of whom have wantonly disregarded international law—pose no threat. A law without a credible means of enforcement—and not just by volunteer “enforcers”—is not a law; as in Hobbes’ state of nature, such a “law” can be said to have the force of an ideological moral desire against opponents.

In the wake of the U.S. military’s capture of Venezuela’s sitting President Maduro, E.U. foreign minister Kallas issued a statement, which reads in part: “The E.U. recalls, that under all circumstances, the principles of international law and the UN Charter must be upheld.”[1] The word must implies at the very least that penalties apply if the must is dismissed by a state that violates the law or Charter. As had been clear for decades, even countries in the UN could easily ignore the Charter with impunity within the UN, and the veto-powers in the Security Council need only veto a proposal to see to it that it cannot be violated because it has not passed. So, what Kallas really meant is that governments around the world should uphold the principles of international law and the UN Charter. Notice that she used the word principles, which do not constitute law, so she contradicts herself in applying the word must. For someone to say, you must follow that principle, is not the same as saying, you must follow the law. Only the latter connotes or implies that violations will be punished—not even that there might be penalties. Those exist even if law enforcement does not catch a particular culprit.

Kallas’s statement can be critiqued on moral grounds, which is certainly ironic because her foreign-policy stance is laudable; I submit that militaristic heads of government should be restrained internationally, lest the world falls back into the dark ages. In using the word must, the E.U.’s foreign minister was doing exactly what Nietzsche calls attention to in his critique of modern morality, in which “Thou shalt not” is used as a club of sorts to beguile the self-confident strong into unilaterally not acting on their strength. Were he alive, Nietzsche would probably council the sitting U.S. president not to feel shamed or guilty from Kallas’s infliction of must, which can only mean should in referring to international law and anything to do with the United Nations given the utter lack of enforcement. Without that, the world is left with international guidelines rather than laws, and the UN is left standing on the sideline utterly impotent from the self-inflicted initial wounds of the veto-mechanism in the Security Council and the lack of any UN armed forces or police adequately empowered as force to enforce UN resolutions. The same goes for the International Criminal Court, the ICC, whose arrest warrants for Russia’s Putin and Israel’s Netanyahu were being either ignored around the world or even actively fought against (by the Trump administration). An arrest warrant that depends on voluntary enforcement by third parties (i.e., governments around the world) is not a warrant in any sense of that word. Again, a misleading use of words.

A problem with using words that are bear on a global order misleadingly is that the appearance of there actually being an order internationally, as distinct from “might makes right” as the de facto default, is illusionary. In actuality, when Putin invaded Ukraine, Netanyahu inflicted an inhumane holocaustic genocide on the people of Gaza, and Trump captured the sitting president Venezuela, the status of international law was epitomized by the word should rather than must. The moral desire for international constraints on raw militaristic aggression is of course laudable, but that desire itself does not constitute recognition of there being international law. To portray the former as the latter is dishonest. 

It is also counter-productive from the standpoint of what would be needed for the family of nations, or more practically a coalition of “the willing” among the political unions and sovereign states of the world, to design, approve, and activate institutions, including possibility a global federation along the times described by Kant, that are capable of instituting and enforcing law internationally. Officials of such institutions as have enough governmental sovereignty to enforce international law even with boots on the ground if necessary could indeed say must without merely expressing a moral desire. Out of such self-confident strength at the global level, albeit with institutional checks on tyranny at that level from a qualified majority of countries, which would all be semi-sovereign, the precedents being incurred in favor of “might makes right” by Putin, Netanyahu, and Trump could potentially be reversed and once again set as outliers internationally. Such rogue nations could be relegated and effectively expelled from the family of nations both economically and politically. 

That a holocaustic—yes, holocaustic—severity of suffering was unleashed by a genocidal government in the Middle East for years in the so-called modern era (after the Enlightenment!) is itself testimony enough that the post-World War II global order’s international organizations, including the International Criminal Court and the UN, including its top court, was by 2023 utterly impotent. Out of this power vacuum, militaristic aggressors on the world stage could easily sense that low-hanging fruit could be easily plucked with utter impunity. It is precisely at such a point that the ground is fertile for a new world order to be promulgated and enacted so as to constrain angry men who are bathed in power. Human nature itself is the root cause behind the cycle of world orders through history punctuated by intervals of unimpeded military aggression, such as by the three blind men, driving drunk with power, in the mid-2020s.

