Psybertron Asks

The wisest strategy? Engaging in military attack against Syria to make the point about chemical weapons against civilians being unacceptable behaviour? The risk is hitting the Assad regime hard and giving the advantage to even less desirable terrorist rebels, maybe even allowing the weapons of atrocity to fall into their hands, right?

So don’t.

Make the objective to bash both heads equally hard, disable both their offensive capabilities with minimal human collateral and … if not entirely successful in one wave and the prospect of boots on the ground returns? … make the mission a smash and grab (Entebbe style) to seize the offending weapons (even one batch thereof, to show we intend to if we can) and get out fast. Leaving the chastened parties behind to “sort yourselves out like civilised humans”. If you have to redraw borders to satisfy religio-tribal family differences, get on with it – we’re still watching you.

We don’t choose sides, aim for a regime change, we simply level and civilise the playing field. And we can (should be) blue-helmets, not another imperfect nationally allied self-interest. Maybe we even suggest the Russians and/or Chinese do the smash and grab, with perhaps greater local cooperation ?

Hopefully Obama is already on the phone to Putin.

[And what’s the worst that could happen?]

Time to get creative, not cowardly.

Posted quite a bit on this recently, when we hear debates on what is in “our” interests – a shared first person plural – in politics, whether UK in EU or Rest of the world in Syria, etc. All that really matters is who “we” are. I’ve called it the multiple overlapping constituencies problem, and a tendency to contrast any one of “us” that takes our fancy in a given context with “them”.

Last noticed it when the Syrian ambassador suggested redrawing of national boundaries would be needed to find long term solutions – unusual for the incumbent “nation” to raise that suggestion. Roger Scruton’s point here is that nations need to be more like families. And I agree. The additional point being that families also respect and trust each other as families of man (*). Having no national borders is a utopian myth, but the best practical borders are those that delineate families (ie tribes) that can – in Roger’s words – share a first person plural. Politically, economic, expedient, circumstantial borders that artificially confine or divide “families” will always exhibit problems. Families have problems of course, but they generally see them as “their” problems, not someone else’s.

And looking at what “binds” nations as families, is where “religion” (that which binds us) and trust-based-on-love come into it.

[Good on Mr Gove. The way I see it the eastern Mediterranean is “our” shores. They are we. We are experiencing an atrocity. In which we discover that Sarah Vine is Michael Gove’s wife – seen retweeted many times:

given the choice of humiliating David Cameron
or taking a stand against atrocity,
they chose the former. Nice.

This is why (counter-intuitively) numerical voting is the wrong approach in a democracy – people think it’s about us winning over them and forget about the topic – clearly advertised by Cameron (credit to him) as “judgement”. They’re meant to be representatives, not delegates. I heard one MP justifying his vote in terms of the count of emails he’d received on one side. Talk about passing the buck of moral responsibility.]

[(*) The “Family” model works, because you not only have familial love within, you also recognise and “identify with” another family with its internal relationships and problems. A different family, but another family none-the-less, just like us. They are no different to we.

And, taking the US approach, currently in seeing evidence of atrocity and risk of future atrocity to be acted against as being in “our” interest. Yes the justification / rationalisation panders to selfish interest, but the judgement is enlightened nevertheless. It could be (have been) us – identifying with them – an enlightened inclusive indirect self-interest. The indirection matters. Self interest beyond the immediate vote Mr Milliband.]

[And tangentially connected – here another relevant example of the folly of focusing on the arithmetic. Austerity? Let’s announce a cut. OK, now what? And talking of Milliband’s juvenile incompetence, when the numbers do matter – his party funding – he shoots himself in the foot with his previous knee-jerk to breaking the default connection between Labour and the Unions. Talk about missing the point of Labour, disregarding history.]

Nothing really new here except some example opinions, but one to add to this earlier more comprehensive post on the subject.

Yes, some alternate spellings are genuinely redundant or a result of artificial introduction of combinations Germanic, Romance and Classical Latin “corrections” to pre-existing phonetic words (multiple ill-fitting trousers), before most people were dealing with the written word, but there are two kinds of spelling being overlooked. One that different words have and do come from different languages and preserved spellings reflect historical roots, and many so called similar pronounced sounds are similar but not actually the same for those accents that care to preserve their differences.

One value of language is to maintain our history and geography in view, not just maximum communication efficiency here and now. Obviously if we reduce the purpose of language to the latter, all bets are off, though it does ring fence us into narrower view that may miss future opportunities – being tidy is not good for evolution. (No reason not to tolerate simplified / abbreviated spellings in fast communications – as we do, always have – but the formal written form shouldn’t lose its history, its etymology. There are narrow measures and broader qualities of literacy; and measures make bad objectives.)

Hopefully this is nothing more than coincidental, but history seems to be repeating itself, with France taking Syria more seriously than the Brits again. Old imperialists never die it seems.

