April 3 2025: What is humanity’s greatest need?

(artwork: ‘Liberation dove’ by Incé Husain)

A: I think that one of the important things is we need to work collaboratively and find sustainable solutions. It could be about climate change or something else we lack. One thing I see in my studies is lack of mental health interventions. One of the greatest figures that come to mind is Greta Thunberg, and she says we need a lot of emotional intelligence and coming together to fight for solutions on these issues. I feel like us coming together and having empathy and emotional intelligence and thinking about sustainable solutions are humanity’s greatest needs. A mixture of both and not putting emotions inside.

B: Which would basically lead to pragmatic solutions that also acknowledge everyone needs?

A: Yes.

B: The “what is humanity’s greatest need” is actually a question I stole from a scholarship application. There was one person who answered it who wanted to be a lawyer. She believed the answer was to be more comfortable disagreeing with others rather than quieting down due to cancel culture. She said “we need to get better at having disagreements.”

C: I don’t think I really agree with that. As a species, we are constrained by different biases to deal with disagreements. The more cultivated we become, the more sophisticated we become, the more ways we can be engaged with agreements and disagreements. The problem is that there is a class in society - the exploiting capitalist class - who don’t give a fuck about discourse. They always uphold the sacred property right and they will not allow it.

B: So you’re saying that the premise of a discussion is not there, and therefore it wouldn’t make sense to call it humanity’s greatest need?

C: It’s not there and things are headed downwards in a critical direction because the poor cannot fight it. They don’t give a fuck. Our critical thinking skills are not the problem here. There is a structure in place and years of policies and getting more points and ripping off workers from any means of resistance and the more we go, the harder it is to protest. I don’t see how. It comes from a place of having a liberality of society where everyone is happy and sweet and we can all have civilized conversations but it simply hides the class nature of society.

D: I think the world needs more consciousness - as in being politically literate. I read about social anarchism and I have not stopped thinking about that “Party as Articulator” piece. I think consciousness and dealing with material conditions and social structures, and having solidarity, and also “party as the articulator” and having that collaboration are the greatest needs. I don’t think it’s about having discussions, but about leftists wanting the same thing yet having different means of getting to the same ends. I think that being able to work together, even though the means are different, is very important to get to the collective end - liberation. 

A: Adding to your point about helping bringing up disagreements, on whether there is a structure to be put in place and there is a perfect scenario. What C said - I do feel like disagreements would help us build a social connection and that emotional intelligence. I think it creates the social aspect that we have and what makes humans unique. It also shows you how people think in different perspectives, even in ones you haven’t considered. Like promoting innovation. I think making disagreements an acceptable thing is something that humanity lacks.

B: I think this idea about disagreements doesn’t only apply to an entire structure but also to people in a shared solidarity context. People with a common background also have massive disagreements. I think we can apply the need to be better at disagreeing to a smaller scale, not just a larger sense, so we can cultivate on a smaller field before we push back in general.

C: I’m not disagreeing with that, but I just don’t think this is the biggest thing that humanity needs. John Rawls has this idea about “reasonable pluralism” - that people follow a common project, we are all one, and we are on a campaign for social justice but we have our disagreements about different things. Rawls’ idea is that, given how complex reality is and how limited human cognitive complexity is, we end up in a level of pluralism that is not unreasonable. It has been a part of human society, the cooperative projects and human nature. You cannot assume that people have similar views of what is a good life or what is a doctrine of good, it is not necessary for them to agree on principles of justice. If we have basic freedoms and organization of society, the disadvantaged can also benefit. My point is that reasonable pluralism is there, it works, but what I see here is the question of “are we putting too much pressure on human nature for us to think about a better or ideal society?” The trouble here is that we know about how to resolve disagreements, and that some people are just biased or born into a Zionist community, and we just have to calm ourselves down and have discussions about this. The problem with humanity is that we can’t discuss with Zionists. I don’t think that’s a black and white scenario. Even in an ideal socialist society, the dictators and fascists are still there, but they would not be leaders, but in political asylums or in basements. We don’t have to bring maniacs to the table and have an agreement with them. There will always be some Dick Cheneys and Saddam Husseins in the world. We just have to find a process in society so that they will never have the nuclear code.

A: So when you say that we are putting too much pressure on human nature for the betterment of society - what do you mean by that?

C: We should not expect a political project or movement to maximize disagreement and to deal with it to make sure that political movement is pushing society in the right direction. I don’t think that it’s even a rational agreement most of the time that brings about positive solutions. Even with the abolition of slavery in the United States, it wasn’t due to the goodheartedness of Abraham Lincoln, but about a system based on human labor. The conflict boiled to a point where it became a Civil War. Even after the Russian Revolution, it wasn’t the goodheartedness of the peasants to support the socialists, but it was hunger that pushed them to encourage land reform and whatever the Bolsheviks would give us. It’s not that we have to agree on basic stuff. I feel like material interests is more important in coordinating the masses. But it might be a moot point because you guys might be more interested in discussing about a group of people who are doing a political project rather than a historical project. I’m a philosopher so I put it into a grand scheme of things.

