A single world government is one of the older ideas around. I thought of it a very long time ago myself. It’s a sophomoric idea that consolidators first think of. It isn’t good.
A single world government would be oppressive, repressive and monopolistic to the point of dictatorship. A hierarchy would result with ranks seeking to serve yet reach the peak of power. Like an absolute monarchy or dictatorship an error in government policy would doom everyone that felt they weren’t already doomed by the onerous decrees of the sole planetary power.
Competition in the marketplace of ideas is requisite for producing good ones. Today in the U.S. Democracy politicians already ignore good ideas and go with popular ones that ensure political support and positive reinforcement from powerful special interests. With one government ruling the world there would be no marketplace of ideas or competition with the ideas of the government. The government would be the absolute authority on everything negating the intellectual productivity of virtually everyone not high on the table of ranks.
About the only good reason for one world government is the establishment of a Military dictatorship capable of forcing everyone alive to follow a particular environmental plan to save the planet. It would be a benevolent military dictatorship as well as a very bad idea. There are many better ways to go. If one really desires a world government then wait unto the return of the Lord God and be content with nations and national independence until then.
Russia has always had plans to invade Germany. They have twice invaded Germany (to help start the First World War (Germany was planning to invade Russia and the Tsar rather clumsily decided to try to nip it in the bud) and to help end the Second). Each invasion required general planning. The Soviet Union had plans to invade Germany for World War Three, yet that opportunity fizzled out when the Soviet Union ended. Fortunately Russia’s military inherited the plans to invade Germany and they probably exist in some computer software someplace in Moscow. Complete planning routes, personnel, equipment, deployment of rocket forces and so forth upgraded with continuous real-time input. It would be a great battle that would require a lot of sophisticated programming writing to command and control troop and weapons deployments as well as to keep track of opposition forces. I think that sort of stuff is de rigueur for modern nations concerned with the invade or be invaded scenarios that exist in select historical environments including those of the present. In my opinion Russia has no interest in war on its western front. They would prefer good trade relations and have been a little rebuffed by the civilian sectors more so than tradition foreign military-industrial elements. Some civilians have found it to their advantage to regard Russia as the new evil empire to replace the vanished Soviet Evil Empire. Maybe former Soviet possessions have some real estate value to them. Russia isn’t especially wicked for keeping good planning software- there are a lot of moving parts and variables with a nice assortment of constants for any possible modern conflict. Simply consider placement of those beautiful little 22 kilogram tactical nuclear bombs that special soldiers can carry around; if one has a few hundred of them where would be the best places to send them, and how would they go? Would reservations or alternate, green transportation be needed to get them to the show on time? Modern freight and package delivery systems require vast networks of real time planning to command and control deliveries of packages in a timely way. Military deliveries of weapons packages require a similar structure and that important sort of planning can not be put off until the war starts- Pre-invasion gaming is required ad nauseum even if the plans are never fielded. Everyone, even gamers, have invasion plans...
The United States has largely born the cost of post-Second world war containment of communism, terrorism and genocide itself as the primary force. It is of course had allies now and then that have shared the sacrifice. The U.S.A. has no colonies, and seeks none- it is a trading kind of commercial nation that many people hate for its success. Keeping some military forces abroad-such as at Okinawa and Japan, was necessary for a number of reason- and has helped stabilize Asia for some decades after MacArthur’s direction of reconstructing the Japanese political economy concluded. It may be true that the United States- that drew down so many forces from Germany after the cold war, should relocate some of the remaining forces in Germany to Afghanistan to keep the area free from terrorist training for some time until the culture has evolved to one with a more egalitarian democratic characteristic. If there were no plans or interests of foreign peoples to war on their neighbors or whomever, to invade or occupy etc. The United States could have few troops anywhere beyond its borders and save some money with the military industrial complex evolving into other commercial ventures and production. If the world required no policemen it would be a better place than it is now, Unfortunately the dangers of modern terrorism and desires of some forces to rule the world, impose their own economic or moral authority over others with force has not ended. In fact, there is rumored to be racial disharmony in some places, though the U.N. is a bunch of nice guys.