Probably really just a reflection how weak and unprincipled current UK government and parliament has become – damaged goods thanks to the Thatcher/Reagan & Blair/Bush years. It’s no good to say “we can’t trust our leaders any more”. Where are the strong, and who are the trusted; what’s so funny ’bout …. again. We need leaders we can trust, and we do need to trust them. There is no substitute for trust, no better form of governance than the worst form being better than all the others, where trust can be dispensed with. Cameron and Milliband could redeem their trust by showing us their strength and principles in resigning, set an example to the others who voted “tactically” as if parliamentary motions were an in-house game. Though, until there is new blood (with balls) to fill the leadership slots, we’ll need the likes of Ming Campbell or Paddy Ashdown to step up to the plate.

If I hear anyone cite problems with proof and responsibility holding them back from making principled agreements I shall scream. Assad’s regime IS responsible for chemical weapons discharged in their country – whatever individuals and motives were involved – stand up and address it. There is NO proof in actions and intent – it’s about how you handle benefit of the doubt and who you can most trust. In practice I hope Willy Hague is spending time with the Syrian Ambassador right now. But I digress.

Sykes-Picot was a dead letter already half-way through WW1, only to be resurrected afterwards for the Paris peace conference. Trust was built on shared confidences, but is ultimately worthless unless shared right through the ranks to the top.

Having read Scott Anderson’s Lawrence In Arabia, I’m re-reading John Mack’s A Prince Of Our Disorder – the life of T.E.Lawrence. Anderson’s massively researched work nevertheless acknowledges contributions from previous Lawrence biographers, particularly John Mack and Jeremy Wilson. Mack’s is a deliberately “psychological” analysis, but he is nevertheless drawn to TEL as the hero, the influential but introspective leader of  men and minds, with candid views on his own responsibilities and failings. Anderson cites his “tremendous debt of gratitude to … Wilson’s exhaustive research … his work remains the starting point for all serious Lawrence scholarship.” Yet despite further acknowledging Wilson’s “trailblazing achievements” and again being “indebted to [his] astounding scholarly research” he “respectfully disagree’s” with Wilson on “several aspects of Lawrence’s actions in Arabia”. I don’t see it myself, having read all three and TEL’s own Seven Pillars many times, I see the same complex character and motivations, including judicious conflation, diminution, exaggeration and rearrangement of actions in both memory and reports. The reality was true – truth is reality – and the truth is words are always arranged for rhetorical purposes, particularly if you have a purpose, a cause, as Lawrence did and didn’t hide.

The fact that this “little gem” can be discussed by “the good folks at Rational Skepticism” just shows how lightly some people take rationality and expect to receive Pay Pal donations for their “running costs”! Snake-oil salesmen, just like Deepak Chopra in fact. It’s OK because, like the BHA questionnaire, it’s just a bit of fun apparently, for entertainment purposes only. (Hat tip to PsyJr on Facebook).

I’ve probably said this before, but the one good thing about the Richard Dawkins Foundation, apart from the jokes, is the fact that between Reason and Science there is an ampersand, so clearly they do know that science is not reason, and neither is one a superset of the other. A start.

But, is this the best Assad can come up with?

1126: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has warned that his country will “defend itself in the face of any aggression,” Syrian state TV reports.

How can this kind of rhetoric help? I thought his ambassador on BBCR4Today was making more sense this morning – even though he was stoutly defending his country and its government, doing his job. The idea that national boundaries may have to be redrawn is suddenly not unthinkable.

Having just completed Scott Anderson’s Lawrence in Arabia, I’m reminded (though it’s not quoted) of Lawrence introductory problem in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom – that in all these questions of self-determination even a question like who are “the Arabs” is moot, let alone “a Syrian”. Can think of no better recommendation, that anyone interested in Mid-East “democracy” seriously digests Anderson’s excellent book.

Whether it’s I / me / we / us / they / them / the other, the question is always overlapping “constituencies” and their histories.

No-one is proposing “aggression” – in fact the two years of inaction is the rest of the world bending over backwards to avoid intervention in what looks like a messy civil war – with no doubt plenty of innocent victims on all sides – though the very idea of “sides” is a simplistication. This is about evidence of a serious horror. Address that Assad, or whoever knows what they’re doing in the Syrian government. Simply saying it’s unthinkable is a “head in the sand” response, not addressing the evidence.

Someone in the Syrian government needs to step up to the plate.

(See point on benefit of the doubt. And responsibility post-script.)

Wonder what all the “institutional infringement of individual privacy” people think about this kind of surveillance that was originally dubbed “spy in the cab” think now? A use that was never intended when this data capture started. Right result nevertheless.

