The French police stopped the Swiss Ambassador to OECD, the other day, on suspicion of driving under the influence. Charges were placed against him. The Swiss government lifted the ambassador’s diplomatic immunity but did not recall him – a move which would have effectively shielded him from prosecution by giving him safe conduit out of the country. The Swiss MFA enjoined him to cooperate fully with the French police. The ambassador faces the rigor of justice just as any other person in the same circumstances would.

The story is trivial. What are not trivial, in my view, are the deeper circumstances leading to the contingent event.

Humankind internalizes experiences and social rules by linking them to emotions. Building on basic predispositions – empathy for instance, “folk psychology”[1], or a sense of justice – from infancy we slowly acquire such habits and practices from the social environment. Disgust and fear have genetic roots (some of us recoil from snakes even without direct experience of them), but they also are an acquired trait with both personal and cultural components. Disambiguation is futile.

The human brain consists of two “parts”: type I is reflexive and fast, albeit unconscious; Type II is reflective and slow and involves consciousness. It can only deal with a few elements of the context at a time: the order of magnitude is that every second we register over 10 million sensations from the surroundings. Consciousness only registers a few.

All along the socialization process, essentially we link socially acceptable behavior to the Type I brain, which then reacts instinctively and emotionally. Living in a complex society presupposes such ability: we navigate implicitly 99% of the enormous complexity of social reality. This linking process is undirected – an enabling capacity rather than an instruction. This makes sense. Any abstract rule must be applicable to many and ever changing contexts: 2 + 2 should apply both to apples and persons. Only experience and practice teaches us when and where the rule is applicable.

This is the purpose of education. William CORY, a famous Eton schoolmaster, formulated is this way:

“At school you are nor engaged so much in acquiring knowledge as in making mental efforts under criticism… A certain amount of knowledge you can indeed, with average faculties, acquire so as to retain; nor need you regret the hours you spend on much that is forgotten, for the shadow of lost knowledge at least protects you from many illusions. But you go to a great school not so much for knowledge as for arts and habits: for the habit of attention, for the art of expression, for the art of assuming at a moment’s notice, a new intellectual position, for the art of entering quickly into another person’s thoughts, for the habit of submitting to censure and refutation, for the art of indicating assent or dissent in graduated terms, for the habit of regarding minute points of accuracy, for the art of working out what is possible in a given time, for taste, discrimination, for mental courage and mental soberness. And above all, you go to a great school for self-knowledge.”[2]

To put it bluntly: it takes us a minute to understand what a hammer does – hit nails. That is essentially what a teacher can convey to the pupil. The rest is up to the student. Only long practice enables us, at one stroke, anywhere, anytime, without fail, to drive a nail in “just right”. “Embedding” the instruction takes place by trial and error. The desired outcome is a practice that resonates – like a well-tuned violin “sings” no matter how the bow hits it.

Nowadays, we see the process of acquiring habits and practices as “boring” – everything should be “goal-oriented” or “effective” – and fast. Habits stifle spontaneity – we opine (we are oblivious to the fact that what we call “spontaneity” builds on long practice of internalization). The long period of apprenticeship, however, is meant to guide us fast and safely to the goal and past a situation of stress, where the conscious mind risks being overwhelmed by the context. This is why soldiers drill for battle.

The Swiss ambassador had been told the limits of diplomatic immunity – I’m sure of this. I’m sure we’d find appropriate detailed instructions to accompany his letter of appointment. What was missing, I suspect, was the long process of internalization anchoring failsafe behavior. Was the ambassador drilled on what to do when one is caught with one’s pants down? Only experience, or simulated experience, can teach this. May be this is why his instincts failed him. The Type II brain had been “briefed”. The Type I brain, however, had not had the opportunity to “internalize” the desirable behavior and supply the instincts appropriate to the situation.

OAKSHOTT would have differentiated between “technical knowledge” (that can be made explicit and formalized) and “practical” knowledge – in fact a set of sensibilities, dispositions, aptness, recognitions, judgments etc. – which cannot be taught by formula.[3]

Finally, the Master of Eton spoke of “self-knowledge”. The rhetoric intimates “quality” – Platonic advancement toward “truth as the crow flies”. Far from it. “Self-knowledge” simply means experience about one’s behavior in as many situations as possible. A “school” is meant to provide opportunities for experimentation, as well as protection from the consequences of inevitable (and instructive) failures.

Unimaginable, right?

Well, this was the situation in the French rural areas under the Ancien Regime (things were no better in the stinking cities). Most people barely had enough to eat: at best it was 2kg of bread a day in water – or an equivalent fare. Meat was on the table a few holidays each year: that is why peasants feasted on frog legs and snails. In a village, people ate what they grew: they only bought food when the harvest was poor – and the prices extortionate. Debt led to peonage, or worse. When destitution loomed, in desperation people deserted their hovels to beg and steal on the road, croaking in the end in a bush. Alternatively, many would leave after harvest and sought day labor jobs to stave off hunger during a harsh winter. The road – the great alternative to staying put in the village, was at any one time the choice of one quarter of the French population.

Robert DARNTON describes the situation of the French peasants through the prism of fairy tales, which they told, and retold each other during the veillées, when men mending tools, and women spinning, sat around the warming hearth.[1] Village life, the life of the overwhelming majority of Frenchmen, was harsh and dangerous. Everyone faced endless, limitless labor, from early childhood until the day of death (without anesthetics). Hatred, jealousy, and conflicts of interest cleaved peasant society. History in the villages stood still – l’histoire immobile. There was no conception of things ever really changing. Only in a fairy tale, a cunning trickster may be able to outwit the powerful (if his sense of superiority blinded him).

Life was quite different then – and it is difficult for us to relive their plight. Where did Napoleon get his Grande Armée? In part from such vagrants: they were more than happy to swap life on the road for life in a camp, companionship and loot – even though it meant a real chance of gruesome death on the battlefield.

I address my first reflection to all those who wax nostalgic for the past. “Where is the world coming to?” “Surely we are on the slippery slope toward doomsday!” Maybe so, but we’ll still be better off than our fore-parents were – by a long stretch. The highlight of most fairy tales was “manger à sa faim” – to eat one’s fill. Fairy tales were told to members of the family huddled around the fire the way we huddle around the TV. Sitcoms are the equivalent of fairy tales. Could eating one’s fill be the highlight of sitcoms?

The second reflection is that some fundamentals never seem to go away – like Proteus they just change their appearance. Francis FUKUYAMA proudly declared “the end of history”. Fernand BRAUDEL spoke of village time as “immobile history”. Vagrancy is now dubbed “commuting”. Food fare was monotonous then – our hurried choice has shrunk to pizza and hamburgers. Athletes already take in synthetic food – to max their power. In ten years’ time,  we’ll imitate them. After 15 years,  married life ends: divorce has replaced death as the main cause. The trickster of the fairy tale has become today’s celebrity: someone who has managed to work the system to his own advantage and flaunts it – without ever belonging to the establishment (even trophy wives are throwaway). Twitter has replaced village gossip – but gossip we do with abandon.

Nothing and everything is new under the sun – that is what keeps us warm and on the go…

Ms. Shirin EBADI, an Iranian human rights lawyer who received the Nobel Prize in 2003, has written an occasional piece (http://bit.ly/157Bvmw) – probably on the occasion of the “Nobel Women’s Initiative Conference” in Belfast.

The text is canonical: it reflects and summarizes mainstream views. I’ll discuss this text to highlight what I consider troublesome thinking underpinning the discussion on the role of human rights.

“Democracy, in its classical definition, means the rule of the majority.” This is the first sentence in her text, and the premises on which she builds her argumentation. I do not know where she got this idea from, but to me this is not what democracy is all about.[1]

In Athens, there were no parties or proper “elections” – just a series of votes cast within a restricted oligarchy of citizens on individual issues (women and slaves – the majority – need not utter a word). Prior to Greek democracy, the Romans had developed a complex system of checks and balances framing the voting (see my 162 blog entry http://bit.ly/157Bvmw). Underpinning all discussion about democracy, in either case, is the idea that “winning elections” is a means and part of a never-ending process toward the goal of making policies for the common weal. True, the winners have the right of initiative. It remains a “common” endeavor, however, and “winners” must try to be inclusive.

Referring to my 234 blog entry (http://bit.ly/157Bvmw ), I have argued there for the existence of “social logic” – a more or less coherent set of beliefs or principles – underpinning the social system and allowing it to evolve harmoniously. While the “winners” of an election may have the lead in interpreting it and choosing policies to fit the context, they are in the end bound by the social logic and by the respect they owe to all members of the group. Any such social logic, then, is strictly internal to the social system and would have no universal character.

