the world in a teacup
Easy reading is damn hard writing
Nathaniel Hawthorne. 1853
Everything as simple as possible but not simpler.
Albert Einstein, 1930’s
Internationalism,
A fresh look at a global world. Through the writer’s eye.
Writers are artists of the human experience. Their tools are words that best match ideas and feelings with events. They are not pundits, journalists , politicians or salesmen of opinions. They are observers of the scene who express their impressions as think-pieces offering a new angle on presumed real events. If a situation looks dismal, the writer shows an opening.
So it is with today’s global world of near-200 countries unified by digital technology. While most look at discordance, inequality and conflict, the internationalist writer sees a world of full of limitless interest, growth and opportunity.,
American Iiternationalism is a new concept of global cooperation It promotes a win-win form of capitalism aimed at equality through fair trade arrangements developed through partnerships at al levels from personal to regional and beyond. Most importantly, American internationalism promotes the concept of global democracy as set out in the United Nations Charter modeled on the United States Constitution. In short, the world is ready for a seismic shift.
Like Galileo back in the 1500 hundreds found that the world revolved around the sun and not on its own orbit, the world today is learning that it revolves arount its entiret, not stuck on any pocket. Equilibrium is within reach. It needs just a broader focus, a small shift from a western to a global perspective. We’re all important, say the internationalists. Let’s do trade with our diverse assets across our mutually prized personal pecadillos as nations.
Internanalism is a bird’s eye view of the global world. There, conflicts point to “democracy or bust” but that democracy in a global sense leaves room for the gradual shift of the world’s near-200 countries toward the ideals they all signed onto in the United Nations Charter.
Most importantly, internationalism stresses the value of the global cultural mix. Interactive flows between countries and regions shed light on the reality yjat all are vital parts of global humanity. Like people themselves, all countries have personalities and all are far from the ideal. That’s the starting point for finding the commonalities that defeat hostilies.
In the internationalist view the key to cultural integration in a global digital world is a gradual, step by step approach. Ideas in a tech world can;t be walled out. Repression makes a fertile ground for unrest. Open exchange about lessons learned at all levels leads to best solution with the rule of law as the guidepost with violemce a univeral taboo.
Helen Fogarassy was born into Communist Hungary. She became an American when her family fled from the Soviet crackdown on her country’s rebellion against the regime. The chage of cultures as a child refugee was the start of her deep curiosity about how people communicate. Her status as animmigrant has paid off in the ability to be both empathic and resilient when faced with adversity. The tech age has proved a challenge to both those skills as well as many others perfected by then as a writer. But recent events have convinced her beyond any doubt that human skills are key to the survival of the species. .
The fall of the Iron Curtain across Eastern Europe in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later was a satisfying end-point in justice for the injustice-scarred Fogarassy just starting her 20-year association with the United Nations by then. Flash forward to today, Gogarassy’s internationalist views are an outgrowth og her career-long push for a richer quality of life in her adoptive US based on experience.
Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine was a deja-vu of the bad old Soviet days that had chased her family from their homeland. The election of Donald Trump to the US presidency was a continuation of that failed Soviet experiment because she had worked for Trump during the period when the Iron Curtain fell and he was the cookie cutter version of the Soviet intalls that had kept satellites tethered for 40 years after the Second World War. And now with the crisis in the Middle East rounding back to the outcome of the Second World War, the time seems ripe for the ibternationalist age.
Internationalism is the cure.
The world looks dour at this point when near-200 countries are digitally connected while socially they are a hodge-podge of cultural levels from traditional to avante garde and even “woke.” That range of complexity applies not only to the near-200 countries but to the thousands of subgroups within them. To an internationalist writer grounded in classics as rounded out by United Nations breadth, such a world is a workable new frontier.
Like any major milestone for humanity such as industrialization, the global digital age is both a blessing and a threat. Like always, humans negotiate the terms of the transition.
Only humans have the ingenuity to fuse new tools with the old. They do this not with the brain alone as modern Artificial Intelligence aims to do, but by the processes of the entire system from body to mind and soul. This human element is the part of global relations that internationalism promotes.
