Jonathan Brun

On Life

A few years ago I stood in the small room that my wife’s grandfather was occupying in a retirement home. The room was no larger than 12 feet by 12 feet in a nice building with good services and friendly staff. He had a television, a small closet, a bathroom and a bottle of rum. He insisted we drink a bit, “A rum and coke?”, he proposed. Who was I to turn down an offer like this? He then poured a bit of coke into a glass and then followed with a lot of rum. Sitting in that room and drinking the stiff drink, I thought to myself two things – “So, this is how it ends” and “I would drink too in this situation.”

Life is terribly ephemeral – a moment we are here, living and breathing and the next we are on our way out. As has often been repeated, the only truly certain thing we have is death. It comes for us all and when it does, there is nothing else. You may choose to believe in some form of mystical afterlife or reincarnation depending on your religions inclination, but life as we know it on this planet with all of its foibles and challenges is over. For some, death comes early and swiftly and for others there may be a long wait after a wholesome life filled with emotions and love and all sorts of ups and downs. No one knows and no one can tell you what will happen.

At 42 years of age, I am hopefully somewhere towards the middle of my life. This is both a comforting thought and a scary thought. Thanks to much good fortune, I have thoroughly enjoyed my first 42 years on our little spaceship called Earth. Born in a great country to a good family and blessed with good health, my time so far has been pleasant and meaningful. As a father of three, with a wonderful wife and meaningful job, and living in a great city – I have no reason to complain about anything really. My main hope is that this trend of luck and health continue for another 40 or 50 years – fingers crossed. As I have progressed through life, I have accumulated experiences that remind me of how sacred the good life is. People I have personally known have died at a younger age than I am now, parents I know have lost children to accidents and disease, I have seem the misery of hopeless abject poverty in places such as Haiti, Ethiopia and the United States. Said another way – things could be worse (for me).

When William Shatner, the actor who played Captain Kirk in Star Trek, returned from an actual trip to the edge of space onboard a Blue Origin rocket, he explained his experience:

“I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing. I turned back toward the light of home. I could see the curvature of Earth, the beige of the desert, the white of the clouds and the blue of the sky. It was life. Nurturing, sustaining, life. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I was leaving her.

Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong.

I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things—that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. In the film “Contact,” when Jodie Foster’s character goes to space and looks out into the heavens, she lets out an astonished whisper, “They should’ve sent a poet.” I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.

It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness.”

The abject emptiness of space should act as a strong reminder that life is precious. In many things in life we choose to define ourselves by what we are not – racist thoughts, sports team rivalries, thoughts about people we know and dislike, etc. While this way of thinking is not always desirable, it serves a useful purpose of creating structure in our perception of the world. If we care to define life as what it is not, space would be the contrasting thing. Outside of earth, to the best of our knowledge, there is no life. There is nothing but but an infinite and expanding universe that is likely unreachable by us and can only reflect back light that we can observe. There is no salvation, no saviour and nothing of note outside of our spaceship which we live on and which orbits our Sun.

The bleakness of space should help remind us of the joys of life. As my young children demonstrate to me every single day – life is worth celebrating. Their joy, energy, happiness and reactions to food, people, events, friends and more are what make life so amazing. You can do so much, take in all that you want and express yourself as you wish. As long as you are not breaking the laws of physics, you can do a lot. In a wonderful TED talk by brother David Steindl-Rast, he explains how to be happy: be grateful. He provides a useful reminder of the many things we enjoy every day and should marvel at. For many of us in the developed world we should marvel every day at some of the basic things we have and one of the most overlooked things we should all be grateful for: free potable water.

