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The Self Is Not an Illusion | The Moral Sciences Club | Big Think

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:19:05 -0000

Comments:

"What could it mean to say that the self is an illusion? Here’s Bruce Hood, author of the new book The Self Illusion, in an interview at Sam Harris’ joint:

Most of us have an experience of a self. I certainly have one, and I do not doubt that others do as well – an autonomous individual with a coherent identity and sense of free will. But that experience is an illusion – it does not exist independently of the person having the experience, and it is certainly not what it seems."

Counterpoint. - Matt Warren

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by: Matt Warren

The Self Illusion: An Interview With Bruce Hood | Wired Science | Wired.com

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:17:12 -0000

Comments:

"Bruce Hood, a psychologist at the University of Bristol, picks up where Woolf and the modernists left off. In his excellent new book, The Self Illusion, he seeks to understand how the singularity of the self emerges from the cacophony of mind and the mess of social life. Dr. Hood was kind enough to answer a few of my questions below:"

This whole thing is like one long advertisement for why tabula rasa adherents (ie: Ayn Rand) are highly uncritical. - Matt Warren

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

LEHRER: If the self is an illusion, then why does it exist? Why do we bother telling a story about ourselves?

HOOD: For the same reason that our brains create a highly abstracted version of the world around us. It is bad enough that our brain is metabolically hogging most of our energy requirements, but it does this to reduce the workload to act. That’s the original reason why the brain evolved in the first place – to plan and control movements and keep track of the environment. It’s why living creatures that do not act or navigate around their environments do not have brains. So the brain generates maps and models on which to base current and future behaviors. Now the value of a map or a model is the extent to which it provides the most relevant useful information without overburdening you with too much detail.

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by: Matt Warren

Britain's Strategy

Tue, 01 May 2012 15:22:48 -0000

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Britain controlled about one-fourth of the Earth's land surface and one-fifth of the world's population in 1939. Fifty years later, its holdings outside the British Isles had become trivial, and it even faced an insurgency in Northern Ireland.

Britain spent the intervening years developing strategies to cope with what poet Rudyard Kipling called its "recessional," or the transient nature of Britain's imperial power. It has spent the last 20 years defining its place not in the world in general but between continental Europe and the United States in particular. - Matt Warren

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Britain's rise to its once-extraordinary power represented an unintended gift from Napoleon. It had global ambitions before the Napoleonic Wars, but its defeat in North America and competition with other European navies meant Britain was by no means assured pre-eminence.

The defeat of the French fleet at Trafalgar and the ultimate French defeat at Waterloo then eliminated France as a significant naval challenger to Britain for several generations.

Not only was Britain the dominant political and military power, it also was emerging as the leader in the Industrial Revolution then occurring in Europe.

Napoleon's devastation of continental Europe, the collapse of French power and the underdevelopment of the United States gave Britain an advantage and an opportunity.

Britain also benefitted from the Napoleonic Wars' having crippled most European powers. Britain was not under military pressure for most of the century, and was not forced into a singularly exploitative relationship with its empire to support its wars. It thus avoided Hitler's trap.

This began to change in the late 19th century with two major shifts.

The first was German unification in 1871

The second challenge came from the United States, which also was industrializing at a dramatic pace -- a process ironically underwritten by investors from Britain seeking higher returns than they could get at home.

The German challenge culminated in World War I, a catastrophe for Britain and for the rest of Europe. Apart from decimating a generation of men, the cost of the war undermined Britain's economic base, subtly shifting London's relationship with its empire. Moreover, British power no longer seemed inevitable

World War II, the second round of the German war, broke Britain's power.

Britain lost the war not to Germany but to the United States. It might have been a benign defeat in the sense that the United States, pursuing its own interests, saved Britain from being forced into an accommodation with Germany. Nevertheless, the balance of power between the United States and Britain completely shifted during the war. Britain emerged from the war vastly weaker economically and militarily than the United States. Though it retained its empire, its ability to hold it depended on the United States. Britain no longer could hold it unilaterally.

British strategy at the end of the war was to remain aligned with the United States and try to find a foundation for the United States to underwrite the retention of the empire. But the United States had no interest in this. It saw its primary strategic interest as blocking the Soviet Union in what became known as the Cold War.

The U.S. political intervention against the British, French and Israeli attack on Egypt in 1956, which was designed to maintain British control of the Suez Canal, marked the empire's breaking point. Thereafter, the British retreated strategically and psychologically from the empire.

the British aligned themselves with the U.S.-dominated alliance system and the postwar financial arrangements lumped together under the Bretton Woods system.

The British, however, added a dimension to this. Unable to match the United States militarily, they outstripped other American allies both in the quantity of their military resources and in their willingness to use them at the behest of the Americans.

Britain could not be America's equal. However, it could in effect be America's lieutenant, wielding a military force that outstripped in number -- and technical sophistication -- the forces deployed by other European countries.

The goal was to accept a subordinate position without being simply another U.S. ally.

The United States was not motivated to go along merely out of sentiment based on shared history, although that played a part. Rather, like all great powers, the United States wanted to engage in coalition warfare and near warfare along with burden sharing.

A good example -- though not a very important one -- was London's ability to recruit U.S. support in Britain's war against Argentina in the Falkland Islands, also known as the Malvinas. The United States had no interests at stake, but given that Britain did have an interest, the U.S. default setting was to support the British.

There were two dangers for the British in this relationship.

The first was the cost of maintaining the force relative to the benefits.

The second was the danger of being drawn so deeply into the U.S. orbit that Britain would lose its own freedom of action, effectively becoming, as some warned, the 51st state.

Britain has developed a strategy of being enmeshed in Europe without France's enthusiasm, at the same time positioning itself as the single most important ally of the only global power. There are costs on both sides of this, but Britain has been able to retain its options while limiting its dependency on either side.

While the United States remains Britain's largest customer for exports if Europe is viewed as individual countries, Europe as a whole is a bigger customer.

Britain has positioned itself superbly for a strategy of waiting, watching and retaining options regardless of what happens. If the European Union fails and the European nation-states re-emerge as primary institutions, Britain will be in a position to exploit the fragmentation of Europe to its own economic and political advantage and have the United States available to support its strategy.