Internationalism posits that every person matters in a global digital world and that humans experience the world from the persomal to local and national levels. With internationalism, awareness expands to the global level of near-200 countries..
That might seem like a tall order right now, especially to small countries that are little more than names on the global map. It may even seem undesirable to many as giant corporations bulldozeBut internationalism holds that the most aggressive corporations and the most totalitarian of regimes can be made tractactable if those adversely affected are given agency, a voice and a way to in which they can influence the course that opressors of any sort would impose on them.
About this Site
Building a website around a concept is more like sculpture than any other current form of communication. You put a piece here, take a chunk from there, going by a feel for balance. Recruiting the team to carry out the conceptual designs derived through theteamwork accessing all forms of input is a work of art in itself. It calls for creativity at every step of the process and in between.
Fogarassy is well familiar with such complexity. She is at ease in the Oak Rooms of New York City and yet she has remained a refugee immigrant at heart throughout her life.
Helen Fogarassy was born into Communist Hungary and became a child refugee when her family fled after the failed revolution against Soviet oppression. She lived briefly in Austria, grew up in the US Midwest and as a New Yorker has a 20-year asociation with the United Nations, including in Somalia. Writing is the device that links all those spheres.
Contrary to social postings heavy with emojis, the art of writing matches ideas with just the right words. Across cultures, the exchange is is a rich opening for errors, misunderstandings, clarifications and rephrasings until understanding is reached. The process calls for a commitment to the process until mutual satisfaction.
As part of its evolution, this website invites writers at all levels of the activity, craft or art to share views and experiences about their place in the world. Language limitations are part of the process in communicating. They can be tricky but also delightful. Emojis are fine. Just give us a hint about your location.
As a new concept in a complex world, the internationalist writer website at helenfogarassy.com has a great future. It focuses on Eurasia as the global crossroads for for geographical regions, cultural variations and economic extremes. The website is a clearing house for differences and a sharing of lessons learned. Its own is to be monetized by a hybrid economic scheme combining for profit and non-profit financing schemes.
As the site develops, socially conscious corporate entities will be invited to participate. That income will enable the hiring of writers on groundbreaking aspects of breaking news events.
Meanwhile, your participationin getting us there is greatly appreciated. Just bear with us as we , like you, do our best to make this workable world work for us. Cheers.
The World Now As Is
The current world of near-200 countries is bursting at seams sewn sewn into it after the Second World War. That was when the world decided to stabilize under threat of annihilating itself with the nuclear bomb.
New boundaries were drawn for the world’s trouble spots. There would be no more colonialism and countries would not invade each other. The United Nations was set up as a forum for nations to settle disputes. Financil institutions such as the World Bank were established to reduce the great disparities in wealth that lead to armed conflict. The basics for great global development were put in place and they worked until they remained hidebound while the world changed rapidly.
At this point, the world’s near-200 countries have many options on how to move forward in a glabal digitally connected world. Most belong to one or multiple regional organizations. Those countries make decisions in line with the group’s broader aims. Some countries remain defiantly isolationist, most notably North Korea. But that is not much different from isolationist individuals the world over, includingthe world leading US. But most countries like most people are socially minded and peer pressure is a big factor in obying the international laws they agree upon at the United Nations.
International law is the foundation for all national laws. The United Nations Charter imodeled after the US Constitution is the basic legal document that all countries have agreed to as they spellout democratic principles. However, the Charter allows great leeway in how countries implement the laws. Recently, countries have also backslid in honoring the democratic principles they have agreed to. None have openly violated international law until Russia recently invaded Ukraine.
While all countries either condemned the action or stayed neutral , the newly formed multi-continental BRICS (Brazil,Russia, India, SAfrica) declined to censure Russia for ongoing violations of International law in Ukraine. Instead, six new members were invited to join (Saudi Arabia, Iran,Ethiopia, Egypt,Argentina,UAE). It remains to be seen how qickly the international community can bring Russia to heel and restore Ukraine’s rightful sovereignty.
