A model is a simplified representation of reality, not reality itself. Likewise, a map is not the territory. The same goes for our language. The word tree is not the same as a tree. So, if there is a tree on the map, that says little about the scenery, except that there is probably a tree at the location designated by the map. What we think of as reality is also a model. Our brain doesn’t register reality but merely processes it. The outside world generates inputs via our senses, such as seeing, hearing, and touching, which the brain integrates with our memories and emotions. It is what we call consciousness. What we experience as reality is a model. A dog experiences that same reality very differently, and the dog’s experience centres more around smell. We may see a couch and notice its colour, while a dog smells that a cat has been lying on it recently.
The brain generates our perception of reality, and our consciousness is an integrated experience shaped by that brain, informed by its own expectations and the senses. The brain works with an expectation, and adapts it when the senses disagree. We imagine reality, and correct it if contradicting information emerges. It is efficient because it greatly reduces the need for information processing. The brain aims to minimise surprise by having the best possible representation of reality. If our brain fails, for instance, when we are sleep-deprived, the world begins to look unreal. And so, intense stress can cause psychosis. During dreaming, the integrated experience of consciousness remains active, except that the information may not come from the senses but from the brain itself.
We employ models of reality to explain the world. Together, they form our worldview. We try to minimise surprises because we depend on our worldview to survive. Models are imaginations. We may believe that X causes Y because after X occurs, Y happens. We infer our models of reality from our observations and thoughts, as well as those of others. Models have a wide array of uses, including weather and economic models. Using multiple models can help us to reduce surprise, because different models have different strengths and weaknesses. It is, however, crucial to understand that models are not true or false but aim to minimise surprise.
Your model of reality may say that all swans are white, perhaps because you base it on the swans you have seen. Once you see a black one, you change your view to minimise future surprises. That seems a rather straightforward case. You can also reduce surprise by ignoring evidence, as we have trouble handling complexity and contradictions. We may also do that because we are group animals who cooperate and survive based on shared fantasies. This project, The Plan For The Future, aims to overcome these limits to arrive at a comprehensive and accurate model of the relevant issues to fix the apocalyptic problems and outline the future world civilisation. My aim was also to minimise future surprise by facing the evidence that contradicted my views, and seeking better explanations.
Often, I would write down my views on relevant subjects, and every time new information came to light, I adapted my texts accordingly. Finding evidence and setting out the direction were my primary concerns, not the practical execution. The more accurate the direction is, the more straightforward the execution becomes. Hence, I focused on proving that this universe is a virtual reality, that God is a woman who married Jesus and Muhammad, that we can have a global usury-free financial system, and that we need to socially engineer the future world society to be the most socially advanced. That requires fine-tuning, but if the direction is incorrect, we will end up in the wrong place. And so, this model of reality has undergone over 17 years of work, with numerous revisions, and is far from complete, all in a frantic dash to minimise surprise in case my plans get executed.
Limitations of simplicity
Proverbs state contradictory things. One proverb says that two heads are better than one, while another says that too many cooks spoil the broth. How can both be right at the same time? There is an optimal number of people working on a project. It is a very simplistic view. The qualities of the individuals working on the project also matter, as do the available tools, and countless other factors. These proverbs only scratch the surface and are useless for practical purposes. The headcount is just one variable of many that you need to manage if you run a business or a government. If you decide on these matters, you don’t open up a book with proverbs for guidance.
A one-dimensional spectrum, so a line, with two opposites, ranging from one participant to a large number, can make you fail to see the solution. Perhaps it lies outside that line, so this way of thinking keeps us from seeing it. Maybe the project isn’t worth undertaking in the first place, or perhaps success depends on the right tools. The number of people working on the project may still matter, so you have to consider that also. The debate about capitalism versus socialism has dragged on for over a century and has dominated world politics during the Cold War. So, do we need more or less state interference in markets? Yet, markets and states don’t create agreeable societies on their own.
Economic models include multiple variables, such as employment, inflation, consumption, business investment, and government spending. You can add more, such as workforce education, market flexibility, foreign competition, and regulations. There are countless variables to consider. If you have identified variables, you need data to estimate their impact. Economic data is usually insufficient to achieve certainty, as changes can have multiple causes. How do you know that some other variable didn’t interfere with the outcome? Despite all the models central banks used, they didn’t foresee the 2008 financial crisis. So models can be wrong, and often are. The financial models did get countless other things right, but missing one crucial variable can already make the model fail.
Still, models can be helpful. The more models we use, the more errors we can eliminate, but even then, we may still miss something important. Our minds have constraints. We often take a perspective and reason from there. A socialist economist might be good at pinpointing why capitalism fails but may not see what is wrong with socialism. Economic theories explain specific phenomena under certain conditions. You might find additional explanations in psychology, sociology, or even history. You might want to check your ideas before trying. You can run the idea through several economic theories. That might give new insights. You can’t be sure you are right, but models help you eliminate errors.
Natural Money is research into an interest-free financial system. It draws from economic theories, monetary economics, banking, psychology and even history. I reviewed that idea using existing theories and historical evidence to investigate how it might work in practice. During the research process, unforeseen issues came to light. Once interest rates in Europe fell below zero, resistance to negative interest rates emerged. Savers prefer 2% interest and 10% inflation over -2% and 0% inflation, it turned out. That is irrational, but normal human behaviour, so humans are not, as economics may suggest, rationally calculating individuals.
We seem to measure our gains and losses in currency units rather than purchasing power. And behavioural economics says we give more weight to losses than gains. It is a reason why inflation and money printing meet little resistance, while negative interest rates make people go berserk. A 4% loss in interest income impresses us more than the 10% reduction in inflation because we count our money units. Emotions can be strong and make us act irrationally. And so, it is pointless to try to convince savers that they are better off. Once that became apparent, I could look for a fix for this particular human feature by making negative interest rates appear as inflation.
Insights models give
Models yield better results than uneducated guesses, and combining models yields better outcomes than using a single model. Models tie us to a mast of logic so that we are not carried away by our thoughts and can figure out which ideas are useful to us under what circumstances. Using data, we can calibrate our models, so if our model is wrong, we can investigate why and correct the error. Scientific disciplines like economics, sociology, linguistics and biology use models. According to Scott Page, models share the following characteristics:
They simplify by omitting irrelevant details and focusing on the essentials. Models abstract from reality.
They formalise by making precise definitions and providing a framework for logical thinking to explain and predict.
They are somewhat wrong because they simplify and omit details. The use of multiple models can reduce the errors coming from that.
Weather models make calculations, such as predicting that the maximum temperature in Amsterdam will be 26°C eight days from now. That is a precise calculation, but likely it is wrong. And so, weather forecasters use up to fifty models to make weather predictions. The average of these models is more reliable than the individual models. People who use a single model do poorly at predicting. They may be correct occasionally, just like a clock that has stopped is sometimes accurate, and then tout their few successes while forgetting about their much longer list of failures. Experts know that their models have limitations. When constructing a model, we can choose from the following approaches:
Aiming for realism by describing relevant parts and relationships. Climate models work with CO2 levels and their effects on temperatures.
Using an analogy by describing a process as similar to another. You can compare the ruinous growth of human activities with a cancer.
Exploring possibilities if limits change. You can explore what will happen when unlimited energy becomes available at no cost.
When making a plan for humanity that lasts a thousand years or more, numbers and mathematics become meaningless, and we have to do it with words. You can’t measure culture, but it is the central ingredient. And still, we must try to pin down things by modelling humans to predict what we can do and how it might work. You get observations like religion can save us because humans are imaginary creatures who cooperate on the basis of myths. This is a strong and meaningful statement without mathematics, and part of the model of reality that may save us all. And there must be an explanation why humans are like that and why they fail in any realistic scenario.
To illustrate the use of models, I have taken two examples from the course Model Thinking by Scott Page on Coursera that investigate why people of the same ethnicity often live together, and why revolutions are difficult to predict.
Sorting and peer effects
Groups of people who hang out together tend to look alike, think alike and act alike. If you look at the map of Detroit, you see people of the same ethnicity living together. Blue dots represent black people, and red dots represent white people. We can’t change our skin colour, so if we hang around with people who look like us, that is sorting. We also adapt our behaviour to match that of others around us. When you hang around with smokers, you may start smoking too. Alternatively, if you hang out with people who don’t smoke, you might quit smoking. That is the peer effect. Both sorting and peer effects create groups of similar people who hang out with each other. Models can help us understand how these processes work by modelling them.1
Schelling’s segregation model offers insight into the segregation process. It says nothing about why people move. That we seek out people that are like us is an observation. Why would people move? That is an interesting question, most notably if it points to problems. If we believe that skin colour shouldn’t matter, then why does it matter? Yet, the model doesn’t say anything about that. So, that is a limitation. Schelling developed a model in which individuals follow simple rules. Suppose everyone lives in a block with eight neighbours. Red boxes represent homes where rich people live, and grey boxes are homes where poor people dwell. The blank box is an empty home. Assume now that everyone has a threshold of similar people who will make them stay.
A rich person might stay as long as at least 30% of his neighbours are rich. Assume a rich person lives at X. In this case, three out of seven or 43%, of the neighbours are rich, like the person living at X. If one of the wealthy neighbours moves out, and a poor person takes that place, 29% of the neighbours will be rich, and the person living at X will move.
A computer can simulate how that works out over time. Assume there are 2,000 people; 1,000 are poor, represented by yellow dots, and 1,000 are rich, represented by blue dots. Suppose they are randomly distributed at the start, and everyone wants to live among at least 30% similar people. In that case, the average is 50% alike, and only 16% are unhappy because less than 30% of their neighbours are alike. As a result, people start moving, and you end up with an average of 72% similar and 0% unhappy.
Even when everyone likes to live in a diverse neighbourhood where only 30% of their neighbours are like them, segregation occurs. Segregation may not be the intention of the individuals involved, as they might be tolerant people requiring only a minority of similar people living in their neighbourhood.1 Whether that is indeed the case remains to be seen. But if it is correct, and if we believe segregation is undesirable, social engineering the ethnic or wealth characteristics of neighbourhoods by mixing homes for different income groups makes sense. Some countries plan neighbourhoods that way.
Peer effects cause people to act alike. Contagious phenomena are peer effects. They often start suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere. In uprisings and revolutions, extremists frequently determine what happens, as in the French, Bolshevik, and Maidan revolutions. Things could have proceeded differently. It is difficult to predict revolutions. Granovetter’s model offers possible insight into why that is so.
Suppose there is a group of individuals. Each individual has a threshold for participating in an event like an uprising and will join if at least a specific number of others join. If your threshold is 0, you do it anyway. If your threshold is 50, you start if you see 50 participants. The outcome varies depending on the thresholds of other people that might get involved.
Suppose there are five individuals, and the behaviour is wearing a suit. One individual has a threshold of 0, one has a threshold of 1, and three have a threshold of 2. The following will happen: one individual starts wearing a suit because her threshold is 0. The second individual joins because his threshold is 1. Then, the three remaining individuals join in because their threshold is 2.
If the thresholds had been 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, nobody would have worn a suit despite the group, on average, being more open to the idea. If the thresholds had been 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, everyone would have worn a suit after five turns, even though the group, on average, was less keen on doing this. In this case, extremist suit-wearers determine the outcome.
It indicates that collective action is more likely to occur with lower thresholds and greater variation. The influence of variation is surprising. It might explain why it is challenging to predict whether something like an uprising will occur. Not only do you need to know the average level of discontent, but you must also see the spread of discontent among the population and connections between individuals and groups.1
Yet, what motivates people to join a movement greatly determines the tresholds, and the model gives no insight into that. The British Tea Tax, which sparked the outrage that led to the Americans to declare independence, was actually a good deal for the Americans that would lower tea prices. The Americans had a good life, only no influence on British policies. They didn’t suffer like the Russians that started the Bolshevik Revolution. Yet, they risked life and limb for independence in the war the war that followed.
Proof in the pudding
Do similar people hang out together because of sorting or the peer effect? That is the identification problem. Sometimes, it is clear. Segregation by race occurs due to sorting as you can’t change your skin colour. Other situations are less clear, and you can’t tell whether it is sorting or peer effect as the outcomes are the same. Happy people hang out with each other, as do unhappy people. Both sorting and peer effects may have caused this.1 Happy people may seek each other’s company because they don’t like to hear the whining of unhappy people or the company of happy people makes you happier.
Models can provide insights as to why similar people hang out together and why revolutions are difficult to predict. Yet, they don’t tell the whole story. Other models help us investigate what might happen under which circumstances. Thus, models explore the dimensions of complex questions and help us identify the spots where the best solutions hang out. In this way, models can assist us. If we intend to get people to contribute to a cause, we might want to model human behaviour to see how we can do that.
