Blog on Capitalism
Pre-empting Henry Hyde's Nightmare

We, living in capitalist countries, are becoming aware of a world which seems not to appreciate all we have done for them. There is a growing antipathy toward ‘The West’ around the world.

As Henry Hyde said, on October 3 2001, weeks after the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York:

Let us begin by accepting there is no single enemy to be defeated, no one network to be eliminated. Al-Qa’eda is but our most prominent opponent, but its outlook is shared by many others who are equally committed to our destruction…
We know now that we have permanent, mortal enemies…

If we have 'mortal enemies' then we need to know what is driving apparently intelligent, resourceful people into opposing us, even at the risk of their own lives.

Where is this disenchantment coming from?

It doesn't matter that you and I wish that things were different. Unless we understand what is driving people to become our enemies we are likely to continue creating the very circumstances which seem to drive people to:

seize upon our vulnerabilities to bloody us, to murder our citizens, to commit horror for the purpose of forcing horror upon us…

How truly sad it will be if we and our children have to live our lives in a state of permanent apprehension, committed to Henry Hyde's vision of the future:

Our strategy, plans, and actions must be comprehensive, deliberate and formulated for the long-term. We must be prepared not only to protect ourselves from new assaults, not only to intercept and frustrate them, but to eliminate new threats at their source. This must be a permanent campaign, similar to the ancient one humanity has waged against disease and its never-ending assault upon our defenses.

This site is committed to exploring the conditions which have produced consequences like these in so many places around the world.

It doesn't have all the 'answers', it merely attempts to set the scene so that you and I, together, might use the skills which our education has given us to to tease out the reasons and devise means of  addressing the issues we uncover.

I hope you will contribute your insights, as I will contribute mine, to addressing a problem which has already cost countless lives and trillions of dollars.

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Further Resources:
Why 'Third World'?:
Explanation of use of the term 'Third World' in preference to such terms as 'Developing World' or 'Global South'.
Anomie, Terror and Revitalisation:
What happens when communities are disrupted, their forms of law and order dismantled, and their understanding of reality undermined?
How Born Again Christians Rescued Capitalism:
How did capitalism gain its evangelical force and missionary zeal?
How did the small land-holders, small business people and those with whom they identified become the driving force of capitalism?
Subsistence and Status:
What happens when a community constantly expands its resource requirements?
How do communities manage to live within the resource limitations of their environments?
Reciprocity and Exchange:
What are the kinds of relationship which can exist in a community?
How do relationships affect the ways goods and services are exchanged; how does exchange of goods and services affect relationships?
Ideology and Reality:
What is 'reality' and what happens when your 'reality' is challenged and your understanding of your world distorted and eroded?
Capitalism and Third World Nations: Global demands, local political realities:
Why do non-Western nations so often seem to be riddled with corruption and unstable?
The nature of 'Work':
Why do people in Western communities spend most of their lives 'working'?
Is this the way everyone on earth organises life?
History of the Emergence of Capitalism:
Where did 'capitalism' come from?
What historical events in Medieval Europe resulted in Western Europe being re-organised and moving from Feudalism to Capitalism?
Common classificatory principles of metaphor and proverb:
How do human beings organise reality and then interact with the reality they have organised?
Complete Home Library: Information and Downloads
(Includes a 'demonstration library' named 'Anthropology and the Western World' which has these and other articles in it.)