D: I don’t think that dealing with disagreements is the largest thing in the universe. But I see that with organizations, there are so many organizations doing so much stuff. Non-profits, unions, all in Southwestern Ontario. They all ultimately want the same thing. I can speak to housing initiatives where the goal is that everyone should be housed and no one should be evicted. The issue is that some of these groups are in conflict because the leaders are in conflict while they easily could be working together. It’s these petty grievances and egos that end up making any political action less effective than they could be. The ends are the same but the means are different, people disagree on the means, and there is no solidarity to get to the ends as efficiently as they could. And I think a lot of Canada is like that now, or Southern Ontario. Unions are not working together due to differences or not coordinated due to lack of effort. You can’t do a lot of solidarity work or strikes, general strikes.

C: Is there a law?

D: I don’t know but it might be written. Union motions get smashed all the time by the government. Train strikes, postal strikes, then there’s also solidarity reasons, like people trying to make a coordinated effort but can’t due to disagreements. These need to be overcome to build any strong political movement in the left in Ontario.

E: I noticed the exact same pattern and it’s frustrating.

D: You have to work with people you don’t like.

B: This is a question that I think is an undercurrent of the discussion so far: does collaboration require that people agree? D, you said that people derail their own missions by disagreeing with people with the same missions. Is it possible to work with people you disagree with and collaborate? In a more nuanced way of asking, what is the ideal ratio of people who share the same common goal but disagree and those who are fully in agreement - in goal and means - for having the most victory? I think we need both, but what is the best balance? If we agree too much, we might miss new ideas that could faster lead us to the goal. But if we disagree too much, we might not be effective at all.

A: When you asked if collaboration requires agreement - I think at the end, agreement is required, but it isn’t required in the process. Maybe coming to a compromise and learning how to compromise or adopt new solutions is part of the process. But I think there is a level to the disagreement -I don’t know what level - that would be a dealbreaker. I think, at the very end, we must agree. I think that it’s similar to how the jury has to come to a unanimous decision for a verdict. At first, people might disagree, but they all have to agree. People might be able to come to a different agreement that everyone is collectively more comfortable with. Maybe if ten of twelve jury members agreed to the death penalty while the other two disagreed, they can choose a different punishment.

B: So a long time ago, we did Circles on the Rome Statute (see take 1 and take 2). Today, Hungary allowed Netanyahu to freely enter the country, and chose to exit the International Criminal Court so that it is legally allowed for them to do that. The Al Jazeera headline literally says: “Hungary announces decision to exit International Criminal Court as Israel’s Netanyahu, subject of an ICC arrest warrant, visit”.

A: I was looking at the tariffs. Because the US imposed 17% tariffs on Israel, the Israelis retaliated with 34%.

(Laughter)

B: I do think about collaboration all the time. I wonder what would it take - what disruptive concrete thing, not an ideological coming together - for organizations that have the worst relations possible to collaborate?

E: Aliens.

C: I take issue to that. Like whatever country, nothing could bring two peoples with two different values and two different ideas working together. It’s about two ruling classes, two different strategies to work together.

B: I’m not talking about bridging ideological divides like ruling classes and differing strategies. I’m talking about something concrete. What is so disruptive that it would cause them to work together? The possible answers to this are infinite. But I think it’s a very interesting question because the null hypothesis - that nothing in the entire universe could bring them together - has so much gravity. It implies there is nothing that could ever unite them, or there is nothing ever concrete enough to let them heal. If we decide that, it shows a massive limit of our species.

E: I don’t think it’s nothing, but everyone depends so much on individual divides. Maybe everyone can gang up together on one thing.

B: We could take it even to an individual level. What if I had such a massive divide with a family member that we chose never to speak again and cut of any semblance of a tie? Is there anything that could bring us together again, to break the fierce ideological severance?

A: Yeah there is. My mom says “the impossible is possible”. I would think it is.

C: I think that E talked about it and there might not be a way that all these conflicts could be generalized into a single rule.

B: The question is not about whether there is a general rule, but whether it is even possible at all, on any scale? Like you brought up Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh having solidarity over the tariffs despite their histories.

D: The thing is that there are absolutely wild conditions that bring people together. It would be very weird, and there would be very specific conditions. You basically have to imagine a state being so different and that’s what makes it difficult.

C: In this specific case, do we want to discuss the specific motivations of what Trump is doing?

E: They’re trying to create that much noise so they can get things done in the background.

D: I think it’s also that Trump is working on different rules for imperialism. I think it’s a 20th century model and pre-globalization of materials and acquiring them. The majority of materials in America were made inside. The set of rules he’s working on doesn’t exist anymore. There’s globalism and trade. There are things that are not produced in America and we can’t force them to produce it because the ruling class allowed for this globalism to happen.

A: I heard that because of the financial strain that is happening, the US is trying to get cash flow in. 

D: Exactly. He said he’ll make other countries pay for it. Economists would say that they don’t, but it would be the consumers who would.

C: One thing I’ve heard in some discussions is the argument that there is this popular story about what Trump is doing - it’s called the Madman Story. He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing and this is just a “Madman Strategy”. I don’t subscribe to it; if you look at it carefully, there is a method in the madness. He’s just trying to invent a new way of managing American capitalism and imperialism.

B: A form that no longer exists, is built on outdated rules of imperialism and the world order, as D said.