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1. Maria Tadeo, “EU Calls for Respect of International Law as Trump Remains Vague on Venezuelan Transition Plan,” Euronews.com, 4 January 2026.

COP30: Is Symbolism Enough Amid Climate-Change?

COP30 in Brazil on combatting carbon-emissions and the related global warming, the question of whether the basis of the annual conference, voluntary compliance, is sufficient and thus should be enabled by the staged meetings. Even to continue to have the conferences annually can be viewed as part of a broader state of denial, given that the 1.5C degree maximum for the planet’s warming set at the Paris conference a decade earlier was by 2025 universally acknowledged by scientists to no longer be realistic; the target would almost certainly be surpassed. It is in this context that any progress from COP30 should be placed.

The full essay is at "COP30." 

Russia’s President Putin: Political Realism with Lies

As a former KGB agent, Russia’s President Putin could probably write a book and teach a course on the art of lying, or fabrication, as means of doing foreign policy, which manipulation being the not so subtle subtext. The tactic can be reckoned as being expedient, with the loss of value in reputational capital being assessed to be a cost worth incurring. That Putin lied to U.S. President Trump in Alaska in 2025 on the Russian’s intention to “put an end to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine” should have caught the American off guard, if the claim made by Kurt Volker, an American envoy to Ukraine that Putin had indeed lied to Trump about being willing to meet and negotiate with the Ukrainian president is true.[1] The American president was, in short, naïve even in being willing to meet with his Russian counterpart, especially without the president of the E.U. present too, at least to serve as a reality-test regarding Putin’s real game, for Europe had more to lose—more on the line—than did America from incursions from the east. Political realism is the theory that best fits the Russian president.

In realism, states act in their own interests, even in multilateral negotiations, rather than forsaking any such immediate interests for the good of the global order, if indeed such an order exists institutionally. Power is the name of the game, and, as Nietzsche observed, the strong have incentive to give up their position of strength to the weak (so the weak can only hope to beguile the strong into feeling ashamed ethically of using their strength). In other words, Putin still had a winning hand when it came to extending his invasion farther west in Ukraine, so why would he unilaterally offer to sit down at a negotiating table unless any such territory were to be offered to him? Equality in terms of power is the only context in which justice is possible, Nietzsche wrote, and Hume as well as Nietzsche hold that equality does not really exist; more counter-power is needed for an invaded power to arrest the insurgency of a greater power. With Putin stating that the force of arms would decide the political matter of Ukraine, the world should have realized that political realism best fit and that any common good, or world order, would be nugatory in comparison to the interests of strong, powerful states. The impotence and fecklessness of the United Nations had created the vacuum in which both Russia’s Putin and Israel’s Netanyahu could blatantly pursue their respective military interests even at the expense of the civilian populations of their respective enemies. In other words, impunity, even in being able to arrest peaceful protesters in international waters, and throw them in prison, invites political realism to fill the void and come to characterize international relations. The world itself has been culpable in this by refusing to reform the UN or establish an alternative international body sans vetoes and with an enforcement mechanism of its own that could stand up to aggressors internationally, as Mo Di, the founder of Mohism, had done in China during the Warring States period of the Zhou Dynasty.

Political realism is dangerous, not only because states nakedly pursue their own interests without regard to the common good—that of the world—but also because the personal, emotional reactions of presidents can easily come into play. As Volker said of the effect of Putin’s lie on Trump: “He made Trump look weak and Trump doesn’t like looking weak, so this is now a personal issue for him.”[2] So Trump was considering sending long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, whether doing so was in the strategic interest of the U.S. or not. Without a world order as a viable constraint as political realist states pursue their own interests in relation to other states, political realism can easily lapse into personal vengeance and retaliation even at the expense of state interests. In short, political realism can lapse in to something much worse—and much more dangerous. The Cuban Missile Crisis is a case in point, as nuclear weapons were in the mix.

So political realism is in need of a major constraint beyond what Koehane and Nye suggest in their theory of neo-realism; especially in the nuclear age when “force of arms” is still being relied on by some state actors to settle political questions and such actors are all too willing to lie, our species should engage in a stepwise political development resulting in a world federation of the willing—countries that are willing to subscribe without a veto and even be willing to transfer some military hardware and troops so the common good has a means of clamping down on state actors who seek to invade weaker states with impunity. It is interesting that even as our species has advanced technology so much, political development has been stalled for centuries. Perhaps a new millennium can mean something, politically, such that deciding questions by the primitive means of force of arms can finally be treated as antiquated.