If the United States stumbles and Europe emerges more prominent, Britain can modulate its relationship with Europe at will and serve as the Europeans' interface with a weakened United States. If both Europe and the United States weaken, Britain is in a position to chart whatever independent course it must.

Whatever the British thought of Iraq, a strategy of remaining the most reliable ally of the United States dictated participation.

The British strategy represents a classic case of a nation accepting reversal, retaining autonomy, and accommodating itself to its environment while manipulating it. All the while Britain waits, holding its options open, waiting to see how the game plays out and positioning itself to take maximum advantage of its shifts in the environment.

Tags: america, pacific, logic, geopolitics

by: Matt Warren

The India-China Rivalry by Robert D. Kaplan

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:18:46 -0000

Comments:

As the world moves into the second decade of the 21st century, a new power rivalry is taking shape between India and China, Asia's two behemoths in terms of territory, population and richness of civilization. India's recent successful launch of a long-range missile able to hit Beijing and Shanghai with nuclear weapons is the latest sign of this development. - Matt Warren
It's been a long time coming. I remember this playing into my 9/11 freakout, because I was pretty sure WWIII was coming and I was draft bait. - Erik Hanson

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Indian elites hate when India is hyphenated with Pakistan, a poor and semi-chaotic state; they much prefer to be hyphenated with China.

Why does this strike me as singularly hilarious? Sadly, it also makes a degree of sense... - Matt Warren

This is normal. In an unequal rivalry, it is the lesser power that always demonstrates the greater degree of obsession.

Okay, I'm starting to mentally characterize this as the goofy nerd with a weird hate-crush on the hot girl. - Matt Warren

China's inherent strength in relation to India is more than just a matter of its greater economic capacity, or its more efficient governmental authority. It is also a matter of its geography.

the Indian army is constrained with problems inside the subcontinent itself.

Both Afghanistan and North Korea have the capacity to drain energy and resources away from India and China, though here India may have the upper hand because India has no land border with Afghanistan, whereas China has a land border with North Korea.

Because India's population will surpass that of China in 2030 or so, even as India's population will get gray at a slower rate than that of China, India may in relative terms have a brighter future.

Were China ever to face a serious insurrection in Tibet, India's shadow zone of influence would grow measurably. Thus, while China is clearly the greater power, there are favorable possibilities for India in this rivalry.

India and the United States are not formal allies. The Indian political establishment, with its nationalistic and leftist characteristics, would never allow for that.

That is the silver lining of the India-China rivalry: India balancing against China, and thus relieving the United States of some of the burden of being the world's dominant power.

This state of affairs has been brought to you by the letter B, also the U.S. military-industrial-trade system and a million other intentional, unintentional, and accidental elements whipped into the air by policy, technology, and history.

Sorry. I'm speeding along on too much coffee right now... - Matt Warren

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by: Matt Warren

America's Pacific Logic

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:58:34 -0000

Comments:

by Robert D. Kaplan

The Obama administration "pivot" to the Pacific, formally announced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last November and reiterated more recently by the president himself, might appear like a reassertion of America's imperial tendencies just at the time when Washington should be concentrating on the domestic economy. But in fact, the pivot was almost inevitable. - Matt Warren

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, signaling communism's defeat in Europe, security experts talked about a shift in diplomatic and military energies to the Pacific. But Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 led to a decadelong preoccupation with the Middle East, with the U.S. Army leading a land war against Iraq in 1991 and the Navy and Air Force operating no-fly zones for years thereafter. Then came 9/11, and the Bush administration's initiation of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as a response. Finally, the ending of both those conflicts is in sight, and the United States, rather than return to quasi-isolationism as it has done with deleterious effect after other ground wars in its history, is attempting to pivot its focus to the geographical heart of the global economy: the Indian and Pacific oceans.

The Indian Ocean is the world's energy interstate, across which passes crude oil and natural gas from the Arabian Peninsula and Iranian Plateau to the burgeoning, middle-class urban sprawls of East Asia.

Though we live in a jet and information age, 90 percent of all commercial goods that travel from one continent to another do so by container ship, and half of those goods in terms of global tonnage -- and one-third in terms of monetary value -- traverse the South China Sea

And it is the U.S. Navy and Air Force, more than any other institutions, that have kept those sea lines of communication secure, thus allowing for post-Cold War globalization in the first place.

This is the real public good that the United States provides the world.

I posit that this is a slight misnomer. While it provides the world with a long, reliable trade route, it is still focused around maintaining U.S. global primacy and so serves a national interest. It doesn't befit us to get weepy-eyed at how much we've 'given.' Not that StratFor is DOING that, but I'm just trying to clear my throat on a tiny detail that (I think) matters. - Matt Warren
All of capitalism's worth is tied up in the external benefits stemming from self-interested actions, innit? - Erik Hanson

Beijing has been buying smart, investing in subs, ballistic missiles, and space and cyber warfare as part of a general defense build-up. China has no intention of going to war with the United States, but it does seek to impede in time of crisis U.S. military access to the South China Sea and the rest of maritime Asia.

China, through the combination of its economic and military power, will undermine the sovereignty of countries such as Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore, all of which are de facto or de jure U.S. allies.

The country that is the biggest target for China is Vietnam, whose seaboard forms the western edge of the South China Sea and whose economically dynamic population of 87 million makes it a future maritime Turkey, a midlevel power in its own right

If China can "Finlandize" Vietnam, Beijing will in practical terms capture the South China Sea. This explains Washington's increasing military and interest in Hanoi.

Dropped a word, there. ;) - Erik Hanson

The Chinese are simply unable to psychologically divorce their claims on the nearby South China Sea from the territorial depredations directed against China by the West in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. To Chinese officials, the South China Sea represents blue national soil.

Of course, American diplomacy has been active on these matters for years, but U.S. diplomats would lack credibility if they were not backed by a robust military presence in the future. This is what the pivot is all about: The United States does not intend to desert maritime Asia in its hour of need. As one high-ranking diplomat of a South China Sea country told me, if the United States were to withdraw an aircraft carrier strike group from the region it would be a "game-changer," ushering the region toward Finlandization.

A profound socio-economic crisis in China itself -- something that by no means can be ruled out -- might have the effect of slowing this quasi-imperial rise. But that hasn't happened quite yet, and in the meantime, the United States is forced to react to China's growing military and commercial capabilities.