Why Writing
Writing is the most precise recording of thoughts into words. The act of writing valls for the patience to let a blizzard of thought fragments settle on one shard that can be worked into a coherent statement. Most accurate.y that is creative writing, a term more respected in some cultures than others.
Creative writers are distinguished from the casual tweeters. Like radio and TV or junk food and gourmet meals, both have their place and creative writing reigns supreme.
The process of creative writing gives aleg up in the current global world of misinfo, disinfo, propaganda and downright deep fake non-info.-As the saying goes, “truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense.” Fiction is a correlation of a truth between author and reader. The truth strikes a note of recognition in both, much like a musical chord.
To a writer, the message of a lying autocrat has an entirely different resonance from that of an earnest democratic leader. If the facts are wrong, media amplification will wholly distort the message. The writer remembers that it made sense, the ideas matched with the words and struck the chord in the hearer. As American Hemingway put it, writers need a 100% foolproof bulls*t detector to be effective in their work.
Further, writers take a broader view of events and human relations than most people. Writers are interested in nuances and patterns of similrity that are beyond the interest of most. Writers are connoisseurs of human experience as reflected by the interplay of thought, word and action. As such, they are an indispensable factor in navigating the malleable reality of a digitally connected world manipulated for political purposes.
Like politicians, writers are captives of public sentiment in their drive to achieve their aims. The writer’s aim is to communicate the experience of life as lived. That of the politician is to win the right to tell people how to live. Journalists and news reporters are critical for keeping politicians on the right track. Writers are essential for helping people appreciate what they have and for motivating them to take action when needed.
Warming to Internationalism
Internationalism is an attitude, a way of looking at events in a broader orbit than one is used to. It is an awareness that the world is made up of just 200 countries, each with a personality just like one’s own. More complicated, of course.
Given the conflicts raging in the world today, internationalism may seem like a utopian dream. But most of the conflicts boil down to a few basic causes. Internationalism looks at them and points to ways of finding common solutions tailored to individual national needs. Internationalism does this be showcasing countries in a regional context that ties into the whole of global society. It eases the globalization fears of cultural annihilation.
Internationalism holds that in a global world it’s not necessary to like everone else. Indeed there may be personal or cultural antipathies and even hostilities. But all people and cultures deserve due respect. Physical violence at any level is taboo. Arts including sports are promoted as legitimate outlets for aggression.
Why Internationalism
The world is obviously global and digitally connected. Some may deny the situation or say it doesn’t affect them. They are enttled to the view just as are climate deniers and flat-earthers still afraid of falling off the edge. But the world moves on and in a global world that can happen in many ways.
Great strides have been made since WWII in reducing inequities that lead to armed conflict. Yet the conflicts continue to erupt because the global governance order is stuck on an outmoded model in dire need of upgrade. Like a rutted airport runway staffed with five traffic controllers empowered to cancel each other in the limited range of their province, the robust ideal of the United Nations has grown sclerotic, its arteries hardened.
Internationalism can fix the problem by sneaking up on it. Instead of butting heads in the vaunted UN diplomatic arena, countries and regions can do their homework first to make a powerful impact ion the global stage.
Internationalist Tenets
Internationalism holds that a country’s economy is an outgrowth of its governance, economic structure and civic sectors participating in a cultural context. In simple terms, a healthy cultural life is vital to the stability of both government and economy.
Like individuals, countries have an inherited cultural DNA influenced by its current environment. The global digital age has swept the world rapidly in a matter of mere decades, Cultural DNA is often washed out in the global flood. The arts as the repository of cultural wisdom are the restorative. In particular, the process of writing preserves the essence of a culture in a rapidly changing world.
Free-floating anxiety is a term for a sense of unease about uncertainty. Indeed, ideas and events can be fleeting, ephemeral in the digital age. The process of writing fits ideas with the best possible words. They are preserved forever in the classical works produced in every corner of the world, to be consulted and updated to reflect the impact of progress over centuries and millennia.
