And in the End……

The hundredth monkey effect is a hypothetical phenomenon in which a new behavior or idea is spread rapidly by unexplained means from one group to all related groups once a critical number of members of one group exhibit the new behavior or acknowledge the new idea.

There was a great little movie that came out in 1979 called Time after Time. The plot of the movie was H.G. Wells invents a time machine where Wells ends up pursuing Jack the Ripper to 20th Century San Francisco. Before chasing the Ripper from 1880’s London to 1979 San Francisco, Wells was convinced that in the future, there would be no more wars, murders, war, or violence of any kind. People would ‘evolve’ and all agree on the folly of war and violence. When Wells arrives in San Francisco, he finds that the world he has traveled to is more aligned with the behavior of Jack the Ripper than it is to the predictions of H.G. Wells.

The idea that as people evolve, they will reject violence is as quaint and unrealistic as H.G. Wells’ time machine. The last war should have been World War I. The sheer devastation of that war and the millions of dead should have convinced every country and its leaders that war was an antiquated way for civilized people to solve their differences. And the world tried. The Paris Peace Conference, the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations were three of five treaties signed following World War I

Of course, World War I was followed by World War II and instead of nations resolving their differences without violence, the exact opposite happened. Violence has increased exponentially in the world with no remote indications of abatement.

Which is why the world in 2023 is more dangerous and depressing than at any time since World War II. On a micro level, theft, rape, murder, and suicide are all on the upswing. On a macro level, events in Ukraine and the Middle East are threatening to put us all on the precipice of World War III.

Regardless of your position on these issues or which side you think is right, the victims are always the same. Babies, the elderly, the infirmed and innocent families always end up paying the price.

H.G. Wells believed that humans would evolve along with technology to see the folly of war. But as Wells came to learn, technology advanced, while humans as a species have regressed. Instead, technology has been used to make killing more efficient.

When enough people demand peace, perhaps there will come a day when Palestinians can live in their own country self-governed for the benefit of the Palestinian people. And just maybe, Israeli’s will live in peace without the threat of bombs and terrorism in their midst and the Ukrainian people can live in peace while the Russian people can express themselves without fear of retribution.

The more people demand from their governments that they are allowed to live in peace, the harder it will be to take nations to war. Someday that hundredth monkey is going to tip the scales towards peace.