Ms. EBADI, however, argues: “Democracy has a framework that must be observed. What is the framework of democracy? The framework of democracy is human rights laws.” For her, the “framework” is universal, hence external to the social system. Never mind that the terms “framework” and “laws” are contradictory. A law is a social construct – a collective intentionality somehow subject to the approval of the social actors. It cannot be a universal. More cogently: I know of genetically founded universals. Primatologists have observed empathy in all apish cousins, so the assumption of a genetic presupposition is fair. I have no evidence fur cultural universals – unless they are of religious origin and transcendental.

Ms. EBADI fails to indicate how the “human rights framework” emerged. To her it is axiomatic, or self-evident. As a political theory, however, “human rights” is a contemporary development.[2] One is strained to bestow universal and timeless character. The claimed universal character puts human rights in the class of revealed principles. The only difference is that there is no Moses to carry down from Mt. Sinai the Ten Human Rights, or how many they may be.

Transcendentalism has consequences. A revelation is an open invitation for someone to show up and reveal/interpret it. There is no dearth of candidates on this score, all high-minded, mind you, and ready to decide what’s suitable for you and me. I’m also amazed at the proliferation of “human rights” being asserted directly or deduced from first principles. Transition to “animal rights” is an emergent phenomenon.

More problematic aspects arise. A right is entitlement – it may not be questioned or subject to deliberation. A “right” is a “non-negotiable demand” so dear to the ’68 generation. Furthermore, a framework is a framework is a framework. It must be directly applicable, either prescriptively or at least proscriptively. Ms EBADI is quite clear on this point: “Pretexts for violation of human rights as cultural relativism, religion and ideology, are not acceptable”. She goes on. “No country can be a quasi-democracy” – leaving it open where the boundary between real-existing democracy and eutopia lies.

I would wholeheartedly agree with Ms. EBADI on there being “different degrees of democracy”, and on “democracy requires constant attention,” lest it veer into oligarchy or autarchy (with a human face these days). Contrary to her, however, this is not a matter of asserting universality and transcendent rights, but a matter for ongoing deliberation. It is a not an individual’s right, it is a common responsibility.

In my blog entry 211, I waxed skeptical about Joseph S. NYE’s “soft power”. I disliked the intertwining of persuasion and brute power. Persuasion backed by power tends to become dogma. NYE’s concept of “change from within”, however, has an intriguing kernel. My meandering readings have led me to some insights in this respect, which might be worth sharing. An Italian author used to quip: “sometimes the shortest path between two points is an arabesque”. This post is akin to it – bear with me.

At the beginning… there is a beginning

In his Rhetoric, Aristotle argues that in a social context (e.g. public speech) arguments are deducted from accepted opinions.[1] Aristotle is right. In order to move forward, a social group needs to share a beginning. Deliberations toward concerted action start from common ground. In jargon, one would say: the construction of a social reality requires a starting collective intentionality: deliberation from the shared assumptions will hopefully lead to a new collective intentionality and even action.[2]

The view: “everything has a beginning (and a cause)” is a “universal”. I may add: if we cannot find a beginning, we’ll happily invent one (they are called cosmogonies). Research tells us: fabulation about beginnings is a genetic predisposition in everyone. [3]

Genetic predispositions

Science is discovering many genetic predispositions[4]. Empathy is one, and there are more. Such predispositions set an unassailable beginning to the understanding of social reality. Culture is seamlessly built on genetic predispositions.[5] Trying to separate out the two worlds is akin to drawing a line in the water.

Shared assumptions

In practice, any society rests on a set of underlying common assumptions. Kent FLANNERY and Joyce MARCUS[6] use (regrettably without definition) the term “social logic.” “Mentality” might also be used.[7]

I list the common principles or “social logic” underlying a hunting-and gathering society, as taken from FLANNERY – MARCUS (Pg. 54). This choice is just exemplary and aims at making it easy to understand underlying features:

(1)        Generosity is admirable; selfishness is reprehensible;

(2)        The social relationship created by a gift is more valuable than the gift itself;

(3)        All gifts should be reciprocated; however, a reasonable delay before reciprocating is acceptable;

(4)        Names are magic and should not be casually assigned;

(5)        Since all humans are reincarnated, ancestors’ names should be treated with particular respect;

(6)        Homicide is unacceptable. A killer’s relatives should either execute him or pay reparations to the victim’s family;

(7)        Do not commit incest; get your spouse outside your immediate kin (however defined);

(8)        In return for a bride, the groom should provide her family with services or gifts;

(9)        Marriage is a flexible economic partnership; it allows for multiple spouses and variations.

This list is far from exhaustive. The principle of social cause and effect, for one, is not included. Neither is the principle of social substitutability (or collective guilt) or the “first come, first served” universal. In fact, most agreed principles are silent or unspoken. The human mind uses such assumptions unconsciously and without effort, but has a hard time conceptualizing them (one only needs to think of the infinite complexity of language. Everyone uses it, but only dedicated linguists are able to begin plumbing its structure).

Within one “social logic,” the various principles not only coexist: they reinforce each other, creating synergies. Rituals, for links to emotions, are added. Sacred propositions – creation myths and cosmogonies – yield ethic and morals. A homeostatic [8] value system emerges. It permits the group to live harmoniously – and to do so over generations. It also allows for “niche creation” – humanity’s ability to enter a strange environment and adapt to it successfully. “Social logic” is akin to what I called a “social Bernard machine” in the blog entry 232, a system that tends to replicate itself over time. Such a system shapes the group as much as the group shapes the system.

“Social logic” need not be internally consistent. Humans are pretty proficient at suspension of disbelief. They handle contradictions by back-grounding them as needed. This eases the evolutionary process, even though it makes it messy.

I admit to groping for a proper term to describe this complex system. “Social logic” overly stresses the conceptual at the expense of the people in which the logic is embodied. It also fails to highlight the existence of interchangeable components in the logic. The same applies for the term “mentality”. “Machine” is a poor fit for s process that is inherently complex. Would John SEARLE’s “social reality” be a better term? Maybe – even though it is too static for my liking. For the dynamic, ever-evolving character is a central feature. Richard DAWKINS has created the term “meme.”[9] I dislike it, for suggests granularity, when the social logic is open-ended: elements are added, deleted, and transformed at any moment.[10] There are no clear boundaries, and replication is far from being comparable to genes.

To recapitulate: the “social logic” is a complex of assumptions (some overt, some silent) shared within a social group. Replacement or declination of any such assumption is possible and even likely. Exceptions are probable,[11] even central, to the well-functioning of the system. Each assumption is absolute (values are incommensurable). They all form part, however,  of the same social logic. They coexist somehow: deliberations yield ever-shifting trade-offs and in the end equilibrium. Finally, both the group and its constituent social logic act together in replication and co-evolution.

How “social logic” evolves

Any complex system evolves. This rule applies also to social logic. The group tests, rejects, redefines all the time the elements of the social logic. New equilibria are found. Some elements may be lost, as when the depository of social logic dies unexpectedly, or when collective memory lapses (or is suppressed by an elite). Curiosity and analogy may introduce novelties. Technological change may impinge or even transform any social logic (e.g. the introduction of agriculture). Change in environmental conditions (e.g. climate change), experience (e.g. war), but also leaders may alter it.[12]

Such change may be akin to a Darwinian process – trial and error.[13] Social logic contains intentionality, however: the process is also cultural and social.[14] Experience and conceptual analysis drive the formulation and validation: in fact, they interact. A new mindset enables the person to understand the phenomenon as the experience validates the concept. The outcome is akin to a Lamarckian process.

Social logic may change gradually and in cumulative fashion. It spreads slowly through the social fabric as individuals grapple with concepts and experiences. Shared experiences – empowerment – may accelerate the process and make it viral.[15] Concepts too – ideas, visions –may trigger change in ways similar to experiences. A new discourse matures through slow accumulation of arguments. People become increasingly comfortable with them as defenders of old views die out. An old concept dies the “death of the thousand articles (or arguments)”. Occasionally, however, a compact form of the concept strikes the imagination – and triggers enthusiasm as well as antagonistic reaction. DARWIN’s “descent with modification” is such a felicitous formulation summarizing a “long argument” – it turned out to be exceedingly divisive.[16]

Memory loss as well as loss of the lived experience is major factor impinging on change. Social logic is embedded in people foremost. When people forget or die, the social logic is impoverished. This is a loss and an opportunity: a new social logic may emerge. Memory loss is not innocent: it is one of the elite’s favorite means of controlling the social logic.

Writing has much slowed down this process – without eliminating it. In many ways, it has simply hidden it: we use the same words, but their meaning has evolved silently through experience (paraphrasing Heraclitus: one cannot use the same word twice). This phenomenon leads to all sorts of trouble. Reverence for diachronic consistency tends to trump adaptation to context. The social logic becomes rigid and fits poorly to the context: it becomes ideology.

“Soft power” – changing elements of “social logic” from without

So far, I’ve described social logic as evolving autonomously within the social group or in response to the cultural and material context in which the group finds itself.