In short, the digital medium is great for rapid-fire range. It is an open invitation for fakery and scams. Durability is reliable andreassures. It commands respect and calls for more thought and work. Commitment to the agreed upon written word is sacred.
The Internationalist Botom Line
Thousands of sub-cultures live within the umbrella culture of the world’s near-200 countries. They are all united by one common element. Respect for the rule of law as they know it.
Societies and their laws evolve in line with the nigger communities to which they belong as the world by necessity grows ever more global. Each of those societies are likely to their bad guys and none of them are an asset to the society as a whole. Outlaws and and whit collar godfathers may have romantic appeal but they hurt and not help the social fabric.
Even dictators of sliding democracies conduct their affairs by providing paper cover for nefarious deeds.s. Russia did it that way until it openly flouted international law by invading Ukraine and continuing to violate the law with impunity.
.The last such violation led to the decisive Second World War. The ability of the world to avoid such a conflagration is a testament to the instruments in place since then. Messy, convoluted and humanly flawed as they are, the institutions have held thanks to adherence to their principles by people of integrity, not all the world’s people or countries but enough of a majority to keep the process going. That is the essence of the democracy that Ukraine is fighting for with the aid of Allies who value the principles.
All the world was drawn into the brutal armed conflict of the Second World War. This time around, Ukraine is shouldering the responsibility of protecting democratic freedoms on behalf of the whole world at a great human cost..Global geopolitics feed into this nexus of contention over rule of law. They radiate out worldwide wherever vestigial nneocolonialists place a footprint in their latest guise.
In the modern world, the rule of law begins at the Ubited Nation where laws are formulated and articulated. The process of implementing those laws at the national level by near-200 countries is laborious , complicated and excruciatibgly slow. But regional groups ease the process, as ECOWAS is doing in the spate of African countries experiencing coups lately. Pooling resources and intel to sort actors and actions.
The internationalist attitude turbo charges such protective mechanisms for democratic freedoms within national governmental constraints. The rule of thumb there is this. All near-200 nations of the world have agreed in writing to abide by the democratic principles of the United Nations Charter. While great leewayis allowed for working those principles in the national legislation of near -200 countries, the basic commitment is still binding and all nations must comply with international standards. Sanctions for non-compliance is an evolving field of international law that is part and parcel of the internationalist plan of action.
Internationalist Psychology
However large or small, however sophisticated or nativist, each of the world’s near-200 countries is powered by people. Rich or poor, they have the same psychological make-up shaped by ever broader social circlesthat in however small a way bear their imprint. Big crook or small, all miscreants are social misfits stuck at a primitive level of development.
Despite shortcomings, the Freudian model of psychological development is fairly widely accepted. A person is made up of three parts controlled by three parts of the brain. The id is the oldest, most primitive part, seat of basic drives and raw emotions. The ego is the sense of self, the socialized version of the id. The superego in the highest, most developed brain areas are the seat of ideation, imagination and higher aspirations for social good. Cultures and governmental systems can be conducive to fostering any of three levels of behavior either tacitly or by default. So can institutions or, businesses or any human-based social construct.
A tyrannical regime that maintains power for self-propagation relies on lower brain functioning of its society. Cronyism, corruption, deceit and fear are a few of its modes of operation. Without the adaptation enabled by higher brain functioning, these regimes remain limited in the tools available to maintain social order. In a global digital world full of information flow, repression becomes increasingly the last resort in a feedback loop of escalating anxiety and stress.
By contrast, democracies are based on the highest superego ideals that national egos achieve to a wide range of levels depending on how well the democratic process functions. By definition, democracy is “rule by the people.” That means that a healthy democracy needs the engagement of its people in institutions subject to routine maintenance like any system. There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine in democracy.
Why Democracy
If the Freudian model of the human psyche is correct, then democracy is the only way for any individual anywhere to acieve full potential. As babies we all start out at thr lowest id level and are nurtured into socialized adulthood into thr self-sustaing ego level. That’s when we put legs on our superego ambitions for the greater good. Nice plan, infinite variations.
