The Global Architecture of Survival:

Introduction At my age it isn’t necessary to cultivate a feeling of responsibility for posterity. The feeling blooms in my breast quite naturally each time I look into the faces of my grandchildren. What kind of world will they live in? Will they know peace and security? Will they have a real chance at achieving the American Dream? Will their grandchildren even have the chance to exist? This book is for them, and their children’s children, and so on down that great living line. Here I offer thoughts and observations from a lifetime of political study and experience, in hopes that my own humble perspective might help make the world a better place for those who come after me. Few in the Western World can fail to recognize that we humans are facing a great challenge, the ultimate end of which amounts to species survival. Perpetual war, environmental degradation, social and political unrest, the rising economic status of so many in a world of limited resources, and the almost limitless potential for the abuse of power—political and economic—have become so obvious that it cannot be reasonably denied. The deniers of this situation, though their voices are loud because they have so much corporate money behind them, are relatively few, and even those few not made disingenuous by money seem to miss the larger point. We are not talking about the extinction of the human species within a generation or two (though that is possible with the push of a few buttons), but rather about the quality of life for the next few generations, and the possible extinction scenario would be perhaps 4 or 10 generations hence (100 to 250 years). This requires some imagination and abstract thought, but the mere fact that so many today have recognized the peril of our human situation gives me great hope. I am an optimist when all is said and done. Ninety-nine percent of all species known to have existed on this planet are now extinct—failed experiments in evolution. The idea, whether religious or secular, that the human species is somehow exempt from this calculation is no longer credible. We are the first species on this planet to “do science,” as Carl Sagan pointed out; but, thereby, we are also the first species to engineer a means of mass collective suicide (nuclear, chemical, and biological). The 4000-year history of the Jewish people offers great lessons in survival strategies on a tribal and “distinct people” level, many of which can be magnified and applied on a “species survival” level. The fact that the Jews survived as a distinct people through thousands of years of persecution, the Holocaust, without a homeland and dispersed all over the globe, is evidence enough of their success. More recent Jewish and Israeli history also offers lessons in bad survival strategies. Israel’s bull-in-the-china-shop approach to relations with its neighbors in the Middle East is clearly bad survival strategy—it has made worse the state of perpetual war, which means perpetual insecurity for everyone. Israel must survive and thrive, but so must her neighbors; that, in the long run, will be a great benefit to the entire species. The United States, as Israel’s most ardent ally, is therefore also practicing bad survival strategy, and this is why, in the big picture, the current political situation in the Middle East must matter to American voters. For more than ten years Americans have known the same state of perpetual war, perpetual insecurity, and it is rapidly draining not only our coffers, but also our spirit. The time has come for American voters to do something about this state of affairs. The power rests with you. I am neither democrat nor republican, and as I do with my own grandchildren, I insist that you vote your conscience. Only do so as well informed as possible on the issues. That is your responsibility as a citizen, and here I offer my humble help. George L. Fouke, Ph.D. Indialantic, Florida June, 2014