If we see humans as rational beings, we can convince them with arguments to do the right thing. If we see humans as myth-belieiving creatures, an inspiring story can prompt them to act. If we think humans are calculating individuals, incentives and punishments can make them do the right thing. If we see humans as status seekers driven by pride seeking recognition, we might achieve the objective by telling them how great they are. You may get the best result if you use a combined approach, so multiple models. Not everyone is the same, so each approach may appeal best to a particular group of people.
Latest revision: 29 August 2026
Featured image: Line And Dot On A Grey Rectangle. The artist wishes to remain anonymous because who wants to be as famous as Piet Mondriaan?
1. Model Thinking. Scott Page. Coursera (2014). [link]
The motto of the French Revolution, based on the ideals of the European Enlightenment, was ‘Liberty, equality, and brotherhood.’ It means that we should all be free and equal, as brothers and sisters. That was a tad ambitious back then, and it still is today, because human nature is not particularly forthcoming. Values like liberty, equality, and brotherhood existed elsewhere, but developments in the West came to shape world history, making them the most worthy of investigation. The European Enlightenment turned these values into abstract ideals that apply to everyone. The French Revolution and the subsequent spread of Enlightenment ideas across Europe by French armies led by Napoleon prompted the German philosopher Hegel to formulate his dialectic of progress. That would be how God’s plan would operate, he figured. Yet there probably would have been no French Revolution had there not been an American Revolution a few years earlier. Well, talking about unforeseen consequences, let’s go out on a few limbs.
The Americans came to reject the English king’s authority. That proved an opportunity to base the brand-new country’s constitution on recently developed Enlightenment ideas, such as basing sovereignty on the people and holding that people are born equal and have unalienable rights, including the right to pursue happiness. These wonderful-sounding words also enthralled blacks, women, and natives, which was not what the property-owning American whites had in mind. Yet, once written down, the fairy tale began to inspire others, creating a lasting achievement that changed the world. The French soldiers, who had fought alongside the American revolutionaries, brought these ideals home. These ideas then motivated the French revolutionaries and, later, the Russian communists to overthrow and murder monarchs God had put in place. And so, the American Revolution became the spark that ignited a fire in Europe and, later, even in China, which became a republic after over 2,000 years as a monarchy.
As for the intentions of the American revolutionaries, George Washington, the first American president, wished to rob Native Americans of their lands, which the British were trying to prevent. Washington was a land speculator who had purchased that land even though the people living there hadn’t sold it. The settlers’ intentions were one reason many natives sided with the British. After America had won the War of Independence, Washington organised military campaigns to ethnically cleanse tribal lands, burning down villages of the native tribes, destroying their crops, and forcing them to relocate. And so, the Iroquois nicknamed him ‘Town Destroyer’. It is not that Washington was destitute and had to feed his hungry children, as he was well-to-do. No, he was a man of ambition pursuing the American Dream. The Tea Tax, which sparked the outrage that led to the Declaration of Independence, was actually a good deal that would lower tea prices. But not paying taxes was at least one moral principle the unruly mobs could agree on.
Many European thinkers saw these Enlightenment ideas as social progress. Unlike the British, the French had an incompetent government. And unlike in Great Britain, the aristocracy didn’t pay taxes, so the tax burden fell on ordinary people, so the French had reason to complain. As a result, the Enlightenment ideas fell on fertile ground in France. After the French Revolution, Napoleon’s armies spread them throughout Europe. It is indeed a remarkable historical accident. Progress was in the air. Hegel then laid out the ideological conflict between progressives and conservatives that would dominate Western societies over the next two centuries. Better ideas would replace poorer ones in a competition that includes revolution and warfare, he prophesied.
One particular branch of progressivism was Marxism. Marx believed that the organisation of societies stems from unenlightened self-interest, thus our willingness to accept the myths of the elites and our unwillingness to accept the facts. At the time, intellectuals came to agree that much of the Bible was fiction. And Jesus still had not shown up after 1,800 years. Religion kept people dumb and obedient, Marx reasoned.
Christ taught that the meek would inherit the Earth. Marx taught that the meek should rise against their oppressors to achieve Paradise themselves. In the Soviet Union, communists started a state-run economy. In the West, socialists pressed for labour reforms and higher wages. Once workers in Western societies had come to live the good life, the Marxists moved on to try to liberate other oppressed groups. Critical Theory, also known as Cultural Marxism, examines and criticises society and culture using the social sciences and the humanities. The question remains: what is oppression and what is not? And if liberating requires repression, would the end still justify the means?
Max Horkheimer described Critical Theory as seeking to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them. You can free yourself from thoughts such as the belief that your job or role in society is natural or divinely ordained. And you can free yourself and your group from another’s oppression. Critical Theory examines power structures, societal roles, cultures and their alternatives. You can ask yourself why most members of parliament are men. Is it culture, human nature, or power structures? Critical Theory leads to serious problems if it tries to liberate us from human nature. Still, culture influences our conduct, so there is room for change. Cultural attitudes affect the amount of sexual abuse. Still, it would be an illusion to think we can eradicate it. It will always be a man’s problem despite cultural influences. And Critical Theory can lead to a new power structure of opinion-makers who tell you what you should think.
The critical theorists suspect the existence of conspiracies of those in power to keep the oppression going, such as men in positions of power aiming to keep women out of positions of power. There is something like an old boys’ network. Men being in power have consequences for the rules in society. If men are in control, they make the rules and determine what constitutes acceptable conduct in relationships between men and women. Most complaints about improper behaviour come from women complaining about men. What men might consider harmless, women might see as intimidating. And so, women started the MeToo movement. Humans are genetically nearly identical, so differences in behaviour between groups are mostly cultural.
Conservatives object to Critical Theory, claiming it promotes divisions within society. They might claim the order is natural. Men should treat women right, but aren’t gender roles natural? And if you dress like that, should you complain about men making remarks? Do we need political correctness officers who tell us what we should and shouldn’t say? Why do we need a new language? Does replacing the word ‘alderman’ with ‘alderperson’ change anything for the better? What people believe is acceptable and reasonable changes over time, and that change often comes from activism. Women have fought for the right to vote. Now most people accept it. Social justice causes have helped to make societies more agreeable. Still, there is a limit to what we can achieve, and when order falls apart, civilisation will prove to be a thin veneer, and gone before we know it.
The long road to ending slavery
One noteworthy example of Hegelian progress is the end of slavery. It was a long struggle, as it took more than 1,000 years, at least if you reason from the Western perspective, and that is the most fruitful approach, as the West shaped the world. It involved political activism and war. Most ancient societies had classes like slaves, serfs, free men, nobility, and priests. We pursue social status, not only for ourselves but also for the groups we belong to. We divide societies into social classes, while conquerors often enslaved the conquered. It helps to explain why ending slavery took so long, or why raising blacks to equality with whites aroused strong negative sentiments among whites. And even when we are equal before the law, cultural differences can make us unequal in reality. In the past, most people considered slavery normal or natural, but our values and culture have changed. There were also entrenched interests within societies. Slave owners were usually wealthy and powerful. In 1860, they were the elite in the Southern United States.
One of the first efforts to end slavery and serfdom in Western Europe began in the 7th century with Queen Balthild, a former slave, who forbade the sale and trade of Christians within Frankish borders. In 1102, the Council of London banned ‘the infamous business, prevalent in England, of selling men like animals.’ Around 1220, the Sachsenspiegel, a German law code, condemned slavery as ‘a violation of man’s likeness to God.’ The argument for abolishing slavery was a Christian view on human dignity. There was also an economic reason. Cities provided economic opportunities, and serfs flocked to them, prompting lords to compete for labour. It made serfdom in Western Europe untenable.
By 1500 AD, slavery and serfdom were rare in Western Europe, but by then, slavery began to take off in the colonies. Christians could still enslave non-Christians. A similar historical process would unfold, officially ending slavery more than three centuries later. Shortly after 1500, Spain banned the slavery of Native Americans but allowed unpaid forced labour or corvée called Encomienda. It made the natives serfs on paper but slaves in practice as the corvée extended. The natives weren’t sturdy enough for hard physical labour and died of diseases brought by the Europeans.
European plantation owners needed a sturdier workforce. European traders brought them from Africa by boatloads, crammed them into cargo holds, and chained them, leaving little room to move, to maximise profits by efficient use of available space. Slavery was common in Africa. Tribespeople captured and enslaved members of other tribes. The European slave trade dramatically increased demand for slaves and made it a lucrative business, so hunting people for profit became commonplace in Africa. Unhygienic conditions, dehydration, dysentery, and scurvy caused one out of six to die during the voyage. Between 1526 and 1860, slave traders put an estimated 12.5 million Africans on ships in Africa, and 10.7 million survived the trip to the Americas.
The European slavery of Africans was chattel. The slaves, and also their children, were the property of their owners and had no rights. There are other forms of slavery, such as the slavery and serfdom that existed in Europe during the Middle Ages, in which slaves had rights and sometimes could own property. The same was true for most slavery in Africa before the Europeans arrived. The Mamluks in Egypt bought enslaved boys from abroad, raised them as Muslims, and let them work in the military.
Yet, these other forms of slavery were brutal as well, and the difference with chattel slavery could be negligible. In the era of the Atlantic slave trade, North African Muslim pirates captured and enslaved over 1 million Europeans by raiding coasts and ships. They came as far as England. Europeans bought some of them back for ransom, but the others had miserable lives. The Arab slave trade, which lasted 13 centuries, involved over 17 million people. In the Saharan region alone, more than 9 million African captives were deported, and two million died on the roads. For the individual slave, the character of the owner mattered most for the living conditions.
The Europeans didn’t see African slaves as humans, but as cargo. On 1 January 1738, the Dutch slave ship De Leusden sank near the coast of Suriname. Over 600 Africans died because the crew had boarded up the hatches on the orders of the captain, thus not even allowing them to swim for their lives. Yet, in Europe, the mood began to change, and more people came to oppose slavery. In his diaries published in The Voyage Of The Beagle, Charles Darwin wrote that slaves would regularly receive beatings and torture for insignificant offences, mistakes or for no reason at all. When Darwin wrote these notes, public opinion in Great Britain was shifting, and Britain was about to abolish slavery in its colonies. There was also an economic reason. The Industrial Revolution had taken off, and the British economy no longer depended as much on slave labour as it had in the past.
History of blacks in the United States
The abolition of slavery became the central issue in the 1860-1865 US Civil War. The Northern states had abolished slavery soon after the American Revolution. Their economies didn’t depend on slave labour. That was different in the South. The invention of the cotton gin turned into a boon to the cotton industry and greatly increased the demand for slave labour. By 1860, slave plantations in the United States produced two-thirds of the global cotton supply. Efficiency improvements came from tracking each person’s output and harshly punishing those who failed to meet their production targets. Slaves who tried to escape faced brutal physical punishments like whippings, branding, or maiming. As the South’s wealth was based on slavery, it wasn’t willing to end it.
A noteworthy figure in the abolition movement was John Brown, a man of strong religious conviction, who believed himself to be ‘an instrument of God, raised to strike the death blow to slavery in the United States.’ He saw it as his sacred obligation. The opposition against slavery was broader, but Brown became dissatisfied with their pacifism. He came to propagate radical action, saying, ‘I, John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.’ He led a number of anti-slavery volunteers during the Civil War in Kansas about the issue of whether the state would enter the Union as a slave state or a free state, which led to his execution for treason in 1859.
The dispute leading to the Civil War was over whether to allow slavery in the new territories in the West. The controversy came to a head when Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery’s expansion, became president, and Southern states seceded. Lincoln, hoping to reunite the country, didn’t plan to abolish slavery in the South at first. That changed when a peace deal remained out of sight, and the North needed soldiers to fight the war. Lincoln then signed the Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 1863, which freed the slaves and allowed them to enlist in the army. Many slaves escaped and fled to the North to obtain their freedom and to join the Northern Army.
At the time, Frederick Douglass, an influential black writer, complained about the unequal pay of black soldiers, who earned less than white privates. The North’s weak response to the cruel treatment of black prisoners of war by the South also angered him. He forced his way into President Lincoln’s office, and the two men came to know each other. It was a learning experience for both. Lincoln learned how slavery affected the lives of black people, while Douglass came to understand political reality. Most whites weren’t ready for black emancipation, so a politician could only do so much. Not much later, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln for promising blacks suffrage.
After the Civil War, whites regained control in the South. Paramilitary groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan and the White Man’s League, disrupted political campaigning, ran officeholders out of town, lynched black voters, and committed voter fraud. The federal government didn’t stop it. Voting for blacks became more restrictive with literacy requirements combined with the underfunding or closing of black schools. States and counties introduced laws to enforce racial segregation, the so-called Jim Crow laws. Successful blacks faced violence, destruction of their businesses and killing by violent mobs of whites. The most famous example of that is the Tulsa massacre of 1921.