But the change in U.S. policy focus is not literally about containing China. "Containment" is a word of Cold War vintage related to holding ground against the Soviet Union, a country with which the United States had a one-dimensional, hostile relationship. The tens of thousands of American students and corporate executives in Beijing attest to the rich, multi-dimensional relationship the United States enjoys with China. China is so much freer than the former Soviet Union that to glibly state that China is "not a democracy" is to miss the point of China's rise entirely.

Were the United States not now to turn to the Indo-Pacific, it would risk a multipolar military order arising up alongside an already existent multipolar economic and political order. Multipolar military systems are more unstable than unipolar and bipolar ones because there are more points of interactions and thus more opportunities for miscalculations, as each country seeks to readjust the balance of power in its own favor.

If American power was diminished, China, India and other powers would be far more aggressive toward each other than they are now, for they all benefit from the secure sea lines of communication provided by the U. S. Navy and Air Force.

I buy this, and the relationship fascinates me. I like how U.S. control over the sea lanes tempers hostility. These nations can tolerate U.S. control more than they can their other regional competitors. - Matt Warren

Australia, a country of only 23 million inhabitants, will spend $279 billion over the next two decades on submarines, fighter jets and other hardware. This is not militarism, but the reasonable response of a nation at the confluence of the Indian and Pacific oceans in order to account for its own defense in the face of rapidly changing power dynamics.

Tags: america, pacific, logic, geopolitics

by: Matt Warren

I Re-Watched Titanic So You Don't Have To. You're Welcome.

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 14:56:11 -0000

Comments:

I don't remember a lot of specifics about watching Titanic in theaters in 1997, but I was 15 years old, which means my two biggest concerns were 1) locating romance, and 2) not dying in a nautical catastrophe. - Matt Warren

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Here's the thing about Titanic, and the reason 15-year-old girls love it so much: James Cameron is a 15-year-old girl. All of the characters are either 15-year-old girls in disguise ("Parents just don't understand!" "Waaah, make the boat go faster!" "I know we literally met 20 minutes ago, but I love you with a suicidal fervor!"), or the kind of goofy caricatures that 15-year-old girls would write if we let 15-year-old girls write our blockbuster screenplays.

Titanic is three hours and 14 minutes long, which—fun fact—is longer than the actual journey of the Titanic. It is sooooo ballsy to just assume people will watch your movie for three hours and 14 minutes!

Then, to wrap things up, there's a dream sequence where the ghosts of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio walk down the Titanic's grand staircase and everyone on earth applauds for no reason. You know who are the only people that think the world owes them a round of applause? Fifteen-year-old girls and billionaire directors who own submarines. I rest my case.

I feel like James Cameron has never met an actual person before. Titanic is basically a 3.5-hour-long Zales commercial, only slightly less emotionally compelling.

Tags: funny

by: Matt Warren

A Tour of the New Geopolitics of Global Warming

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 16:36:39 -0000

Comments:

Energy security and climate change present massive threats to global security, military planners say, with connections and consequences spanning the world.

Some scientists have linked the Arab Spring uprisings to high food prices caused by the failed Russian wheat crop in 2010, a result of an unparalleled heat wave. The predicted effects of climate change are also expected to hit developing nations particularly hard, raising the importance of supporting humanitarian response efforts and infrastructure improvements.

Here's a look at several geopolitical hotspots that will likely bear the unpredictable and dangerous consequences of climate change and current energy policies. - Matt Warren

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

The Middle East's oil reserves have served as the flashpoint for conflicts, and military leaders are keeping a close eye on Yemen these days, as the country suffers through instability related, in part, to water shortages, which are expected to worsen with climate change.

Corell said Asian countries, including China and South Korea, are already plotting new navigation routes and building cargo ships that can push through seasonal ice. The shift would eliminate some travel that now passes through the Straits of Malacca, between Malaysia and Indonesia, where piracy remains active, but it could also enable Asia to take firm control of global trade.

Long-term drought in Sudan contributed to the ethnic cleansing in Darfur, he added. The conflict also exposed how poorly prepared the international community is to respond to such scenarios.

The Navy's Task Force Climate Change fears that floods or food shortages in Bangladesh could trigger mass migrations to India, increasing ethnic conflict and repression in the region as families compete for resources and survival.

Tags: geopolitics, global warming

by: Matt Warren

Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature: Ayn Rand & Human Nature 21

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:39:24 -0000

Comments:

Objectivism considers religion a mere execrescence of irrationality, a product of wrong premises misintregrated into the subconscious. What evidence do Objectivists present on behalf of this hypothesis? None whatsoever. In fact, Rand herself does not appear to have even considered the issue of evidence. - Matt Warren

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

One problem that Objectivism runs into right from the start is the near universality of religion. We find it nearly everywhere, even among isolated peoples. If religion were merely a product of premises, we would expect to find more variety in the world at large, as some cultures would choose religious premises and hence become religious, while other cultures would choose non-religious premises and hence become secular.

There is one major exception to the universality of religion: contemporary Europe.

we would expect non-religious cultures to have a competitive advantage over religious cultures

Given the widespread, nearly universal belief in mythical entities, it's difficult believe that there is nothing innate behind it all: because even if belief in myths arises from the acceptance of some premise, the fact that nearly everyone has accepted that premise provides strong indication that a natural proclivity exists behind the whole business

Tags: objectivism

by: Matt Warren

Captive Virgins, Polygamy, Sex Slaves: What Marriage Would Look Like if We Actually Followed the Bible

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:35:25 -0000

Comments:

There’s no way to understand politics anywhere without understanding religion, but to an outsider American Christianity -- and so American politics -- can seem almost incomprehensible. Over the last 2,000 years, Christians have quarreled themselves into 30,000 different denominations. On top of that, American Christianity, like American culture more broadly, tends to flout hierarchy and authority, which means that a sizeable number of American Christians consider themselves “nondenominational." - Matt Warren

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

“Bible-believing” Christians, also called “biblical literalists,” believe the Bible is the literally perfect word of God, essentially dictated by God to the writers. Thanks to the determined work of historical revisionists like David Barton, many of them also believe (very, very wrongly) that America’s Constitution and legal system also were founded on principles and laws drawn from the Bible.