Superego ideals can start formulating from earliest babyhood on but they must be organic, originating from the individual human system itself. Social engineering experiments such as the Russian Soviet system of assigning social roles early in line with social needs have been colossal failures. The subjects simply don’t develop the libido, life force drive to be effective. They don’t interact with their environment enough to be fully responsive to new events in a process nearest to godliness called creativity.
That creativity can be thwarted, twisted and even killed by bad parenting or social circumstances. Conversely, the creative drive can be boosted and maximized by education and social engagent, including in the political process safeguarding the democracy that cultvates, nurtures an promotes it. Internationalism points the way
Elements of Internationalism
If the Freudian model of the human psyche holds and radiates out society-wide, then the primitive id level of meeting basic existence needs passes with nurture to the national ego level of functionality and starts working toward higher superego ideals. In short, dirt poor poverty anywhere in the world’s near-200 countries is a drain on the global population as a whole. While great progress has been made in eradicating it since the Second World War, Internationalism calls for more.
“Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink” is a poetic line describing msailors marooned at sea. In the global digital world of near-22 countries the lin describes those unable to access the vast amount of resources available at all levels of social development from the poorest to the most wealthy.
Those basic building blocks of internationalism are portable modules from one developmental level to another. They include communication of information, opening access channels and supporting governance structures that promote rather than repress development of the individual.
These elements of internationalism are already established and active. They need only to be consolidated, organized, streamlined and most importantly, embraced and implemented as a practicable way forward for a peacefully prosperous world.
Internationalism presumes that people at large want to live satisfying lives, whether through happiness, dedication to duty or the pursuit of some socially beneficial aim. Living a life of crime or being a social pariah may have its perks to some, even to way too many in some circles, but it most likely isn’t very satisfying from an overview angle. Even hardened dictators can’t be very satisfied with a bottom line concern of merely staying alive. however fulfilled is the base need to see ememies suffer. So if satisfaction is the aim, what stands in the way?
Generalizing from conflicts now flaring all over the world, nearly all have common causes that boil down to blockages. Frustrations boil over when people have no agency to satisfy basic needs whether for physical survival or ego growth. These in turn are due to crossed circuits in information flows. Some are intentional, others due to history, situation or circumstance. I
Internationalism offers a cross-cutting solution to these situations. It is based on promoting agency, voice and stake for people in life, community, country and greater wotld..
The Groundwork
All the elements for an internationalist attitude are already in place. They are disjointed, haphazard and defensively isolationist against the prevailing perceived global standard of a Western bias. In fact, from an internationalist perspective, those Western presumed prevailing force is composed of separate elements as diverse as the rest of the world. To a large extent, that’s the universal handicap of outmoded stereotyping at work.
While it is true that a Wester bias prevails in the world today, it is also true that the grounds for that bias are eroding but they are failing to register in the global zeitgeist , or consciousness. In simple terms, people the world over don’t know that the West is not the paradise it is still presumed to be, nor are the emerging parts of the world as hopeless as they appear to be. This, in essence, is a major driver in the number one cause of conflict today, the forced migration of people due to political instability as exasperated by climate change crises.
Internationalism holds that a country’s all-important economy is an outgrowth of its government and its society, which in turn is made up of its cultural and commercial sectors. In an internationalist global world, those three elements are kept in balance by big and small countries joining forces to solve global challenges while nations at home work to optimize coherence between commerce and culture for maximal economic growth. That schema has major implications for conceptualizing national conflicts in a global context.
Countries in trouble are on a fool’s errand if they try to handle internal conflicts on their own. Hostilities spill over, illicit global traffickers are on the prowl for their network, the country suffers brain-drain while also earning ill-fame on the global stage. The internationalist alternative is to use existing mechanisms to make the country a viable environment where native citizens have a stake in the country’s growth.