Racial segregation officially ended in the 1960s after the civil rights movement took on the issue. Television made the nonviolent resistance led by Martin Luther King a success. Scenes of police violence highlighted the oppression of blacks, and the world could see it. It damaged the credibility of the United States, which was at the time in a propaganda war with the Soviet Union to win the hearts and minds of formerly colonised peoples. That forced President Kennedy to act. And one century after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Declaration, he signed the Civil Rights Act. Both presidents acted for political reasons rather than moral ones. One can only admire the marketing that made these self-interested political acts look like righteous moves, but fairy tales inspire people, so it had a positive effect. Since then, everyone in the United States has been equal before the law, even though not always in practice.
Something went wrong somewhere
In December 1992, I was on holiday in Florida. My travel agent had advised me not to enter a particular quarter in Miami where blacks lived. Yet, I accidentally drove into that district twice. And once tried to book a hotel room there. The lady behind the counter was kind enough to talk me out of it. She said, ‘Folks like you shouldn’t come here, you know.’ She meant whites. And the neighbourhood seemed okay, not like a ghetto at least. I had also accidentally driven through a ghetto, where the blacks living there gazed at me as if I were an animal escaped from the zoo. The travel agency had warned me that if I ended up in such an area, I shouldn’t stop at traffic lights. I am not the kind of person to go against the advice of people who know better.
It was different in the Netherlands, so the presence of blacks didn’t worry me. And I was about to move to a neighbourhood where a considerable number of blacks lived. Months earlier, a jury had acquitted four Los Angeles policemen of the beating of Rodney King, a black taxi driver, despite the evidence being clear. Fury erupted, incited by grievances about racial and economic inequality, and the city burned. Something had gone wrong somewhere. The ‘something’ and the ‘somewhere’ are not as straightforward as in the past. Multicultural societies in Europe face similar issues.
In the West, culture has become more of a determinant of success than privileges and institutions. The success of immigrants is related to their ethnic background, despite their receiving similar opportunities. Education didn’t matter much to enslaved blacks in the United States, and later on, during the Jim Crow years, their education was willfully neglected. Whatever the cause is, blacks in the United States have a culture that values education less than other cultures. Many want to be successful at sports rather than to become an engineer. And sports are a waste of time and energy, as they produce nothing at all. You don’t eat food produced by sports nor do you live in a home built by sports. And so, a question remains: how would blacks in the United States have fared had whites not stood in their way for so long? The answer is not that straightforward.
Another factor contributing to the persistence of racial inequality in the United States could be the disintegration of families, which particularly affected blacks. The disappearance of industrial jobs worsened the situation. Such explanations are speculative. There is evidence supporting it and evidence to the contrary. If it were so, there would be other factors as well. In 1965, Senator Daniel Moynihan warned that the rise of out-of-wedlock births among blacks would cause a disaster. He argued that black men couldn’t become good husbands and fathers without jobs to support a family. It would cause divorce, child abandonment, out-of-wedlock births, and households headed by women living on welfare. Without a positive role model of a providing father with a job who looks after his sons, young males are more likely to enter a life of crime, Moynihan argued.
The report came at a time when the Civil Rights movement fought segregation and white racism. Civil rights leaders attacked the report as an example of white patronising, cultural bias, and racism. The problem with these issues is that you can be right while the other can be right too, but people take sides, so the result is a political struggle rather than a resolution. Whites were holding back blacks, but blacks also had issues that held them back. The report helped to create the black welfare queen stereotype. A stereotype originates in a pattern, but it is not reality. Blacks are more often on welfare, but most have a job. And the relationship between family disintegration and crime is difficult to prove. Likely, the neighbourhood you grow up in, the people you meet and the friends you get have a greater impact on your choices.
The supposed relationship between the strength of communities and families and success in society comes from the ideat that you have an advantage when you grow up in a stable environment with married parents who can invest more time in raising and providing for their children. Only, it doesn’t explain why Muslims often perform poorly in European societies, as they usually have strong family ties. Attitudes towards education and society also matter, and perhaps even more. Blacks and Muslims may feel resentment and think that society is not for them. Blacks may say it is a white man’s world. To Muslims, the success of the West and the Jews is at odds with the supposed superiority of Islam. And if you believe you aren’t a fully recognised member of society and never will be because you are black or Muslim, you are less likely to participate.
In 2013, the acquittal of a neighbourhood watch in the fatal shooting of the 17-year-old Trayvon Martin gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement. Martin had no convictions. The police had once found jewellery in his possession, but couldn’t prove he had stolen it. The neighbourhood watch tried to apprehend Martin for being in the neighbourhood where burglaries had occurred. He claimed self-defence because the unarmed Martin resisted with force. The death of George Floyd in 2020 is another noteworthy case. A police officer knelt on Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed and lying face-down in the street, contributing to his death. Floyd said that he couldn’t breathe. The police officer ignored him. Floyd allegedly had used a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill. He had served eight jail terms for petty crimes.
The Black Lives Matter movement turned the brutality of American police into a race issue. Had Floyd been white, would the police officer have treated him differently? That may well be the case. Was Martin racially profiled? Likely so. Perhaps someone else was the burglar. Get blacks pulled over more often by the police? Sure. Yet, blacks are three times as likely to be killed by the police as whites, but six times as likely to be convicted of a violent crime. Relative to the number of violent crime suspects per race, the police killed fewer blacks than whites. That makes it hard to separate the two issues. There is no excuse for racism, but also not for crime, and if you look at the numbers, the latter is the bigger problem. Floyd wasn’t saving the rainforests or helping out poor people. He was a petty criminal. You shouldn’t make heroes out of criminals. You also shouldn’t erect statues and make heroes out of traitors who fought to preserve the institution of slavery.
The jury justice system adds a complication. Well-known is the case in which a jury acquitted O.J. Simpson of the 1994 double murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. The panel had 9 blacks, which made people question the verdict, believing the jury to be racially biased. In many more cases, the jury mainly consists of whites, especially in cases that involve blacks. Jury justice is seriously unprofessional, and one issue with it is that the race of jury members may impair their judgment. Research suggests that blacks get 20% to 30% more prison sentences than whites in similar cases. Access to better lawyers can also play a role, as does cultural bias, so a white person knows better what a white judge wants to hear than a black person because they share the same culture. Still, a reduction in the crime level to the level of whites would help blacks much more than correcting the racial bias in the justice system.
Culture also affects the nature of crimes. Sweden has long been one of the least violent countries with one of the most progressive justice systems. Yet, in recent years, gang violence among immigrant groups, often with young perpetrators, has led the Swedes to revise their system, as it wasn’t effective in dealing with this new type of gangsters. It is a problematic path. As culture affects the nature of crimes, immigrants may receive more severe punishments, even for similar crimes, because of the assumption that they require different treatment due to their cultural attitudes.
And regardless of conduct, there is racism. Blacks face more racism than others, except where they are the majority. Humans are xenophobic creatures, and the skin colour of blacks stands out. Even language works against them, as the words ‘black’ and ‘dark’ are associated with evil. On the Dutch island of Curacao, where there is racial mixing, lighter skin is more appreciated, or so an islander once told me. Solving the issue begins with accepting that it is natural for humans to exclude those who are different. Apart from differences in conduct, unfamiliarity is an obstacle to acceptance. Humans are xenophobic creatures and may hate, bully and ostracise others for differences in views, appearance and conduct. So, familiarity and similar conduct can help reduce these issues.
The cause of the high number of black fatalities at the hands of the police is brutality rather than ethnic profiling. In the United States, police fatalities are 33 per 10 million inhabitants per year, in league with countries like Angola, Colombia, Mali and Sudan, which is 30 times as much as countries like Germany, Portugal, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. It comes with the level of lethal violence Americans accept. In the United States, you can get away with shooting a cleaning lady trying to open the wrong door. In Europe, that would be murder. In Europe, a neighbourhood watch would also do prison time for shooting an unarmed person. In civilised society, that works better. That requires the police to do their job. And in the United States, everyone can carry a gun, so the police are on edge, making them shoot first and ask questions later.
Historical perspective
We view things from today’s perspective and assess the past through today’s values. It doesn’t help to understand history or social changes. Slavery has long been normal in many parts of the world. The Bible does not speak out against it. That Christians gradually came to reject it is a remarkable historical development. Slave owners thus didn’t think they were doing anything wrong. They could be kind people and still treat their slaves cruelly. Darwin wrote, ‘I was present when a kind-hearted man was on the point of separating forever the men, women, and little children of a large number of families who had long lived together.’ He could only do that if he didn’t view slaves as people. Among the Nazis exterminating Jews in the concentration camps were family men who cared for their wives and children. Most of us are capable of allowing or contributing to atrocities.
Those of us who eat meat contribute to the animal suffering in the meat industry, which is as horrific as the Holocaust, even though it concerns animals rather than humans. Animals don’t differ from us as much as many of us like to imagine. We buy clothes made by children in Bangladesh who work twelve hours six days a week in filthy factories. Many people in Europe and the United States condone the cruel treatment of immigrants because they think there are too many, and that migration undermines their societies, and giving them humane treatment would invite more to come over. And that is correct. ICE brutality led many illegal immigrants to flee the United States. Future generations may view our conduct as appalling as we view slavery today, but only if we have a better world in the future. If we end up in a Mad Max world ruled by warring gangs, few would care.
Seeing the abolition of slavery as a historical process and acknowledging the limits of our compassion helps us understand why it took so long and why slavery has never fully ended. Moral beliefs and economic issues were involved. Slavery was common in most traditional societies, but had ended in Western Europe by 1,500 AD. Europeans then turned the slavery of blacks into a large-scale commercial enterprise, making it a pillar of the European capitalist economy. European Christians engaged in the slave trade, but Christianity also contributed to the end of slavery.
Christianity proclaimed a fundamental equality of human souls. Christian churches approved of slavery and benefited from it, but they also aimed to convert indigenous peoples. These conversions themselves were often brutal, but by doing so, European Christians admitted that indigenous peoples were humans worthy of conversion. And if they were Christians, enslaving them conflicted with the Christian principles Europeans imagined. Muslims lived by that same principle, but the Muslim world has been a sideshow in world history, and by extension, the Muslim slave trade. The Western ideal of equality has its roots in Christendom. Europeans gradually began to apply the principle of equality to people of other races.
Slavery ended once the economic situation allowed it. The Industrial Revolution became the new engine of economic growth, so the slave trade and slavery contributed less to the economy. Factory workers were cheap and often lived on the brink of starvation, so the capitalists’ bottom line didn’t suffer from abolishing slavery, except in the South of the United States, which went to war over slavery, thus proving Marx’s point that economics has a considerable, if not decisive, effect on the class structure in societies. Ending slavery didn’t magically create a better world, nor did ending segregation solve inequality.
Slavery can return at any time if the conditions favour it or if a stronger power emerges to re-establish it. If so, it will come with a new myth telling us that slavery is the best system for reasons like humans being unworthy of freedom because they feel entitled to what is not theirs, and as a result, ruin this planet with their insatiable desires. That is the irony of history or God’s sense of humour. It could be chattel slavery in which God owns you and your children, and where you have to contribute positively to God’s society. Those who go along with it will own nothing and be happy. After all, it is better to be a slave in Paradise than to be free in hell.
Latest update: 12 August 2026
Featured image: Storming of the Bastille and arrest of Governor M. de Launay on 14 July 1789. Public domain.
In the 2000s, it struck me that nearly all the empty cigarette packages littering the streets were Marlboro Reds. I began to pay attention. There were one or two Camels and a few others, but almost all were Marlboro Red. Marlboro Red is the most popular brand. Its market share in the Netherlands is nearly 30%. The second-largest brand has a market share of under 10%. But if you had to make a guess based on discarded empty packages, you would think Marlboro Red had a market share of 95%. It was not scientific research, but my observation and my wife’s. We made jokes about it. We didn’t make tallies, but it was like that. Cultural differences are a big issue, as I had already learned as a student. Marlboro Red smokers often dumped their garbage on the spot, while other smokers rarely did. So, if you’re looking for a jerk, check who’s smoking Marlboro Reds.
You might think that littering isn’t that bad if you compare it to the horrors of warfare, dumping chemicals, the abuses in the meat and dairy industries, and the cutting down of rainforests. Still, disrespect for God’s Creation begins with littering. It is a matter of upbringing, hence culture. Some countries are clean, while others are a total mess because people dispose of their garbage wherever they see fit. It’s pretty easy to spot jerks. Those who litter are. Jerkdom is part of a culture of not caring. We buy the products of corporations that dump chemicals in the ocean and then complain about the poisoned fish we eat. There are worse offences. But it starts with littering. Next comes graffiti, which only those who make it consider art. I know art is personal expression, so do it inside your home so that only you can see it. Then comes destroying property. If you want to cause even more harm, you might consider buying the latest fashion.