Not all Christians share this view. Biblical literalists are at the opposite end of the theological spectrum from modernist Christians, who see the Bible as the record of our imperfect spiritual ancestors who struggled to understand what is good and what is God and how to live in moral community with each other.

Reasonably minded Christians everywhere thank the author for pointing this very fucking important fact out. - Matt Warren
"Modernist Christians"? I'd say Modernist theology is a big part of the problem. (This is a semantic quibble.) - Erik Hanson

Even though divorce and teen pregnancy rates are lower in more secular parts of the country, Bible believers see both as problems caused primarily by America’s loss of faith.

Let me tell you a secret about Bible believers that I know because I was one. Most of them don’t read their Bibles. If they did, they would know that the biblical model of sex and marriage has little to do with the one they so loudly defend.

That's the easy explanation, but not necessarily the right one. I've sat in Bible-study groups of fairly wealthy Christians as they spent an hour convincing themselves that Jesus doesn't really want them to sell their stuff and give the proceeds to the church and the poor, even if there are multiple instances of what I take to be fairly clear language saying that Christians should do precisely that. It's that "Modernist" stuff again—our brains aren't that rational. - Erik Hanson
That's a fair point. Whether you read the Bible or not, that lack-of-rationality thing is surely in play. As you implicitly note, though, this is not the fault of religion - it's our damned species. - Matt Warren
Theologically speaking, it's almost as if God didn't set us up to be able to have Godlike understanding of everything. Like we're limited and mortal or something. - Erik Hanson

Stories depicted in the Bible include rape, incest, master-slave sexual relations, captive virgins, and more. Now, just because a story is told in the Bible doesn’t mean it is intended as a model for devout behavior. Other factors have to be considered, like whether God commands or forbids the behavior, if the behavior is punished, and if Jesus subsequently indicates the rules have changed, come the New Testament.

Through this lens, you find that the God of the Bible still endorses polygamy and sexual slavery and coerced marriage of young virgins along with monogamy. In fact, he endorses all three to the point of providing detailed regulations.

Polygamy is a norm in the Old Testament and accepted in the New Testament.

Concubines are sex slaves, and the Bible gives instructions on acquisition of several types of sex slaves, although the line between biblical marriage and sexual slavery is blurry.

In the book of Numbers (31:18) God’s servant commands the Israelites to kill all of the used Midianite women who have been captured in war, and all of the boy children, but to keep all of the virgin girls for themselves.

These stories might be irrelevant to the question of biblical marriage were it not that Bible believers keep telling us that God punishes people when he dislikes their sexual behavior.

The nuclear family model so prized by America’s fundamentalist Christians emerged from the interplay between Christianity and European cultures including the monogamous tradition of the Roman Empire.

Bible believers, even those who think themselves “nondenominational,” almost all follow some theological tradition that tells them which parts of the Bible to follow and how.

But many who call themselves Bible believers are simply, congenitally conservative – meaning change-resistant. It is not the Bible they worship so much as the status quo, which they justify by invoking ancient texts. Gay marriage will come, as will reproductive rights, and these Bible believers will adapt to the change as they have others: reluctantly, slowly and with angry protests, but in the end accepting it, and perhaps even insisting that it was God’s will all along.

Tags: bible, marriage, polygamy, relationships

by: Matt Warren

The Current Rage In Branding: Fake Authenticity Is Now A-Okay

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 20:34:50 -0000

Comments:

FAKING AN AUTHENTIC EXPERIENCE IS NOW LAUDED, AND COMPANIES SUCH AS J. CREW ARE EXPLOITING THE TREND, WRITES MICHAEL RAISANEN. - Matt Warren

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Freemans is a pioneer in a trend that we have seen happening for a while now, striving for a sort of refined, woolly, arts-and-craftsy, anachronistic Americana feeling.

The common denominator in this trend seems to be a yearning for the “authentic.” Interestingly, things don’t need to actually be authentic as long as they feel authentic.

Perhaps a postmodernist would call this inauthentic authenticity.

However, there are some interesting lessons to be learnt from J. Crew; they have managed to harness the trend and take inauthentic authenticity to the next level, to mainstream America. The narrative they put forth for men in catalogues and advertising is a composite of the following:

• outdoorsy, classical, New England, early ’60s collegiate
• oaky, duck hunting, landed gentry, sheep dog
• waxed mustache, axe-yielding, self-sufficient, eccentric woodsman

The common denominator is, of course, authenticity and nostalgia for a time when things were “real.”

We are indeed living in an interesting age when it is socially accepted, even prestigious, to fake an authentic experience. We have come a long way from frowning at the Italian pavilion at Epcot center with all its fake kitsch. Today’s simulacra are tasteful and only kitsch as an ironic statement.

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by: Matt Warren

Home | Civil Politics.org

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:34:45 -0000

Comments:

At CivilPolitics.org, our mission is to find and promote evidence-based methods for increasing political civility.

By civility we do NOT mean politeness, decorum, agreement, bipartisanship, or unity. We think disagreement and debate are good things. We think America is well served when political parties represent different viewpoints and then compete vigorously to recruit voters to their side. - Matt Warren

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Civility as we pursue it is the ability to disagree with others while respecting their sincerity and decency. We believe this ability is best fostered by indirect methods (changing contexts, payoffs, and institutions), rather than by direct methods (such as pleading with people to be more civil, or asking people to sign civility pledges).

Tags: no_tag

by: Matt Warren

Let Wallace and Gromit teach your kids about science

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 15:51:13 -0000

Comments:

At first glance, the idea of "Wallace and Gromit have their own science education show" seems a bit weird. Especially when you see Wallace, the claymation man with unmistakable sweater vest, sitting at a desk saying "Hello viewers." But actually, Wallace & Gromit's World of Invention, which just came out on DVD in the U.S., is cracking great fun. - Matt Warren

Tags: education

by: Matt Warren

The United States in Korea: A Strategy of Inertia

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:50:17 -0000

Comments:

After U.S. President Barack Obama visited the Korean Demilitarized Zone on March 25 during his trip to South Korea for a nuclear security summit, he made the obligatory presidential remarks warning North Korea against continued provocations. He also praised the strength of U.S.-South Korean relations and commended the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed there. Obama's visit itself is of little importance, but it is an opportunity to ask just what Washington's strategy is in Korea and how the countries around North Korea (China, Russia, South Korea and Japan) view the region. As always, any understanding of current strategy requires a consideration of the history of that strategy. - Matt Warren

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Korea conceptually lay outside this framework.

