Today is another sad day for people who do not identify with their country, but rather with humanity as a whole. We have had several such days this year: the Brexit crisis, the ongoing warfare in the Middle East, and now the election of Trump.

I feel very strongly that my internationalism is something which is logical and important, and I want to find some evidence to back it up. The best I can do, and it really is just anecdata, is to pick the example of our astronauts. This quote from Rakesh Sharma, who spend eight days in space on a joint mission between India and the Soviet Union in 1984:

“Anyone who goes to space tried to look at his own country first, but soon it appears that there is no boundary between the countries and the entire world is one family where our destinies are integrated.”

Rakesh Sharma, in the India Express

There are many similar stories from scientist astronauts who have spent time on the International Space Station. I am, apparently, an astronaut at heart. Not bad company!

Having slicked my gut feeling with an unsatisfactory coating of legitimacy, I’ll get on to what I really wanted to say: people really don’t like this wooly liberal viewpoint. It is a rejection of the internationalisation (or globalisation) of economies that has caused the vexing set of democratic results this year, and a rejection of the multicultural and tolerant thesis that fuels the daesh/Russia/NATO conflict, and the rise in racist abuse and intimidation in the U.K., that is tearing through too much of the world.

Since this is the domain of politics and morality, there are no correct answers, mathematical truth has left us stranded and we are stuck with convincing people to behave peacefully, by political argument or coercive law. And goodness me is my side worse at this than the other! When Labour introduced the laws against hate speech in the U.K., it took the form of harsh criminal law. It was an assumption that anyone who objected was a racist and could be dismissed, indeed it was almost a challenge to invite people to deny it. I refer you to this article on what some Americans call liberal smugness.

We can do better than that: we can persuade and reason our way to a more civil discourse. If you read the conventional news, you’ll notice a good deal of bias in the setting the content is placed in: how the interviewer phrases their questions, and which logical assumptions both sides seem to agree on. Now, don’t get me wrong: interviewers asking people to justify the construction of separated nations every time a politician makes an assumption that people generally agree on, e.g. each country should have an army, would get boring very quickly.

So, I have resolved to write on this blog giving you the slant: when you want to have those fundamental assumptions challenged, come here to the gym for political opinions and see if I can melt your brain with my take on the news.

PS I really do want to be an astronaut. 🚀