Now, if 30% of the people dump 95% of the garbage, the remaining 70% is responsible for only 5% of the garbage. And you can calculate that Marlboro Red smokers were 44 times as likely to dump their trash on the street as other smokers ((95/30) / (5/70) = 44), a striking find. The sample was large enough to make the finding statistically significant. The sample may have issues, but these issues can’t fully explain the difference. It is more complicated to do the same investigation today. You still find cigarette packages on the street, but it is hard to identify the brand name among the scary pictures of cancers and other horrible diseases you get from smoking. Marlboro Red smokers differ from other cigarette smokers. You can call it culture. Culture can explain the deviant behaviour of groups of people who share common characteristics, such as smoking Marlboro Red. It is politically incorrect, but culture explains a lot about behavioural differences between groups.
The Marlboro Man embodies careless living in a consumerist society, which apparently includes discarding one’s garbage on the spot. Our brand choices reveal a great deal about our personalities, so marketers have done their jobs very well indeed. A politically correct person would say I am stigmatising Marlboro Red users. There could be something wrong with my sample. The sample may have flaws, as I live near a train station where young people gather, but I have also noticed this elsewhere. The difference is so stark that it can’t merely be an error in the sample. But even if the sample correctly reflects reality, perhaps only 0.1% of smokers discard their cigarette packages on the street, so only a tiny minority of 4.4% of Marlboro Red smokers might do so. Perhaps that is correct, or perhaps not, but 44 times as much is an eye-popping difference.
If you intend to tackle the problem of litter from cigarette packages and have a limited budget, you may target Marlboro Red users to achieve the greatest impact. Otherwise, you are wasting money. And who wants to waste money? Okay, stupid question. People buy cigarettes. I think of Marlboro Red smokers as jerks who don’t care, thus people who might piss through your letter box, or throw fireworks in it. It is what I imagine, and I know that it isn’t true for all of them. Many are people like you and me, who might be friendly, own a dog, have a job, and look after their neighbours. And reality never ceases to surprise me.
If I meet an individual, this person often doesn’t conform to all my prejudices about the groups to which he or she belongs. A group consists of individuals, and although they share common traits on aggregate, each individual is different. There are behaviours like littering that occur more in certain groups than others. Our prejudices about groups often have a basis in reality. Still, our prejudices aren’t reality. If you only see Marlboro Red packages on the ground, you may think that Marlboro Red smokers are all littering jerks, while it might be a small minority of them.
Can I trust my dentist?
How do cultures emerge and develop? History and circumstances go a long way in explaining that, as the following example illustrates. I trust my general practitioner, but not my dentist. That is because of my experiences and those of others. General practitioners and dentists are similar medical professions. In the Netherlands, a general practitioner doesn’t benefit from the advised treatments, while a dentist does. You have to trust medical professionals because your health depends on them, but you can’t trust them in a market. That is why healthcare for profit turns into a scam where doctors prey on desperate people and sell treatments for which there is no scientific proof. That ranges from magic potions to revolutionary cancer treatments. If you buy it, they sell it.
To prevent dental professionals from taking advantage of me too much, I see the dentist once a year rather than twice. So what made me so distrustful? As a child, I had the same dentist for over fifteen years, an old-fashioned one for peasants like me. He didn’t propose treatments unless they were necessary. He once told me that I could wear braces, but added that it wasn’t necessary for my teeth’s health. Not caring about looking perfect, I still live with the consequences that have never bothered me.
After leaving my parental home and moving to Groningen, I selected a new dentist. The first thing he did was take X-ray pictures. He said a cavity was developing underneath one of the fillings. Well, what a coincidence. The other dentist had never seen it. Then the dentist showed me the picture and pointed at a dark spot. There was another filling with a dark area beneath it, and I said, ‘You can see a similar blot here.’ He replied, ‘That is something different.’ I am unqualified to evaluate these X-rays, but both areas were similar, so the dentist lied. Had he not shown me the photograph, I would have believed him. It made me suspicious and very critical of what dentists were doing.
Before he could treat my tooth for the supposed cavity, I came up with a lame excuse and selected another dentist. A few years later, I had a colleague who had married a dentist. She previously had lived in the same neighbourhood. Her husband was in training at the time. And so, she had been seeing another dentist, who happened to be that one. She told me she had had a row with him, so I wasn’t the only one who had smelled a rat there. Her husband was a dentist-in-training, so she probably had valid reasons for quarrelling.
That was a noteworthy coincidence indeed, and there have been many in my life. What are the odds that she had the same dentist, they had an altercation about malpractice, and her husband was a dentist in training, which would provide me with evidence to support my suspicions? Thirty years later, the tooth and the filling were still in place. Later, I moved to Sneek and found an old-fashioned dentist. He was like my first dentist, so I trusted him. He often performed dental cleaning. That usually took 10 minutes and cost €21. After ten years, he joined a practice with some other dentists. Shortly after that, he retired.
My next dentist didn’t perform the dental cleaning. Instead, he sent me to a dental hygienist. That treatment lasted twenty-five minutes and was a lot more expensive. Instead of €21, I paid €62. Standards do change, but I doubted the sudden need for 150% more cleaning. But if my dentist advises the treatment, who am I to disagree? After all, he is the expert. It is best to accept the assessment of medical professionals unless you have proof they are wrong. Otherwise, you endanger your health.
Since then, I have worked harder on brushing and cleaning my teeth, but the cleaning always took 25 minutes, no matter how hard I tried. After eight years, my dentist said my teeth were in good shape and clean. There was a tiny bit of tartar, so he advised me to see the dental hygienist anyway. The dental hygienist could have stopped after ten minutes, but she went on to arrive at twenty-five, so she could bill me for that, or so it seemed. The treatment was always twenty-five minutes, regardless of the condition of the teeth. I found that dubious and looked for another dentist.
It would only get worse, even though not at the beginning. A new guideline stated that dental hygienists could do the periodic dental check-up. The following year, the dental hygienist combined the check-up with dental cleaning, making the most of the allotted time financially. I was there for thirty minutes. She billed me for thirty minutes of dental cleaning and also charged me for the check-up. A decent check-up lasts ten minutes, so you might expect a check-up and twenty minutes of dental cleaning if you are there for thirty minutes. I was surprised and wasn’t sure. Had I checked the clock correctly?
The following year, she did it again. Additionally, she charged me for taking X-rays and evaluating them. How can you do all that in thirty minutes if you already spend thirty minutes on dental cleaning? It doesn’t add up. The dentists had decided to take pictures every 3 years instead of every 5, which means even more money for them. And she was double-charging me. Dental cleaning was €160 per hour at the time, which was nearly what I brought home after a day of work and paying taxes. Many people work longer for that money. To charge that per hour wasn’t enough for her, which is particularly nefarious.
After returning home, I emailed her to request clarification. She didn’t respond, so I filed a complaint with the Dutch Association of Dentists and looked for another dentist. In the complaint letter, I protested against the double-charging and noted that questionable ethics have become customary in dental care. A few decades ago, there were no dental hygienists. My wife once said, ‘The dental hygienist is a new profession created out of thin air.’ She had left a dentist because he required her to see the dental hygienist before examining her teeth to determine whether that was necessary. She went to another, who also began maximising profits at the expense of clients, so she left again. I have heard several stories from others of dentists overcharging or doing unnecessary treatments.
My next dentist also advised dental cleaning. And this time, I was with the dental hygienist for forty minutes, and she billed me accordingly for €119. Over the past fifteen years, the time spent on dental cleaning has increased by 300%, and the cost has risen by 467%. I take much better care of my teeth than I did twenty years ago, and began using toothpicks, but it doesn’t show up in the dental cleaning cost. It can’t be that all these dentists and dental hygienists are lying. My teeth accumulate tartar no matter how well I clean them, so the cleaning is necessary, but the amount remains questionable, to say the least. I put up the ante once again, brushing my teeth three times a day, and it finally showed in a somewhat reduced dental cleaning time in the years that followed.
The parabolic rise in dentist costs is partly due to changing standards. Dental cleaning improves the health of teeth. At some point, the benefits of increased cleaning and more photographs become minimal while the costs escalate. The precise border between higher and scamming will always be elusive, and you can’t prove it from individual cases like mine. Still, we have, without any doubt, entered scamming territory, but no one puts a halt to it. In 2026, a Tubantia newspaper headline said, ‘Eight minutes in the chair, pay 200 euros: more and more patients feel like ‘cash cows’ at the dentist.’ And the article goes on to say, ‘Three minutes of polishing for €480 per hour. Half-cent cotton rolls billed for €10. A €1,600 treatment plan that disappears after a second opinion. Hundreds of readers contact us after reading articles about dental fraud. And research by Zilveren Kruis shows that in six out of ten cases investigated, there was indeed overbilling.’
Again, I have to be politically correct and say that the number of complaints about treatments is less than 1% of the total number of treatments. People only complain if they think something is wrong, so that 60% of complaints are justified doesn’t mean 60% of dentists are overbilling. Undoubtedly, much also goes unnoticed. My wife has switched twice after being scammed, and never filed a complaint. I switched three times and complained only once. And so the percentage of fraudulent dentists is likely significantly higher than 1%, but probably it is a minority, and there is a grey area between changing standards and overtreatment. Still, the consequence is that more and more people can’t afford dental care, and their teeth’s health suffers. So, while the number of treatments increases, the quality of dental healthcare in the Netherlands declines, which seems to be a systemic problem in healthcare-for-profit. General practitioners don’t benefit from the treatments they recommend, leading to better care at lower cost.
The same trend is visible in veterinary practices. Douwe, our late cat, suffered from kidney failure. We had spent hundreds of euros on tests, but the vets found nothing. And we had seen several vets, because we suspected that the other vet was scamming us, but they all did it. We spent hundreds of euros more on special diets sold by these vets, but Douwe’s condition only deteriorated. We finally visited an old-fashioned vet. He examined Douwe by feeling with his hand. He found the kidney failure and euthanised Douwe. That cost us only €30. Modern veterinarians often don’t physically inspect the animals but perform tests, charging over 1000% more. Physical examinations are bad for business.
My father has spent over €5,000 on surgery for the leg of his dog. An old-fashioned vet would have amputated the leg, as the animal could still walk on three legs. But that is, of course, much cheaper and generates far fewer profits. The surgery failed, so the poor animal had to undergo a second surgery. After that, the ailment returned, so a third surgery followed. And it is not that if the treatment fails, you get the next one for free. Not even a discount, unless you are, like my father, insistent on a discount and somewhat unpleasant. The dog didn’t recover. My father had his dog euthanised because it was in pain.
The market works so that unnecessary treatments proliferate because the rich desire them. They would rather spend €10,000 on unnecessary treatments for their dogs than on feeding children in Africa. We are all like that. I don’t give all my money to charities either, so it is a most serious issue that we can only fix with unthinkably brutal measures like taxing the rich. These treatments have become the norm, so the vets sell them to the poor as well, telling them every pet deserves these treatments, even when their owners can’t afford them.
You can’t blame only the vets and dentists for the cost explosion. We view our pets as family members and want the best for them, just as we do for our children. Modern veterinary outfits look like hospitals and make investments that need to bring in a return. And we want perfect teeth, not just healthy ones. Not everyone can afford them, and healthy teeth are more important than perfect teeth. Vets make tons of money. They now retire early, purchase luxury mansions and travel around the world. It has become so lucrative that vulture capitalists are buying up veterinary practices, so scams will proliferate like cancer until the entire sector has become a scam.
Group culture can be a problem. Most veterinary and dental care professionals think they are doing a good job. Dutch politicians are catching up and proposing a law to ban profit maximisation at the expense of pet owners, but, as usual, nothing will change. It reflects the mood in society, where we see greed as good, so that dental care professionals and vets may be unaware of the damage their culture and professional values cause to society. And that is precisely the problem with many other cultures, whether they are professional groups or ethnic groups.
The politically incorrect
It is okay to say that, but once you apply the reasoning to ethnicity, you step into a minefield. But hey, let’s begin with kicking in an open door. White Europeans have caused the most trouble. And now we can move on, and also discuss the problems others cause. These differences can be an excuse for racism and discrimination. Racism is widespread, and discrimination is even more so. Typically, stereotypes are rooted in reality, which complicates the issue. Racism and bigotry are undesirable, but if you have reason to have grudges against specific groups, these grudges might express themselves as racism. You might as well hate Marlboro Red smokers and dentists. The standard politically correct answer is that most people from minorities are good people, just like most Marlboro Red smokers and dentists are. Additionally, the ethnic group to which you belong can also cause trouble for other groups. Whites caused the most trouble in history.
