And why not?
On the interconnectedness front, it doesn’t matter a whole heap whether North Korea drops the bomb or China smashes the Pacific fleet while it’s engaged in preparing for Waterworld. It’s all global now, which means that everything matters, which also means that nothing matters.
The purpose of U.S. Pacific Command is no longer to fulfill a prosaic function such as keeping the peace. Like every other arm of the vast government, it exists to spread awareness of the impact of our actions on each other. It is just another ant in a vast ant hive whose sole purpose is to make a better ant hive by reminding everyone that they are ants living in one single blue marble ant hive whether an errant sneeze, an extra plane trip or a picnic of non-locally grown melons can destroy the hive.
“We can’t drive our SUVs, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees,” Obama famously said.
In the age of the social ant, you can’t just do things. There is no you, only the omnipresent interconnected “We” and the nature of being a good we ant is to remind the other ants of all the things that they can’t do, whether it’s drinking large sodas or winning wars.
We are now interconnected. Everything affects everything else. And once you accept that premise, then the individual is done. There is only a flattened world of ant hives where conspicuous sacrifice is the new moral code and no one can do anything they want because it might destroy the world.
Originally published at Sultan Knish.