The next step is for social groups to interact with one another. They may do so on the basis of equality. Given mankind’s universals of curiosity, imitation and emulation, the influence is reciprocal.[17]

History shows, however, that soon enough inequality – within and between groups – creeps in. We observe “alpha-” and “subaltern” groups. Soft power is the ability of a superior group to alter the social logic of a subaltern one. It need not be done by power and fear at all – though it helps. Soft power emerges seamlessly from inequality between groups. The influence can be surreptitious, innocent, or peripheral. In the end, it is pervasive.

Social logic is a complex matter consisting of many strands. In the past, subaltern groups tried to filter out unwanted aspects of superior soft power. China introduced the policy of ti-yong (“Chinese learning should remain the essence, but Western learning be used for practical development”).[18] Japan adopted a “Western science, Japanese essence” policy with a twist: it rejected Chinese learning, which had previously influenced the country, as “cancer in Japanese Society”.[19] Attempts at disentangling may fare poorly.[20]

Is it possible to use “soft power” in a directive manner – to foster the “superior” group’s purposes? Prudence would the order of the day. Complex systems yield unexpected outcomes. In politics, this is called “blowback.”[21] One also tends to forget the importance of reception, and its social expression – empowerment. No matter what is on offer: what counts is what people do with it. At best “soft power” enables – it opens up possibilities. The desired outcome is but one of many possibilities.

About 6 million years ago, the chimpanzees, the bonobos, and hominids divided up the realm of Pan, their Common Ancestor. Looking at the apish offspring today, we see a shared tendency for alpha males/females[1] to appear at the top of pecking orders. There is a pre-disposition for hierarchical structures. There is also strong competition for high ranks. Subordinates, however, soon balk at the top male’s behavior and create counter-dominant coalitions in an attempt to defeat him.[2]

This tension seems to have been particularly present in humans.[3] What we know for sure is that, the end of humanity’s evolutionary process, homo habilis habilis was resolutely egalitarian.[4] How did we get to be that way?

It probably was a “just so” or contingent story. 400,000 or so years ago, we invented tools that could kill at a distance – spears. The scavenger ape became a big game hunter – but in a group only. This created a group management problem. How to divide the carcass within the group? An alpha-male grabbing too much meat for himself would leave the rest of the band with insufficient energy for the next hunt. All members needed feeding for the system to work. It looks as if hunting efficiency drove the group toward egalitarianism.

What did this entail? The group “declared” overbearing alpha-males (alpha-bullies in fact) “unfit” for reproduction and took them out of reproduction by ostracism, and even capital punishment. Among the first images from the distant past, there is one of a man pierced by arrows like a porcupine. It may have represented a warning to prospective alpha-bullies.

Fear-based control (as in other apes) was too crude an instrument to work all by itself. Nor did it work terribly well with free-riders – the other scourge of any collective effort – who disguised themselves while being anti-social, or were slick and charming characters. Also, the process was mainly genetic in origin, hence slow to evolve.

Active policing of alpha-male social predators by their own band-level communities emerged as a social tool. Pro-social behavior transformed us into altruists, but also terrible gossips and moralists. An “ethical project” emerged.[5] Building on biological pre-adaptations,[6] hominids internalized social i.e. cultural rules and linked them to emotions. Since then, an inner “voice” tells us what is right and wrong. When we say something we know to be morally wrong, we blush uncontrollably – this is a tell-tale sign of a link between biology and culture. Not only do we feel the voice, but we gossip about moral behavior all the time, validating and reinforcing a pro-social stance. Most likely, sexual selection (“reputation” as the basis for reproductive success) was also involved. [7]

Such culturally based purposeful inputs are both part of natural selection and a product thereof. “Their effects have gone beyond shaping everyday group life pro-socially, for they have helped to shape our gene pools in pro-social directions that are similar.” (Pg. 333) 250,000 years ago, we became egalitarian – some archeologists conjecture. BOEHM sums it up: we had developed a mechanism for “self-domestication.”

Characteristically, the moral sense is not absolute, but highly flexible. The inner voice urges pro-sociality. The individual may override this instinct – depending on material and social context – and be egoist. Christopher BOEHM regrets this “weakness” of mankind’s moral compass as compared to innate egoism.

He need not worry. The “ethical project” may just be the first instance of a social “Bernard machine.” “The Bernard machine is named for the great French physiologist Claude Bernard, who first pointed to homeostasis[8] as a central feature of living systems. Bernard machines are agents of homeostasis, and I discuss how design emerges from the action of Bernard machines that create new environments and impose homeostasis on them. Generation of design by Bernard machines contrasts in some fundamental ways from the Darwinist explanation for design, in which good design arises from a selection for “good function genes.”[9]

Once the “self-domestication” system got going, it shaped human evolution.[10] It was a balancing act aimed at moral homeostasis. Too little morality – and the alpha-bullies have it. Too much morality – and “self-domestication” leads to effete ineffectiveness. In order for the social system to survive, it needed curbing excesses either way in a flexible way. Rigid rules would destroy homeostasis. Only homeostasis ensures survival – including its own. Dialectic tinkering will ever so subtly yield this. The aim is “good enough”- keeping the social system from seizing up. To put it another way – social Bernard machines are dialectic: their dynamics is not based in action ó reaction, but just the opposite – contradiction. Bernard machines are adaptive, not directive.

Bernard machines are demanding. Once in place they “impose” their will on the living structure, be it biological or social. Of course, no intentionality is involved. But the effect is to yield stable design – necessary path-dependent outcomes. This is probably why moral systems the world over all look alike.

Having learned the usefulness of social Bernard machines, humans applied them everywhere unthinkingly. The “check and balances” system for a well-functioning democracy is such a Bernard machine. Most likely, society is a social “meta-Bernard machine” composed on many topical “sub-machines” and sporting many inconsistencies, poor interfaces, or contradictions that cancel each other out.

Bernard machines are not “beautiful” in a mechanical sense. They are not “well-structured”. In fact, they may look down-right ugly to our geometrically trained eye. A termite mound would not please Leonardo’s eye. On the other hand, discovering its inner working of homeostasis – so different from that of the mechanical contraptions he imagined – might have pleased Leonardo’s mind.

Funnily enough – we rely on analogies from mechanics and the inanimate world to describe such living structures. Our favorite metaphor is the “infinite complications” of a clock – even though Bernard machines are just the opposite of clockwork. We prize order and structure over functioning. With Bernard machines, function yields structure, not the other way around. This gives rise to no end of trouble. Fortunately an ability to “suspend disbelief” and ignore contradictions allows papering over such disconnects.

We may not be able to do so for much longer, however. Drawing on analogies from the physical world, we clamor for consistency and direction deducted from first principles. We yearn for the certainties of mechanical linearity, rather than the endless surprise of dialectics. In this view, everything is reduced to structure. Are we unwittingly destroying social Bernard machines in an iconoclastic drive for reductionist order? As Tacitus said about the Romans:” where they make a desert, they call it peace…”

Alain TESTART has written a brilliant analysis of “transfers” in socio-anthropological terms.[1] He observes that there are three types of transfers between people: exchanges, gifts and, finally, what he calls (somewhat awkwardly) “transfers of a third kind”( T3T). It is on the latter ones that I’d like to reflect, for a lot of current political heat is expended on their character and purpose. What are T3T, in fact?

(T3T as payments to become part of a group)

The first kind of transfer, which we might crudely describe as trade, implies both sides having “willingness” to participate. The arms-length deal is struck: the good or service is supplied and simultaneously entitlement to compensation accrues to the provider. The state (or the social group) guarantees the proper execution of the deal, and provides unassailable closure.[2] The principle of pacta sunt servanda applies within a well-regulated group.

“Gifts”, are unilateral transfers without specific compensation.[3] They may come wrapped in all sorts of rituals, and of expectations of future return – what one may call “indirect reciprocity”. The state is not involved, for there is no legal obligation, and even the social group has a limited role. Again, gifts accrue within a well-ordered group.

“Transfers of the third kind” seem to share one characteristic of each the two first transfers – hence the conceptual difficulty. Here, first a few examples:

• ·        A slave is obligated to work for his master unconditionally;

• ·        Taxes are due unconditionally (as opposed to charges, which reflect a good or service provided by the state).

• ·        Dowry may be unidirectional and unconditional.

With exchanges, T3Ts share the obligatory character of the transaction. On the other hand, as in the case of gifts, T3Ts are unilateral. So where do they fit? In my view, the key differentiation between the exchanges and gifts on one side and T3Ts on the other lies in the switch from “willingness” (which implies individual autonomy) to “ability” to pay. The core issue is trying to understand why such a shift occurs.