Water is the essence of life, without water there is likely no life or certainly no life as we know it. Every time we open our faucet to take water to drink, cook, clean or do so much else – we should be reminded of the beauty of life. The act of experiencing something and especially of experiencing life alongside others – people, family, friends, animals, plants, insects, and other forms of life – remains the most fulfilling thing we can do. We are all in this show together – whether we like it or not. The uniqueness of life and of our perception of it is what makes it so special. Every living thing is unique and is constantly changing, reacting, growing, suffering and renewing itself all the time. The past is largely set in stone, the present and future are great and infinite unknown sea we must travel. As Robin Williams explained in the film Good Will Hunting,

“So if I asked you about art, you’d probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life’s work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I’ll bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You’ve never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that. If I ask you about women, you’d probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can’t tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You’re a tough kid. And I’d ask you about war, you’d probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, “once more unto the breach dear friends.” But you’ve never been near one. You’ve never held your best friend’s head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I’d ask you about love, you’d probably quote me a sonnet. But you’ve never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn’t know what it’s like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn’t know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms “visiting hours” don’t apply to you. You don’t know about real loss, ’cause it only occurs when you’ve loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you’ve ever dared to love anybody that much. And look at you… I don’t see an intelligent, confident man… I see a cocky, scared shitless kid. But you’re a genius Will. No one denies that. No one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine, and you ripped my fucking life apart. You’re an orphan right?

[Will nods]

Sean (Robin Williams): You think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you? Personally… I don’t give a shit about all that, because you know what, I can’t learn anything from you, I can’t read in some fuckin’ book. Unless you want to talk about you, who you are. Then I’m fascinated. I’m in. But you don’t want to do that do you sport? You’re terrified of what you might say. Your move, chief.”

This dramatic quote may have some exaggeration to it, but the point remains – each person has a unique story to tell and their own view of the world. This is something that should be embraced and cherished. We are all going to die and we will take with us all of our experiences and memories to the tomb. While we do live, we should strive to fill our lives with as much positive meaning as possible, because afterwards it is all gone. After three generations, no one will remember you. No matter how rich you are, it always ends the same way. Even the wealthy Pharoah Tutankhamen could not leave us his thoughts and dreams – only his gold and perhaps some dead slaves in his tomb. Let me end with a one last thought from another film, Ferris Bueller’s day off, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

FOMO and the Lack of Children

The declining birth rates around the world have received growing media attention, though likely not as much attention as the topic deserves. Everywhere in the world, without exception, birth rates are declining or already at rock bottom levels. Unofficial rates in China, Korea and Japan peg the numbers at 0.7 – 0.9 children per woman, meaning the population will shrink by 60% in a generation or two. Countries like Canada are at 1.2-1.3 – hardly better. Even most African countries are well below 3 and declining. In short, everywhere, regardless of culture, history or type of government, we are seeing radical decreases in births. This will undoubtedly completely change human society as we have to deal with an oversized elderly population who will be reliant on the tiny workforce to support it. It will get ugly on many fronts – economic, political and social.

I have tried to read what I can on the topic, such as the book Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline by by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson, the excellent New Yorker Article The End of Children by Gideon Lewis-Kraus, and many other analyses. In the New York article, they clearly state “Anyone who offers a confident explanation of the situation is probably wrong.” This is true. No one seems to have a compelling answer to what is going on and no one seems able to reverse the trend. So, let me try!

Globally, the only developed country that remains an exception to declining birth rates seems to be Israel, where the dense concentration of religious people amped up with nationalistic fervor has led to high birth rates. Specific devout people in certain developed countries do tend to have more children and there are pro-natalist movements popping up around the world, often backed with some sort of religious belief. Religious people, for better or worse, do have something that drives them to procreate: faith. Faith that humans have a higher purpose and that we have a duty to reproduce and fill the world with faithful followers is seemingly the only thing that works at scale. My Hassidic Jewish neighbours with their 7 or 8 children (tough to count when they all dress the same) are certainly living proof of this faithful devotion to reproduction.

Religion aside, the more interesting question is why so few people are having children, waiting much longer to have children and when they do, they only have one or two children (often constrained by the late age at which they had them). There are many reasons for declining birth rates, likely all of which contribute to this global effect: cost of living, online phonography, addition to social media and video games, lack of social skills necessary to find a mate, or a fear of the future. While each of these items are contributors, the only overarching thread I can see is a general and broad shift in global culture.

Our culture has dramatically changed in the past 50 years and and one notable common belief that most people share is that we only live once and we should try and take advantage of our single lifespan. A related concept that is a popular social media hashtag is FOMO – or Fear Of Missing Out. This fear of missing out on an interesting experience or an opportunity leads to always be looking for something bigger, better, faster and shinier. This is true in the online dating world where a person always has many options and if you are good looking woman, you have near infinite options – each one potentially more appealing than the person sitting in front of you at the bar. Long story short about kids: the truth is that to have kids, you have to be willing to settle.

