I have interrupted most of my regular activities a little bit(including some writing)because I want to reflect about what I see on TV and through the media just about every time I look. I see little that looks good, much that is depressing. It is natural for older people to do this and to think “everything was better” way back when. Well, I don’t think everything was better. But some things were. It would be foolish not to acknowledge that.

Soon after Winston Churchill died, American novelist John O’Hara wrote an interesting column. O’Hara, of course, was known as a shocking writer about 2 generations ago because he was frank about sex and a few other things which people hardly noticed. But he was really quite conservative in many of his own opinions, particularly in political matters. In 1964 he began a column that ran in “Newsday”(maybe some other papers picked it up-not certain)It was called “My Turn” and O’Hara certainly took advantage of his turn to say what he wanted to.

I do not have a copy of the column in front of me now, but I believe it began with something like “The departure from this earth of Sir Winston Churchill and the arrival at my house of a pair of handmade shoes from bespoke workshops in London occurred” at about the same time, maybe a day or two apart. O’Hara went on “Nothing could be easier than to connect these two events and relate them to each other and to our time.” This is not word for word but I remember it with some clarity and it is close.

His main point was that things were getting worse and civilization was going downhill. The classy part of life was goiing and being replaced by cheapness, crude behavior and obviously confused and foolish thinking. Without endorsing all of his points or agreeing with him on a lot of them, I think he is worthy of listening to and I have tried to look at today’s world right now and see what I find.

O’Hara said, “We are living in the age of the jerk,” and went on to name a number of examples of jerkish behavior. He meant to be funny, I dare say, but also intended to score some points. There were things such as “It is jerkism for a non-Rabbincal student to wear a beard”.” It is jerkism for a John Bircher to call Eisenhower a communist. It is jerkism to be a communist and it is jerkism to be a John Bircher.”(The John Birch society was a “conservative” group of likely harmless but quite irritating right wing zealots) So he passed around the compliments or, in this case, the criticisms.

I don’t think I’ll use “jerkism” as a descriptive term or or invent one to replace it. I’ll just say what I think about what I hear about the world out there and what, if anything, is to be done.

Just following news of recent weeks, I’d have to say the world is in trouble. The trouble is worse than 1964 when the main problem was the one covered mostly by the term the “Cold War.” This involved some serious dangers, nuclear weapons being the worst, but it also included some security’ The British and French Empires were on their way out, but slowly. There was still stability in some places, British-French holdover standards backed up by US money and military power. But the thing most dangerous to the world as a whole was certainly nuclear weapons.

I would not be so optimistic as to say nuclear weapons are no long a danger. The still are. This has become manifest by the Russian-Ukrainian war and the increasing desperation on both sides, and obvious bad shape both countries are in now. It is also obvious in the middle east, particularly the US-Iranian War which is(apparently according to the Administration)about nuclear weapons among other things. Trump has offered a plethora of choices of what the war is about and they change often. But no sane person wants the Iranian leadership to have access to such power.

Nonetheless, I don’t think these weapons are the worst danger to us now. I think the worst(POTENTIAL, at least)danger now is AI. Such ideas have been bandied about in recent weeks and months by many people, a lot of them intelligent people, some whom work with AI in some direct or indirect way. At worst, some of them believe, AI could take over the whole world. It could eventually(some say fairly soon, some several years off)wipe out human beings because they would have no need for them

Now I am not a scientist or even very good with computers, so I have to take a lot on faith here. But if I understand anything at all about this, it appears that the destiny of the human race could be at stake. It would be easy to be cynical and say “well, big deal,” and likely some will. But that is not a satisfactory answer. It is true we–human beings— invented war, prejudice, and injustice. We also were responsible for Shakespeare, Mother Teresa and Einstein. One could make a reasonable argument that we have done OK so far. It would be a shame if it all disappeared.

I have reflected on this a lot because I am a student of history and a former history instructor. I keep thinking about who is coming after us and what they will think of us, But, wait a minute. If nobody comes after a certain point., there will be no history books, no one to write or read them, no one to understand what history or humanity was. James Baldwin once wrote “I refuse to believe there is no one coming after us.” We would all like to share his confidence.

The idea of human death, an end(or maybe just a change)for all of us is one thing and we are duly and reasonably quite frightened by it. The idea of the end of humanity, however, is frightening in a different way. The idea of the end of humanity is terrifying–all the accomplishment and struggles of man gone, no one left to account for them, appreciate them or even think about them. The most beautiful music and poetry gone, along with the noblest thoughts and no one to know they were ever here.