Usually, a minority in that group causes trouble, but that minority can make a neighbourhood unsafe. And people from a group don’t rat out each other, so that they can be part of the problem. There has been growing negativity surrounding immigration recently. That is not only because of the numbers, but also because of the crime. However, the image you get from the evidence you see is not reality itself. If most suspects of burglary have a particular skin colour, you might think they are all criminals, while it is usually a minority. Even when differences are relatively small, the groups in question pose a problem. If the percentage of criminals in the population rises from 1% to 2%, you need twice as many police, courts and prisons. And if you can’t discuss these issues, you also can’t discuss the problems the majority causes.
Usually, a minority in that group causes trouble, but that minority can make a neighbourhood unsafe. And people from a group don’t rat out each other, so that they can be part of the problem. There has been growing negativity surrounding immigration recently. That is not only because of the numbers, but also because of the crime. However, the image you get from the evidence you see is not reality itself. If most suspects of burglary have a particular skin colour, you might think they are all criminals, while it is usually a minority. Even when differences are relatively small, the groups in question pose a problem. If the percentage of criminals in the population rises from 1% to 2%, you need twice as many police, courts and prisons. And if you can’t discuss these issues, you also can’t discuss the problems the majority causes.
It works two ways. Host societies have varying ways of dealing with immigrants. The gang violence among immigrants is worse in Sweden than elsewhere. The Swedes tend to keep to themselves, and it isn’t always easy for foreigners to integrate into Swedish society. Many countries have volunteers who care for asylum seekers and help them settle. It is probably not a coincidence that my worst hitch-hiking experience as a youth occurred in Sweden, where my cousin and I waited for over seven hours for a lift despite the heavy traffic. Nowhere else had I waited for much more than an hour, and I have hitch-hiked in seven countries. Whatever the cause may be, these gangsters commit these crimes, not the Swedes who allowed them into their country. Still, there must be a reason why the gang violence in Sweden among immigrants is worse than elsewhere.
When harmful conduct relates to culture, the politically correct response is often that only a minority is involved in it. Why do mass shootings occur far more often in the United States than elsewhere? The politically correct gun lobby would argue that only a tiny fraction of Americans go on a shooting spree. The image you get is not reality itself. If there are mass shootings in the United States nearly every day, you might think Americans are gun-obsessed nutters, while it is a small minority. Still, there are mass shootings all the time, so it sets the United States apart from other countries. The problem is not gun ownership. Liberals might think that stricter gun laws will solve the problem. More stringent gun laws will never happen because the problem is not gun ownership but gun culture.
When there is no gun culture, gun ownership wouldn’t pose such a problem. European countries, such as Finland and Switzerland, also have widespread gun ownership. Still, random mass shootings are a typical American phenomenon. America has a gun culture and a belief that guns are a preferred way to solve problems. American police are over 60 times as lethal as their British counterparts (33 versus 0.5 fatalities per 10 million inhabitants in 2022), which is an appalling statistic. Still, several countries have far more violent police forces. These numbers relate not only to the amount of violent crime. Compared to films from other countries, American films overflow with excessive violence, including gory details like bullets penetrating bodies and tearing flesh apart, which Americans somehow seem to be particularly interested in. The hidden suggestion is that killing other people is business as usual.
Ethnic groups have cultures. We picture Americans, Chinese, Germans and Arabs like we picture lawyers and construction workers. Our prejudices may accurately identify group characteristics, but will often fail us in individual cases. Suppose all the cookies are gone on Sesame Street, and you must find suspects. Would you not select the big-mouthed, blue-haired ones with a taste for cookies? That is also profiling. But perhaps it was one of Ernie’s pranks. If you did not think of that, you are prejudiced. We base our prejudices on experience and facts, as well as fiction and rumours. Only the facts do not base themselves on our prejudices. We often forget about that. Not all dentists are greedy money-grabbers, likely not even most. Although some minority groups cause more trouble than others, most individuals within these groups probably do well. Still, cultures and societies are Big Things, even though you can’t precisely define or measure them.
Intentions and arguments
In multicultural societies, people from certain ethnic groups often face greater difficulties and cause more problems than others. That undermines the fabric of society as much as racism and discrimination. It is one of the reasons why right-wing populism is on the rise. Culture often coincides with ethnicity, so the resentment can express itself as racism, which allows racists and bigots to have their say. That was the reason for having political correctness. Policymakers have long hoped that maintaining a friendly atmosphere and helping disadvantaged groups would help to reduce these problems over time.
The validity of an argument doesn’t depend on the intentions of the person making it. That said, there is a wide array of possibilities for misrepresenting the facts, so intent usually matters for the quality of the argument. Activists are cherry-picking incidents to present a picture of a group causing trouble. I could have photographed discarded, empty Marlboro Red cigarette packages on the street to illustrate that Marlboro Red smokers are littering jerks. Although there is some truth to it, it is not the truth itself.
Our cultures and values play a crucial role in how we view society. Groups that pose problems often share a belief that the society in which they live is not their own. ‘It is a white man’s world,’ a black man might say. You may become angry or frustrated when you fail in society due to circumstances you believe are outside your control. You may not understand the unwritten rules or know the right people to get ahead. Even when we are equal before the law, we are not in reality. It is not always easy to determine to what degree you can blame society, the individual, or the groups to which individuals belong.
Ethnic profiling
Cultural differences are why authorities engage in ethnic profiling. Culture coincides with ethnicity. In the Netherlands, crime rates vary by ethnic group. Criminals are a minority in every group, but the differences are significant. People of Antillian, Moroccan, Surinamese and Turkish descent are, on average, three times more likely (2.4%) to be crime suspects than native Dutch (0.8%). It has a magnifying effect, as it influences how the native Dutch think of these people. When you see pictures of crime suspects, they often have, as the Dutch call it, a tinted skin, meaning they aren’t white. It can give you the impression non-whites are all criminals, just like you can get the impression that all Americans are gun-wielding nutters or that Marlboro Red smokers are jerks. It can make you distrust people who aren’t white, most notably when you hardly know them.
The relationship between ethnicity and crime can be misleading. There is a coincidence between income and crime. And these minorities have relatively low incomes. A good question is why people from certain ethnic groups have low incomes. That relates to culture, but it is not the only explanation. Many immigrants came to Western Europe for low-paid jobs that required little education. Their parents had little education. Education was not a high priority for them, so their children often ended up with little education. Even when income explains crime rates better than culture, culture still plays a significant role in income, most notably through attitudes towards education and work. It is something we can’t ignore as specific types of conduct relate to particular groups.
Diversity policies, such as hiring persons from disadvantaged groups, can help improve society. However, the result can be that better-qualified people don’t get the job because of their skin colour or gender, which is discrimination. And, if you don’t hire the best people for the job, the quality of your product or service can come under pressure. On the other hand, without diversity policies, talent may go to waste. You can train talented people when they lack education. The Dutch government invested in the education of minorities rather than promoting diversity in hiring. Equalising opportunities with education seems a better approach than lowering standards.
Ethnic profiling is controversial. It has undesirable consequences, as the following example demonstrates. Suppose a country consists of two ethnic groups, which are Group A, 2/3 of the population, and Group B, 1/3. Assume further that people in Groups A and B are each responsible for 50% of Fraud X. Hence, people in Group B are twice as likely to commit Fraud X as people in Group A. To combat fraud effectively, you can only verify individuals from Group B to achieve the maximum result. You could apprehend twice as many fraudsters with the same effort. But now comes the catch. You don’t check on people from Group A, so only people from Group B end up in prison. While responsible for 50% of the fraud, Group B receives 100% of the punishment. That is discrimination.
Some call it racist, but the reason for ethnic profiling can be a risk assessment related to cultural characteristics, not ethnicity. In this hypothetical case, it is the likelihood of committing Fraud X. Also, in that case, ethnic profiling can be racist. People from Group A might dislike those from Group B and elect a leader who allows the authorities to investigate the crimes of Group B while disregarding the crimes of Group A. You can end up with a situation where the authorities prosecute Fraud X and only check on people in Group B, supposedly because they are doing it more frequently while doing nothing about Fraud Y, which members of Group A commit twice as often as those from Group B.
If your job is combating Fraud X, and you dedicate only 50% of your resources to Group B, that seems reasonable because people from Group B are responsible for 50% of Fraud X. In that case, people from Group B are still twice as likely to get punished because Group B is half the size of Group A, but receives the same amount of checking. And because people in Group B are twice as likely to commit Fraud X, people from Group B end up in prison four times as likely as those from Group A. While responsible for 50% of the fraud, Group B accounts for 67% of the prison population. If people from Group B claim that the authorities discriminate against them and punish them more, they are right.
People from ethnic minorities often get harsher punishment for the same crimes. A Dutch study showed that people from other ethnic groups are up to 30% more likely to receive a prison sentence for the same crime than native Dutch. The reason might be discrimination, but more likely, it is cultural. If you share the same culture with the judge, you know what to say to sway the judge’s opinion. Consequently, the judge might think the migrant is a jerk and the Dutchman is reasonable.
If the problem is severe enough, the end may justify the means. Ethnic profiling can undermine the trust of minorities in the authorities, because these groups may feel they are the target of police harassment. Still, if authorities don’t act on culturally related crime, we might end up with lawless ghettos. In several Western European multicultural societies, males of North African descent are overrepresented in the prison populations. In the United States, it is black males. On average, they commit more crimes than the general population. And if the police engage in ethnic profiling, people from these groups receive more punishment for the same crimes than others.
Ethnic profiling to check on people is one thing, but it becomes much worse when you use it to punish people without proof. The Netherlands has benefits with advance payments for medical expenses, rent and childcare. The tax service administers these benefits. These advance payments can bring people into trouble when it later turns out they aren’t qualified and must refund the money received. The rules were complex and prone to errors, as well as to fraud. Most irregularities occurred in areas where poor people lived, often ethnic minorities, so the tax service checked these individuals more closely. It remains unclear whether the tax service did ethnic profiling. Whether these were errors or fraud is often impossible to say, but he tax service didn’t need proof to label you as a fraudster and demand repayment.
Criteria can help identify potential fraud, but they don’t prove that someone committed fraud, nor can they distinguish between honest mistakes and intentional embezzlement. Suppose 5% of the people who used the childcare arrangement committed fraud. Assume also that there were criteria to select the 20% doing 80% of the embezzlement. In that case, 20% of that selection commits fraud, and 80% do not. There was a political climate that promoted harsh treatment of ethnic minorities. A decade later, thousands of people were in financial and emotional ruin. Complex regulations lead to errors and encourage fraud.
Officially, there is no ethnic profiling in the Netherlands, but it does happen. The Dutch government conducts an offensive against ‘undermining crime’ in selected poor neighbourhoods. In Zaandam East, it led to the surveillance of suspicious individuals and manhunts, sometimes based on hunches rather than evidence. The area is known for the window-cleaning gangs that divide up territories and use violence against the competition. It has been hard to crack down on these gangs, and Dutch authorities fear that criminals are undermining Dutch society. Zaandam East is one of the twenty areas targeted by the National Programme for Liveability and Safety, a drastic approach to ‘clean up’ city districts. The people living there are mostly foreigners, often from Bulgaria and Turkey. The methods the authorities use may not always be lawful, and critics ask whether the fraud and crimes committed by native Dutch receive similar scrutiny.1 Still, fighting organised crime requires intrusive methods. Zaandam-East is a crime-infested neighbourhood, but the majority of people living there aren’t criminals. I have known two Turks who lived in Zaandam. They were ordinary people with jobs.
Discrimination everywhere
Municipal officials from ethnic minorities experience discrimination and racism by colleagues, a 2023 survey in the Netherlands revealed. Civil servants participating in the survey reported facing discrimination, such as receiving criticism when another member of their ethnic group misbehaved. Those who spoke out against those remarks faced bullying and exclusion, so others kept their mouths shut out of fear of losing their job or being labelled a problematic case. Many municipal officials from ethnic minorities left their jobs due to racism and also because they had fewer chances of promotion, the report said.
Discrimination is not a trivial issue, but there are two sides. Those who make the remarks may think they are funny and that their jokes are harmless. They don’t think of the consequences. Bullying and exclusion can cause long-lasting trauma. Some complainers might have displayed unacceptable behaviour or taken offence at issues a Dutch person wouldn’t. We have no footage to establish what happened. In many cases, attributing the problem to discrimination based on ethnicity only scratches the surface. Bullying and exclusion happen for many reasons. It has to do with how humans behave in groups.
In workplaces, a pecking order often exists, with leaders, followers, and outcasts. Humans desire to establish social hierarchies. Some want to be the boss. To be a leader, you must demonstrate strength and confidence. A low-risk approach is attacking the weak or those who are different. There is also a group culture that defines how you should behave. Causing problems for the group and not fitting in are reasons for bullying. These issues may relate to skin colour, sexual preference or political views. Angry responses demonstrate your weakness. Reporting incidents makes you a rat.