Contrary to our FOMO culture, settling is not a bad thing. Studies have shown arranged marriages outlast love induced marriages and frankly, making compromise is easier when your alternatives are blocked off. The more options you have, the less likely you are to compromise on your choice. In the past, we simply had less options and knew of less alternatives and by consequence, we were willing or obliged to settle for someone who is not perfect (no one is), but who understood that you were not perfect either and that was acceptable. Because most people settled, settling was the acceptable social norm. Today, the acceptable social norm seems to have shifted to a constant dissatisfaction with our life in relation to those around us. Social media certainly does not help. Today, my feeling is that our expectations are sometimes too high – leading to this perennial search for something better. Some people search for this through dating, others through a gym membership, intoxicants, triathlons, marathons, excessive travelling, spas, all inclusive resorts, hip new restaurants, retreats, or some other act that makes them “feel alive and special”.

Our current culture of self-actualization has been built on the back of a hundred years of unbridled marketing and promotion of a consumption driven life. This has been thoroughly document and well explained by Adam Curtis and his numerous documentaries. I suggest The Century of Self to get started. Our main purpose has shifted from being a father or mother to being a consumer and accumulator of things. One factor that may be exasperating this is the fact that “time” costs more and the economic marketplace is more competitive than ever. To just stay afloat and similar to your peer group, you cannot afford to lose too much time or earnings to rearing children. For example, to afford a home, two incomes are needed and if two incomes are needed then it is much harder to justify children. This may be why the group in the United States with the lowest labour participation rate is white women. This NYTimes article gives a good explanation of this issue.

Because birth rates are down across nearly every country, it is hard to attribute it to anything that is specific to a country. Birth rates are down in socialist countries, capitalist countries, individualist nations, and communitarian countries. The only common thread I can see is a decline in birth rates linked to a rise in consumption of material goods and self actualization. I certainly am not advocating we reduce development to help the birthrate, but we should question where are we headed and why.

Even amongst those who have children, there seems to be a rise in whining about having children – which hardly encourages others. Comedians, sitcoms and various TikTok videos seem to focus on the challenging moments when your kids will not go to sleep, will not cooperate, or when they have done something that is simply frustrating. These moments can be funny and sharing them may be cathartic, but promoting only the hard parts is a highly incomplete portrait of reality. Even highly educated and astute people like Paul Graham of YCombinator fame admitted that he was against having children because his impression of children was negative. He would often only see children at a restaurant and only notice them when they were making a fuss. Like a software bug, you only notice the issue or pay particularly attention to the software when it has a problem. The 99.99% of the time when the service works well you do not take notice. By the time Paul Graham realized he should have kids, he only had time to have two. Kids are amazing the vast majority of the time. This fact is not highlighted enough and our cultural focus on the negative parts of child rearing almost certainly dissuades others from embarking on the journey.

As Paul Graham eloquently explained in 2019,

Before I had kids, I was afraid of having kids. Up to that point I felt about kids the way the young Augustine felt about living virtuously. I’d have been sad to think I’d never have children. But did I want them now? No.

If I had kids, I’d become a parent, and parents, as I’d known since I was a kid, were uncool. They were dull and responsible and had no fun. And while it’s not surprising that kids would believe that, to be honest I hadn’t seen much as an adult to change my mind. Whenever I’d noticed parents with kids, the kids seemed to be terrors, and the parents pathetic harried creatures, even when they prevailed.

When people had babies, I congratulated them enthusiastically, because that seemed to be what one did. But I didn’t feel it at all. “Better you than me,” I was thinking.

Now when people have babies I congratulate them enthusiastically and I mean it. Especially the first one. I feel like they just got the best gift in the world.

What changed, of course, is that I had kids. Something I dreaded turned out to be wonderful.