There’s nothing new under the sun, is one of my repeated adages. Plus ca change – with technology of communications and media, for example – plus c’est la meme chose. I often also quote Horace quoting another from 4000BCE similarly pointing out the the perceived problems “of our time” are nothing of the sort, but are rather recurring cycles of ubiquitous aspects of humanity.

How I come to be posting this today is a case of tennis, elbow, foot. PsyJr posted a link on FB to the Guardian piece on Sam Harris and scientism ! – and Sam Harris being someone I’ve referred to often (mostly positively) on Psybertron, I skimmed previous posts including this one – We Didn’t Start The Fire. It’s a review of Harris piece on the scientific evidence against open fires as a source of heating – though the subject matter of his piece is incidental, illustrative of his main point about faith-based belief responses to scientific evidence against their faith.

I included a YouTube link to Billy Joel’s song of the same name which, apart from being a stonking pop song, is the same message. It was written as a response to someone with an 80’s/90’s perspective of world problems looking back on the 50’s/60’s/70’s as a time when nothing of note happened. And we could say the same looking back on the late 20th century from the early 21st when it comes to (say) mid-east conflict and terrorism from a Syrian perspective (this month) or Egyptian (last month). Ironic, having just also read and thoroughly enjoyed Scot Anderson’s Lawrence In Arabia in the last week.

So what about Harris and scientism – I see the BHA has also posted a link – need to respond. Science gone too far – can’t hear that expression in anything other than the dulcet tones of Handsome Dick Manitoba of the Dictators …. it’s nothing new.

Anyway, the particular Oliver Burkeman Guardian piece says itself that a previous piece by Steven Poole better addresses the scientism debate kicked off by Steven Pinker – responded to previously here.

Apart from more links to things I’ve not yet read, neither piece actually adds much more than a summary of the debate remaining contentious – but a real debate – scientists responding to “accusations” of scientism. Actually that’s not my problem. I have NO problem with scientists doing science being scientistic – it’s everybody else.

Curtis White – The Science Delusion:

When Richard Dawkins was named the world’s “Top Thinker” in a poll recently published by Prospect magazine, it was hard to avoid the suspicion that the world�”or at least that part of it that votes in such polls�”must have an impoverished sense of what constitutes a vital or transformative intellectual figure. Mark O’Connell – The Slate.

Scientism -> impoverished sense, sounds about right. Having been blogging on about this for 12 years so far, it’s good to see the debate getting out there. Dawkins being held up as some kind of paragon of virtue (I use the term advisedly) is a prime reason he’s one if my recurring targets – nothing personal.

[Although it appears White is someone who shares my view that scientism is THE major problem “of our time” (irony alert) his book doesn’t sound like one I’d like to read. (By “of our time” I of course mean, since the 18th Century “enlightenment”. The part of the problem that is “not of our time” but ubiquitous, is the memetic problem – the problem that humans mostly share as knowledge what is most easy to share, not what is best. It is that fact that this problem is reinforced by mass communications media that makes it THE problem of our times.)]

Heard Sacks on BBC Sunday, talking sense as usual. Not really digested this yet. Contentious, was equating trust with religion – with which I have no problem – religion / trust is what binds “us” together. Only question is who is “us” and the nature of the “bondage”.

In essence I agree with Sacks point (again). Culture is losing the plot if it decides all it can trust are things scientific. Scientism as I’ve dubbed the problem. Oddly scary that formal humanist organisations share this lack of trust in humanity. (Must check Sacks use of the word “secular” here.)

The comment thread on the BBC story has some classics. Here just one example, much promoted.

[Trust of people] derives from how you are brought up as a child, and this has a lot to do with love, respect, acceptance and kindness, and little or nothing to do with religion.
[Huh, except that religion also derives from … and has a lot to do with … etc. The religious upbringing line is even brought up by atheist humanists as “child abuse” fer chrissakes.]

I prefer humanists to religious folk, convinced of their own righteousness.
[Talk about the righteous pointing fingers! Irony x hypocrisy squared.]

(Comment  are closed – actually quite a good few balanced responses too – about not ignoring Sacks points simply because you do not agree with his religion.) But more generally – people confuse religion with (a) irrational belief and (b) the particular practices of particular religions. Whereas it is by definition what binds us together. It’s another clear management (or governance) example – the same cultural failing – that turns such values into objectives where so-called organised religions – like any “professional” organisation. They inadvertently attempt codify what they value in prescriptive do-this / do-that practices, and destroy their value in the process. Religion (trust) ceases to be. What religions are accused of is precisely what most important cultural institutions suffer from.

Today’s lesson (see earlier posts):
Any benefit of the doubt, in an objective evidential sense,
must fall with trusting the humanity of the human(s) involved.
It is that which binds us together.

The problem is a cultural one, one of cultural values. Not problems with religion or science except in so far as they are both immersed in cultural problems, the same as politics and economics are, including the politics and economics of the humanities ironically.