Highlights of a book from award-winning author James Gander attack the coming unprecedented changes in population size, mobility, worldwide communications, cultural interactions, and unsustainable economic and environmental challenges, and shares observations that will promote solutions.

1. We are in the early stages of the greatest transformation
in human affairs since history began.
We are in no way ready for it.

2. Context: An Assessment of where we were,
where we are, and where we’re heading
PHILOSOPHICAL DIVERSIONS is a book that
looks at the coming unprecedented
changes in population size, mobility,
worldwide communications, cultural
interactions, and unsustainable economic
and environmental challenges, and shares
observations that will promote solutions.
About the Author
James E. Gander has held senior positions in
business, international institutions, the
Government of Canada and the United Nations.
He was awarded a Centennial Canada Medal for
outstanding public service.

3. Contents
• Setting the Perspective
• The Values We Live By
• Economic Foundations
• Personal Beliefs and Behaviour
• The Spiritual Dimension
• Politics and Geopolitics
• Conclusion
PONDERATIONS & PROFUNDUMS
“When you are walking towards the
edge of a cliff, staying the course is
not a good policy.”
“A great tragedy is that the
American people are generous, kind
and helpful, but…these qualities are
more than offset by the ruthless,
imperialistic policies carried out by
their government.”
“The spectacular achievements of
science, technology and
communication have not been
matched by similar advances in
human society.”

4. The Crises
• The traditional confidence of the American
people has been badly shaken: less than 50%
support present policies or expect them to
improve
• The same number are against the current
military policy, and see no chance for
improvement
• The regimes that America supports are
repressive dictatorships hated by their people
• New national economies are eroding American
prosperity, while income imbalance keeps
Americans from rising
• The biggest failure of all is our failure to realize
the magnitude and complexity of our
problems; this is blinding us to the need for
heroic transformations.
PONDERATIONS & PROFUNDUMS
Emotions are stronger than reasons.
That’s why we get into so much
trouble.
Supporting our troops is one thing;
supporting the war is something
else.
It’s not just terrorists that are the
problem, it’s how we respond to
them and generate more.
What will happen when China
replaces the U.S. as the largest
economic power, creates the most
pollution, and makes greater and
greater demands on the world’s
resources?

5. The Perspective
• The old imperialist empires created such
rivalry that they destroyed one another
and set the stage for unending conflict
• The stock market crash, the depression,
the turmoil of communism and the rise of
fascism shattered our smug beliefs
• The Cold War followed by factional wars
have created a climate of “perpetual war”
• Every person is exposed to an ever-widening
circle of influences, until the
whole globe affects our lives
PONDERATIONS & PROFUNDUMS
“I’m not as young as I used to be,
but then I never was.”
“The old values that made a stable
society have not been replaced by
new ones.”
“Business and financial institutions
ask for billions of dollars of
assistance when they are in
difficulties. Why shouldn’t poor
people seek help?”
“The news we don’t get is often
more important than the news we
get.”

6. The Values We Live By
• Terrorism is deliberately being used in the
West as a bogeyman to harness people
into a political agenda
• Central authority and the common good
have lost ground to a belief in ‘doing my
own thing’; whatever the merits of that, it
creates tremendous problems
• The increasing volume of activities creates
more complex systems that are more
prone to breakdowns
• The energy problem is not so much
finding new energy sources as greatly
reducing demand
PONDERATIONS & PROFUNDUMS
Tolerance should not simply be
indifference.
One of the most destructive forces is
a sense of superiority, }”I’m right
and everyone else is wrong.” True
superiority should lead to greater
service, not greater ruthlessness.
In looking at much that goes o in the
world, an appropriate question is,
“Where does stupidity end and
insanity begin? Insanity has many
forms we call normal behaviour. For
many people, being in their right
mind raises definitional problems.

7. Values (2)
• Great leaders are non-conformists, who
emerge to achieve a fundamental change.
Currently our crises is not yet clearly
recognized enough to trigger coalescence
behind a visionary leader
• President Bush, largely because of his own
policies, presided over the beginning of the
decline of American power.
• American policy seems to run on bogeymen,
resulting in needless death everywhere from
Vietnam through Nicaragua to Iraq. Where
America gives military help, its presence has
weakened those involved.
PONDERATIONS & PROFUNDUM
History is very much a function of the
leadership that is available. The “c’s” of
leadership are certainty of purpose,
conviction, capability for effective
action, and cooperation from the
people.
The Marshall Plan leadership is where
America made substantial contributions
to help Western Europe recover from
WW II. It made an essential contribution
to stability and progress, and was an
example of what positive, creative
initiatives can do.
Thought is rarely given to the high
moral and ethical principles that would
have demonstrated the true greatness
of the United States.

8. The Economic Foundations
• Great differences in economic structure
will now require transformations on a
scale never before witnessed in so short a
time
• The mega-corporations require levels of
consumption that are clearly
unsustainable
• We are faced with establishing a
completely new combination of private
enterprise and government activities that
are complementary and that protect the
public interest
PONDERATIONS & PROFUNDUMS
The greater the mess, the fatter the
contracts to those making the mess.
The problem with locking up
crooked business people who have
stolen millions, is that they take
more taxpayers money keeping
them in jail.
In some countries young people can
make a better living as soldiers or
going through city garbage dumps
to salvage recyclables than farming
or working in the city. Something
wrong here.