I have little hope that this global trend can be reversed. Perhaps, under some bizarre logic, this reduction in birth rates is a way for humanity to collectively say, “We must change!”. Maybe our choice to have no kids or less kids is a self-levelling feature of society where we are indirectly saying that we do not want to continue the direction we are headed. Who knows? I certainly do not claim to have a definitive anwser. All I can confidently say is that children can be the greatest thing in the world if you are setup to have them, have a great partner, and are willing to invest in them an in your relationship with them. In college, my friend told me that you “get out what you put in.” This certainly applies to children. If you want to have FOMO, there is no greater experience your can miss out on than helping and watching a baby turn into a person.

Partial Bibliography

Liberal Societies Have Dangerously Low Birth Rates The Atlantic 

The great global baby bust is under way The Economist · by Jun 14th 2023

The Pandemic Caused a Baby Bust, Not a Boom – Scientific American Scientific American · by Tanya Lewis

The West, not China, needs to worry about birth rates The Telegraph · by Ross Clark

A Surprising Reason to Worry About Low Birth Rates The Atlantic · by Olga Khazan · May 26, 2018

How Women Can Save the Planet: Scientific American Scientific American · by Lawrence M. Krauss

Fertility Collapse Demands New Cultures palladiummag.com · by Malcolm and Simone Collins · April 6, 2023

Can America Cope with Demographic Decline?aei.org

Opinion: Italians seem to be going extinct – the economic and political consequences of relentless population declines The Globe and Mail · by Eric Reguly · April 6, 2024

Chinese women look to South Korean ‘K-girls’ for inspiration as declining birth rates spark backlash The Globe and Mail · by James Griffiths · October 18, 2024

How A Dead Millionaire Convinced Dozens Of Women To Have As Many Babies As Possible FiveThirtyEight · by David Goldenberg · December 11, 2015

The Population Implosion Foreign Policy · by Nicholas Eberstadt

India defuses its population bomb: Fertility falls to two children per woman science.org · by Share on X

Feminist justification for child subsidies Nytimes

Peace Museum Hiroshima and Understanding Paths to Peace

As we shuffled through the Hiroshima Peace Museum alongside the throngs of tourists, I wondered what was the point. The museum was so packed that you were basically pushed along by the crowd and dared now take time to read or see much. I even got frustrated with those who stopped to observe the museum exhibits and consequently slowed down the progress of the crowd and created further human traffic jams. 

While this specific museum requires a major upgrade to handle the crowds and an update of its exhibits and layout, my thoughts wandered to the experience and impact of museums related to peace, war and genocide. As a firm proponent of non-violent action against oppression and a staunch anti-war advocate, I often think about how to convince more people to shift away from their overt or tacit support of violence for political motives – otherwise known as war or oppression. There are sufficient books and documentaries for anyone curious about the benefits of non-violence, yet only a very small percentage of the population is aware of the potential of non-violence. Nearly everyone has the belief that there is no real alternative to war.

With numerous ongoing violent conflicts in 2025 – Ukraine, Palestine, D.R.C., Sudan, Myanmar, and elsewhere, it is an unsettling time for many. Not only are there ongoing conflicts, but many world leaders express pro-war sentiment on a regular basis and there seems to be a true failure to deescalate conflicts and rhetoric. Words can lead to violence. It is just as important to stem the vitriol as it is to find paths to peace in ongoing conflicts. As we exited the museum, my family and I were happy to be done with the unpleasant experience, but I thought to myself how much of an impact the Hiroshima Peace Museum or other peace museums really have. How many people who are made aware of the horrors of war do anything afterwards? I suspect the number is quite low. This is presumably similar to any single life experience. No one changes their beliefs or actions after a single experience, but only and rarely after numerous experiences and events that shake their underlying assumptions about a topic or issue. 

Anyone who has studied war and the history of man and violence will be aware of the horrendous suffering we are capable of inflicting on each other. In more situations than I can recall, war was caused or encouraged by a few small groups of people who believed they had the right answer or who were unwilling to compromise. It seems unlikely that we will change human nature or that we will move away from hierarchical structures where one person and their entourage have disproportionate power over a large body of human beings who want to live, breathe and enjoy their time on earth. We must therefore not only focus on teaching the horrors of war, but place much more focus on the alternatives to war that actually work. No self respecting warm blooded human wants to be trampled on. People will fight back if pushed. If the belief remains that violence is the only way to combat violence, we are doomed to continue to our past. We must find a way to educate and more importantly, train people and groups in the tactics and practices and strategies of non-violent non-cooperation that can stop war and force the uncompromising leaders to compromise or capitulate.