Scientists tell us that the odds are very strong that there are other civilizations somewhere in the universe–perhaps some of them are like ours. Would they be included in this overall wipe out? Who could say? And if they were they would never know of our glories and questions just as we earth people would never know of theirs. This is beyond thinkable to me, both in the can’t imagine it being true sense and in the too bad to contemplate sense.

There are some people who are now calling for a stop. Some involved in AI directly or by some financial connection are saying it’s time to slow it down, maybe quit pursuing it. Could this be done? There seems to be disagreement on this but there are those who say yes, it could be stopped. All it needs is the will to do it and some straightforward, serious, non-selfish action by a number of governments. Could this happen? I hope so. I am not certain. The two things that appear to appeal most to human egoism–pride and money- are our enemies here, I think. But some kind of action by a number of governments is needed and they would need to work together. I do not know exactly how this should be arranged or organized, But I hope it can be done., And maybe some day years from now, someone will read these lines you are reding now–and appreciate them. But just reading them would be enough.

Regarding other things that are dangers to us I think the next one is leadership around the world. This is somewhat related to the AI danger as mentioned above and I’ll elaborate a little bit on that. In recent years–well, decades–there has been a drift toward authoritarian leadership, left or right, around the globe. There are are “logical” reasons for this but it is a depressing thing to observe and the consequences may be unfortunate.

In “My Turn” O’Hara wrote “Good men and good things vanish.” He likely over-estimated the seriousness of the issue at the time and failed to notice some of the people and things that were going to become important in the near future(Like Simon and Garfunkel and Bob Dylan, for example)Many of these turned out to be good. But the idea still remains, the feeling is still there, and it seems inevitable that sometimes the statement is true.

The main thing that overall has vanished, well, not completely, but been demeaned is the Western concept of individual freedom which necessarily implies at least a fair and constitutionally limited government. It suggests nation states in which the rule of law is observed and the law is fair and does not discriminate according to race, belief systems, etc. It looked as if the US and it allies were going to spread this around the world in the generation or so after the war, but that turned out not to be widely true., Now we have new dictatorships or more dictator-like governments in Egypt and Turkey. The rest of the Middle East is holding it own, but only just and increasingly affected by conduct related to Iran and its proxies.

Eastern Europe has moved back toward right-wing dictatorhip. Italy has its most conservative leader since Mussolini, according to some, (though the PM, Ms Meloni, has at least shown that she has ideas and that she knows how to handle Trump). Marie le Pen, once considered a political loser, is now back and possibly will succeed Macron as French president. In Germany the new AFD Party which, though not outwardly Nazi, seems to lean hard to the right, won an important election recently and though it has not yet taken over the country, it may. Even The British have similar problems. The Conservatives are out of power and apparently without serious ideas or convincing leaders. The Laborites are In power but about as unpopular with the voters as Trump is in the US. Nigel Farage and his right wing “populist” party seem to be emerging as possibly the ruling party the next time the UK changes governments.

This means that all over Europe, also in the Middle East and elsewhere there has been a drift from democratic or at least constitutional and less-repressive governments to just the opposite. This creates an atmosphere in which cooperation will be difficult for the older Western democratic leaning countries(UK, France, Italy, and the US still belong to that group)to negotiate since their negotiating partners will include a number of rightist “populists” who might be hostile to both our ideas and ourselves. Even without considering the AI threat, this does not bode well for the future of the West or the ideas of individual freedom

Now, consider all that and add in the AI threat. We have to start working on the threat and there is much to be done pretty quickly. Then imagine all the things that could go wrong in the Middle East or Europe(or here) If we don’t reach some kind of detente of cooperation with other leading nations, particularly those strong in the economy issue and learned in computer issues and the Internet, it will be more difficult.

What I have heard and seen very recently has some encouragement in it. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Chris Coons both sounded seriously concerned and determined in TV interviews. So have some others from both parties. So there is hope. But there needs to be quick action coming from the hope. My own hope is that the world will see more of it very soon.

O’Hara ended his column with commenting on the ending of the hand made shoes which would no longer be available. He said that in the future there would be no place for the hand made article. And he added that he didn’t see any new Churchills on the horizon.

Neither do I. But I guess we can still hope, at least a little bit.