A political economy interfaces politics and economics. For the U.S.A., when government regulation quality and understanding is lacking the private sector and government investment goes to seed; the ecosystem declines, economics serve capital concentration entirely for its own sake rather than national citizenry well-being, national financial balances run tens of trillions of dollars of deficits, and wealth is concentrated to the point of creating a virtual aristocracy or plutonomy. Remedies exist that are obvious, yet the corporatism phenomena of the private sector merging with the government that becomes a servo-unit for it following it about has negated the selection of quality political candidates and oversight. Patents can be reformed such that exclusivity exists for just three years with 10% royalties to patent holders from anyone in the common domain era after three years, Regulations can be made to reward quality production that reduces mal-effects on the ecosystem. Capital acquisition by individuals can be capped at a percent of the national income that is low enough to prevent political power from being concentrated as well as economic, and ecological economics can become a guiding principle for the political economy, instead of being a vague outline in the shadows.
I made one of those posters for grasshopper as applied to global warming questions. It seems like the left use Buddhism in their tool kit for environmentalism- yet is that accurate?
I like John Stuart Mill's work on utilitarianism. It seems to me the debate was always about act and rule based versions. The greatest good for the greatest number as the golden rule for utilitarians for example would, a priori, proscribe mass killings from drunk drivers IMO, or nuking innocent cities to kick off urban renewal.A consequentialist might wait until after the fact to decide if the consequences of the nuking were good or bad.
I am not sure if it is a Zen Koan. If i interpreted the meaning correctly, for Buddhists reality is illusory. If nothing is more than a temporal illusion, and return to nothingness (nirvana) is best, then killing the puppy is nothing meaningful either. Because so many of the post-industrial left tend to like Buddhism quite a bit, and are environmentalists too (at least nominally), I though I would try to point out the inconsistency in values; if everything is illusory then why concern about global warming and ecosphere decline? I don't share the viewpoint, yet it is interesting to note that by the turn of the century most people on Earth (if present trends continue) won't have access to brain growing omega 3s because of over-fishing, ocean warming, habitat loss etc. https://www.inverse.com/article/59208-omega-3-shortage Today some academic insiders of the east look toward consequentialism as the justification for leftist ethics for grasshoppers of the cognoscenti. In my opinion though, some of the deontological systems that are Bible based work better, yet if one's idea is to change social moral norms to something that anti-Christians would be comfortable in, then Bible deontological ethics would be problematic. Few people actually study ethics then personally apply them I think. Ethics aren't difficult to find-especially in Muslim cultures. All human cultures have social behavior patterns that have set acceptable parameters; even lawful parameters. Sociologists and others study human behavior, and mass human behavior, and the rules of social behavior are fairly well known. Moral behavior is the way people interact in society-what they actually do, and what manner they follow those rules, historical rules, ere applied ethics. Morality are the rules of what is acceptable social behavior, and ethics are the way those rules are used by people. It is a very old custom. The ten commandments and other deontological systems were moral paradigmata. Thou shalt not kill, steal, perp adultery, etc are as old as human society. One might argue that social rules against bad behavior originated with society as an innate logic for social behavior, and their may be some truth in that. Plainly people are not amoeba or zombies free to consume their neighbor for-themselves without legal, moral or ethical concern.