I’ll provide now some “leading” examples:

• ·        In France, apprentices still practice the “Grand Tour” – they move all over the country from employer to employer, working under their direction for a pittance. At the end, the apprentices are inducted into the guild;

• ·        Initiations and rites of passage also involve contributions by the initiee;

• ·        Membership fees in select clubs are induction fees;

T3T, it would seem, are unilateral payments or induction fees a person effects in order to “belong” to a group or state. The in-group levies a fee on the individual asking for the privilege of becoming part of this group or to remain a member in good standing. The demand is discretionary and bears no measurable relation to specific benefits. The petitioner has no say in the matter; his “ability”, not his “willingness” to pay, is determinant.

For the individual, a T3T is the price he has to pay to obtain benefits from participating in the group. For the group, a T3T is the way to deal with the “free rider problem” – how to extract a “fair” contribution toward the common costs of being a group. In economics, one speaks of “public goods”.[4] Groups are symbolically marked.[5] A T3T is for the individual a means to have the symbolic marker shifted to include him in the group. It occurs at the boundary between in-group and individual.

Let’s go back to the examples in this light. A dowry is paid unconditionally in order to become part of the spouse’s kinship group. What about institutionalized slavery? In war, ancient convention held that the loser forfeited his life. He becomes a slave instead: his work purchases his right to live. The slave may not determine the conditions for his release, and even then, he may retain obligations to his original owner.

Taxes? In this light taxes are contributions to the common weal levied on members of the in-group. Benefits from citizenship are “lumpy”; lacking ways to measure benefits, fairness demands that all participate towards this supply on the basis of their ability (not their willingness) to pay. Taxes are in a way “membership fees” in a state. “No taxation without representation” must be also read symmetrically: “no representation without taxation”. In their logic, Tea Party buffs are not wrong in implying secession.

Why assert: “taxes are theft”? My conjecture points in the direction of a narrow reading of the Bible.[6] The myth of the Edenic primeval couple implies the absence of a group. Under such conditions, fully “reaping the fruits of one’s toil” makes intuitive sense, and depriving the individual of such fruits is theft. The myth suppresses a basic fact: “benefits” only accrue because the individual is part of the social group. In the end, Robinson Crusoe needed Friday. China’s “artful recluse”[7] is never alone.

I’ve been reading a prominent French social anthropologist, Alain TESTART. His critical analysis of the concept of “gift”[1] in anthropology is nothing short of exact. Reading the text is akin to intellectual Pilates. It challenges and stimulates: at the end one feels clever by reflection.

(Vestimentary ornament from Shizaishan. Yunnan, China – 150-50 BCE)

At the same time, I’ve been reading Christopher BOEHM[2] on the slow progress of hominids toward morals – what Philip KITCHER[3] felicitously calls an “ethical project” that has been going on for the last 100,000 years or so.

Looking from a vantage distance, this project is one of “disambiguation” – transforming general (and genetic) attitudes and unspoken antecedents into conscious social, hence moral rules. It is a process of discovery and description, of categorization and concretization. Maybe the myth of “original sin” symbolizes the slow and inadvertent passage from “is” to “ought” – when for the first time we reflect on behavior and define it in terms of rule.

It struck me, however, that the current categorizing as well analytical approach to rituals, ideas and events from a distant past, involves the risk of being an exercise in anachronism. Heraclitus’s dictum: “”Everything changes and nothing remains still … and … you cannot step twice into the same stream” does not just refer to experience, it also, nay, even more, refers to disambiguation. Once the fog of ambiguity is pierced or the horizon of the possible has been widened, there is no way to “relive” the antecedent status of uncertainty or “ignorance”.

There is a price to pay, of course for disambiguation: the outcome of any disambiguation is not “truth” but path-dependent and hence contingent. Aristotle would put it this way: a deduction is made from accepted opinions—as opposed to deductions from first and true sentences or principles.[4] Accepted, one may point out, means contingent. Accepted means “common sense”, or unexamined intuition; accepted means “self-evident”. “Self-evident” truths need not be explained and are inaccessible to the historian because they are unspoken.[5] Revisiting the situation in an effort to insert current “first or true” principles (according to our present lights) may give us the illusion of understanding the past. We are simply projecting our understanding on the past.

(Please note: disambiguation only leads to complexification – not necessarily truth. Any disambiguation from an “accepted” principle will exhaust itself, after a while. Should the process exhaust itself, a challenge to the accepted antecedent would be warranted. All deviation from “common sense” is counter-intuitive.)

We waste a lot of time and words, trying to ascertain precursors of political ideas – “human rights” come to mind. This, however, is nothing but “data mining” of the past: a process we practice in religion, where we trawl a hailed text for answers we “know” beforehand to be true. The past is not more “genuine” – it is just more ambiguous.

Meat-eating apes (chimpanzee, bonobos, and humans) hunt as a group. Sustained success depends on the fitness of the hunting party. Consequently, the catch must be shared. Social rules govern both the hunt and the distribution of the meat.

These rules are socially enforced. An alpha-bully trying to hog too much faces the revolt of the subordinates. He/she (oh yes, the bonobo are a matri-centric society) will either tolerate or encourage meat-sharing as an insurance against (sometimes deadly) revolt. This process is opportunistic or, if one prefers, political and based on the calculation of fear. A quick survey of the situation will decide on the course of action. The chosen strategy is highly adaptive and inherently unstable.

Humans are the only ape that blushes. Not only do we have social rules, we have internalized them. Breaking the rules will elicit our inner voice – the self-inhibitory conscience – warning us against infringement. Positive/negative emotions lead us reflexively. Of course we can override the rule: our conscience’s flexibility allows us to adjust our behavior to the situation (unless one is a religious fundamentalist, that is) as well as to navigate dilemmas arising from multiple objectives stretching over time. Collaterally, we may be tempted to break the rules if we think we can get away with it without too much damage to reputation. Still, unless we are psychopaths, we shall feel uneasy. Conscience – the internalized (i.e. emotionally grounded) rule of behavior – seems to distinguish us from our ape cousins.

For those interested in how this phenomenon might have emerged, humans started (relatively) big game hunting with hand-held weapons about 250’000 year ago. BOEHM argues – quite plausibly, I would say – that this shift strengthened pre-existing egalitarian tendencies.[2] This entailed socially taking alpha-bullies out of the reproduction business by shaming (giving them a bad reputation), ostracism or even execution (we have cave paintings from the Holocene in Spain, which may depict just such liquidations). In a sense we have “auto-domesticated” ourselves through punitive social selection.

I’d argue that chimpanzee and bonobos are calculators operating within a set of social rules. At any time a recalculation is possible and does not entitle feelings – except fear. With them, the situation dominates. For emotional reasons humans tend to give preference to rules over context.

Culture establishes the emotional link. Socialization of the young leads the way. We may use emotionally charged ritually to reinforce moral sentiment. Gossip and shaming reaffirm it. Deviants are punished – even killed. Compared to the opportunistic calculations of chimpanzee and bonobos this equilibrium is more predictable. Predictability facilitates generosity and long-term investment in the group. Of course, such “indirect reciprocity” is plastic.

Now to “persuasion”. The term has an honorable tradition best exemplified by its use in late Antiquity. From there it has entered political thought. The Roman Empire was autocratic. Subordinate elites used “persuasion” to mitigate the effects of autocracy as executed in the provinces. They did so by invoking the social values enshrined in paideia as practiced by Greek and Roman philosophers and thinkers. Persuasion was a complex and subtle exercise (coached in uplifting terms) in shaming the autocracy’s representatives into following well-established socially internalized rules.[3] Critically, however, persuasion was the language of subordinates.

I would argue that we cannot persuade chimpanzee, bonobos, or for the matter Martians. Apes do not have emotional ties to their rules. As for the Martians, they do not share rules with us. Even if they are emotionally attached to their set, there is no guarantee that their set and ours is congruent. Persuasion fails because it does not lead to shame. Neither apes nor Mr. Spock (of Star Trek fame) blush.

We have conflicts when groups or nations apply incompatible social rules to each other. Sharing rules (possibly out of fear) will lead to conflict abatement – armistices and containment come to mind. Stasis ensues, but this equilibrium is unstable. Persuasion – internalization of rules – is needed. Going much deeper than securing an outcome on the basis of common rules, persuasion aims to establish emotional ties to common rules taking them beyond “realist” calculation.[4] The “historic handshake” that turns foes into friends signifies the shared emotional commitment.

Is the creation simply a circle of greed?

The ocean is certainly not agitated

By fish flashing about

BHARTRI-HARI

In 1706, the Numunu moved from the west to the dominant continental grasslands east of the Continental Divide of North America, seeking a new “way of life” around the emerging ecological triad of grasses, bison, and horses. These foragers on foot were few in number. They adopted and adapted to the horse, quickly developing specialized mounted bison-hunting as their “new lifestyle”. They also profited from European technology trickling into the prairies: guns and iron tools. Henceforth they called themselves Comanche. For more than 150 years, the Comanche dominated an area of well over 100’000 square miles ranging from the Arkansas river to the north to well into today New Mexico and Texas. Their lifestyle became dominant.[1]

Writing extensively on the subject, the author called the emergence of Comancheria “a momentous cultural experiment”. “Momentous” it certainly was; an “experiment” it was as well. I doubt that it was “cultural”. The core population was too small to qualify as “culture”. It was at best a “way of life”. I’d rather call it a business, or even a racket.

