Articles on PR for People

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” The quote in my title (above) is how Donald Trump was once characterized by his sister – a federal judge.   No kidding. Phineas Taylor Barnum was the nineteenth century self-described “showman” (he seems to have invented that job category) who made a fortune promoting celebrated hoaxes with gullible audiences.  Barnum himself marveled at how willingly the American public “submits to a clever humbug.” 

Between the growing environmental crisis, extreme economic inequality and global poverty, a long list of social needs that are unfunded, or underfunded, and, not least, the dysfunctional or corrupt political regimes in many countries, our species is in genuine peril.  And it’s entirely a self-made crisis.  Yet this is precisely why there is reason for hope.

Let’s begin with some political theory. Aristotle, in his great treatise, the Politics, concluded that there are, basically, only two different kinds of governments in terms of the outcomes for a society — those that serve the common good, or the public interest, and those that have been co-opted to serve the self-interests of the people who hold political power. 

Evolution and ethics may seem to be incompatible, perhaps even an oxymoron.  Isn’t natural selection all about individual competition and winner take all?  Logically, the end should justify the means, ethically speaking.   As I noted in a previous blog item on the “Survival of the Fittest,” this model is totally deficient.  Complex human societies have evolved as a cooperative enterprise, a “superorganism”, and our relationships with one another are highly relevant to the well-being of both the individual members and the whole.