Direct comparative criteria for national collapse of the old world empires and modern societies are not exactly on the mark without some enumeration of points. They have fundamentally different elements and paradigms for nations. Roman civilization in its day was far ahead of most of the rest of pagan, ignorant Europeans. Celts had only relinquished their cannibalistic warrior ways in Switzerland with the appearance of Germanic enemies who marginalized them. Germans had stick villages. England had Stonehenge, yet it was probably short, darker people from Malta that migrated north to bring their technology to the cold isle. I wonder if the structure around St. Peter's square could be said to imitate Stonehenge structure a little? Italians are a Germanic people too, and the Roman Empire following the Etruscan inherited the knowledge of the very ancient civilizations to the south. Roman expansion through France and Britain was nearly like an advanced extra-terrestrial civilization arriving on Earth where live the conceited hillbillies believe they know it all. Ancient Roman Civilization took the best of the near East and Greek knowledge too, and brought everything to the far west and north. Roman civilization was due to collapse when it had served its purpose of bringing civilization and Christianity to all of Europe. Christianity was the common tie that drew formerly pagan and violent peoples into a proto-modern-European Civilization. It became a violent Europe with rapidly developing technology tempered with Christianity in a largely illiterate social environment. Imperial Rome could only go so far and last so long. Tamarlane would surge into invading unto Iraq. There was too much going on up North and West, while Constantine moved the main focus of his ruling era toward the East in Constantinople where the Eastern version of the Roman Empire survived another thousand years beyond the west. The United States compared to Rome has not yet fulfilled its destiny as a leading technological and cultural accelerator of human prospects within a democratic political economy. It is possible that branches of the United States may survive off-world longer than the terrestrial version- maybe ten or twenty thousand years. I would think if that occurred it would not be recognizably American except in name only should some uncreative group of people full of nostalgia for this millennium wish to call themselves the USA or America. The United States hasn't a history of owning foreign colonies- it is a trading empire with much direct investment in foreign entities. It hasn't foreign possessions to lose. True it was stuck with the Philippines for a few decades, yet it rectified that when practical to do so. It is possible that the rapid decline in Christianity in the United States could precipitate national economic and social collapse. Rich corporations tend to be over-promoting their existing values and methods to the detriment of democracy’s marketplace of ideas. Good ideas may have few readers as the authors are marginalized in the commercial ecosystem. Perhaps Mexican illegal aliens and other Latinos will bump out the existing cultural composition in the United States and transform the nation into something else- a Nova Mexico, through evolution and leadership weakness in the U.S.A. Alternatively China may absorb America like the Borg absorbs civilizations as Americans hand them the political economy on a silver platter because of cheap labor and sales opportunities in China. No one ever said the Chinese are stupid- they won’t look a gift horse in the mouth, as the saying goes. The United States could fade away as environmental crisis overtakes the vanities of mass consumerism political economics. Certainly there is no political leadership aware of the science of ecological economics in the United States. Alaska's northern towns have warmed up a lot since 1976. The Alaska Climate Research Center publishes a chart comparing temperatures from 1976 to 2018, and the results are consistent with global warming observations and theories. The temperature change for Barrow in autumn, for example, is 18.0 degrees Fahrenheit. Chart from Alaska Climate Research Center-affiliated with U.A.F. Geophysical Institute.
Alaska's northern towns have warmed
up a lot since 1976. The Alaska Climate Research Center publishes a chart comparing
temperatures from 1976 to 2018, and the results are consistent with global
warming observations and theories. The temperature change for Barrow in autumn,
for example, is 18.0 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Fed would create a lot of electronic dollars to loan to itself (new public debt)- however many trillions the Democrat Party leaders deemed useful, and allocate that pot of money to various contractors known to be sympathetic to Democrat Party politicians.
Because a green new deal would require some copious latitude for condemnations, expropriations and relocations of sundry establishment content found to obstruct government eco-redesign plans, some Supreme Court quibbling would ensue for some time, so a leftist court would be de rigueur for implementation of the Von Green Deal plan.
Giving the U.S.A. a great tax increase again would be necessary to fund the deal and make it seem like it would pay for itself. Maybe a 50% tax on the income of the top 5% earners. $12,000 of free income for all would end unemployment and employment for some.
It would all go very smoothly and the dawning of the Age of Aquarius would arrive at last.
Physicists generally believe the laws of the Universe haven't changed. There was an idea about a possible variable speed of light, yet that was not developed too far. One might want to throw out the word 'eternal' from the cosmology criterion. The Universe is believed to have had a beginning at T=0 and now is about 13.3 billion years old (unless it is an unobservable Multiverse- the boundaries could never be observed with the present physics knowledge and tech). So if it has any sort of eternal character about it that would be in one direction-outward as time and matter runs down, unless of course it is an eternally recurrent Universe that expands and contracts like a yo yo (an improbable idea and it would require constant never changing laws ad infinitum).