Specialized hunters trade part of their meat for grain they need to obtain a balanced diet.[2] Based on smooth reciprocity, this process is on the whole peaceful. The presence of the horse marred the sudden encounter between the emerging Comanche and the semi-sedentary Apache. The horse enabled the Comanche to raid the Apache for food, horses, and captives. Raiding became a way of life for the Comanche. Location determined the rest: Comancheria was sandwiched between pre-industrial New Spain and Louisiana (later the emergent USA). Raiding these territories became a fast growing business, as the Comanche exchanged horses, mules, skins and captives against guns and other artifacts.

The horse was the centerpiece of the business. The Comanche bred part of the herd on the range; youth tended it. They stole the rest from the settled areas: in particular they stole mules, which fetched better prices than horses among American settlers. Buffalo skins were easy to procure but hard to process: this was women’s job, together with curing buffalo meat for the winter. A man with many horses and many women was a rich man. He could command a large extended family that was tributary to him. Polygyny and slavery emerged. Climate and disease were limiting factors to the business expansion. The Comanche never got to be over 40’000 in total, and this only thanks to ruthless miscegenation with captives.

Comanche, who had started from a handful people, probably were never able to develop more than core behavior patterns involved with gaining a living, along to the social behaviors that are basic to such an enterprise. Raiding was highly hierarchical. The successful band leader got the best pick. A leader was expected to show conspicuous generosity, but in this system of primitive accumulation generosity translated into political power and further accumulation of wealth.

All young people started out as hired hands riding their chief’s horses. Personal achievement was everything, and status was not fixed, but forever contestable. According to custom, youth had to pay bride price. Their access to women and wealth depended on raiding exploits: “Excluded from marriage, horseless and horse-poor young men found their route to full social enfranchisement severely compromised” (pg. 264).

“The dual nature of Comanche society, its deepening segmentation and its persistent plasticity fueled fierce social competition.” (pg. 165) Comanche men were culturally conditioned to be ambitious, aggressive, and competitive. “… it was not because they were inherently violent, but because they were desperate to cross the social fault lines from bachelorship to marriage, poverty to prosperity, and drudgery to leisure.” (pg. 269) The great losers in this social system were women, whose standing in the community plummeted to that of menial labor, and slaves or quasi-slaves, who did most chores. For most Comanche, life was brutish and short.

The encounter with the horse transformed the Comanche into proto-capitalists, whose main (if not only) business was raiding – exploitation of neighboring societies. In this sense the “business model” was “parasitic” on the emergent US society and collapsed soon after incorporation into US territory. It is doubtful that such a “business model” would have been capable of evolving into a stable social system.

The capitalist development model has brought enormous progress, but also increasing inequality.[3] Today, an esoteric financial system spearheads development. To the extent that the latter is not a “speculative bubble”, one might discern some similitude to Comanche raiding.

Beyond the issue of justice and morality the issue is one of stability of a social system based on ruthless accumulation as well as stark up/down mobility. Human societies have emerged from the Holocene with rather strong anti-hierarchical traits.[4] Shaming and, as the last resort, killing enforced these traits (particularly of the alpha-bully). Complex societies would seem to favor egalitarian attitudes. One wonders about current trends toward deepening segmentation and persistent plasticity, which fuels fierce social competition.

Why were the Greeks so hapless? My conjecture is that this reflected in part their political institutions. Kingdoms and tyrannies were the exception in the Greek commonwealth. Oligarchies or assemblies of the people ruled Greece – let’s call them extended oligarchies. A diplomat had to address a group and get consensus. The diplomat had one shot at his task: he spoke before the assembly. It was “one-to-many” persuasion. Rhetoric was his only instrument. If he failed, he lost his case.[2] The Greeks lacked adequate communication instruments for their “one-to-many” diplomatic ambitions – the approach faltered.

The paradigm we have all come to identify with “bilateral diplomacy” is the child of autocratic governments “talking to each other” in “one-to-one” interaction. The aim is achieving stability – dynastic marriages cemented stasis. The aim was a well-defined and unchanging world map, where everything was divided up and all the surfaces neatly colored.

This “one-to-one” paradigm survived the shift from autocracy to democracy. The government of a country acts with “one voice” as the notional autocrat (albeit with popular legitimacy by delegation) in foreign affairs. Consensus-building within the country is the government’s responsibility. The diplomat is not directly involved.

The “one-to-one” paradigm works best when settling “vital interests” bilaterally. “Vital interests” are political discontinuities: they are either/or situations often resolved by overt or covert use of raw power. Here, the government legitimately represents the state as a whole. War and peace, or territorial issues are “vital interests” – the issues of the “map”.

Wars and their equivalents have proven poor policy tools these days – see Iraq and Afghanistan. Borders between states are stable – but for “grandfathered issues” – unsettled territorial disputes from the past. “Regime change” or “economic system change” would be a further case of “vital interests”: “rogue” states come to mind, but they represent the exception to the rule that modern states get along. Diplomacy has worked in Burma, and might do the trick in North Korea.

Beyond these rare instances, the “one-to-one” paradigm looks increasingly threadbare. The stuff of international relations, nowadays, is all about many countries finding an ongoing consensus on “policy preferences” within a common institutional framework: the UN, WTO, IMF, and other international fora. It is “many-to-many” relations stretching over time and aiming for predictable change, rather than stasis. The aim is “pooling forces” toward a common task, rather than “dividing up” the political space.

Furthermore, “preferences” entail no discontinuities and either/or situations – it is all a matter of degree, where infinite adaptive compromises are possible within/between policies. Everything is in a sense fungible – that is why we use the term “preference”. A good example of such a system at work is the EU. Countries are in perpetual negotiation; tomorrow’s gain offsets today’s loss. It is difficult for a unitary government to have a consolidated stance over time.

In the world of “preferences” it is difficult to speak of “national interest”– national positions reflect internal triangulation among many stakeholders shifting in accordance with the evolution of the negotiation. The state arbitrates and, at best, includes the “general national interest”. Stakeholders are no longer content to have a say indirectly through governmental representation. They want to have their say directly. Transnational alliances among like-minded stakeholders emerge – civil society knows no borders.

The unitary stance of the government flags, as stakeholders and their members become actors. In moving toward a multinational consensus, states are no longer alone; they may not even be principals, but rather the national institutions charged with implementing group consensus.

“Greek-style diplomacy” – “one-to-many” diplomacy – is making a comeback. Diplomats who want to play a role within this framework must address many stakeholders at once. One needs means other than those available within “one-to-one bilateral” diplomacy. Public diplomacy, or e-diplomacy, comes to mind. Diplomats today begin to grapple with the same problems Greek diplomacy tried to address: how to get “many” to agree with one’s positions. They supplement their public rhetoric with electronic tools: they aim to garner widespread accord with their positions by large dissemination.

Three problems arise. The first is that “one-to-many” diplomacy is unstable. It goes toward “many-to-many”. Cacophony ensues. Celebrity diplomacy helps e.g. in capturing the agenda. It is rather haphazard, however. Also, it is so loud an instrument, it blacks out the rest. The ability to temper the electronic instruments – speaking softly and slowly – will be one determinant of success.

The second is the often emergent character of the outcome. Once the author launches a twitter message, she never knows whether it goes viral, or fizzles out, or how it gets changed in the process. The crowd always surprises.

The third is lack of legitimacy. Stakeholders are self-appointed. They are not democratic in a larger sense, nor do they try to be. From my Berkeley days, I can attest at the lack of democracy inherent in “movements”. Though I disagree with Allan BLOOM on many things, I must agree with him on this: “The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity, but the one that removes awareness of other possibilities.” The price of rallying rapidly around a common goal is the loss of deliberation.

As bilateral diplomacy declines “Greek-style diplomacy” emerges. Unlike Athena rising as an adult from the head of her father – we have to learn to live with this emergent reality. It will not be easy.

We have a case of substitution (see my 225). The difficult question is to determine whether the person is fit for the job. The simpler question is to verify that he was good in his last job. Presto, switch past performance for future success as the selection criterion: alas, in the long run incompetent managers take over. This applies also to politicians, of course.

What is one to do? Laurence J. Peter, after whom the principle is named, proposed establishing an elite fast track as “second best” solution.[2] This is voodoo management to me: why should restricting the pool of candidates yield better outcomes? How is one to determine “brilliance” – at a young age? Why should career security be reward for “brilliance”? In fact, the effect is likely to be perverse: the caste will have an easier time protecting its collective incompetence.