1. Sasha Vakulina and Shona Murray, “’Putin Lied to Trump and Made Him Look Weak,’ Former US Envoy to Ukraine Says,” Euronews.com, 6 October 2025.
2. Ibid.

Maimonides on Netanyahu

On August 5, 2025, Israel’s prime minister, Ben Netanyahu and his cabinet were considering conquering all of Gaza as cease-fire talks came to naught. According to the Associated Press, he “hinted at wider military action in devastated Gaza . . . even as former Israeli army and intelligence chiefs called for an end of to the nearly 22-month war.”[1] Roughly thirty years earlier, Netanyahu had admitted in an interview that Israel destroys countries (or peoples) it doesn’t like very slowly. The slow process of starvation amid Israeli troops and American mercenaries enjoying shooting Gazans at designated food-distribution sites through at least the summer of 2025 instantiates Netanyahu’s perhaps careless admission of cruelty befitting a man out for vengeance. Never mind the scriptural passage, Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord; Netanyahu and his cabinet, and even the president of Israel felt entitled to take that task upon themselves, such that even just death would be too good for Palestinians, rather than having faith in their deity, whose vengeance would presumably be narrowly and properly directed to the Hamas attackers and kidnappers rather than to innocent people, including small children who could not possibly be considered to have been culpable two months shy of two years earlier in 2023. The religious depth of the betrayal of Yahweh by Netanyahu and his cabinet can be gleamed by recalling passages from Maimonides.

The full essay is at "Maimonides on Netanyahu."

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1. Julia Frankel and Wafaa Shurafa, “Netanyahu Hints at Expanded War in Gaza but Former Israeli Military and Spy Chiefs Object,” The Associated Press, August 5, 2025.

Pope Leo on the Fallacy of Collective Justice: The Case of Israel in Gaza

One of the many pitfalls in the doctrine of absolute sovereignty, whereby government officials acting as government can literally get away with murder domestically given the lack of credible de jure and de facto enforcement of international “law,” is the ability to inflict collective punishment based on group-identity, including the ideologies that hinge on identity politics. Going the actual culprits of a crime or even a revolt, collective punishment inflicts harm and even mass murder on an entire group, including individuals thereof who are not at all culpable. Unlike “collateral damage,” the ideology of collective justice includes intentionally harming such individuals. It is an ideology because it is based on beliefs about a group rather than an ethic that would justify normatively the infliction of pain and suffering on the innocent. Furthermore, collective justice is an ideology because it includes the artificial elevation of a group (i.e., the collective) over the individual even though members of a group are arguably foremost individuals, who typically belong to more than one group or organization. To put the collective abstraction first ontologically is thus tenuous at best. A person may be a Texan, a Democrat, a Catholic, and a member of a football team, for example, so the claim that that person is essentially any one of these would be dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary. In privileging a part over a whole, thus being partisan, an ideology is in a sense arbitrary, even in claiming that a state of affairs that is favored or desired is the present state of affairs, as if the statement were a fact of reason rather than a counter-factual statement.

It is one thing for intellectuals to debate and discuss ontological and ethical matters, and quite another when a leader on the world stage makes an explicit normative statement condemning collective punishment. The reason why such a public pronouncement by a person chosen to head a government or a global religious organization is important is that the Israeli government quickly discovered in 2023 that having its president state publicly that every resident of Gaza would be punished for being culpable in an atrocity committed by criminals in October of that year in Israel was not going over well in the media around the world. Because the collective-justice motive was from then on—for at least 21 months (and counting)—on stealth mode in the Israeli government even though the fingerprints were obvious in Gaza, to have a leader recognized globally state publicly that collective “justice” was being pursued by the Israeli government even though prohibited by international law. For some reason, facts on the ground, even when obvious, are not enough for human beings to think, Hmm, the Israelis really are pursuing collective justice on their subjugated people within Israel’s borders. Even with such a recognition and acknowledgement, the prerogative of absolute sovereignty can go on, unimpeded internationally.