U.S. strategy changed in 1950, when the North Koreans invaded the South, sparking the Korean War.

Had the North Korean military faced only South Korean forces, they would have been right. They clearly miscalculated the American intent to intervene, though it is not clear that even the Americans understood their intent prior to the intervention. However, once the North Koreans moved south, President Harry Truman decided to intervene. His reasoning had less to do with Korea than with the impact of a communist military success on coalition partners elsewhere.

The U.S. global strategy depended on Washington's ability to convince its partners that it would come to their aid if they were invaded. Strategic considerations aside, not intervening would have created a crisis of confidence, or so was the concern. Therefore, the United States intervened.

The Chinese intervened in the war, pushing the Americans back from the Yalu and suffering huge casualties in the process. The Americans regrouped, pushed back and a stalemate was achieved roughly along the former border and the current Demilitarized Zone.

The great mystery of the post-Cold War world is the survival of the North Korean regime. With a dynamic South, a non-Communist Russia and a China committed to good economic relations with the West, it would appear that the North Korean regime would have found it difficult to survive.

From the Chinese point of view, North Korea served the same function in the 1990s as it did in 1950: It was a buffer zone between the now economically powerful South Koreans (and the U.S. military) and Manchuria.

The reason for intervening in the first place was murky. The U.S. military presence between 1953 and 1991 was intended to maintain the status quo during the Cold War. The willingness to remain beyond that is more complex.

With the loss of its Cold War patrons and the changing dynamic of the post-Cold War world, the North Koreans developed a survival strategy that Stratfor identified in the 1990s. The Koreans' intention was to appear -- simultaneously -- weak, fearsome and crazy. This was not an easy strategy to carry out, but they have carried it out well.

First, they made certain that they were perceived to be always on the verge of internal collapse and thus not a direct threat to anyone but themselves.

Second, they wanted to appear to be fearsome. This would at first blush seem to contradict the impression of weakness, but they managed it brilliantly by perpetually reminding the world that they were close to developing nuclear weapons and longer-range missiles.

The final piece was to appear crazy, or crazy enough that when pressed, they would choose the suicide option of striking with a nuclear weapon, if they had one.

The ability to maneuver itself into a position equal to these powers was North Korea's greatest achievement, and it had a tremendous effect on stabilizing the regime by reinforcing its legitimacy internally and its power externally.

Crucially for Pyongyang, North Korea was of tremendous use to one power: China. Even more than North Korea's role as a buffer state, its antics allowed China to emerge as mediator between the inscrutable Pyongyang and the frustrated United States.

While the U.S. troop presence in Korea may not make the most sense in a global U.S. military strategy, it ironically seems to fit, at least for now, the interests of the Chinese, South Koreans and Japanese, and even in some sense the North Koreans.

Tags: no_tag

by: Matt Warren

‘The Righteous Mind,’ by Jonathan Haidt

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:10:25 -0000

Comments:

You’re smart. You’re liberal. You’re well informed. You think conservatives are narrow-minded. You can’t understand why working-class Americans vote Republican. You figure they’re being duped. You’re wrong.

This isn’t an accusation from the right. It’s a friendly warning from Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who, until 2009, considered himself a partisan liberal. - Matt Warren

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

That’s what makes “The Righteous Mind” well worth reading. Politics isn’t just about manipulating people who disagree with you. It’s about learning from them.

David Hume, the Scottish philosopher who notoriously said reason was fit only to be “the slave of the passions,” was largely correct. E. O. Wilson, the ecologist who was branded a fascist for stressing the biological origins of human behavior, has been vindicated by the study of moral emotions.

To the question many people ask about politics — Why doesn’t the other side listen to reason? — Haidt replies: We were never designed to listen to reason. When you ask people moral questions, time their responses and scan their brains, their answers and brain activation patterns indicate that they reach conclusions quickly and produce reasons later only to justify what they’ve decided.

The problem isn’t that people don’t reason. They do reason. But their arguments aim to support their conclusions, not yours. Reason doesn’t work like a judge or teacher, impartially weighing evidence or guiding us to wisdom. It works more like a lawyer or press secretary, justifying our acts and judgments to others.

Haidt’s account of reason is a bit too simple — his whole book, after all, is a deployment of reason to advance learning — and his advice sounds cynical. But set aside those objections for now, and go with him. If you follow Haidt through the tunnel of cynicism, you’ll find that what he’s really after is enlightenment. He wants to open your mind to the moral intuitions of other people.

The worldviews Haidt discusses may differ from yours. They don’t start with the individual. They start with the group or the cosmic order. They exalt families, armies and communities. They assume that people should be treated differently according to social role or status — elders should be honored, subordinates should be protected. They suppress forms of self-expression that might weaken the social fabric. They assume interdependence, not autonomy. They prize order, not equality.

These moral systems aren’t ignorant or backward. Haidt argues that they’re common in history and across the globe because they fit human nature. He compares them to cuisines. We acquire morality the same way we acquire food preferences: we start with what we’re given. If it tastes good, we stick with it. If it doesn’t, we reject it.

This is Haidt’s startling message to the left: When it comes to morality, conservatives are more broad-minded than liberals. They serve a more varied diet.

Haidt treats electoral success as a kind of evolutionary fitness test. He figures that if voters like Republican messages, there’s something in Republican messages worth liking. He chides psychologists who try to “explain away” conservatism, treating it as a pathology. Conservatism thrives because it fits how people think, and that’s what validates it. Workers who vote Republican aren’t fools. In Haidt’s words, they’re “voting for their moral interests.”

Saving Darfur, submitting to the United Nations and paying taxes to educate children in another state may be noble, but they aren’t natural. What’s natural is giving to your church, helping your P.T.A. and rallying together as Americans against a foreign threat.

From Chris Blattman:

Haidt’s previous book, The Happiness Hypothesis, was a fantastic introduction to the psychology of behavior and morality. And I think the basic message of the new book rings true. So I am inclined to recommend it.

