One important way that cause-and-effect weaves its way in the human world is through the operation of contagion - a phenomenon visible throughout history.
Something like the recent "Arab Spring" cannot be understood well without a recognition of the reality of contagion. After events in Tunisia brought down an authoritarian regime in that nation, long-standing regimes in other Arab countries - in Egypt, in Libya, in Syria - also came under popular challenge.
Another illustration of contagion involves the cascade of events in Eastern Europe near the end of the Cold War - the fall of the Berlin Wall, followed immediately thereafter by the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and onward to other nations in the region. That same contagious example of people's freeing themselves from oppressive regimes contributed, months later, to the rise of the Democracy Movement in China (that movement which was crushed so brutally by the Tiananmen massacre).
History is full of such examples -- the good, the bad, and the ugly -- of movements spreading by people being moved by what they see other people feeling and doing.
We are animals wired for contagion. Try yawning in the presence of a group of people and see what happens. People tend to laugh when others laugh, smile when they smile, cry when others around them do likewise. Anger is contagious, and so are good vibes. And as we civilized humans have organized ourselves into nations and as we watch each other on a global scale, contagion operates also on that larger scale.
Which is all the more reason why we should not want a spokesman for bigotry - an apostle for Us-vs.-Them passions - to become the leader of our nation. To paraphrase John Donne: "No nation is an island, Entire unto itself, Every nation is a piece of the planet, A part of the humankind's global civilization." And that is especially true when that nation is the one that long has been called, "The leader of the free world."
Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for us all.
Something like the recent "Arab Spring" cannot be understood well without a recognition of the reality of contagion. After events in Tunisia brought down an authoritarian regime in that nation, long-standing regimes in other Arab countries - in Egypt, in Libya, in Syria - also came under popular challenge.
Another illustration of contagion involves the cascade of events in Eastern Europe near the end of the Cold War - the fall of the Berlin Wall, followed immediately thereafter by the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and onward to other nations in the region. That same contagious example of people's freeing themselves from oppressive regimes contributed, months later, to the rise of the Democracy Movement in China (that movement which was crushed so brutally by the Tiananmen massacre).
History is full of such examples -- the good, the bad, and the ugly -- of movements spreading by people being moved by what they see other people feeling and doing.
Which is all the more reason why we should not want a spokesman for bigotry - an apostle for Us-vs.-Them passions - to become the leader of our nation. To paraphrase John Donne: "No nation is an island, Entire unto itself, Every nation is a piece of the planet, A part of the humankind's global civilization." And that is especially true when that nation is the one that long has been called, "The leader of the free world."
Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for us all.
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