Italian researchers have taken a different tack. Their solution is to expand the candidate pool: they propose promoting by lot. They used an agent-based modeling approach to simulate the promotion of employees and tested alternative strategies (please note their search for evidence rather than plausibility). Although counter-intuitive, they found that the best way to improve efficiency in an enterprise is to promote people randomly, or to shortlist the best and the worst performer in a given group, from which the person to be promoted is then selected randomly. This work won the 2010 Ig Nobel Prize in management science.

In a recent article,  they expanded the concept to Parliamentary elections.[3] Party politics favors partisan law-making at the expense of the “common good”. The “winner-take-all” attitude we encounter in politics today reflects this attitude.

The authors propose introducing “independent parliamentarians” drawn by lot. They do not have to be angels and vote only for laws that enhance the common weal. We want their independence to destroy the effect of party politics, where “right or wrong my party” prevails. How many such parliamentarians are required? The larger is the winning party, the larger must the number of independent agents be. What is interesting, however, is that the effect is non-linear and depends on circumstances. A few independent parliamentarians suffice to make a big difference, provided the majority party has no stronghold on Parliament.

The ancient Greeks and Romans understood the constructive role of chance. We still find traces of it in the jury system. We should embrace it too. We have one advantage over our forefathers: we can simulate the outcome.

I asked a friend of mine, who is a humanitarian law specialist, about this Manual. I received the following comment: “I do believe that International Humanitarian Law provides pretty sufficient laws and principles related to cyber-war: in all wars principles of distinction and proportionality are the key.”

The term “proportionality” struck a chord with me – but it took me a bit to understand why it seemed odd. Remembering by association my training as an economist, I realized that “proportionality” and the economic term “efficiency” are close relatives. Of course, in “proportionality” one tries to avoid “wasting” lives. “Efficiency” is about avoiding waste of (other) resources. The spirit, however, is the same.

This photo brings it all together:

1968: bombing the DMZ in Vietnam

Did the US have to bomb so indiscriminately (distinction) in order to kill the Vietcong (proportionality)? Could the US have achieved the same objective with better precision bombing (efficiency)? Would drones have made it “satisfactory”? Exploring the language further, the term “collateral damage” is a first cousin of the economic concept of “externality”. The economic thinking is pervasive – if not persuasive.

Just as we have “efficiency” experts – the managers of a firm – we have now “proportionality” experts – it is said that bombing targets during the Kosovo intervention were vetted by a team comprising 250 lawyers.

What has happened? We certainly disagree about ends – about whether there are “just” as opposed to “unjust” wars[1], or whether all wars are unjust. We can all agree, however, that if we wage war, we should do so in a spirit of “proportionality” (and economy). If we can’t get to an ideal, we settle for “second best” (another economic term – except that the theory of second best rejects approximation).

Over time, a subtle switch has taken place: the if has transmogrified into provided: war is OK, provided proportionality is applied. Economic thinking again is in the lead. After all, society does not worry whether a “market” is good or bad, or “fair” – it worries that it be “efficient”. The same reasoning now applies to war. The quest for peace has been replaced by the quest for proportionality. The Western ideology of progress is the accomplice. We just promise “to do better next time”, in fact we know we will be better – but also that there will be the next war.

Psychologically, we have here a nice instance of substitution. KAHNEMAN[2] describes it this way:

• The target question is the assessment you intend to produce.
• The heuristic question is the simpler question that you answer instead.

“Bait and switch” would be a less glorified formulation.

Yes, deep down I worry that concentrating on “proportionality” as “second best” After all, if I have set my mind to climbing the Everest, climbing atop a nearby hillock is a poor substitute.

I have a second concern, which is not moral, but analytical. War has become commodified – in fact we only speak of “armed conflict” (so my friend) which sweeps the immense variety of the war experience under an abstract conceptual rug of a generic term. War has become a-historical and de-contextualized.

We should be going in the opposite direction. In order to deal with war, I’d argue, we need to confront each instance in its gory uniqueness. For, it is within its specifics and diversities, feedbacks and path-dependent outcomes that we may find the way forward.

“Forward” is the operative word. Retributive justice looks backward – hopelessly looking for unattainable “truth” or the prime agent. Restorative justice looks forward to closure. It only asks: “what does it take to get peace”? In old Latin “peace” and “pay” have the same etymological root. So peace may be about economics after all…

Here the topic: “Just back from a “basketball diplomacy” trip to North Korea, the former N.B.A. player Dennis RODMAN turned around and visited Vatican City last week during the papal election to support the Ghanian cardinal Peter TURKSON as the first black pope.

“Can celebrities like Rodman, Bono or Angelina Jolie who get involved in diplomacy or antipoverty efforts offer a useful diplomatic service, or are they just putting pretty and recognizable faces on complicated and unwieldy issues?”

I have no idea of the motivations behind Dennis RODMAN’s trip to Pyongyang. Vanity – a fading celebrity in search of a cause to burnish his image? Did he truly believe he could make a difference? It does not matter: the reception in North Korea alone matters. Neither RODMAN nor I have any inkling on how this “escapade” from traditional diplomacy will turn out.

Enter the pundits: they all have different opinions. Is it useful to have “opinions” on such an issue?

I doubt it: … “in most [other] novel situations, one cannot predict with any accuracy how particular people will respond.”[1] (emphasis mine). Social psychology teaches that people react situationally. When they are in a new situation, anything can happen. Factor in KIM Jong-Un’s own environment. How will it react to RODMAN’s coming, and how will this impact on KIM? God knows.

Punditry is prophesizing… er… predicting. Pundits derive rules from anecdote. Generalizing from the particular is a risky business. Philip TETLOCK interviewed 284 people who made their living “commenting or offering advice on political and economic trends.” Respondents were asked to rate the probabilities of three alternative outcomes. Reviewing the predictions years later “The experts performed worse than they would have if they had simply assigned equal probabilities to each of the three potential outcomes.”[2]

Is the future wholly opaque? Not necessarily: “Our intuitive ideas about people and the principles governing their responses to their environment are generally adequate for most purposes of the office and the home; but they are seriously deficient when we must understand, predict or control behavior in contexts that lie outside our most customary experience – that is when we take on new and different roles or responsibilities, encounter new cultures, analyze newly arisen social problems, or contemplate novel social interventions to address such problems.”[3]

RODMAN’s visit was the roll of the dice. He stirred the pot. Nothing, something, or anything may happen. As for the pundits, we can dispense with their commentary. They are engaged in creating heuristics for public consumption: “If a satisfactory answer to a hard question is not found quickly, the System 1 brain will find a related question that is easier and answer it. (…) substitution [occurs]. (…) heuristic is a straightforward procedure that helps find adequate, though often imperfect, answers to difficult questions.”[4] Alas, heuristics are never appropriate in novel situations. Not even if there is a novel situation every day.

I’ve received this photo both from people in Europe and the US

Europeans sent it to me with the comment: how clever – we shared a smile. I nodded pensively – I would not have come up with such a ingenious solution.

This is the generic comment from the US:

Subject: Too lazy to stand in line to get their welfare check!

Now, don’t tell me that welfare recipients aren’t innovative! No reason to stand on your feet waiting to get your check. Just put your flip-flops next in line and go back and sit on your ass and play games on your iPhone. What a great country!

Let me tread lightly on the fact that nothing in the photo indicates its location (Europeans tell me it is Haiti); nothing in the picture indicates what people are waiting for. For all I know, it could be the post office, or the dispensary.

Now back to the comments. Some people use this photo to celebrate inventiveness; others use it to stigmatize – what a cultural difference!

The comment from the US casts the world into two camps: “We, the righteous” and “them, the cheats”. Nothing wrong with basking in being right and on the sunny side of life – as they used to say in the 60s: “more power to you.” Let me ask: why should one pair the pleasure of being “right” with an invidious condemnation of other people as “cheats”?

The US likes to portray itself as the “land of endless opportunity”. The comment, however, reveals people’s perception of life in the US as a zero-sum game. Transfers to the poor necessarily cripple personal success. In the race for the elusive opportunity winning is all – consolation prizes are inherently unfair.

Here is the personal comment with the circulating photo: “I can not feel sorry for the majority of these people. This is America and had the same opportunities as me in getting off their ass, going to a school, (hopefully one not run by Liberal professors) get a skill and go to work. … But you know most drawing a Government check are not really needy.”

Let me again tread lightly on the assertion: “most people are not really needy”. Certainly the writer has no basis for it. Let me also skip the issue of transfers to the rich. Tax loopholes for particular interests in the US amount to about 500 billion US $ – not a bad welfare check, I’d say. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

What worries me most is stigmatization. This simple photo, which shows human infinite adaptability and ability to solve problems, is used to spit venom on people who did not draw the grand prize of life. As if we all could draw it; or as if life’s lottery could provide winning numbers for everyone.[1]

This stigmatization harks back to: “For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.” (Matt.13:12). What the “haves” are taking away from the have-nots is their right to dignity in dearth.