9. Economic Foundations: Back to the Future
• Even if they cannot solve all of the
problems, some changes require
backtracking to less destructive
lifestyles
• Smaller, more efficient cars are joined
by energy savings from a change in
lifestyle to more use of bicycles and
walking
• The use of wind power, solar power,
biomass and recycling are all local
responses to the national crises
PONDERATIONS & PROFUNDUMS
We talk about sustainable
development while living
unsustainable lives.
The more public support for wrong
policies, the greater the disaster.
We reply far too much on attempts
to dominate; on violence,
destruction and attempted mastery
over others.

10. Personal Beliefs and Behaviours
• More people are killed by internal
violence than by terrorists; a major
objective should be to reduce those
destructive forces
• Two programs show how a sense of
achievement could be provided:
• People Empowering People (PEP) would take
remedial action before trouble begins
• Mi Casa in Guatemala has fed and trained
hundreds of orphans to go on the universities
and careers
PONDERATIONS & PROFUNDUMS
Obsession with power, either
personal or national, deprives
society of the vital energies and
resources to improve civilization or
even sustain it.
Genetic engineering can tailor-make
kids but it can’t tailor-make adults.
That’s the rub.
One small consolation is that a
suicide bomber can’t do it again.

11. Personal Beliefs (2)
• A proper measure of ‘poverty’ is not
set by income but by the level of
struggle it takes for low-income people
to advance
• 100 of the world’s richest people have
incomes larger than the 100-million
poorest
• Providing proper support to the
exploited and to the imprisoned, would
produce a tremendous net benefit to
society
PONDERATIONS & PROFUNDUMS
The biggest of all our problems is
our failure to appreciate their
magnitude and complexity, the
absence of any idea of how to begin
to deal with these transformations,
even if we did recognize them; the
lack both of leadership and a
concerned dedicated public to insist
that we do better, and that we can
do better.
Once we give up our principles of
fairness, justice, the rule of law,
generosity and humaneness, the
enemy has won. We have gone far
in destroying the values of our
society.

12. The Spiritual Dimension
• Most people have a feeling that they are part
of something more than just their daily lives
• In spite of the fanatics, all religions seek
peaceful, productive lives; conflicts arise when
the hierarchies collide
• One difficulty with many who claim to be
Christian is that they show little evidence of
having read the New Testament
• We are not called on to destroy, but to show a
better way
• The spiritual dimension must lead to practical
actions
PONDERATIONS & PROFUNDUMS
A good thing to remember – a better
thing to do: work on the
construction gang, not the wrecking
crew.
The first hundred years of our lives
are a learning experience. Too bad
that’s about all the time we have.
Events are not just what is
happening. More basically, they are
about motives, ambitions,
understanding, the presence or
absence of principle, and what
follows from the events.

13. Politics and Geopolitics
• National dedication can produce
outstanding transformation: within two
years of the start of WWII Canada had
created an army, navy and air-force, and
mobilized both public and private sectors
• But a series of wrong-headed policies can
be counter-productive
• Cold War dominated by over-reaction
• Loss of Vietnam, Cambodia and East Asia
• Central and South America destabilized
• Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine destroyed
• Former partners are declared enemies
PONDERATIONS & PROFUNDUMS
The tremendous shift in economic
power, especially toward China and
India, must be accommodated one
way or another. That
accommodation is made far worse
because their economic
development rests on much the
same structure that we have
demonstrated to be unsustainable
and destructive.
The U.S. has assumed erroneously
that regimes you don’t like must be
destroyed by war or subversive
intervention of some sort.

14. Politics and Geopolitics (2)
• When America has 900 military bases in 153
countries, it is not fighting for its freedom – it is
running an empire
• It influence is however waning, as new economic
forces from China, India, and elsewhere compete
• Think of what benefits could have been provided
to society if a small portion of America’s military
budget had been spent on infrastructure, health
and education
• A contrast: focussing on civil projects, India has
unified itself and pulled its economy forward;
Pakistan, run by the military, has lagged behind
• Most people are content to live in their small
sphere of activity; larger forces will not allow this
to continue, and will pull all of us into an active
role in the global assembly of interests, rivalries
and disruptions
PONDERATIONS & PROFUNDUMS
The Iraq war and other violence are
symptomatic of a weakening of
democracy, especially in the U.S. and
U.K. The people had no say in going
to war, have almost no meaningful
information or understanding of iit,
and have mounted no democratic
action to stop it. Where is
democracy?
Many people in or near political and
economic power profit substantially
from a crises and its continuation.
There is more incentive to initiate a
crises and prolong it than to resolve
it.

15. Conclusion
• We are only at the early stages of the greatest
transformation in history
• Through our destructive, exploitive
imperialistic policies, we have created much of
the hatred and violence that is directed against
the West
• As long as we continue in our present course,
the hatred and violence will increase
• We need to reverse course; to reach for the
side of our nature that is positive, creative,
constructive, generous and tolerant
• This means switching our social efforts to the
support of education, healthcare, and the
creation of meaning for our citizens
PONDERATIONS & PROFUNDUMS
We try to establish our status and
position in the world by a display of
wealth and an impressive living
style. Wrong priorities. Our worth is
measured by what we do with our
time and our talent, especially how
we make ourselves useful: what we
can do to help others and the world.
The epilogue to this book will be
written every day, week, month and
year as time progresses and reveals
the consequences of these past and
present acts and how we respond to
them.

16. Should you make the mistake of wanting to obtain this book, it is available in e-pub
format at:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/james-e-gander/philosophical-diversions/ebook/product-21774371.html
Thank you for your consideration.
James Gander

17. Values
PONDERATIONS & PROFUNDUMS