The reason for the assumption that the laws of physics haven’t changed since the start of the Universe is based on observations of the Universe together with the body of physics knowledge theory development and how that correlates with observations. One need distinguish between the laws of physics that exist in nature and human ideas about what those laws are. Physicists and their theories are fallible. Their ideas evolve over time and usually improve. https://www.livescience.com/solution-to-worst-prediction-in-physics.html
The Universe has a thermodynamic nature- it started highly organized and compact and unwinds to expand in a disorganized form. Initially there was just one force and field, highly compact, and it expanded and cooled down in to four primary forces that exist today. At very high temperature such as occurred at the start of the Universe the forces unify.
There is a Multiverse theory wherein each unique Universe has its own laws. Yet once the Universe starts it irreversibly flows ‘downslope’ as it were unwinding along within its particular balances of physical structure.
Physical laws are discovered rather than invented, so it is quite right that the understanding and description of physical laws may change. What does not change is the operating mechanics of any given universe. It is the operating laws of a universe that make it that particular universe.
An analogy might be that of a square box with three dimensions and six sides including the top and bottom. A box in that Universe could not have ten sides, or two sides, and be a square box. It would be possible to redefine what a side is and say for example that all of the sides of the box excluding the top and bottom are just one sides (ignoring the corners), yet the box that must exist in the Universe would be the same box regardless of how it is described (assume that there is one perfect example box that really exists to describe). In that same Universe a box described as having six sides could not be a box described as having three sides without either a logic or categorical error/inconsistency in the definition of sides.
Descartes' Meditations about first principles of thought and certainty (epistemology) of what is known or knowable began with self-reflection on thought. Zhuangzi had a famous saying about a man dreaming he is a butterfly and vice versa- the east had several thinkers who considered the possibility that reality as illusory before Descartes. Descartes' main differentiation from his predecessors is in his development of reason as the tool for epistemology and certainty. He wrote the Meditations of a Method while employed as a mercenary in Switzerland where he spent a lot of time inside an oven that was used as a sauna.
U.S. Foreign policy has remained fairly constant the past two years. What has changed is the emergence of characteristics of the policy initiatives in Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan that show a certain variegated approach toward bellicose rhetoric and military disengagement.
President Trump has directed negotiations with the Taliban that excluded the lawful government of Afghanistan and the media reports they are close to reaching a deal for the United States to withdraw half of its troops right away and possibly more later in exchange for three promises or wishes the Trump team asked. President Trump seems to have short-term profit strategy in his foreign policy, yet with Afghanistan long-term commitment is required to create a Taliban-free culture that isn’t a coordinating center for Eastern hemispheric terrorism.
What would have happened if the United States had allowed the Nazi party to return to Germany in 1963? The answer probably is that today it would be run by the 4th Reich of Nazis. Germany required a half century before it really changed, and Afghanistan will require a century more or less of U.S. garrisons working with the Afghan people before it has a culture that can co-exist with the west (although the west need be tolerant of Muslim moral norms generally and should not expect to coerce those to change).
The President’s North Korean diplomacy with North Korea is good, yet bad because that nation continues to develop nuclear weapons and systems to deliver them. Since China was saturated with W-54 small nuke technology by the Clinton administration’s allies, and as Pakistan has that too, there may be a deep feeling that portable man and drone carried nuclear weapons are a thing of the second world’s future so they can play around with the western leaders until the time is better for changing balances. I wonder if President Trump has any awareness of that, if it is so.
President Trump has expanded U.S. ground forces in Poland at their request to defend against the Russian menace, that is more of a result of Democrat party insistence than anything else, that bad relations with Russia rise, that the Ukraine was usually not part of Russia and Russians should have no interest or claim on it or the Crimea. If Germany does not require U.S. forces to make sure that young Adolph II does not seek to be the Chancellor, some of those could be shifted to Afghanistan to garrison it for a century to make sure the Taliban does not let a profusion of terror training and bomb making underground clinics arise amidst the mass stoning of women that were westernized and lynchings of anyone that worked with the United States.