Nevertheless, it is significant that Pope Leo of the Roman Catholic Church, whose billion-plus membership spans the globe, “said at the end of his Sunday Angelus prayer” on July 20, 2025, “I once again call for an immediate end to the barbarity of this war and for a peaceful resolution of the conflict.”[1] Typically, leaders on the global stage are satisfied to leave it at that; they condemn this or that without stating what actions in particular, or what ideologies behind those actions, are being castigated. In addition to bringing up the Israeli attack on the only Catholic church in Gaza just days earlier, the pontiff said, “I appeal to the international community to observe humanitarian law and respect the obligation to protect civilians as well as the prohibition of collective punishment, the indiscriminate use of force, and the forced displacement of populations.”[2] Together with the barbarity of that war, the collective punishment, which presumes the validity of collective justice unless punishment is inflicted without cause, such as randomly, can be said to be extreme in its severity, and not just in its scale. If in fact the Vatican had turned a blind eye to the Nazi Holocaust, the Church was not making the same mistake on the Israeli Holocaust in Gaza. Pope Leo was essentially telling the Israeli government officials:

We know what you’re trying to do; you’re trying to extinguish the Palestinian people who now live in the uninhabitable area that you created so to decimate the Gazans, whom you view not only as culpable collectively, but also sub-human—as “animals,” as it were. This is not the first time in human history that a government has considered a people in its territory to be subhuman. It is ironic, is it not? The Torah makes clear that being Yahweh’s chosen people does not spare you from God’s wrath. You are not divine, so it is not your place to fete out collective justice that God can do by virtue of being omniscient as well as omnipotent.

Whereas the Pope would have to acknowledge the validity of divine collective justice in the Old Testament, Nietzsche argues that the conception of the deity wherein it is both omnibenevolent and vengeful, for “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” is discredited by whomever added that line, knowing that God must be perfect goodness. Perhaps collective justice is not vengeance, and a deity who knows all would only inflict collective punishment in cases in which everyone is in fact guilty of some injustice. Nietzsche was not an atheist; in fact, he may have been criticizing a flawed concept so that a new, healthier concept could be built.  An atheist would likely go further, arguing that collective justice is inherently unjust so positing it of a deity is wrongheaded, and in fact could do additional damage as Israeli officials could try to justify their heinous crimes against humanity by saying that Yahweh engages in collective justice in punishing Israel, such as by keeping the Hebrews in the wilderness for forty years and later by allowing them to be conquered for violating the covenant. Trying to exterminate a people who believe in the same deity—unlike the people in Jericho in the Bible story—is arguably such a violation. It would be ironic were Yahweh to apply collective justice on the Israelis by punishing Israel for having inflicted collective punishment on the Gazans as if every resident in Gaza in October, 2023 were a culprit. Whether collective justice rightfully applies to an omniscient deity or contradicts the very notion of divinity, the assumption that we mere mortals enjoy God’s prerogative is impious self-idolatry.  

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1. The Associated Press, “Pope Repeats Call for Gaza Ceasefire as Israel Widens Evacuation Orders,” Euronews.com, July 20, 2025.
2. Ibid., italics added for emphasis.

Beyond the Reach of Any Greenhouse-Gas Agreement: Nature’s Contribution

With China and the U.S. coming to an agreement in 2014 on limiting their respective greenhouse-gas emissions, the Peru talks suddenly gained new momentum toward a deal on a global scale. To be sure, even the U.S.-China agreement would not kick in for years, if not decades, and a global agreement would not even take effect until 2020 at the earliest. This drawback may pale in comparison to one of nature’s own contributions to greenhouse-gas emissions, and nature itself cannot agree to voluntarily restrict its own output. Accordingly, we should not assume that a global agreement will save the day, rendering the planet still inhabitable for humans in the next century.

All across the Arctic, scientists have detected abnormally high concentrations of methane seeping out of the thawing permafrost. Along Siberia’s Yamal Peninsula in 2014, concentrations of the greenhouse gas 50,000 times higher than the atmospheric average were found to be rising from a 200 feet deep hole created when a large sheet of permafrost thawed and collapsed. In Canada’s western Arctic, three of many seeps found in the area have been found to be emitting as much greenhouse gases in a year as are emitted by 9,000 average-sized cars.[1]

Methane has ten times the greenhouse-effect as carbon. Nature’s contribution to global warming may thus turn out to dwarf the impact of any conceivable global agreement. The continuing thawing of the permafrost in the Northern hemisphere past 2014 is a certainty given the carbon and methane already in the atmosphere then and the fact that carbon emission targets in the U.S.-China agreement are merely to get back to earlier levels, such as that of 2005 in the case of the U.S.  In other words, we may have set in motion a chain-reaction beyond our reach that could result in atmospheric warming beyond 2 degrees Celsius—the tipping point, scientists tell us, beyond which life would become very unpleasant and even impossible for our species on Earth.