Much of the work to document this has been done by the Albert Einstein Institute and its creator Gene Sharp. This work needs to be somehow better communicated and offered in a compelling way to help protect ourselves from ourselves. One day, when I have more free time, I would very much like to contribute to this effort. In the meantime, I simply encourage all those who decide to visit peace museums from Hiroshima to Yad Vashem to understand that there are other paths to affecting political change that do not require tanks, guns, bombs and death.

Fighting Envy

I am currently reading the book The Curve of Time which is a journal by a widowed mother who spent her summers coasting the waters near Vancouver Island with her four children in the 1930s. The book is a lovely tribute to a bygone era of abandoned Indian villages, limited technology, soaring mountains and endless days that blend with each other. In our frenetic and always connected world of 2025, the book reminds me that there are other ways to live and experience the planet we inhabit. For the past few summers, my family has taken a few days to canoe camp with friends and disconnect. It is a splendid respite from the non-stop bustle of the modern world.

Many years ago I attended a lecture by David Suzuki, the Canadian environmentalist, scientist, public speaker and advocate for the planet. The talk was held at McGill University around 2010 in the context of sustainability conference. During his talk he spoke of the rising tides and temperatures, the perils for the planet, the need to change our ways and the risks we are taking with our overconsumption and pollution. Of all the things he said, one item stood out. David Suzuki highlighted how the average home in Canada had dramatically grown in size over the past few decades. In his youth in the 1950s and 60s, homes were often no larger than 1200-1500 square feet. Today, the average house is often over 2500 square feet. The same growth in size can be found in our cars, wardrobes and many other things. Suzuki argued that to solve our sustainability issues, all we had to do was go back to our old habits which at the time, were perfectly adequate for most people.

The famed investor Charlie Munger was once asked what drove the world and our need to consume. The natural response many of us will have to this question is greed, money, lust, or other emotions that push us to fight for top place and dictate our relations with other people. Munger asserted the main emotion driving our world was in fact Envy. Our envy for what others have is what pushes us to buy more, go bigger and chase an elusive goal that may never really be achievable. This envy is more prevalent today than ever before thanks to the internet, Instagram, influencers and our brains being bombarded with the perfect lives of our friends, relations and celebrities. ‘Keeping up with the Jones’ is nothing new, but I feel it is an overwhelming emotion today that in many ways drives non-optimal decisions. As far as I can tell, too many of us consume too much, save too little and cannot resist the urge to YOLO.

Growing up in a wealthy neighbourhood and at a private school, it was clear that the disease of envy spared no one, especially not the upper classes. If your friend had an Audi, you needed a Porsche. I recently heard of a study (there are so many) that demonstrated that no matter what a person had in income or wealth, they always thought that twice that amount would be the right amount to have. If you had 100$ in your bank account, 200$ would make all the difference. If you had 1 million dollars, 2 million would be enough. I recently know someone who made about 3 million dollars selling their business, they now want 10 million. The lack of satisfaction is what drives us and despite the negative aspects to chasing money, there are positive sides to this human urge to have more.

Without this envy for what others have, our desire to compete and our need to show off, we may still be living in mud huts on the savanna. Though there are many negative aspects to chasing cash, we must admit that it has numerous positive effects too. Someone famously quipped, “Even if you win the rat race, you are still a rat”. True. But the rat race has helped us invent new liberating machines that do so much work for us, develop air travel that brings the world together and dramatically extend our lifespans and improve our quality of life. The trick, I suppose, is to know when enough is enough for you.

There is no shortage of evidence that people on their deathbeds do not lament the jet they never had. Nearly all the time, they seek the people they love or loved and regret the things they said and did that impacted their human relationships. The challenge is not to knowledge and understand the realities we face at death, but rather to live our life on a day to day basis that leads to the end we know we seek. Today, more then ever before, we are subject to constant temptation. Algorithms play us like a fine tuned violin – leading us to waste time watching meaningless videos instead of calling family and friends, buying things we certainly do not need and making decisions we should not make. The economic precarity that so many people face only exacerbates this situation as we seek some form of temporary balm from the knowledge that our financial position is not good and unlikely to improve.