Iran has been given sanctions (as has Russia) and stern warnings, yet nothing will follow that. President Reagan walked softly and carried a big stick while President Trump has a boastful mouth and threats that are like one huge, dark cloud passing in the summer desert sky. He is fundamentally a man of profit and peace with recalcitrance to spend on fighting- wars are costly. Still, some defense allocations are necessary to keep the peace, rather than rash withdrawals or commencement of hostilities. With illegal immigration from Latin America and elsewhere over the southern U.S. border the President has shown a consistent approach of defending U.S. national interests. As the Chief enforcement officer of the U.S.A. he has worked to stop illegal entry into the nation. China policy has also been a consistent program to require Chinese compliance with equal rights and normal responsibilities of trading partners; primarily the United States. The President has used tariffs to enforce the policy as well as other measures. Prior President were loose with China trade policy and a lot of U.S. business relocated to China. That trend developed so far that much U.S. manufacturing capacity was being lost. Analysts have said that the policy of Wall Street was to have tech employment on the American coasts, flood the nation with illegal aliens in the center to keep wages down and manufacture things in China. The President has resisted that apparently, though he too is a billionaire. His foreign policy is consistent enough.
Growing the meat of beef cattle
without a whole cow; a meat growing mechanism without stomachs, flatulence,
without a brain or legs, sitting on a warehouse shelf somewhere and fed with artificial
nutrients might be a project that bio-scientists might investigate to develop
and replace the present global warming gas, cattle raised for slaughter
technosystem that badly affects the planetary ecosphere because of the vast
numbers of cattle. The growing product would have no head, no nervous system or anything not required for direct support of growing the meat. It would be meat minimalism shaped perhaps as a large New York steak five foot in diameter and two feet thick. It would have no genetic engineering or pesticide contact. It would be an all-natural food.
Manufacturing beef in a way that
would be comparable to growing watermelons would free up the acreage exploited
for cattle grazing and stop the CO2 from those multiple stomachs and a-holes. New businesses such as The Mindless Meat Company could sprout.
Meeting the meat challenge should be within the capacity of science and technology.
It should be hard to believe that British leaders and Eurocrats given months or years to figure out how to make Northern Ireland a free trade zone able to govern its own trade and set its own rules, yet remain a British client state. It isn't unbelievable as it should be. Politicians these years don't have full wattage in their brains ordinarily.Britain and Northern Ireland would have a joint foreign origin trade control criteria that wouldn't let foreign interests exploit North Ire as a back door to England for easy dump in England.
The Yellowstone magma reserve
underground has the energy to create enough electricity to enable a national
electric vehicle in-line power grid. Removing all of the nation's fossil fuel
cars and replacing them with electric would be a good way to reduce greenhouse
gases. https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/observatories/yvo/
The down side of exploiting
Yellowstone's geothermal power is that it might induct more heat from down
below and precipitate a super-eruption.
A number of other factors could
make the super-volcano erupt sooner than expected...
That includes unforeseen plate tectonic
activity and meteors from space striking some area of the surface sending
shockwaves along.
At the least the US Government
should form a scientific committee to investigate all of the variables and
constants about the super-volcano to discover how it might be safely harnessed
to produce electric power. There is so much heat that salt-water could be
siphoned from the Pacific in pipelines and evaporated to make freshwater for
agriculture elsewhere in the nation, after passing through turbines to make
electricity for the nation auto grid. It might be possible to refill Lake Bonneville and other water storage areas and develop agriculture with irrigation across much of the S.W. It might be quicker to siphon saltwater to Deming New Mexico and create a border canal with double covers to spill it in and evaporate-condense on the lid to desalinate it as it flows in locks east and west. There is no harm in getting more bang for the buck with a better than a fence boundary security barrier with millions of gallons of fresh water for agriculture, drinking and recreation in Arizona, New Mexico, California and the Sonora desert. Perhaps both methods should be invested in with research at the least.