Giving people stake in their country begins with giving them a voice. a voice, an affirmation of respect that is essential for human well-being. In the most repressive government systems, that voice may be underground and connected to outside sources. But people will stay at home if they have a say in their future instead of besuffering hopelessly.
Migration and Cultural Saturation
The power of a voice short-circuits grievances to keep them from boiling over into violemce. That holds true for immigrants in host countries and for minorities lost or oppressed among larger population. Given a voice, they enrich national cultures before they become raucus or worse. Nevertheless, a major current challenge that cannot be cured by giving people a voice is that of threats to cultural integrity.
A classic work on prejudice published in the 1950’s noted that most cultures welcomed newcomers up to a point and then grew hostile when the culture itself was threatened. The all-embracing democratic ideal is under stress in most stable established democracies where immigrants in large enough numbers are making a significant impact on the host culture.
The internationalist approach is to improve home conditions to reduce involuntary migration. After that, resources aboud if only they can be accessed.
The Internationalist Structure
The tools to achieve social fluidity on a global scale are a;ready in place. They are mired in cultural gaps, economics, politics and the bane of all progress, protocol and red tape.
Like humans themselves, laws evolve. Between a limited old social order and a more progressive protection of freedoms, procedural norms can pose a challenge and this is a situation faced by all the world’s near-200 countries.
In the US, for example, a president accused of wrong-doing was not prevented by any law from engaging in such conduct. Thus, while the US courts battle out the challenge legally, that process can feed into legislative actions beng taken by newly emerging nations developing in line with the loosely structured United Nations Charter.
In short, all near-200 countries of the world are faced with the same problem of how to upgrade existing laws and norms to fit in with the driving force of the global world digitally united, all of which rests on red tape especially when it comes to economics.
. One is to increase information flow. The other is to facilitate access to getting seen on the global stage. That, in turn, is achieved by activating, cohering and building on structures and channels already in place.
Alliances, partnerships and networks are key to the global coherence needed for an internationalist mindset. In effect, seeing the world as a dynamic, interactive mosaic is the only solution to the nationalism, isolationism and hostility now rendering the world a rag-tag wilderness. Granted that a multitude of forces profit from a disjointed world, their ventures don’t bode well for a viable future. Clearly stated affiliations counter them.
Bureaucracy, red tape and protocol
In the venerable Bible, God created the world by making order out of chaos. Being less than perfect, once humans make order they want to stick with what ‘s fixed. That creates the politically combustible situation where career civil servants , professionals and politicians vam help or hinder each other for huge consequences, particularly when the private sector and civic organizations are factored in.
There is no way to get around the fact that human institutions are a product of human making and that they function according to human character traits ranging from the sublime to the profane, Artificial intelligence may make more order out of chaos but it will never replace the the exhilarating human factor in interacting with others.
Climate and Migration Mitigation
Stating the obvious for emphasis, groupings at any level pool talents. Carefully managed, they promote problem solving. At wider regional and international levels, they reduce the cultural clashes now plaguing the world. By airing challenges faced, they dispel the biased notion that migration and immigration are a problem only for rich countries. Likewise, brain drain does not improve the lot of any country in distress.
In fact, most stereotypes about cultures are highly erroneous generalizations. Given a voice, people can correct many of these and defuse situations before they explode. Likewise, give countries a voice and they can fix problems before their citizens become political refugees. Finally, give regions a voice and there won’t be massive violations of international law as is happening now in Ukraine.
Bridging Cultural Divides
Internationalism calls for an educated global public. That doesn’t mean a world full of Harvard scholars. It means integrating currently disparate fields such as academics, industry, politics and media. Where the United Nations is involved in social development, its vast store of information can be made user friendly. Academic and scholarly papers don’t need to be stored in ivory towers. Turned user friendly, they can inform farmers and shoppers about the products used, That closes up a big gap in the global urban-rural divide.
Translating the arcane and esoteric into useful everyday language is done through cooperation and collaboration. It cannot be done without explicit political will for reducing disparities between rich and poor at every level, from local to national and inernational.