My impression from the last book: Haidt has a very slight tendency to hyperbole, and it’s a shame he doesn’t distinguish between the weak and strong evidence. He’s a skilful writer and his own research looks clever, and so I think he could fix this without making his books boring.

I’m curious, though. Readers who actually know something about cognitive psychology: what’s Haidt’s street cred?

http://chrisblattman.com/2012/03/27/the-tyrany-of-moral-intuition/ - Matt Warren

Tags: no_tag

by: Matt Warren

What Isn’t for Sale?

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 19:35:30 -0000

Comments:

WE LIVE IN A TIME when almost everything can be bought and sold. Over the past three decades, markets—and market values—have come to govern our lives as never before. We did not arrive at this condition through any deliberate choice. It is almost as if it came upon us. - Matt Warren
One particular issue is that we even have a system for some of this commodification in the courts. All sorts of things, from "pain and suffering" to "intentional infliction of emotional distress" get converted into cash values for the sake of assigning damage awards. - Erik Hanson

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Why worry that we are moving toward a society in which everything is up for sale?

For two reasons. One is about inequality, the other about corruption

Paying kids to read books might get them to read more, but might also teach them to regard reading as a chore rather than a source of intrinsic satisfaction.

These examples illustrate a broader point: some of the good things in life are degraded if turned into commodities. So to decide where the market belongs, and where it should be kept at a distance, we have to decide how to value the goods in question—health, education, family life, nature, art, civic duties, and so on. These are moral and political questions, not merely economic ones. To resolve them, we have to debate, case by case, the moral meaning of these goods, and the proper way of valuing them.

The difference is this: A market economy is a tool—a valuable and effective tool—for organizing productive activity. A market society is a way of life in which market values seep into every aspect of human endeavor. It’s a place where social relations are made over in the image of the market.

The great missing debate in contemporary politics is about the role and reach of markets. Do we want a market economy, or a market society? What role should markets play in public life and personal relations? How can we decide which goods should be bought and sold, and which should be governed by nonmarket values? Where should money’s writ not run?

This nonjudgmental stance toward values lies at the heart of market reasoning, and explains much of its appeal. But our reluctance to engage in moral and spiritual argument, together with our embrace of markets, has exacted a heavy price: it has drained public discourse of moral and civic energy, and contributed to the technocratic, managerial politics afflicting many societies today.

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by: Matt Warren

Mischief follows in partisan Bible translations

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 21:36:59 -0000

Comments:

Remember Junias? He was the imaginary male apostle with the unique and implausible name. “Junias” was invented by patriarchal Bible translators and inserted into the text of scripture because those translators didn’t like what the text actually said. - Matt Warren

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Junia is a woman’s name and it just wouldn’t do to have people reading about a woman who was an apostle — let alone one who was “prominent among the apostles.” For patriarchal Christians who insisted on a male-only hierarchy, Junia was intolerable. So they got rid of her. They translated her into an imaginary man with an imaginary name.

Politics — specifically, the political desire to control women — shaped the translation of that text. The translators changed the words of the Bible to make it seem like it supported their political agenda. They changed the words of the Bible so that others reading it would not be able to see that its actual words challenged and contradicted their political agenda.

Here is how Exodus 21:22-25 read in the New American Standard Bible’s 1977 revision of its 1971 original translation:

And if men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is not further injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him; and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

But here’s the same passage in 1995 in the updated current version of the NASB:

If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

“So that she has a miscarriage” has been replaced with “so that she gives birth prematurely.”

The KJV’s “her fruit depart” is a literal, but ambiguous rendition of the original Hebrew. If we ignore the context of the surrounding verses, then we could interpret that as meaning either what the 1977 NASB or what the 1995 NASB says. It could mean “she has a miscarriage” or it might mean “she gives birth prematurely.” Right?

It turns out that English-speaking Christians aren’t the very first people ever to read the book of Exodus. The Jews got there way, way before we did. It seems Jews actually wrote the thing. Plus they’re pretty good at reading Hebrew.

And for anti-abortion American evangelicals, Exodus 21:12-27 was unacceptable. It suggested that striking and killing an unborn fetus was in a separate category from striking and killing a “person.” Strike and kill a free person, you get the death penalty. Strike and kill an unborn fetus, you get a fine.

If that’s what you believe about the Bible, then doesn’t this passage mean that you ought to approve of slavery? Of course it does — because that’s precisely why this form of inerrant, infallible, etc. biblicism was invented here in America. It arose in defense of slavery — slavery of an even more appalling and more brutal sort than that which this biblical passage describes. So, yes, a biblicistic, proof-texting approach to scripture designed in defense of slavery does, in fact, compel those who accept it to defend slavery.

But those defenders of slavery weren’t the only ones reading the Bible. Nor are those who learned to read the Bible from those defenders of slavery the only ones reading it now. “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God …”

Tags: bible

by: Matt Warren

Keeping Terrorism in Perspective

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 16:14:20 -0000

Comments:

"As we conclude our series on the fundamentals of terrorism, it is only fitting that we do so with a discussion of the importance of keeping terrorism in perspective." - Matt Warren

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

By design, terrorist attacks are intended to have a psychological impact far outweighing the physical damage the attack causes. As their name suggests, they are meant to cause terror that amplifies the actual attack. A target population responding to a terrorist attack with panic and hysteria allows the perpetrators to obtain a maximum return on their physical effort.

One way to mitigate the psychological impact of terrorism is to remove the mystique and hype associated with it. The first step in this demystification is recognizing that terrorism is a tactic used by a variety of actors and that it will not go away, something we discussed at length in our first analysis in this series.

Another way to mitigate the impact of terrorism is recognizing that those who conduct terrorist attacks are not some kind of Hollywood superninja commandos who can conjure attacks out of thin air. Terrorist attacks follow a discernable, predictable planning process that can be detected if it is looked for.

A third important component in the demystification process is recognizing and resisting the terror magnifiers terrorist planners use in their efforts to maximize the impact of their attacks.

let's first examine the objective of terrorist planners.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, modern terrorist organizations began to conduct operations designed to serve as terrorist theater, an undertaking greatly aided by the advent and spread of broadcast media.