President Trump's effort to cut a peace and mostly retreat deal with the Taliban seems too much like an appeasement deal to let the Taliban return to power. The President's betrayal of Afghan security forces looks pretty bad. The United States doesn't need another Vietnamization of the war policy failure- though in the case of Vietnam it was the best choice perhaps remaining. https://www.thedailybeast.com/zalmay-khalilzad-says-afghan-taliban-agree-in-principle-to-peace-deal-but-they-scoff-at-trumps-bluff President Trump should establish strong defrappe bases in several areas of Afghanistan that are designed by engineers for good security and look toward a special air force of small drone to police the nation. Twenty thousand soldiers in permanent bases to provide security and reinforcement for non-Taliban Afghan forces ought to be enough. The United States has been in Europe since 1940 and no one is calling for complete withdrawal. In fact the President recently expanded troop deployments in Poland- a location that is unlikely to have an invading Russian Army any time soon, and where they can enjoy sausage and beer off duty. Central Asia has a lot of racists and America haters. It is a location from which defense against China, should they attack the United States perhaps with hundreds of suitcase nukes on drone, would be practical for containment of expanding Red Army elements. More so than Europe, American forces in the Eastern hemisphere have a purpose in serving in Afghanistan. President Trump should drop the Taliban appeasement plan, and reconsider his appeasement plan of the North Korean Dictator too. The President could establish a permanent new branch of the Army called the Afghan Corps that would return those interested in serving there for a decade, if they wish. It could have Marines serving in the same Afghan Corps units as the Army- and perhaps be more accessible to foreign enlistment for service. The Trump appeasement deal seems designed to try to influence Democrat voters to check his box in 2020 since Republicans might hate the plan already. The President might indicate support for legal dope smoking in the military too if he goes even further toward looking for Democrat voter support. Iran must be really worried now that President Trump is showing such a willingness to give the enemy whatever they want. The Afghan appeasement deal seems like one a hopeful rube would make; a rube silly enough to believe the Taliban won't actually purge regular government forces and take everything for themselves. Maybe the President is turning toward Rand Paul libertarian isolationism. President Obama would have been roundly criticized for an appeasement policy deal with the Taliban. A commitment to Afghanistan for the long haul is required to police it from radicals and to assure those that partner with Americans that they won't be left to twist slowly in the wind when the desire for instant gratification by U.S. politicians is thwarted. Those that choose to work with the United States for the benefit of their nation and themselves, as well as in support of U.S. interest in security, have a life-long exposure to victimization by the Taliban. If the United States once again betrays those that trust it, that can't be good for the prospect of seeking future alliances that might be required.
Senator Warren's victory in 2020 is almost inevitable. She is the sole candidate able to accomplish all of the Democrat agenda if she is given a Senate to go with the House ensemble. I will enumerate a few items from the bucket list and other reasons why the Warren win is inevitable. 1) Flood the nations with 4 million more illegal aliens the first term 2) Add a few trillions dollars to public debt with medicare for everyone 3) Add a few trillion more with a special Green Rube Goldberg global warming remediation mandate 4) Sign a new deal with Iran giving them everything they need, with less for the U.S.A. this time 5) Force Dictator Kim to the table to give up his ensemble of miniaturized nuclear weapons made from the W54 design 6) Force Vladimir Putin to recognize Ukrainian independence while giving up the Crimea 7) Bring peace and love to all of the people Republicans have oppressed 9) Confiscate all guns in America 10) Get rid of the electoral college votes of the red states to let the wisdom of the blue choose 11) End use of the word 'felon' in criminal proceedings 12) End any sort of use of offensive language in America and the Internet with careful union screening and censoring out of all the bad language and ideas. 13) Fill the Supreme Court with leftists 14) Increase taxes on the rich to 75% 15) End the return to the moon program 16) Create titles for uralcrats with more than a decade of federal service, and a table of ranks 17) Expand socialism to let the government have a seat on every corporate board. 18) Prove with new testing that she really is a lineal descendant of Pocahontas 19) Add a 60% carbon tax on oil corporation extractions at present West Texas Intermediate Crude price 20) Outlaw abortion after the third post-parthum trimester 21) Appoint Beto O'Rourke Ambassador to Mexico 22) Build a Hollywood liaison and party planning suite in the West Wing 23) Establish a $12,000 guaranteed annual income from the govmint for all registered voters 24) Eliminate all unemployment in the U.S.A. 25) Return the economy to a new normal 1% steady growth pace after a corrective crash 26) Bring requisite evolution classes to all public schools and demonstrate that inferior pace of evolution brings resistance to Democrat agenda, xenophobia, faith in God etc. 27) Democrat Party Evolutionist lawyers will prove Dem Party is the one for intellectuals and Republican aka 'Red' party is of non-intellectual dummies with CEO puppet-masters.