Workplaces should be safe, but that is not always the case. In a properly functioning group, members respect each other, do not exploit each other’s weaknesses, and resolve their differences. For some reason, people can’t always get along. In a job environment, it can be performance on the job. I have worked in a Java team for over a decade. Due to our responsibilities, we couldn’t afford to have underperforming individuals on our team. There was no bullying, but three people had to leave the team because they weren’t performing adequately. These situations were unpleasant.
It is often difficult to pinpoint the exact reasons why people encounter difficulties at work. They may experience discrimination, but the underlying cause may be something else. What makes the outsiders different is usually the point of attack for the bully, making it appear to be a form of discrimination. Employers seek to select individuals who fit in with the team. They are in business to make money, not to settle disputes. Cultural differences can be a source of trouble, and discrimination is often subtle, as employers may have reasons to discriminate.
Once, I had a colleague from Suriname. He was a temporary hire who worked for a software agency. His uncle was his boss. He also came from Suriname. Out of the blue, he told me that he was the only Surinamese working for the agency. His uncle preferred Dutchmen because he could depend on them. They did as asked and kept their agreements. People from Suriname are more relaxed and often come up with excuses as to why they fail to meet their schedules, he seemed to imply by saying that. Customer satisfaction is key to business success, so it matters who you hire. His uncle was a businessman, not a philanthropist. It might have been better if he had hired a few more Surinamese and taught them to take their jobs more seriously and meet appointments. That would have been a diversity policy that could have helped to reduce the issue.
Minorities also discriminate. We are all human, after all. If people from an ethnic minority discriminate, it may seem less damaging than when the majority does it, as minorities usually have fewer favours to dispense. That is probably why liberals looked the other way. Jews are an exception. They have amassed so much wealth and power that their favouring of Jews has become extremely harmful. But few dare to speak out about Jews. Discrimination by minorities undermines society as much as discrimination by the majority. When I was on holiday in the United States, I once wanted to book a hotel room in a black neighbourhood in Miami. The lady behind the reception was kind enough to advise me not to. But if a white man can’t safely sleep in a hotel room in a black neighbourhood, how can blacks expect whites to stop discriminating against them?
One of the most disgraced minorities in the Netherlands is Moroccans because of the troubles caused by young males from this group. Many of them look down on compatriots who have done well in Dutch society. Had the mayor of Rotterdam, a Muslim of Moroccan descent, wished to run for Prime Minister, he would have stood a good chance. But on the message board for Moroccans I regularly visited, there were no words of praise. Several posters saw him as a defector. Also, the Moroccan lady who made it to the speaker of the house received few regards. They see themselves as ‘us’ and the Dutch as ‘them’. Discrimination works both ways. You will never become part of society if you think like that.
What is the matter with me?
I once asked myself the following question. Suppose I had room to let, and two men applied, one a white man from Bulgaria and the other a black man from Suriname. Both had similar jobs, and both gave a favourable impression. Who would get the room? Probably, I would choose the man for Suriname. Suriname has been a Dutch colony, and most people from Suriname living in the Netherlands are nearly as Dutch as the Dutch themselves. I have a prejudice that Surinamese are relaxed people who seldom cause trouble. About Bulgarians, I know far less, and I have never spoken to one. For the same reason, I would have selected a Dutchman if he had made a similar impression.
So, where did I get the idea from that Surinamese are okay? The people I have met? Television? It is unclear. Knowing I am biased, I would still choose the man from Suriname. Surinamese are culturally closer to the Dutch than Bulgarians, and I know more about them. And here we arrive at the heart of the matter, something overlooked in debates about racism and discrimination. About Bulgarians, I know very little. And Bulgarians differ more from native Dutch than Surinamese. When I rent out a room, I don’t want trouble. Judging native Dutch is hard enough already, let alone people from other cultures.
I discriminate and have prejudices like most people. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have opinions about liberals, conservatives, Muslims, Chinese, Germans, dentists and Marlboro Red smokers. I may not always be aware of my biases, but I am not s racist. Otherwise, I would have selected the white guy. It is better to diagnose my condition as xenophobia. I know more about Suriname and Surinamese. That is not to say there is no racism or that it is not widespread, but the underlying issues are often unfamiliarity and cultural differences. And so, identifying the issue as racism only scratches the surface. If you intend to solve the problem, that kind of simplicity doesn’t get you very far.
Those who are different face exclusion and violence. And I am different, so I know what it means that others pick you out for special treatment for no other reason than who I am. It makes you doubt yourself and ask, ‘What’s the matter with me?’ By the time I had become a student, I had become an emotional wreck, mired in self-doubt. But it is how groups of humans deal with deviant behaviour and press for conformity. Even people who think they are open-minded and cherish diversity do it because they don’t tolerate those who disagree. That is what Woke people do. Cooperating in groups requires conformism, so cultural differences and unfamiliarity cause trouble and uncertainty.
It begins with basic things, such as appointments. That made the Surinamese employer not hire his fellow Surinamese. I had a friend who was always late when we went out. He didn’t do that at work, of course. He married a lady from Africa. When she came with him, they were even later. Their marriage worked well because they shared a view on keeping schedules. It wouldn’t have worked with me. It might seem a minor issue, but a foundation of modern civilisation is maintaining schedules. In a business, it is a matter of survival due to competition. The solution, however, might not be for Africans and Surinamese to join the rat race but rather to end the system that drives us to destruction. That is why we must first identify what the future requires of us before we demand that people fit in.
The requirement of fitting in still allows for diversity in traditions as long as they don’t cause harm to nature or other people. Everything is interconnected, so not only do crimes like shoplifting and selling drugs do damage, but also, when there is no direct causal relationship between actions and consequences, such as dumping garbage or spreading hatred, and dying animals and terrorism. The same is true for discrimination. There may be good reasons to discriminate, but there can also be better reasons not to, or to help individuals from disadvantaged groups. Think of the benefits in the long run and the long-forgotten words of Martin Luther King,
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.
Today, King’s dream seems like a distant memory of the past. We are not there yet. It might testify to the stubbornness of the issue. The recent rise of fascism in the West, however, masks the progress beneath the surface. There may be a lack of willpower, but above all, there is a lack of self-criticism among all those involved, as existing traditions and cultures hinder progress. Perhaps it was too much in the 1960s. The colour of your skin can say something about your character, as there is a relationship between ethnicity and culture. Different cultures pose different problems. Throughout history, multiculturalism has been a tool employed by emperors to manage culturally diverse empires. And so it will be for the coming messiah if he is to unite the world. Multiculturalism is the proverbial One Ring and the road to closer integration. If God’s Paradise endures, cultures will lose significance, and the world will be one.
Latest revision: 18 July 2025
Featured image: Black and white sheep. Jesus Solana (2008). Wikimedia Commons.
Solar is the cheapest source of energy, but only when it is available. When the Sun doesn’t shine, there is no solar energy. And there can be too much. The cost of solar power and electricity storage is dropping, so renewable energy may, at some point, overtake fossil fuels as an energy source. But is it economically feasible? Electricity prices in the Netherlands fall below zero for most of the day on sunny, windy summer weekends. In 2023, electricity prices reached a negative €0.40 per kilowatt-hour on a few occasions. Taxes and delivery costs were €0,15, so you could make money using electricity in those instances. As one energy expert put it, ‘This is nuts.’1 Since then, shutting down solar and wind farms during peak hours has helped keep prices in check.
The Netherlands has significant solar and wind capacity, yet also often-changing weather, limited battery storage, and a stressed power grid. In 2022, 40% of the Netherlands’ electricity and 15% of its total energy consumption came from renewable sources. Plans are in place for additional wind and solar farms. To manage all that, you need large batteries to store electric energy, as well as nuclear power plants or plants that run on fossil fuels to bridge periods with little sun and wind. It will be costly, so investors are starting to have second thoughts, putting the plans for new wind farms in jeopardy. The Dutch might be better off by curbing their energy use. Only, no one dares to propose that.
In the drive to reduce carbon emissions, households are increasingly electrifying their energy use, adopting electric heating and electric cars, which is resulting in higher winter electricity demand and further strain on the grid. There is only so much shifting of energy demand that flexible pricing can achieve. Businesses can’t start or expand due to a shortage of grid capacity. That is also because the Netherlands is an international hub for data centres. They will require an increasing amount of energy, likely over 10% of Dutch power consumption by 2030. Power outages during peak hours, once unthinkable, become possible. Further down the road, the Dutch might end up shutting down energy-intensive industries during periods of renewable energy shortage.
The costs of halting climate change will be staggering, so some say renewable energy is a religion. Critics had a field day in 2023 when the Dutch Climate Minister said that the proposed measures to combat climate change would cost €28 billion over seven years, or €222 per person per year, and reduce global temperatures by only 0.00036°C. ‘This is nuts,’ they said. New estimates indicate that the combined national plans, if executed, will reduce the increase in global temperatures from 4.0°C to 2.5°C this century, which is not enough. The first part was the easiest. The second part could run into a cost wall, even if the price of solar energy itself nears zero. Something has to give. The climate is warming, but the costs are becoming prohibitive. We believe economic growth should fund the switch, which is thinking that the problem, growth, is the solution.
Sri Lanka’s organic farming disaster
In the spring of 2021, Sri Lankan farmers went organic overnight. It was not their choice. The government had banned synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, a move intended to save Sri Lanka $ 400 million a year and protect Sri Lankans from the adverse health and environmental impacts of these substances. It led to a 20% fall in rice and tea production. The price of rice rose by 30%, and the prices of vegetables like tomatoes and carrots rose by 400%. It was another blow to a tourism-dependent economy already devastated by the coronavirus pandemic. After five months, the government made a U-turn and reduced the restrictions. By mid-2022, the economy had gone into free fall. Inflation was above 50%, with 90% of Sri Lankans missing at least one meal per day.2 Some say organic farming is a religion.
Synthetic fertilisers make crops grow faster. Pesticides control insect infestations and diseases that destroy crops. Their adoption since the 1960s, known as the Green Revolution, has helped lift countries like Sri Lanka out of poverty. In Sri Lanka, rice yields tripled. Synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, however, ruin our health and the environment. Soil degradation endangers our food supplies. Still, discontinuing the use of fertilisers and pesticides can lead to famine. So, can organic farming feed the world?
There is also the issue of agricultural subsidies. In developed countries, governments subsidise farmers to purchase fertilisers and fuel their tractors. Of the total energy in maize produced in high-input agriculture, about 70% comes from fossil fuels. The manufacture of chemical fertilisers takes more than 30% of this energy. Cleaning the groundwater from excess fertiliser nitrates may be so costly that it will be impossible.3 When these subsidies disappear, less intensive farming methods become more economical. Yet, that will reduce the food supply and make food more expensive, and poor people can barely afford it already.
Organic farming requires twice as much land for the same output. There could be ten billion people by 2050, so the world’s farmers may need to increase their production even further. That is, unless we stop breeding and change our diets. Livestock use nearly 80% of global agricultural land, while producing less than 20% of our calories.4 Holy cow! Meat and dairy are also a religion. By reducing our meat and dairy consumption, we may feed the world through sustainable, or even organic, farming methods.
Replacement
It is sometimes hard to tell which country I live in by looking at the people walking on the street before my home. And I don’t live in Amsterdam, Rotterdam or The Hague. It was not like that in 1997 when I moved here. What fascists call the replacement is happening over here, which is that due to immigration and higher birth rates among immigrants, the newcomers gradually replace the natives. I never felt unsafe, nor did my wife, nor did I witness violent incidents. When I could overhear them, so when they spoke Dutch, those who looked like newcomers usually showed good manners, including the youngsters.
Despite having lived in multicultural neighbourhoods in the past, I feel a bit uneasy about it. I read what people write on message boards. It is not all good. Young people can’t find a home. And some immigrant groups bring troubles with them. If you follow social media, you learn that the violent crime rate among migrants is much higher. It is one of the reasons why resistance to immigration is growing. At the swimming pool, I overheard a man of my age say,
My children are 28 and 25. Both still live with us. They can’t find a home. Homes are too expensive. That is partly the government’s doing. If you walk around in this town, it looks like the Middle East. And those Syrians. They say many of them are physicians and surgeons. Well, they are. They bring their knives with them.
He said that the town looks like the Middle East, but he might as well have said, Africa. As for his remark about Syrians, when the Syrians came, the mainstream media told us that there were many qualified people, including doctors and surgeons, among them. Yet, on social media you learn about knife incidents. Many Syrians are on welfare. I can’t blame them for fleeing that miserable place. The man’s words reflect the mood among many Dutch. About one-third would now vote for a fascist, nationalist or anti-immigration party. Many are ordinary people who don’t hate immigrants, but believe it cannot go on like that.