International relations today are not so much about power relations as about common goals: mitigating climate change, protecting cultural goods, public health, whatever. Nations come together in negotiations to compare their ambitions and hammer out a program of action. When has this form of international cooperation begun?

I suspect that the Council of Trent (1545-1563) was the first instance of such a gathering. The Pope’s representatives, many Bishops, and representatives of the greatest rulers (France. Holy Roman Empire, Spain, as well as Italian states) met to hammer out a common program of doctrine and reform for the Catholic faith. The laity hardly had its own voice during the gathering. The duality of the program papered over a basic disagreement. The Papacy wanted to clarify doctrine so as to condemn Protestantism while reserving reform to itself as head of a hierarchical Church. The political powers, who wanted political stability and religious peace, hoped for accommodation in the doctrinal sphere and concrete steps for the reform of a Church which, in many aspects, gave scandal to the laity. The Bishops, the prime actors in the Council, wanted to clarify and strengthen their role.

On the whole, the Council accomplished its task. Bishops approved a set of unifying Canons for Papal endorsement: the texts covered both doctrine and reform. The Council, however, did not succeed in reconciling Catholicism with the Reformation. In addition, the Council failed to treat a number of core reform issues. This silence allowed later orthodoxies to fill the void.

How did the assembly go about organizing its work? Specialists in multilateral relations will observe the emergence of familiar procedures.

At the beginning,  there was little more than an inchoate expression of political will. Many centers of power expressed more or less articulated ideas of what the Council should treat. De facto, Martin Luther, who never set foot in the Council’s rooms, set the agenda.

A (hardly representative) group of Bishops under the direction of Papal Legates met in the Council. The Powers were officially present: their ambassadors worked on the agenda through Bishops from their lands. The Council soon structured its work on a binary track. There would be “joint” decrees on doctrine and reform. The presiding Legates, whom the Pope had appointed, set out their content at the outset. In their presiding work, however, they had to respect the wishes of the Bishops and the Powers. The balancing task proved taxing on them.

A committee structure soon emerged to facilitate discussion.[2] On matters of doctrine, an informal group of theologians extracted questionable or heretical statements. Congregations of Theologians disputed them. Bishops may or may not attend. Bishops had their say later, in the General Congregations, which prepared the ground for Draft Decrees established by a Drafting Group. After reworking, the Decree a formal Session gave approval to them. Voting was partly secret, partly by open ballot.

While earlier Councils took heretics head on, condemning them to the stake, here the indirect approach of “if statements” helped in the cooling of passions: “If someone should say… he will be excommunicated”. In the OECD, we used this exact approach to deal with violations of the Code of Conduct for Multinational Companies. This avoided inquisitorial procedures and provided quick interpretation of controversial Articles.

On matters of reform, simpler and also more variable (if more chaotic) procedures prevailed. A drafting group headed by a Legate drew up the Draft Decree, which was then discussed in General Congregation.

The Legates convened informal groups (what we would call “green room meetings”) as needed. The Legates resorted to well-known delaying tactics –the provided texts at the last moment. The Pope switched the venue to Bologna in the second period of the Council in order to suit his political purposes At the end the Legates spread the word of the impending death of the Pope to secure superficial treatment of many crucial issues in a rush to come to a close.

Many matters of principle were swept under the rug. The Council is notable for what it did not as much as for what it did decide. Convened in part at least to reform the Church, the Council failed to issue a definition of the Church. Its piecemeal decisions attest to a hierarchical institution, but left the relations between the head and the substructures vague.

Life moved on. After the Council closed people lived through the experience of implementing its mandates. Many took it as inspiration. St. Charles Borromeo was exemplary in this regard, even though he had an inordinate fondness for rule setting. Others took a minimalist line. The reform of the “head” – the Papacy – took centuries, and one may argue that it is still on the agenda. It is telling that the scrutiny and publication of the acts began in 1786 and ended in 2001. The myth of the Tridentine Council arose on this silence.

Beyond the specifics, I’m impressed about the ease with which Legates and Bishops evolved procedural rules and tactics. We observe declination of the rules and procedures in action today – in only slightly changed form. Structures have a way to self-organize themselves and impose their inner logic on those who want to use them.

One remark at the outset: to call Sophie’s situation “choice” is an implicit espousal of the sadistic doctor’s mindset. The “philosopher” is complicit in torturing Sophie, by calling the situation “choice”, when what is on offer is no choice at all, and certainly not one in which Sophie would enter knowingly and willingly. Circumstances beyond Sophie’s control have placed her in a situation where every course of action has catastrophic outcome.

How to get out of the conundrum? Forget ethics! Grab the dice. Let chance decide. This is what the ancient Greeks did (and for good reason). When in doubt, the ancient Greeks asked the Delphic Oracle, or watched birds in flight; others may have looked at a goat’s entrails. The Chinese used scapulomancy. The method was always the same: let chance choose. This entrusting the choice to chance was sacralized.

What was the intent? When catastrophe looms, pain from loss is inevitable. We are ready to bear it – we are fatalists. Fatalism allows closure. The wound is clean and eventually it will heal – albeit leaving scars. We should not, however, also weigh the person’s soul down with guilt for the choice. The wound will fester on forever. Guilt can only be resolved by truth and in Sophie’s case “truth” – the “right thing to do” is not on offer. Sophie is forever on the rack of guilt – which is what the sadistic doctor wanted.

Contrary to fate, truth brooks no closure. For, when “seeking truth” one embarks on a never-ending journey. “Love of truth”, or “faith” may be our spiritual GPS, but all the GPS does, in the end, is obsessively to remind us of our distance from the ideal. We become obsessive.

How much better it would be to outsource the (illusory) choice to a “randomizer” and bear the pain, but not the guilt. Imagine the Palestine issue settled by the roll of the perfect dice – and not by “justice”, or “historical precedent”.

Hunter-gatherers only had portable goods. Raiding between such groups was probably for women and children – their main “wealth”.

Agriculture led to durable stocks (food and artifacts). Neighbors raided each other for them. Extractive elites emerged to strike a (leonine) bargain with local self-governing agricultural communities: they demanded yearly exaction and offered protection against destructive raids in return. Such elites defended territories congruent with their military skills. They demarcated the territory and destroyed raiders crossing the boundary. Extractive elites battled each other for control of their respective territories – warfare emerged. Warfare was an ordeal about elite property.[1] Subject agriculturalists were quite indifferent to the outcome, even though they disliked the collateral entanglements. Religious ideologies underpinned the elites through sacralization. In the main, extractive elites were interchangeable. They dominated agro-literate polities or even a multi-ethnic empire.[2]

The horse allowed nomads to project power long-distance. First they raided, emerging suddenly and then absconding afterward in the steppe beyond the reach of the sedentary elite. Emboldened by experience, nomads destroyed extractive elites and took over their territories – the Mongols were the best in this respect. Success brought about sedentarization and acculturation.

Industrial societies rely on cognitive and economic growth for survival.With industrialization elites merged into a “homogenous world, subject to systematic indiscriminate laws, and open to interminable exploration”: the new society was “morally inert and, on the other side, unitary.” (Pg. 22-23) As industrial societies replaced pre-industrial tributary (and commercial) empires they attempted to redraw the boundaries they found so as to fit the new mode of production. Nationalism and secular ideologies drove the process. It was most bloody. The verdict is clear: economic strength, not military aggressiveness, is the irreplaceable foundation of a dynamic industrial state.

Warfare – an industrial society’s attempt militarily to impose its will on another – is coming to an end (even though unresolved conflicts or belated colonial adventures may linger on). Territorial conquest is no longer an option. Only total war may bring regime change about, as it happened in WWII. “Shock and awe” – as a proxy for total war – has failed to change “hearts and minds”. Regime change is effective only from within – as the failure, in this respect, of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan has shown. Globalization accelerates the process. Regional conflicts may still emerge when a country demands special recognition.

Globalization has weakened the effective sovereignty and fiscal capacity of some states. “Buying off social aggression with material enhancement” (Pg. 22) may no longer work. Dissolution may loom ahead – this is usually peaceful, if not easy. Unresolved ideological and ethnic conflicts within the state may lead to violence and secession. Traditionally states have repressed secession attempts militarily. Secession is frowned upon in international relations. No multilateral doctrine has emerged in this regard.

Emergent dissident groups have fallen back on nomadic tactics in their struggle against sedentary societies. Raids have been carried out against them. They were politically but not strategically successful. Terror is no more able to bring about regime change in a foreign country than a sedentary society. Sedentary societies struggle in their response to such terrorism. For, the foot-lose groups use foreign territories as their base of operations. Received principles of territorial sovereignty hamper “surgical” military operations on foreign soil by the targeted country. Assent and cooperation of the state on whose territory cells of these groups are located,  is uncertain. Collateral damage in the “host” country worsens the situation.