Reality may refer to the principle of existing or being in existence, yet what existence is made of and what the structure of a Universe or Multiverse really is, and that relation to the mind of God (it could be a tiny part of His thought), has different meaning or content to different people in relation to what they think about it. The Cave allegory and the Republic with the description of forms and higher structures has been a paradigm for describing reality (Platonic realism) in contrast to superficial appearance, or nominalism. The forms did turn out to be true, in the sense that physics and particle physics have forms that exist as the foundation of all matter. There are particulars and Universals- a particular hydrogen atom and the Universal form of hydrogen atoms, for example. There are even more forms including forces such as the nuclear and gravity that are probably the same everywhere in the Universe. Plato's idea of forms may be comparable to Democritus' thought about atoms. Tegmark actually speculated about the entire Universe being made at its foundation of mathematics, spin vectors, spacing, intervals etc I suppose. Math is an idea- perhaps of God. Logical spacing and energy compounded into complexity.
Neo-Platonism such as Plotinus wrote about in the 54 Tractates named The Enneads elaborated Plot's ideas and considered The One and why The Intelligence would issue forms and more concrete reality. Molecules, atoms electrons, quarks, muons, hadrons, gluons etc have forms of energetic interaction. Limits to their being exist, and some believe it is pure idea. Bishop Berkeley speculated in the Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous that all matter may be an idea of God, and of course Leibniz thought the smallest particle-an atomic irreducible structure was a one-dimensional windowless monad made of spirit. A point in modern physics as zero dimension and a string-one-dimension.
Yet I think that the topic about reality and contingent being may be compared to that Chinese puzzle box or cups with another smaller (or larger) one within (or without) another one infinitely- Buddhist of course regard belief in God as a heresy, and believe that phenomenal reality must return to nothing- as if the big bang and universe of being must return to nothing for ever, while Hindu's believe that God (Brahma to them) recycles it now and then, and Christians believe it occurs once and then God places souls into different realms than the material, temporal Universe, eternal realms.
Political tribalism and group identification is easiest at the racial level. After more subtle differences intra-racially that caused political divides and conflicts have been made superfluous because of various political changes race identity becomes the largest remaining differentiator especially consistent with cultural differences. Group racial identity should not be taken out of context and assumed to be solely an evolutionary, innate trait inherent in all of any race conditioning social and political behavior. Racism is tied to definite economic factors and political economy as well as culture.
I wouldn't at all agree that human behavior is inherently preconditioned. That seems silly to me. A huge amount of behavior is learned, and the learning is a consequence of circumstantial historical factors such as exists in culture, geography and political economy. People can change their behavior and attitudes toward race fairly easily as circumstances change- for instance as may occur in military socialization (we are all green) and in economic mutual advantage. Lizards of a given color have been studied and observed to have a cyclical battle with lizards of other colors, and programmers can write code to make programs biased toward other programs, yet humans have free will and are quite able to change their attitudes and ideas especially when it is to their economic advantage. B.F. Skinner observed certain characteristics of native human behavior that are organic, yet there is a large element of reason too, and a human capacity to organize based on rational expectations and goals that bring advantage to humans transcending of skin color variations and constants.
The Democrat Party platform of adding trillions of dollars of new public debt for various programs, homosexual marriage, abortion and failing to defend the national boundaries against illegal immigration are what Presidential candidates believe is their winning edge. The candidates also would like to tax the rich with huge increases, forgetful that they voted unanimously to cut the taxes on the rich and everyone else when President Obama had support of both houses of Congress to do that instead of letting the Bush II tax cuts expire and cutting taxes on just the poor and middle class. Democrats would like liberal dope legalization too. Confiscating guns in order to allow union thug rule is on the party radar screen too. Interesting quality control management.