Friedrich Nietzsche, a European philosopher and classicist who wrote in the late nineteenth-century, uses the analogy of light coming from a star light-years away, showing an event that has already happened yet the knowledge of which has not yet reached Earth. In the analogy, we have caused the event ourselves and yet we do not know it yet.  Similarly, we may already have put in motion a chain reaction that will result in our own extinction as a species and yet the light carrying this news has not yet reached us. So we go on as if our governments’ paltry negotiations are somehow newsworthy, even potentially a game-changer. More generally, we put so much stock in the power of our own wills that we don’t stop to ask whether the true game-changer might just be dealt by Nature independent of our efforts at international relations. As a species, we may already have blood on our hands, and yet we, the culprits, do not see it.

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[1] Edward Struzik, “The End and Beginning of the Arctic,” The Huffington Post, December 5, 2014.

The Age of Humans: Snuffing Our Species Out

With California entering its fourth year of severe drought and the planet having its warmest August and September since records began in 1880, one scientist at NASA’s Institute for Space Studies said in 2014 that the warm data points “point toward the long-term trends.”[1] At the time, scientists were already claiming that the planet had entered a new era—that of the Anthropocene—noted for the impact of the homo sapiens species in altering Earth. The implications are profound, even if the huge shift has not fully registered in human consciousness.

According to one geologist speaking in 2014, “humans have become a geologic force on the planet. The age we are living [in now] is really distinct.”[2] Yet we might be too close to it to recognize the distinctness, and so our elected representatives may not feel emboldened to craft public policy to the new reality. The resulting vulnerability has scarcely been contemplated. John Kress, the acting undersecretary of science for the Smithsonian Institution highlighted the mammoth nature of the change. “Never in its 4.6 million-year-old history has the Earth been so affected by one species as it is being affected now by humans.”[3] In addition to climate change, the impact extends to ozone loss, disruption of nitrogen and phosphorous cycles, the acidification of oceans, endocrine disruptors, and deforestation.[4] I submit that we are not even aware of other footprints that could make the planet potentially uninhabitable for our species one day; for without much of a recognition of the new era, we cannot expect to have much of a grasp on the breadth of our species’s impact on the planet.

In his book, Steps to An Ecology of Mind, Gregory Bateson approaches ecological principles from the standpoint of general systems theory. That is to say, he stresses the system-qualities of an ecosystem. His notion of a maximizing variable is relevant here. Such a variable maximizes without taking a break. A species in an ecosystem qualifies as a maximizing variable if that species continues to increase, unhampered even as it butts up against the semi-permeable membrane of an ecosystem’s constraints. When such a species “breaks through” what its ecosystem will tolerate, the state-state equilibrium is disrupted and the ecosystem must “find” another equilibrium. The new resting point may or may not include the species.

Our species is indeed a maximizing variable, with a population of over 7 billion as of 2014. In his pathbreaking work on populations, Malthius postulates that an over-populated species is vulnerable to famine, epidemics, and war. Studies using rats have demonstrated the theory in action. Yet in the Anthropocene Age in which we live, we can add a more “macro” consequence—that of being vulnerable to the planet becoming uninhabitable to our species. As Nietzsche brilliantly writes regarding how people can unintentionally discredit their own conception of God and thus effectively ruin it, we may have blood on our hands and yet not realize that we ourselves have done the deed. Like light coming from the farthest star, awareness of our large-scale impacts already committed has not yet reached us.

Indeed, the Earth’s equilibrium was already on the move in the early 2010s and yet we struggled to separate this out from “natural fluctuations.” Without much recognition of the new era and even less comprehension of the impacts and how serious their respective consequences would likely be, our species could indeed be heedlessly maximizing itself to extinction without realizing it. In genealogical time, our genes could be outstandingly successful in terms of replication only for a short burst of time before burning out like a candle’s flame enjoying too much wick.

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[1] Nick Visser, “The Planet Just Had Its Warmest August on Record,” The Huffington Post, September 15, 2014.

[2] Seth Borenstein, “’Anthropocene’ Term Gains Traction as Human Impacts on Planet Become Clearer,” Associated Press, October 14, 2014.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

On the Cruelty of Gadhafi's Libyan Troops from a Nietzschean Perspective

Gadhafi, or any tyrant who violates the human rights of citizens, can be reckoned as weak rather than strong from a Nietzschean standpoint. Such an analysis could embolden (i.e. awaken) protesters around the world who remain under the subterfuge of a ruler's enforcement of his or her assumed dominance.