Today, the proliferation of 24-hour television news networks and Internet news sites magnifies such media exposure.

Such theatrical attacks exert a strange hold over the human imagination. The sense of terror they create can dwarf the reaction to natural disasters many times greater in magnitude. For example, more than 227,000 people died in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami compared to fewer than 3,000 people on 9/11. Yet the 9/11 attacks spawned a global sense of terror and a geopolitical reaction that had a profound and unparalleled impact upon world events over the past decade.

As noted, the media magnifies this anxiety and terror. Television news, whether broadcast on the airwaves or over the Internet, allows people to experience a terrorist event remotely and vicariously, and the print media reinforces this. While part of this magnification results merely from the nature of television as a medium and the 24-hour news cycle, bad reporting and misunderstanding can build hype and terror.

The traditional news media are not alone in the role of terror magnifier. The Internet has become an increasingly effective conduit for panic and alarm. From hysterical (and false) claims in 2005 that al Qaeda had pre-positioned nuclear weapons in the United States and was preparing to attack nine U.S. cities and kill 4 million Americans in operation "American Hiroshima" to 2010 claims that Mexican drug cartels were smuggling nuclear weapons into the United States for Osama bin Laden, a great deal of fearmongering can spread rapidly over the Internet.

Website operators who earn advertising revenue based on the number of unique site visitors have an obvious financial incentive to publish outlandish and startling terrorism stories.

Sometimes even governments act as terror magnifiers. Certainly, in the early 2000s the media and the American public became fearful every time the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) raised its color-coded threat level. Politicians' statements also can scare people. Such was the case in 2007 when DHS secretary Michael Chertoff said his gut screamed that a major terrorist attack was imminent and in 2010 when the head of French internal intelligence noted that the threat of terrorism in France was never higher.

The world is a dangerous place. Everyone is going to die, and some people are certain to die in a manner that is brutal or painful. Recognizing that terrorist attacks, like car crashes and cancer and natural disasters, are part of the human condition permits people to take prudent, measured actions to prepare for such contingencies and avoid becoming victims (vicarious or otherwise). It is the resilience of the population and their perseverance that determine how much a terrorist attack is allowed to terrorize. By separating terror from terrorism, citizens can deny the practitioners of terror the ability to magnify their reach and power.

Tags: no_tag

by: Matt Warren

How Myanmar Liberates Asia, by Robert D. Kaplan

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 17:29:16 -0000

Comments:

Myanmar's ongoing liberalization and its normalization of relations with the outside world have the possibility of profoundly affecting geopolitics in Asia -- and all for the better. - Matt Warren

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Geographically, Myanmar dominates the Bay of Bengal. It is where the spheres of influence of China and India overlap. Myanmar is also abundant in oil, natural gas, coal, zinc, copper, precious stones, timber and hydropower, with some uranium deposits as well. The prize of the Indo-Pacific region, Myanmar has been locked up by dictatorship for decades, even as the Chinese have been slowly stripping it of natural resources.

Think of Myanmar as another Afghanistan in terms of its potential to change a region: a key, geo-strategic puzzle piece ravaged by war and ineffective government that, if only normalized, would unroll trade routes in all directions.

if Myanmar continues on its path of reform by opening links to the United States and neighboring countries, rather than remaining a natural resource tract to be exploited by China, Myanmar will develop into an energy and natural resource hub in its own right, uniting the Indian subcontinent, China and Southeast Asia all into one fluid, organic continuum.

The salient fact here is that by liberating Myanmar, India's hitherto landlocked northeast, lying on the far side of Bangladesh, will also be opened up to the outside.

But while the future beckons with opportunities, the present is still not assured. The political transition in Myanmar has only begun, and much can still go wrong. The problem, as it was in Yugoslavia and Iraq, is regional and ethnic divides.

Myanmar is a vast kingdom organized around the central Irrawaddy River Valley. The ethnic Burman word for this valley is Myanmar, hence the official name of the country. But a third of the population is not ethnic Burman, even as regionally based minorities in friable borderlands account for seven of Myanmar's 14 states. The hill areas around the Irrawaddy Valley are populated by Chin, Kachin, Shan, Karen and Karenni peoples, who also have their own armies and irregular forces, which have been battling the Burman-controlled national army since the early Cold War period.

Worse, these minority-populated hill regions are ethnically divided from within.

Myanmar, it is true, is becoming less repressive and more open to the outside world. But that in and of itself does not make for a viable institutionalized state. In sum, for Myanmar to succeed, even with civilians in control, the military will have to play a significant role for years to come, because it is mainly officers who know how to run things.

But given its immense natural resources and sizable population of 48 million, if Myanmar can build pan-ethnic institutions in coming decades it could come close to being a midlevel power in its own right -- something that would not necessarily harm Indian and Chinese interests, and, by the way, would unleash trade throughout Asia and the Indian Ocean world.

Tags: myanmar, asia

by: Matt Warren

Dating the Fourth Turning

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 16:21:59 -0000

Comments:

Readers of The Fourth Turning already know that 4Ts in history are dated and internally subdivided into stages by four critical events. The first event, the catalyst, triggers or starts the 4T. It is “a startling event (or sequence of events) that produces a sudden shift in mood.” The second, the regeneracy, marks the beginning of “a new counter-entropy that reunifies and re-energizes civic life.” The third, the climax, is “a crucial moment that confirms the death of the old order and triumph of the new.” The fourth is the resolution, “a triumphant or tragic conclusion that separates winners from losers, resolves the big public questions, and establishes the new order.” - Matt Warren

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Pending stunning new developments, I believe the catalyst occurred in 2008.

First, the economy. Yes, the U.S. recession technically started in December of 2007, but neither the public nor the market felt it until the spring and summer of the following year. In fact, if I had to give the catalyst a month, I would say September of 2008

Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson later recounted (in On the Brink) that in the last two weeks of September, 2008, they were only “days away” from “economic collapse, another Great Depression, and 25 percent unemployment.”

And, to add even greater edge to this catalyst, we were at that time just six weeks away from the election of Barack Obama, who brought a new party to power and was America’s first African-American President. Would he have won without the meltdown? Who knows. It would have been a much closer election.