We are reaching the limits of our possibilities. Most immigrants are labour migrants. That it all still works without too much trouble looks like a miracle. Most immigrants find a place thanks to the efforts of volunteers who help them integrate. Blacks seem to mingle more with the natives than Muslims. These are my personal observations about what happens here. The Netherlands is an agreeable country. People move where they can find a better life. At first, people mostly moved within countries. Now they increasingly move between countries. Modernisation and the ensuing demise of traditional village life were equally profound. It was the death of our traditional cultures.
If there is to be a future world society, it will be a multicultural one, but if there is not enough that unites us, a society will fall apart. And if the Netherlands is an agreeable country where many wish to live, the rest of the world should become like the Netherlands. Excessive consumption in wealthy countries should stop. That would be the end of the main reasons for migrants to move. The fascists are worried and call immigration an invasion. Since World War II, the ethnic makeup of several Western countries has undergone profound changes. Those who came to the Netherlands since 1960, along with their descendants, now comprise over 25% of the population.
We don’t know the future, so our choices are a matter of faith, also on the issue of the multicultural society. Science can’t even predict tomorrow’s headlines, let alone what happens a few decades from now. So, can you call the mass migration an invasion? Can the fascists be right? What seems rational depends on the future you expect. And so, some say that the multicultural society is a religion.
Had the Native North American tribes in 1650 rallied around a fascist leader who claimed whites were an evil race with nefarious inclinations, not humans, but subhuman trolls from a dark place where the Sun never shines who were planning to take their land, and united to eliminate these pale abominations, they might have fared better. And see how these pale faces have culturally enriched the land by replacing the forests with strips of tarmac surrounded by concrete constructs with neon lights. So, if you see people giving the Hitler salute, think of that. Hitler led Germany to destruction. The Native Americans who violently opposed white immigration into their lands also perished. But had the natives succeeded in exterminating the whites and prospered, critics might later have argued that it had been unnecessarily cruel to genocide these pale-faced ones.
The rear-view mirror pundits are a particularly annoying species. They can predict the past with uncanny precision, and claim they knew it all along. We can’t foresee the long-term consequences of migration. It can lead to civil war, but so can divisive politics. In Bosnia, three faiths have lived relatively peacefully alongside each other for five centuries until the 1990s, when they fought a bloody civil war. The Bosnians shared the same ethnicity, culture, and language, differing only in their religion. Nationalist and religious politics plunged them into a civil war.
The multicultural fairy tale is that people of different races, ethnicities, and nationalities live together in the same community, where individuals retain, pass down, celebrate, and share their unique cultural ways of life, languages, art, traditions, and behaviours. It is not a reality in many cases. Ethnic groups frequently reside in separate quarters. Cultural differences cause tensions. Chicago has separate neighbourhoods for whites, Mexicans, blacks, Poles, Koreans, Jews, Indians, Italians, Greeks, and they all have their neighbourhood grocery stores. The purpose of the multicultural fairy tale is to provide a story that maintains the peace long enough for us to work out our differences. That requires us to share a belief in a common destiny.
Goodbye, fossil fuels?
Fossil fuels provide 80% of humanity’s energy consumption. Perhaps you have heard tales about phasing out fossil fuels, that solar is the cheapest source of energy, and that it will all be nice and dandy with solar and wind. A 2021 International Energy Agency (IEA) projection of future energy use tells a different story. The IEA expected a 30% increase in world energy use between 2020 and 2050. Renewable energy will not even fully cover that increase.5 It is the reason Big Oil keeps drilling. And so, saying goodbye to fossil fuels and switching to renewable energy begins with reducing global energy consumption by 50%, and that will require drastic lifestyle changes.
The IEA concludes that the pledges by governments to date—even if fully achieved—fall well short of what is required to bring global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2050 and give the world a 50% chance of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 °C.6 The IEA presented a plan to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. It bets on cheaper solar energy and technology to store it. Achieving 50% renewable energy use may be feasible, but beyond that, the costs may become prohibitive if the bet-on technologies don’t arrive on time. We are about to find out.
A global power grid could make switching to renewable energy feasible, as it would require less spare capacity and batteries. Long-distance electricity transport incurs limited losses (26% per 10,000 kilometres). It might be profitable to transport electricity over thousands of kilometres from locations with predictable solar availability to other locations. It is mainly a political problem as nation-states have conflicting political objectives, so it requires a global government. We may have already surpassed the 1.5°C global average temperature rise, at which point things supposedly become critical. Due to the measures already taken and planned measures, the expected temperature rise may be limited to 2.6°C by 2100 AD, significantly less than the worst-case scenario of a 4°C rise.
What is our religion?
Once we accept a story as the truth, it becomes a matter of faith, whether it is renewable energy, organic farming or a multicultural society. The bottom line is often that we may disagree on whether we need to do it and whether it is possible. Yet, our belief in whether we need to do it may depend on our belief in whether it is possible. Underneath lies the problem that we may have to do it, but that it may be impossible. Maybe we should do something about climate change, but it is not going to happen, so why ruin our industries with energy shortages? And if other countries aren’t switching to organic agriculture, why bankrupt our farmers? And why should we have an open multicultural society, and go through the trouble of accommodating various cultures, when others do not? And should the migrants not adapt in the first place?
Then there are the unforeseen consequences. When the Dutch began electrifying their energy consumption, few foresaw that they might end up with power shortages requiring businesses and consumers to adapt their demand to electricity availability. And there are extremes, like no Sun and no wind during winter, when energy demand is at its peak. The waiting list for grid connections is growing. The Sri Lankans suffered much more from their sudden switch to organic farming. We accept the consequences of our choices if we believe that they are right. Our future and our children’s are on the line. Only, we don’t know the future, so our choices on these matters are a matter of faith.
In the Middle Ages, most Europeans were dirt poor. Their houses were mere sheds. They often barely had enough to eat. Still, medieval Europeans built magnificent cathedrals. God was more important to them. Were they right, or were they wrong? Today, money is our religion, and we are committing suicide by subjecting ourselves to the rule of money. Renewable energy, organic agriculture and the multicultural society are choices of faith with uncertain outcomes. They can go wrong, but so can the alternatives. We often don’t know what the right choices are. Something unforeseen can happen any time, making what seems sensible today appear ill-conceived tomorrow. Yet, the doom that the pursuit of profit will cause is certain, and few see it coming.
Latest revision: 12 August 2026
Featured image: The Lady Chapel of Exeter Cathedral. User Diliff. Wikimedia Commons.
1. ‘This is nuts:’ European power prices go negative as springtime renewables soar. Joshua S Hill (2023). Renew Economy. [link] 2. Sri Lanka’s organic farming disaster, explained. Kenny Torrella (2022). VOX. [link] 3. Can conventional agriculture feed the world? Pablo Tittonell. Wageningen University. 5. How much of the world’s land would we need in order to feed the global population with the average diet of a given country? Hannah Ritchie (2017). Our World In Data. [link] 5. EIA projects nearly 50% increase in world energy use by 2050, led by growth in renewables. EIA (2021). [link] 6. Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector. IEA (2021). [link]
In 2022, Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops to invade Ukraine in a so-called special military operation known as the Ukraine War. It is tempting to see Putin as the sole cause of the war, but there is more to this conflict than the godfather of a mobster government trying to expand his turf. Even Adolf Hitler had good reasons for tearing up the Versailles Peace Treaty and occupying the Rhineland. What he did next was less reasonable, and it culminated in mass murder. After World War II, the Allies realised that without the unreasonable Treaty of Versailles, the war probably wouldn’t have happened. Leaders make mistakes all the time. Western leaders ignored Russian interests by expanding NATO into former Soviet territory and promising NATO membership to Ukraine.
Giving in to Putin’s demands will embolden him to invade other countries. You don’t have to doubt that. Donald Trump, like a veritable peace dove, was willing to give the gangster in the Kremlin what he claimed to desire, but Vlad the Empirebuilder sniffed weakness and now thinks he can win the war. Geopolitics works like gangster warfare. The West operates by the same logic. Iraq didn’t pose a threat to the United States. The businesspeople behind the move hoped to profit from looting the country. China plans to invade Taiwan, and once it has done so, a new objective will undoubtedly pop up in the heads of the imperialists in Beijing. Meanwhile, the madman in the White House has set his eyes on the Panama Canal, Greenland and Canada. So, will there ever be peace?
Blaming the West or Putin for the Ukraine war doesn’t prevent the next war. There are always conflicts brewing, such as those between India and Pakistan, Israel and Iran, and Thailand and Cambodia. There is always something to fight about. The Ukraine conflict has a long history, as do many other conflicts, and the motives of he warring parties always appear honourable. Putin’s case for invading Ukraine is better than the US’s case to invade Iraq. Leaders tell stories about national greatness or the threats posed by other states to send us to war. Had the Soviet Union still existed, a state founded on a story of a brotherhood of peoples that repressed nationalism, the Ukraine War would never have happened. That points to both the cause and the solution. We can end warfare by uniting as one humanity with a single story.
Historical background
Between 800 and 1240 AD, the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, was the centre of Kievan Rus, a state founded by the Viking traders who sought a land route to the Mediterranean. By 1240, the Mongols overran the area. When Mongol power waned by 1400, a new Russian state emerged around Moscow, while Ukraine became part of Poland. Crimea and the surrounding territories became part of Turkey. As a result, Ukraine became separated from Russia and developed a separate culture and language. Polish and Turkish power declined from the seventeenth century onwards, and Russia filled the void. By 1800, Russia had become a large empire controlling most of Ukraine.
During World War I, the Russian Empire collapsed, and a civil war followed the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. By 1922, the communists had won and held most of Ukraine. In the late 1920s, the Soviets forcefully collectivised farms. Farmers lost their land and ended up in prison labour camps. Agricultural output dropped, leading to a famine and the deaths of three to five million people. In 1939, Hitler and Stalin made a pact. They divided Poland, and the Soviet Union acquired Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Western Ukraine. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, some Ukrainians saw the Germans as liberators, but many more fought in the Red Army. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine became independent. Crimea remained strategically important to Russia as it was the home of the Russian Black Sea fleet.
When the Soviet Union retreated from Eastern Europe, NATO leaders promised Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand into its former sphere of influence.1 Eastern European countries were eager to join NATO. Once liberated from Soviet oppression, they sought security guarantees against their neighbour, Russia, which joining NATO could provide. Several policymakers in the West believed NATO expansion would be a historic mistake. Russia could see it as a violation of the promises made, which could undermine cooperation with Russia.2 NATO expansion proceeded nonetheless. The collapse of the Soviet Union broke the Russian spirit and national pride. Russia had been an empire, and the Soviet Union was a world power. It was all in shambles.
Vladimir Putin worked for the Soviet secret service, the KGB, for sixteen years. After leaving the Secret Service in 1991, he worked for the mayor of Saint Petersburg, where he oversaw the disappearance of precious metals and food, leading to allegations of corruption.3 Later, Putin joined President Boris Yeltsin’s staff. In 1998, Yeltsin appointed him director of the intelligence service FSB, the successor of the KGB. On 9 August 1999, he became Prime Minister.
One month later, a series of terrorist attacks took place inside Russia, which the FSB attributed to Chechen militants, while the evidence indicates that the FSB was behind it. State Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov announced that another bombing had occurred in Volgodonsk, while that bombing had yet to happen. In Ryazan, the local police apprehended FSB agents planting bombs. As Putin had been the FSB’s head until a month before these attacks, the obvious question is whether he had ordered them. His being the kind of guy who would do such a thing doesn’t count as proof, but Putin is the kind of guy who would do such a thing. And so, the conductors of an independent investigation either died mysteriously or ended up in prison.
In any case, Putin seized on the opportunity. He vowed to go after the Chechen terrorists, which made him popular with the Russian people. The terrorist attacks became a pretext for a long and bloody war in Chechnya. A few months later, Yeltsin stepped down and appointed Putin his successor. Putin pledged to restore Russia’s prestige and sphere of influence. He eliminated the oligarchs who opposed him and stripped them of their possessions. His opponents, also those who lived abroad, had a significantly higher death rate than average citizens, attributable to causes like falling out of windows or running into nerve gases. The surviving oligarchs had to pay taxes, which improved the state’s income.
Vlad the Empirebuilder sees the former Soviet territories as a primary interest to Russia and seeks influence or dominance in that area. In 2005, despite corruption, voter intimidation, election fraud and the poisoning of the pro-Western candidate Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine held free elections due to a popular uprising, much to the dismay of Putin, who had hoped to retain control of the country with the help of his favourite, Viktor Yanukovych. Most other Soviet republics remained within Russia’s sphere of influence, except Georgia, which aspired to EU and NATO membership. Russia then invaded Georgia in 2008.
Prelude
Since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine has had a multi-party system with numerous corrupt political parties in which oligarchs play a central role. The country became almost evenly split into two political blocs. One sought cooperation with the West, and another aimed for closer ties with Russia. People in the West and the centre of Ukraine favoured the Western-oriented bloc, while people in the East and the South generally favoured the Russia-oriented bloc. That coincided with the languages spoken. People in the East mostly spoke Russian, and people in the West spoke Ukrainian.