International news organizations already cover world news, mostly in the form of covering political upheavals and natural disasters. Internationalism aims to dig deeper into cultural phenomena largely through “spiral” networking.
For example, a UN Agency recently released an in-depth report on violence around the world. The Gerrman DW picked up the report and rendered it readable for the general public. The British BBC in turn made a broadcast version, which made the information available to Americans whose broadcast media would have overlooked the report. Viewer feedback informs programming, which gives all parties a sense of agency, participating in a process.
The value of human agency cannot be overstated in the global world interconnected through technology. By targeting professional information for the person with a modicum of curiosity about others beyond their social circle, internationalism promotes a sense of useful, personal purpose That empowers people the world over to make use of evolving opportunities.
Building on Cultural Memory
The classics are the anchor for a flighty digital age. Humanity evolved over millennia. It did not begin with the cell phone. There is no point to throwing away the map just because you’ve reached a big city.
Super critical for a global digital world is respect for ancient wisdom and art. It is all-inclusive and universal, deeply satisfying to those in all cultures growing bored with the latest tech toys. Dusted off and restored with context, ancient wisdom unites the world and iys generations. It also underlies many internationalist tenets.
“Do no harm” and “live and let live.” are two of them. “Catch-22” is another, It is a famous term for an impasse, as in “be successful, get investors.” When success is in a digital form, an Aesop fable issues the warning about killing the goose laying the golden egg. “Fool’s gold is a useful term to remember in a fake or deep-fake info world. “Look before you leap” may be old hat but it cuts through some fantastical conspiracy theories gone viral.
When it comes to information, “spiral” is better than “viral.” The process is more intereting, satisfying and enduring. In business and in matters of social status, internationalism holds that cooperation yields better results than cut-throat competition.
Money and Value
Currently, money seems to be the bottom line in all human interaction from personal to national and international levels. Indeed, aside from ascetics content with bare bones as a way to spiritual purification, everybody likes money and it h the world over despite the olds a charm for rich and poor alike despite the fact that in a global digital world, money holds only a tangential relationship to true value.
internationalism holds a very pragmatic view of money. Money may not be everything and it may not be the root of all evil, but it sure does obscure social ills that don’t get addressed.
All the money in the world won’t build a country’s infrastructur overnight and there is many a slip twixt the cup and the lip, as the saying goes. Apply that to the investment of developmend funds and implementation. Plenty of opportunity fror countries to learn together.
At the other end of the scale is the world leading US, which has become a highly “litiginous” society. “So sue me,” is the pat defense against any complaint. The cvil legal process that awards mone for for an offense is often the most expeditious way of addressing deep social wounds. In that way, the victim is compensated, society is split between guilt free and resentful while the wound continues to fester.
Internationalism pierces through the money camouflage to look at how government and society affect the economy. Again taking the world leading US as a paradigm, the land of opportunity just recently almost collapsed the global economy in a political shoot-out over culture war issues. The motto of the Silicon Valley global tech center is”fake it ‘needs an internationalist attitude to avoid becoming a plutocracy controlled by til you make it,”
The chipper quip covers the true reality of high drug dependence, alienation and violence in the society. It also hides the economic reality of a high failure rate. An example is a recent run on the Silicon Vallet Bank. A rumor sparked panic and the government leaned on other banks to bail out the little banking maverick. When the dust settle, the mega-bank Chase snapped up the distressed little bank assets as a windfall.
More than any other, the US beacon of democracy needs an internationalist attitude to avoid slipping into a plutocracy where unregulated tech giants decide what news items “we the people” read and which jokes will be repeated ad infinitum based on the number of “likes” or emojis registered in previous runs. The height of social developmen to date can climb higher than a stale joke if the US learns from others as it is doing with Ukraine.
The Ukraine Culture Daisy-Wheel
Ukraine sparked a global reckoning when it chose to side with democracy over whatever plans Russia had for it. Ukraine’s moral integrity won the heart of America just when a reminder was needed because the land of immigrants was a mishmash of vague cultural misperceptions..
