Wednesday, April 28, 2004
A long boring post --
Just now I was in the file room and on the radio there was a guy, some consultant with the Dept. of Defense, who was going on that the best way to deal with so-called "rogue" nations is to convince them that their needs are better served if they are good citizens of the global economy. He calls it "interconnectedness".
China was his primary example. China has become more democratic because of the pressure exerted by its global trading partners to be more open.
This method of intergrating nations into the world economic fold so as to tame them can also be applied to Libya, N. Korea, and, you guessed, Iraq.
In Iraq, the goal, as he explained it, is to make it in the best interest of the man on the street to go along with the rebuilding process rather than to oppose it. This could also go for Palestine, I suppose.
This makes no sense whatsoever at all and just goes to show how simpleminded this administration is. Think back to when Rumsfeld, Cheney et al. said our troops would be greeted as liberators.
Why didn't that happen?
Well, the problem is that people don't think rationally as groups. When John Q. al-Public sees tanks rolling down the way, his mental process is not -- this will enhance my economic opportunities and improve infrastructure, it's -- I am being invaded by a foreign power.
The most powerful forces that determine how a people act, or react, especially to a crisis, are fear, nationalism, and the vis inertiae. Not foresight, reason, and patience.
Even though Iraq is a shithole, it's their shithole. And they would rather run their shithole their way than have it be run better by somebody else. That's human nature.
The same goes for us in the U.S. Outsourcing is bad because Americans lose their jobs. Forget that America's economic preeminence in the world is built on globalization and that it is unclear what net effect on jobs outsourcing has. People losing jobs can be very easily counted. The higher quality of life outsourcing allows for everyone by lowering prices is not so easy to put a number on, or, for that matter, easy to understand. It doesn't help that we are losing jobs to people of a different race.
Basically I know I'm a broken record, but the one thing I believe very strongly is that people do not act because of rational calculations of costs and benefits they make, but because of their culture, religion, beliefs, prejudices, ignorances, history, whatever else you want to throw in. That goes doubly for groups of people.
I'm not criticizing. Groups play it safe and want to stick to the status quo because it is a known commodity. Groups that change course radically because a rational process has told them that it is beneficial to do so run the risk of being wrong.
Another important factor is how "close" something is to me. If my brother dies, I think differently than my neighbor, differently than someone in Timbuktu I have never met. I am more offended by oppression against Catholics, being Catholic, than Protestants, than Jews. One dead American is worth 100,000 Iraqis. I am more interested in how much money I have in my pocket than the federal debt. How prominent is something in my mind? How important is it to me, now?
Most important is group allegiance -- be it nationalism, tribalism, Yankee fan-ism, Red Sox fan-ism, I'm tall-ism Powerful enough to make 13 year old boys strap bombs to their chest and grown men to leave their families and go fight wars. People get into fights over sports teams. Allegiance to religion is perhaps the most powerful force ever. Funny, the most abstract, least concrete, practically useless, impossible to prove institutions are the most able to lead and inspire masses of people.
Adam Ferguson said that nations define themselves by what they are not and who they hate. Every quality they posses is a virtue, the opposite, a vice. This is essential to their identity as a group. The defense of the group is essential to the survival of the individual. Iraqis are not Americans, they're Iraqis, so why would they want us to govern them and change them?
Answer -- they don't.
There is a tipping point when common sense trumps group psychology. We just haven't gotten there yet. To think we would be greated as liberators, and to base our post-war occupation plans on that premise, was dumb.
|
Just now I was in the file room and on the radio there was a guy, some consultant with the Dept. of Defense, who was going on that the best way to deal with so-called "rogue" nations is to convince them that their needs are better served if they are good citizens of the global economy. He calls it "interconnectedness".
China was his primary example. China has become more democratic because of the pressure exerted by its global trading partners to be more open.
This method of intergrating nations into the world economic fold so as to tame them can also be applied to Libya, N. Korea, and, you guessed, Iraq.
In Iraq, the goal, as he explained it, is to make it in the best interest of the man on the street to go along with the rebuilding process rather than to oppose it. This could also go for Palestine, I suppose.
This makes no sense whatsoever at all and just goes to show how simpleminded this administration is. Think back to when Rumsfeld, Cheney et al. said our troops would be greeted as liberators.
Why didn't that happen?
Well, the problem is that people don't think rationally as groups. When John Q. al-Public sees tanks rolling down the way, his mental process is not -- this will enhance my economic opportunities and improve infrastructure, it's -- I am being invaded by a foreign power.
The most powerful forces that determine how a people act, or react, especially to a crisis, are fear, nationalism, and the vis inertiae. Not foresight, reason, and patience.
Even though Iraq is a shithole, it's their shithole. And they would rather run their shithole their way than have it be run better by somebody else. That's human nature.
The same goes for us in the U.S. Outsourcing is bad because Americans lose their jobs. Forget that America's economic preeminence in the world is built on globalization and that it is unclear what net effect on jobs outsourcing has. People losing jobs can be very easily counted. The higher quality of life outsourcing allows for everyone by lowering prices is not so easy to put a number on, or, for that matter, easy to understand. It doesn't help that we are losing jobs to people of a different race.
Basically I know I'm a broken record, but the one thing I believe very strongly is that people do not act because of rational calculations of costs and benefits they make, but because of their culture, religion, beliefs, prejudices, ignorances, history, whatever else you want to throw in. That goes doubly for groups of people.
I'm not criticizing. Groups play it safe and want to stick to the status quo because it is a known commodity. Groups that change course radically because a rational process has told them that it is beneficial to do so run the risk of being wrong.
Another important factor is how "close" something is to me. If my brother dies, I think differently than my neighbor, differently than someone in Timbuktu I have never met. I am more offended by oppression against Catholics, being Catholic, than Protestants, than Jews. One dead American is worth 100,000 Iraqis. I am more interested in how much money I have in my pocket than the federal debt. How prominent is something in my mind? How important is it to me, now?
Most important is group allegiance -- be it nationalism, tribalism, Yankee fan-ism, Red Sox fan-ism, I'm tall-ism Powerful enough to make 13 year old boys strap bombs to their chest and grown men to leave their families and go fight wars. People get into fights over sports teams. Allegiance to religion is perhaps the most powerful force ever. Funny, the most abstract, least concrete, practically useless, impossible to prove institutions are the most able to lead and inspire masses of people.
Adam Ferguson said that nations define themselves by what they are not and who they hate. Every quality they posses is a virtue, the opposite, a vice. This is essential to their identity as a group. The defense of the group is essential to the survival of the individual. Iraqis are not Americans, they're Iraqis, so why would they want us to govern them and change them?
Answer -- they don't.
There is a tipping point when common sense trumps group psychology. We just haven't gotten there yet. To think we would be greated as liberators, and to base our post-war occupation plans on that premise, was dumb.
|