Many living in eastern Ukraine spoke Russian, felt a connection to Russia, and desired friendly relationships with Russia. Many living in the West thought they were Ukrainian, felt unrelated to Russia, and hoped to become part of the West and be free from Russian influence. It was a recipe for trouble, which the imperial powers, the United States and Russia, sought to exploit. Samuel Huntington called Ukraine a cleft country as these blocs identify with separate civilisations. Ukraine had plans to join NATO. In 2008, Putin warned Moscow would view that plan as a direct threat to Russia’s security.4
After fair elections, Putin’s favourite, Viktor Yanukovych, became president in 2010. By 2013, there was strong support for an economic treaty with the European Union (EU) in Parliament. After lengthy negotiations, a deal was in the making. Then, Yanukovych decided not to sign a political association and free trade agreement with the EU and to seek closer ties with Russia instead. Russia was Ukraine’s largest trading partner, and Putin had offered loans on favourable conditions while threatening to harm the interests of the Ukrainian oligarchs and politicians if they rejected his proposal.5
Protests erupted, calling for the resignation of the president and the government. The demonstrations were initially peaceful, but President Yanukovych responded with a police crackdown that included the use of snipers. The protestors held out for months and fought back with chains, sticks, stones, petrol bombs, a bulldozer and firearms. At some point, the police could no longer defend themselves from protesters’ attacks. In the end, 108 civilians and 13 police officers had died. The Euromaidan protests led to the ousting of the government, and President Yanukovych fled. Most Ukrainians didn’t want to sever ties with Russia at that point, as Ukraine relied on cheap gas from Russia.5 After the Maidan Revolution, pro-Russian protests and uprisings erupted in Crimea, the Donbas and Odesa.
Pro-democratic groups had started the Maidan Revolution. Most participants were ordinary citizens. However, the violence of the well-organised fascists, which included the use of snipers, probably decided the outcome. The Ukrainian fascists have a long history which traces back to the partisan movement from the 1940s. After the Maidan Revolution, fascists patrolled the streets of Kyiv. They also provided fighters for the war against Russia-backed separatists. Among them was the Azov regiment, a group of 900 fighters with Nazi sympathies.6 Their bravery on the battlefield at a time when the regular army had difficulty defending Ukrainian territory made the far-right more respected in Ukraine.
Russia claims that the Maidan Revolution was a Western-sponsored coup to overthrow a legitimate government. Yanukovych had become President after fair elections. Between 1991 and 2014, the US spent $ 5 billion to support civil society and NGOs aiming at strengthening democracy, anti-corruption efforts, and economic development. These groups had played a central role in starting the protests. Had the far-right not come to their aid, President Yanukovych might have been able to subdue the demonstrations with force.
And so, Putin sees foreign aid money as interference and a threat to Russia. After pro-democratic protests in Russia, he made Russian NGOs receiving money from abroad subject to a foreign agent law and closed their operations in Russia. Since the Orange Revolution in 2004, Putin began investing in increasing Russian influence abroad.7 It included interference with the 2016 US elections.8 After the Maidan Revolution, the Obama administration chose not to antagonise Russia after learning the lessons of Russia’s war with Georgia in 2008. The previous Bush administration had provided Georgia with money and weapons in an attempt to build a strategic bridgehead in the southern Caucasus region, provoking Russia to invade Georgia.7
Ukraine War
Ukraine was drifting away from Russia and aligning itself with the West. Most Ukrainians don’t want to live under Putin’s rule, but they also hoped for a good relationship with neighbouring Russia. That is why they elected Volodymyr Zelensky. A Ukrainian NATO membership would endanger that. Putin believed Ukraine was of crucial interest to Russia. Losing Ukraine would be a damaging geopolitical loss for Putin. The Russian invasion of Crimea and the Donbas insurgency had soured Russian-Ukrainian relations. There had been a truce, but there was regular shelling of civilian areas.9 The Donbas attracted Ukrainian far-right fighters seeking combat experience. Russia-backed separatists have reported terrorist attacks with a total of 1,000 fatalities between 2015 and 2021.10
Zelensky had won the 2019 elections by promising to seek peace with Russia. The far-right blocked these plans by promising there would be riots and that Zelensky might be killed.11 A return of Ukraine to the Russian sphere of influence was not to be expected. The truce with Russia was not more than a truce for both parties, as Ukraine intended to regain its lost territories while Putin hoped to bring Ukraine under Russian influence. Ukraine was building its military and seeking NATO membership. Although NATO considers itself a defensive alliance, it is part of the Western sphere of influence, and Putin sees it as a coalition against Russia that could threaten Russia’s security.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, few expected the Ukrainian army would hold out for more than a few weeks. In the first days of the war, Zelensky rejected an evacuation offer from the United States, saying he needed ammunition, not a ride. Street fighting in Kyiv was about to commence. Zelensky, who had been an actor previously, unified the nation and extracted weapons and other support from his Western allies. He had played the Ukrainian President in a comedy previously. Fiction has become a reality. Or is reality fiction?
There were peace talks during the first months of the war. Both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin seemed willing to make concessions. Western powers blocked a peace deal, fearing the agreement would reward the aggressor state, Russia. Western powers also hoped to weaken Russia.12 The discovery of the Bucha massacre in early April, in which Russian troops had murdered over four hundred civilians, was another reason the peace talks failed.13 For three years, the war dragged on. Ukraine needed Western support to keep its army in the field.
It was a stalemate, with Russia making a few territorial gains at the expense of massive losses in military personnel. In 2025, Donald Trump became President of the United States. He initially held a more favourable view of the Russian position and went as far as parroting the Russian propaganda narrative that Ukraine had started the war. The man in the White House took upon himself the role of peace dove and tried to broker a peace deal with Russia by pressuring Ukraine into accepting the loss of territory and giving up NATO membership. The sudden change in American policy left America’s European allies in disarray, prompting them to express their support for Ukraine. Trump soon found out that what his European allies told him was all true, and that the man in the Kremlin wasn’t at all interested in peace.
Clash of civilisations
Geopolitical actors act as gangs, defending and expanding their turf. It is insightful to paint the picture of the Ukraine war as gang warfare, so Putin’s mafia state attacking a state backed by the US mobster state run by neoconservative gangsters and the military-industrial complex, which, amongst others, invaded Iraq to loot its oil. And by the way, far-right thugs in Ukraine, the so-called Nazis, whom Putin was harping about while having Nazi mercenaries from the Wagner Group fighting on the Russian side, have prevented a peace deal with Russia. Meanwhile, Ukraine alleges that China is supporting the Russian war effort, while China claims it can’t accept Russia losing the war.14
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Neoconservative view won out, as the United States found itself the hegemon in a unipolar world. It emboldened the Neoconservatives’ aggressive attitude and pursuit of global dominance. US planners aimed to prevent the emergence of a rival power in any part of the world. They hoped to establish a global order, the New World Order, which George H.W. Bush mentioned in his speeches as a peaceful cooperation between nations. This arrangement would allow other countries to pursue their legitimate interests while deterring them from aspiring to a larger regional or global role or challenging US leadership.11
A single world order can bring peace or at least limited warfare. The Romans pacified the Mediterranean. From behind the desks of the geopolitical planners in the United States, it may have seemed a marvellous idea and an excellent business opportunity for the military-industrial complex. It brought the Iraq War, with hundreds of thousands of fatalities. It has always been the prerogative of the hegemon to ignore the subjected people. The Romans never considered how the Gauls felt about Roman occupation. The resentment about the West’s colonial past and military interventions is understandable, but the end of Western dominance will not end warfare. Nothing will unless we have a single world order.
The clash-of-civilisations view doesn’t provide a workable alternative. Ukraine and Russia are Christian Orthodox and Slavic, but most Ukrainians choose the West. The same applies to Taiwan and a few other countries that share China’s Confucianist heritage, such as Japan and South Korea. The Clash of Civilisations predicted that these countries would seek leadership from the leading nations of their respective civilisations, Russia and China. The world has become closely integrated, so separating this globalised world along civilisational lines makes little sense. China’s growing economic and military power makes Neoconservative thinking increasingly risky. China asserts its sovereignty over Taiwan and the South China Sea, using force to back up its claims. If China’s neighbours feel threatened and seek an alliance with the United States, that could be another path to World War III.
Gang warfare
Geopolitical actors act as gangs, defending and expanding their turf. It is insightful to paint the picture of the Ukraine war as gang warfare, so Putin’s mafia state attacking a state backed by the US mobster state run by neoconservative gangsters and the military-industrial complex, which, amongst others, invaded Iraq to loot its oil. And by the way, far-right thugs in Ukraine, the so-called Nazis, whom Putin was harping about while having Nazi mercenaries from the Wagner Group fighting on the Russian side, have prevented a peace deal with Russia. Meanwhile, Ukraine alleges that China is supporting the Russian war effort, while China claims it can’t accept Russia losing the war.15 The major powers are all making their cynical calculations.
Humans operate in groups. It is human nature, so the gang is our default political organisation. This type of establishment dominated most of human history and still exists today in the form of warlords, militia, drug cartels, and street gangs. States have proven to be effective in repressing violence within their borders. If the order breaks down, gangs will run most places.16 Gang leaders see themselves as public benefactors, on par with eminent leaders of states. And so do their followers. As order is retreating, we now witness the rise of far-right gangster governments in the West with leaders who engage in criminal acts. In gangs, peace also works best, but they regularly fight.
In a unipolar world, where one power dominates, most countries fear and respect the hegemonic power. A hegemonic power can provide order, much like a police officer, or it can be a big bully that attacks others. The United States was the hegemon between 1990 and 2020. Other countries didn’t challenge that position. It allowed the United States elites to develop delusions of grandeur and invade Iraq because of a belief in the superiority of Western values. The Neoconservative planners inside the US government thought Iraq would miraculously turn into a liberal democracy after the invasion.17 It was wishful thinking, promoted by delusions of grandeur about the superiority of Western civilisation. Probably, the business case also seemed profitable.
In a world with two major powers, a stable situation can emerge. During the Cold War, there was mutual assured destruction (MAD) in case of a nuclear war. Still, the United States and the Soviet Union were on the brink of nuclear war during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and again in 1983, when Ronald Reagan’s aggressive rhetoric made the Soviet leadership believe the US would attack. They put their nuclear forces on high alert. Both on the Soviet and US sides, warning systems for incoming enemy missiles have malfunctioned and sounded the alarm. The soldiers watching the alarms detected red flags, suggesting these alarms were false. And so, we were lucky to come out of the Cold War alive. In a multipolar world, alliances shift, and a stable situation is less likely to emerge. That is what powers like China and Russia are aiming for.18
On the eve of World War I, Europe was a multipolar continent with five major powers and shifting alliances. The future of the multinational Austrian-Hungarian Empire was in peril as the nationalism of the different peoples living in it gradually undermined it. After a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the leadership of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire believed it had to eliminate the Serbian threat. Russia felt it had to support its ally Serbia to prevent it from being overrun by the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Germany felt threatened because its foes, France and Russia, surrounded it. Germany saw no option but to back its ally, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. France and Great Britain backed Russia because it was their ally, and Germany their foe. And so, a simple assassination plunged Europe into a war that killed over ten million people. We are drifting toward a multipolar world with several major powers, hence, a politically less stable one.
Conspiring for world peace
Before World War I, the socialist movements declared their opposition to war, which meant workers killing each other for their capitalist bosses. Once the war had started, most socialists and trade unions backed their government and supported their country’s war effort. The workers would have been better off if they had united and refused to fight. So, why did they go to war nonetheless? You and the other are better off if you don’t fight. But you don’t know what the other will do. If you don’t fight, the other might kill you. Workers in France were uncertain about the actions of their German counterparts. If the latter had joined the army, but not the French, then Germany would have overrun France. Furthermore, nationalist stories about pride and heritage proved more inspiring than the rational appeal to the self-interest of the international proletariat.
After World War II, the elites of the West tried to prevent future wars by promoting the cooperation of nations in international institutions dominated by Western elites like the United Nations, the World Bank, and the IMF. Nationalists and socialists distrusted the capitalist and internationalist Western elites, who were the primary beneficiaries. Still, a single world order is a requirement for permanent world peace. Nowadays, Western power is in decline. A peaceful world order doesn’t appear to emerge anytime soon, not from peasants and workers of all nations joining hands, nor from the secretive scheming of the elites. Humans have been incapable of bringing permanent peace on their own and probably remain incapable of it in the foreseeable future. Perhaps the survivors of World War III will come to their senses after having seen billions of people die, but there is no guarantee that they will.
Featured image: Destroyed Russian tank near Mariupol. Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. Wikimedia Commons.
Latest revision: 5 August 2025
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The Plan For The Future 