As a rule, a new turning starts a few years (typically 2 to 6) after each living generation (especially the new youth generation) enters a new phase of life. 2008 was 4 to 6 years after the oldest Millennials reached age 21 and graduated from college—and 3 years after the oldest Boomers (born in 1943) started to receive their first Social Security retirement checks. In terms of phase of life, this is right on.

9/11 will go down as one of the more famous crisis precursors in American history. A crisis precursor is an event that foreshadows a crisis without being an integral part of it. Other such precursors in American history include the Stamp Act Rebellion (1765), or Bleeding Kansas (1856), or perhaps the Red Scare (1919).

Now let’s move on to the next question: Where is the regeneracy?

I think it’s pretty obvious that the regeneracy has not yet started.

We may like to imagine that there is a definable day and hour when America, faced by growing danger and adversity, explicitly decides to patch over its differences, band together, and build something new. But maybe what really happens is that everyone feels so numb that they let somebody in charge just go ahead and do whatever he’s got to do.

The regeneracy cannot always be identified with a single news event. But it does have to mark the beginning of a growth in centralized authority and decisive leadership at a time of great peril and urgency. Typically, the catalyst itself doesn’t lead directly to a regeneracy. There has to be a second or third blow, something that seems a lot more perilous than just the election of third-party candidate (Civil War catalyst) or a very bad month in the stock market (Great Power catalyst).

When it happens, I strongly suspect it will be in response to an adverse financial event. It may also happen in response to a geopolitical event. It may well happen over the next year or two. Given the pattern of historical 4Ts, it is very likely happen before the end of the next presidential term (2016).

Which means we already know who will be President at that time: Either Obama or Romney. (Or at least this is high probability: According to Intrade, it is now over a 96 percent bet, so if you disagree you can make 25-to-1 by betting against global future traders.) It’s interesting that both men are temperamentally similar—cool, detatched, capable of gravitas–and that one could imagine either playing a Gray Champion role if history required it.

When will the 4T climax take place? To be honest, I have no idea. On timing, let me toss out my guess based on the typical pattern of historical 4Ts: The climax may arrive around 2022-2025.

The point here being that 4Ts are pretty chaotic. During 4Ts, the future seems much less certain than in retrospect. They are mostly defined not so much by how much institutions provide order, but by how much people want order. Here’s where the Millennials will play a key role.

Tags: generations

by: Matt Warren

1848: History's Shadow Over the Middle East

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 20:26:20 -0000

Comments:

1848 in Europe was the year that wasn't. In the spring and summer of that year, bourgeois intellectuals and working-class radicals staged upheavals from France to the Balkans, shaking ancient regimes and vowing to create new liberal democratic orders. The Arab Spring has periodically been compared to the stirrings of 1848. But with the exception of the toppling of the Orleans monarchy in France, the 1848 revolutions ultimately failed. Dynastic governments reasserted themselves. They did so for a reason that has troubling implications for the Middle East: Conservative regimes in mid-19th century Europe had not only the institutional advantage over their liberal and socialist adversaries but also the moral advantage. - Matt Warren

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

ethnic interests in Europe soon trumped universalist longings.

While ethnic Germans and Hungarians cheered the weakening of Habsburg rule in massive street protests that inspired liberal intelligentsia throughout the Western world, there were Slavs and Romanians who feared the very freedom for which the Germans and Hungarians cried out. Rather than cheer on democracy per se, Slavs and Romanians feared the tyranny of majority rule.

There are fundamental differences between 1848 in Europe and 2011-2012 in the Middle East.

his polyglot Habsburg system, lying at the geographical center of Europe, constituted a morality in and of itself, necessary as it was for peace among the ethnic nations. This is why Metternich's system survived, even as he himself was replaced in 1848.

While there is no equivalent in the Middle East of the Habsburg system, not every dictatorial regime in the Arab world is expendable for some of the same reasons that Habsburg Austria's was not.

That is the burdensome reality of the Middle East today: If conservative -- even reactionary -- orders are necessary for inter-communal peace, then they may survive in one form or another, or at least resurface in places such as Egypt and Iraq.

Iraq in 2006 and 2007 proved that chaos is in some respects worse than tyranny. Thus, a system is simply not moral if it cannot preserve domestic peace.

nobody is saying that conservative-reactionary orders will lead to social betterment. Nonetheless, because order is necessary before progress can take hold, reactionary regimes could be the beneficiary of chaos in some Middle Eastern states, in a similar way that the Habsburgs were after 1848. For it is conservative regimes of one type or another that are more likely to be called upon to restore order.

To wit, if the military is seen to be necessary for communal peace between Muslims and Copts in Egypt, that will give the generals yet another reason to share power with Islamists, rather than retreat entirely from politics. The overthrow of Mubarak will therefore signify not a revolution but a coup.

Indeed, democratic uprisings in 1848 did not secure democracy, they merely served notice that society had become too restive and too complex for the existent monarchical regimes to insure both order and progress.

So one should not confuse the formation of new regimes in the Middle East with their actual consolidation.

If new bureaucratic institutions do not emerge in a more socially complex Middle East, the Arab Spring will be a false one, and it will be remembered like 1848.

Syria is at this very moment a bellwether. It is afflicted by ethnic and sectarian splits -- Sunnis versus Shia-trending Alawites versus Druze and Kurds. But Syria also can claim historical coherence as an age-old cluster of cosmopolitanism at the crossroads of the desert and the Mediterranean, a place littered with the ruins of Byzantine and medieval Arab civilizations. The Western intelligentsia now equate a moral outcome in Syria with the toppling of the present dictator, who requires those sectarian splits to survive.

But soon enough, following the expected end of al Assad's regime, a moral outcome will be associated with the re-establishment of domestic order and the building of institutions -- coercive or not. Because only with that can progress be initiated.

1848 had tragic repercussions: While democracy in Europe flowered briefly following World War I, it was snuffed out by fascism and then communism. Thus, 1848 had to wait until 1989 to truly renew itself.

Because of technology's quickened advance, political change is faster in the Middle East. But for 2011 to truly be remembered as the year of democracy in the Arab world, new forms of non-oppressive order will first have to be established. And with the likely exception of Tunisia -- a country close to Europe with no ethnic or sectarian splits -- that appears for the moment to be problematic.

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by: Matt Warren