The young America with a short cultural resume has a romance with freedom and a mortal fear of anything that smacks of social cooperation, lumped in the general parlance as Communism. In fact, internationalism assauges this fear.
In Communism like the social system in China, the state owns commerce and individuals are cut down to size if they grow big enough to threaten state ownership, primarily through partnerships with ooutside, more permissive actors. Democracy, on the other hand, is a very flexible social economic system.
Democratic social economic systems run the gamut between independence and government control. It range from the free market systems of countries like India with little government oversight to the democratic socialism of most European countries.
That broad range of democratic economic systems is the internationalist venue. cy is the venue. All the world benefits when the world leader US signs on, especially the leader itself.
Again, in internationalism the economy is an outgrowth of the social fabric, formulated and writ large on the global stage by government, commerce and civil activity. In internationalism, outliers to the rule of law don’t die or get killed.. They are squeezed out of competition by partnership and coalition building.
Alliances have been formed from time immemorial but partnerships have become critical as the world has grown global since the Second World War. Almost all countries are party to treaties at the multi-party, regional and international levels. Businesses, civic groups and organizations are all subject to the treaties made by the governments of their countries. Needed now are cross-cultural partnerips, a key component of internationalism.
In short, by its fierce protection f its national identity, Ukraine reaffirmed for all near-200 of the world’s countries the sanctity of their own national heritage and integrity. While Ukraine’s Allies were the major democracracies of the world, Ukraine’s appeal for the support of all the world’s countries gained global respect. With time and trust, fence-sitting admirers may come out and voice support for Ukraine while also respecting the sanctions imposed for the restoration of international rule of law.
International Organizations and Red Tape
“All bureaucracies are bad and the United Nations is the biggest of them all.” Calming advice from an Indian colleague over bureaucratic frustrations during the mid-90’s intervention in Somalia. It was the first joint effort between the United Nations and allies of the United States. It failed because of faulty communications and cooperation across the board due to human foibles reflected in their handling of red tape.
International organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetar Fund play a major role in hlping countries emerge onto the global stage are involved with financing of development, Concerned with economics, the staff of these groups have a limited introduction to the culture where they work. The same holds true for military staff of countries taking part in peace-related operations. The resultant culture clashes can undermine the effort. Internationalism addreses these factors It also provides coherence for such operations. That translates into a reduction of the dreaded red tape.
Transitiomimg from linear to digital to quantm
Those born into a digital world think in a holistic way, editing themselves as they write. The problem with that is that they lack a basic grounding in logic.
The result is communication chaos. A sense of omnipotence is a problem for young people for whom life is a ready-made fully assembled experience tailored to their plans for themselves. They are missing the essential building blocks of success, the process of putting them all together, complete with errors, frustrations and the final relief of finding the success, the aha experience of discovery that makes human life worth living.
Back to basics, internationalism says, not in the sense of regressing but in the sense of reincorporating what has been lost in the rush of technological glee. A stronger grounding in common sense will will enavle all near-200 countries of the world to go forward at their own level and pace into the unchartd territories of AI and quantum.
Fogarassy’s Books
All of Fogarassy’s books deal with aspects of internationalism, from the first fun novel set in the Caribbean to her most recent collection of think-pieces, entertaining essays about the current global political scene. America Votes Obama to Biden Past Trump is a Hungarian-American view of the Trump phenomenon. The stand-alone pieces scan the first two decades of the 21st century. Represetative titles include “Can an invader be a liberator?” about the war in Iraq and “Moscow Towers over Trump” about Fogarassy’s take on the noted bromance.
Factually grounded in open source material, the collection has been described as a fresh look on the era. A Trump supporter called the work enjoyable.The same creative approach sheds a fresh light onthe Soviet occupation of Hungary during the cold war in the real-life novel Light of a Destiny Dark based on a memoir by her mother. The change from the original memoir reflects the vast contrast between life behind the Iron Curtain and the present. That title was “Behind God’s Back,” the fate that Ukraine fights so hard to avoid falling into again.
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