Discipline and focus are the only bulwark against this assault on our senses. These two skills should be taught at our schools from a young age and reinforced as much as possible. As Steve Jobs said, the most important thing you do is what you say No to. The exercise I always recommend to my friends who ask about their career choices or situation is the white paper vivid vision. The task is to take a blank sheet of paper and write out in narrative form the life you want or the vision you have. This can be a big challenge, but its rewards are tremendous. This task of visioning your life and then living your vision is an urgent task because you just never know when things might end or how fate and fortune may decide your life. An old friend of mine who I had travelled with recently passed away at only 50 years old. He left behind the life he wanted – a wife, three kids and great job. He had everything he had sought, but he hit some very bad luck. This can happen to any of us and knowing what we truly want and trying to live it on a daily basis is the only defence we have against unpredictable misfortune and external influence.

Crossing the Rubicon

Tribalism is deeply rooted in the human psyche. For tens of thousands of years, humans evolved and survived only thanks to their participation in a tribe. Very few people can survive without the support of others, finding food, hunting, shelter and protection from attacking tribes requires group effort and coalescence. Even today, though more and more people live solitary lives with work from home and a near persistent attachment to a glowing screen, we still remain part of tribes – be they virtual or real.

In ancient times, one of the most serious punishments for crimes, aside from death or torture, was to be banished from your tribe and cast into the wilderness to near certain death. This happened regularly in traditional societies who sent a strong message that breaking tribal norms was not acceptable. Even antiquity saw people who caused nuisance banished from the city – from Athens to Rome to 19th century France, forced emigration was a common form of punishment and an important tool in maintaining the integrity of society along the lines of what the leaders sought. Despite a changed society, tribalism remains alive and well.

Certain societies claimed and attempted to rid themselves of tribalism. This was most commonly done by communist societies who sought internationalism. Communists believed that only by transcending our tribal divisions could we all be brothers and sisters and move humanity forwards. Even the national anthem of the communist cause was called l’Internationale. Through this dogmatic approach to anti-tribalism a new form of tribalism was created, one centered around the communist party and its leadership apparatus. Oh, the irony!

Liberal societies have also attempted to eliminate or reduce tribalism. Today, it is all too common hear people say they do not see the color of people’s skin, that they are not racist or that they believe in equality for all. More aggressive efforts around this belief that we can break down artificial barriers has taken the institutional form of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) programs that seek to create opportunity for those who were historically excluded from wealth and power. This modern form of affirmative action was aimed at creating a more balanced representation in power structures. These efforts have received widespread backlash and the recent election in 2024 of Donald Trump and other right wing people around the world. A large part of the population has clearly repudiated the breaking up of their tribe. The most liberal and individualistic of all societies, the United States of America has taken the lead in many ways. My only reasonable conclusion is quite simple: People want tribes.

One of the guiding lights in this DEI effort was the writer Ibrahim X. Mendi who wrote a book titled How to be an Anti-Racist. Without delving into this interesting book, suffice to say that the philosophical framework that he proposes has a number of problems. He attempts to identify all the layers of racism and bias within society and quickly discovers that there are a lot of intersecting layers of shit. Black people in white society are obviously discriminated against, but black men discriminate against black women, black women discriminate against lesbian black women who discriminate against black men. The circular nature of all societies inevitably leads to circular discrimination and when taken to the individual level, we get lost in a sea of bias and tribes. In many ways, people want to feel superior to others and they will find a way to feel that if at all possible. Whether they acknowledge that they are supercilious is an entirely different story. It is impossible to clearly navigate yourself out of such a swamp of bias.

Ultimately, the only way a rational human seeking a “normal” life can operate is to adhere to a tribe that is broadly theirs and then hang on for dear life. This is how we have survived so far and it seems unlikely to change. How many people change their tribe, their religion, their fundamental believes or their social environment when compared with their parents?