USA Today reports that “(t)roops loyal to Moammar Gadhafi may be torturing and executing rebel prisoners.”[1] This is according to human rights workers and physicians near the front lines. Such treatment would constitute war crimes under the Geneva Convention. Physicians said the bullet wounds on one man's body weren't meant to kill, but to torture. "When you put a gun to his head, that's execution," said Mohammed Hussain, the head of intensive care at a hospital near the front lines. "When you shoot him here and here and here, that's something else. That's torture. They want him to feel the pain."[2] This last remark struck me as particularly revealing.

What sort of mentality derives a feeling of pleasure from perceiving another person in pain? To what extent is it the other person feeling the pain that is pleasurable to the person watching? Alternatively, the inflicting of the pain could be pleasurable. The inflicting pleasure for the inflictor might involve the pleasure of having power, as in having control of another person against the other person’s will. Such a will to power is a principal motivator, according to Nietzsche. He avers that human beings are primarily motivated to feel the pleasure that comes with exercising power. Yet such pleasure is in the exercise of one’s strength rather than in cruelty itself.  It is the weak, who, in being driven to dominate beyond their innate strength, delight in cruelty as a means to enforce their domination. In other words, the weak who have an irresistible urge to dominate have to instill (or inflict) their dominance because they are not strong and thus naturally to be respected as powers.

Therefore, the troops loyal to Gadhafi were displaying their condition of weakness rather than their strength by devoting time and energy to being cruel.  With the strong, damage is incidental to the charge rather than intended; the strong relish their experience of strength in conquering and therefore they are not interested in cruelty.  That is to say, harm is a byproduct of the vanquishing by the strong, as the latter conquer out of their overflowing confidence of strength. This can perhaps be thought of in terms of stepping outside in the cold after building up a sweat from exercise—the excess heat radiates outward from one’s body such that one does not even feel the cold air. What is the cold to me?  Similarly, what are the parasites to me who fall by the wayside as I take the village?  Any intent to be cruel to a parasite would be a waste or diversion from the strong vanquisher’s self-confident feeling of power that naturally issues out in his or her strength. Only weakness with a relentless instinct to dominate would be oriented to cruelty as a means, for the feeling of pleasure of strength is not available or realizable.

For example, "Col. Gadhafi's militias are brutal," said Mustafa El Gheriany, media liaison for the Transitional National Committee according to USA Today. "They did that probably on purpose to scare our young men, to show them that they are not taking prisoners.”[3] This motivation would be an alternative to simply wanting to inflict pain or to see another person feel it. Even so, the use of cruelty as a means is ultimately to impose one’s dominance, which means that the person’s strength is not sufficient. In other words, the person using cruelty to send a message has an urge to feel more pleasure from power than his or her weakness can proffer in itself.

Essentially then, human rights advocates point to the tactics whereby the weak who suffer from a hypertrophic drive to dominate seek to enforce, or take, beyond their native pith. This investigation can lead to the following questions. Why is it that certain persons of weak constitutions seek to dominate nonetheless, rather than simply to be content with whatever pleasure naturally issues from the power in the strength they do have? Furthermore, is dictatorship as a form of government a weak form in that autocrats do not simply lead, but are almost invariably oriented to efforts to enforce their dominance by intentionally inflicting pain on protesters?  It would be ironic were unarmed protesters in the streets stronger than the rulers whose dominance is being questioned or repudiated.  Indeed, such repudiation strikes at the core of the effort of the weak to dominate; hence such violence as was evinced by Gadhafi should be no surprise.

To the weak who are driven to dominate, the refusal of others to acknowledge the imposition or enforcement of their claim must be utterly intolerable. “How dare they!” the weak dominator is apt to exclaim even though the strong naturally rebuff the pretentions of the weak.  In fact, Nietzsche thought it remarkable that the weak are able to hoodwink the strong into taking the autocratic enforcement mechanisms seriously.  In the case of the mass protests, enough fortitude among enough unarmed protesters could simply overflow the boundaries invented by the tyrants. Were the people itself mobilized, the autocrat might realize that were the entire populous killed, he would have no one to dominate!  There would be no feeling of pleasure in exercising power over a dead city. The strength in the people as a whole lies in simply being able to say no, yet this strength is typically hid from the strong by the weak who benefit from the subterfuge.

1. Greg Campbell, “Libyan Doctors Suspect Brutal War Crimes,” USA Today, April 12, 2011, p. 6A.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

On Nietzsche applied to business, see: On the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietzschean Critique of Business Ethics and Management, available at Amazon.