This brings me to my main issue, which is the clear and remarkable cohesion of the communities in the face of overwhelming evidence of the most horrific of all human endeavors: genocide. A rational person might make the ridiculous mistake of thinking that a tribe who was subject to genocide only 80 years ago would have an elevated sense of humanity. This tribe would understand the horrors of another tribe trying to wipe them off the face of the planet. This tribe would understand not only what can lead to genocide, but also how other groups would react and how a genocide could be stopped – or not. If you were to make such a mistake, like me, you are excused. What seems to be the case is that being subject to genocide in fact creates the exact opposite effect. The collective intergenerational trauma from one genocide has enabled a next generation to inflict a genocide on others. Looking at history now, this seems stupidly obvious.

Groups of people who are subject to horrible violence have a shared and common response: coalesce. When your group is being attacked the natural human reaction is not to reflect, discuss, or think about the causes of this violence. The reaction is simple and clear, protect the group and reinforce the leadership so that they can do their best to protect the tribe. The examples of such a reaction are too numerous to count. When the British firebombed cities in Germany, they hoped to cause an uprising against Hitler and the Nazis. It had the exact opposite effect – people dug deeper into the Nazi cause. The same failed tactic was employed in Japan. When countries apply sanctions to countries like Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Iran, North Korea or Russia with the hope of starving the leadership and driving an uprising, the exact opposite happens – people rally around the leadership who claim to protect the interests of the nation. This patten has been repeated over and over again and yet we learn nothing. More than anything else, humans are social animals and we will literally kill other people’s children rather than give up our position within our own tribe.

In the current genocide in Gaza I have been astonished by the Jewish community outside of Israel. It would be one thing for Israelis to whole heartedly support the massacre – which they broadly do (thought it is starting to slow), but the support by the North American Jewish Community for the massacre in Gaza has been rock solid. While there are groups such as Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) or Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) who advocate against the massacre of children (crazy!), all of the mainstream Jewish groups continue in December 2024 to push against any restriction whatsoever on ripping children to pieces. The Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) just recently lambasted the Amnesty International conclusion that Israel is committing a genocide and insisted the Canadian government continue its policy of sending military equipment to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Within the religious organizations, almost no synagogue or temples have taken any meaningful action against the genocide or against the mainstream Jewish organizations. Even a highly progressive (on most issues) organization such the Mile-End Chavurah, where I live, refuses to take a position on killing tens or thousands of children or creating the largest group of amputees in history. Tribalism is a very deeply rooted part of society and it seems almost nothing can break its cohesion.

Organizations are difficult things to change. Because organizations are themselves a tribe with a leadership and a member body, they tend to have the same conservative and protective impulses as the broader tribe as the organization itself wants to protect the cohesion of the organization. Whether an organization is religious, secular, political or military in nature, they all seek stability before anything else. If we cannot set high expectations for organizations to take a stand on a moral issue, we could perhaps hope that liberal intellectuals who claim to seek enlightenment would shudder and then act when faced with overwhelming evidence of a genocide being conducted in their name. Self proclaimed luminaries who claim to fight tribalism, such as “anti-religion” television pundit Bill Maher, Harvard Professor Steven Pinker or Physicist David Deutsch have all spent decades claiming that tribalism and violence should be fought against. Yet, they all, still, remain firmly behind Israel as the massacres continue. These big men are in fact, quite small. Personally, I prefer to cross the proverbial Rubicon and distance myself from any tribe who finds it acceptable to kill children, even if that means losing some of my friends and family members as people of my tribe.

It seems very little can be done to prevent tribes from killing each other over and over again with no end in sight. Whether it was the Protestant-Catholic wars in Europe, the Tutsi-Hutu massacres in Rwanda, the communist-capitalist cold war battles or some other tribal conflict, humans have scarcely evolved. I wish I could offer some form of optimism amidst the surging increase in tribal conflicts in Sudan, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Syria, Ukraine, Palestine and elsewhere, but it is difficult to see much hope. The only solace I have found is in reading history and the stories of how despite all our past conflict, there was a slow and steady progress of humanism, with the torch of humanity often carried by a very small minority of people and luminaries from one generation to another. Let us hope that we avoid the worst in the years to come and somehow find a way to reduce tribal tensions and find our common humanity again.