Any expectation that military expenditures will reflect the profound changes that have swept the contemporary world is unwarranted. Fear drives military expenditure (Rumsfeld’s 1% rule). One may factor in the inner logic of a self-regarding military-industrial complex and the competitive logic of reciprocity. These forces can drive an involution toward a needlessly militarized societies. Danger looms in this respect.

A recent article[1] described an instance of internet virality and its consequences for the people involved:

“And then, on 5 March, Jason RUSSELL, working for the NGO Invisible Children,  released Kony2012, a 30-minute film that explained why the world needed to catch and bring to justice Joseph Kony, a central African warlord, who, over the previous 26 years, had abducted 30,000 children and turned them into soldiers and sex slaves. Russell directed and starred in the film, and within hours it was on its way to becoming what was then the most viral video of all time. It took a day to hit a million views; six days to reach 100 million.”

For Jason RUSSELL and people around him, this turned out to be a perfect internet storm. He survived – but barely. I suspect that other people who have used the internet as well as Facebook, Twitter etc. have encountered such perfect storms. Dead people do not tell tales. This may be one of the few cases where the victim survived – possibly because the storm was as violent as Sandy.

NASA JPL

I’ve argued that one should study events (http://wp.me/p81We-zD) and here is a perfect internet storm ready for analysis. Here is a short and incomplete description of the phases and stages – I’ve dropped the sequencing.

Virality first of all leads to a logistic emergency. Demands came from all sides – for information, verification, amplification; the media proposed speaking engagements, appearances, and interviews. The organization grew helter-skelter in order to catch up with demand. Management became overtaxed. I do not know whether there are agencies specialized in logistical crisis management – but apparently websites are “stress-tested”. There should be such a service.

An integrity emergency soon looms. As public interest grows, so does human interest in the people behind the story. Personal integrity is part of this. Journalists and others will scrutinize the past for clues and “personality traits.” A difficulty emerges: we all have high standards of integrity, but integrity is never absolute. Let’s forget about the errors we commit. Sloppy habits at the bank mutate into “dubious finance record”. Integrity is never total and unbending: just “good enough” for the situation people live in. A viral setting changes all this: personal integrity is never good enough. Intellectual integrity comes next: intentions and motivations are probed for hidden agendas. Conjectures are created from scraps of evidence. Lack of guile is exploited in adversary fashion. The race among the self-appointed censors is on for precursors. The outcome is often stigmatization. The sphere of privacy vanishes, when one is recognized in the street.

Authenticity of the narrative became the focus of frenzied attention. Each frame of the film is analyzed in adversary fashion for signs of manipulation, error, or clues for malfeasance. “Those who live by the slick viral videos can die by them too”  is the telling title of a press review, which continued: “It reminded me of a manipulative technology advert watch the first four seconds of this again. It’s pompous twaddle with no relevance to fucking anything.” While utter integrity is demanded, the same criteria do not hold for the critics, who “mistakenly” spread unsubstantiated rumors.

A fight for control of the narrative came next. The video advocates action – rather than simply reporting. It addresses both the “root solution” – eliminating the war lord Joseph Kony – and the “mitigation” – helping children affected by the war. The “fourth estate” – the people and in particular youth – are called to move the political world. This complex of aims triggered a principle as well as a personality debate. The subject soon penetrated the international political area. The UN, the African Union, the US Congress got involved. The initiators lost control of the narrative, and at times of the movement as it grew and metastasized.

The perfect storm nearly destroyed Jason RUSSELL. Medical doctors treated for severe mental stress. He survived. One cannot prepare for the perfect storm. Staying away is the only prevention.

*

The site of the Invisible Children offers a “progress report” issued 12 months later. The world has changed. Laws have been passed. Motions have been approved. The issue of “warlord-ship” in Africa has become an international concern. War lords like Joseph Kony will have a harder time doing terrorizing the populace unbeknownst to the world. I can put it another way: while war lords could count on operating “under the radar screen of indifference” this no longer is the case.

It is a new way of bringing about political and social change. Gone are the divisive and negative emotions of opposing ideologies or class struggle, or the cold-blooded calculation of “vital” or partisan interests. Unifying, nay fraternal, and positive emotions aiming for commonality of purpose prevail and shape a hopeful discourse. Performance artists – people skilled in conjuring collective emotions of love and togetherness – have been the first to exploit it. Maybe the emerging politics of common purpose needs leaders with a different voice.

Here, the “constructive” mandate aims to put an end to “corporate rip-off” – instances where management is either over-rewarded for good performance or receives a “golden handshake” despite poor performance. The measure does not include “claw-back”: getting at past management for decisions that have subsequently ruined the firm

Some details of the intended legislation: The general assembly of a publicly traded corporation approves the global amount to be paid out in salaries and emoluments to management and board. Management and board are chosen yearly. Proxy-voting is restricted; electronic voting is allowed. Institutional shareholders (pension funds etc.) exercise their vote in the framework of their fiduciary responsibility and announce their intention publicly. Severance pay for management and board may no longer be agreed to in advance. Guidelines in the statutes set out incentive plans for management. All these measures intend to limit excessive salaries for top management and “sweet deals” among fat cats.

The vote was straightforward. 46% of the electorate participated. Two thirds of actual voters – and all the Swiss cantons – approved. The initiative is now part of the Swiss Constitution. The government creates the regulatory framework within eighteen months.

The measure addresses three core concerns of a market economy:

• Economic theory forbids monopolies (and oligopolies where collusion limits competition) because they cause asymmetries. If the product is good, the monopolist can overcharge. If the product is defective, the client has no alternative. Head I win, tail you lose. Current culture sees managers as “unique”. This allows them to extract monopoly rents.
• Economic theory forbids “asymmetries of information”. Sweet-heart deals and back-room pacts between management and institutional investors are no longer allowed.
• Share ownership is diffuse nowadays. Rights are exercised by proxy – the bank holding the shares, or the investment fund, or the pension fund. The “default” position has been so far: vote with the management. This form of “nudging” grossly favors management: currently a shareholder may only propose change in person; but he is powerless against the “default block”.

Opponents of the measure argued: it is too constrictive. Parliament did not propose an alternative, however, though it could have done so and shown commitment. It gave a bland and generic promise to act in the spirit of the mandate. Voters showed their fear that Parliament (which has heavy representation of corporate interests within the Membership) might only make cosmetic changes in the law. A referendum may disallow a gutless law, but not improve it. In this instance, voters wanted to impose a framework for positive action.

Beyond the specifics of the vote, I’d like to say a couple of words about the use of referendums. For historical reasons, the voting rules in Switzerland favor minorities. Constitutional initiatives must garner a majority both nationwide and in the 26 cantons. Success depends on “over-majorities” of close to 60%. The rules protect small (and rural) mountain cantons from the power of the large and urban cantons in the plains. Things have changed, however. The small cantons are no longer rural – they have become suburban. Fat cats commute to the large towns from their homes in the mountains. The small cantons can become a fief of an oligarchy. This is gerrymandering of sorts.

The working of the Swiss system rests on a strong political culture. Four times à year voters go to the urns on federal, cantonal, and local matters. Some decisions are complex. Involvement in the vote reminds voters of their responsibility as they feel “empowered” by the act. It is a subtle educational process that yields long-term stability to a country which has linguistic, cultural, and religious diversity.

Direct democracy rests on the systematic use of the referendum. The occasional referendum, on the other hand, holds the substance hostage to the momentary popularity of the government.

There seems no compromise between direct and representative democracy. Does not the adage say: a woman cannot be “a bit” pregnant?

__________________

5* = Five star Movement of comic Beppe Grillo; PD = Democratic Party; PdL = center-right party under Berlusconi.

The numbers secure the Democratic Party (PD)a majority in the House. In the Senate,  the PD needs help: either a coalition or at least external allies – first of all to get the vote of confidence, and then pass laws.

A newspaper-sponsored poll indicates a majority in the country for a center-left government. Opinions diverge within the group between coalition (33%) and alliance (15%). Understandably, part of the electorate calls for a grand coalition (34%), so as not to be left out in the cold.

Now for the petitions: there is a clear convergence among them. The 5*Movement is to join forces with the PD and create a government that can carry out some reforms. Beppe Grillo is under pressure to revise his “we only do it alone” attitude.

If one looks at the numbers, petition A is by far the winner. I do not have whether this overwhelming vote reflects contingent history. In any case, the text is well written, and the author is a 24-old lady.

The petitions concentrate on the government program. Here I’d say, there is much overt or covert overlap: A and D share the same program, but diverge on the tactics. In fact,  tactical opinions (coalition/alliance) appear as subaltern concern – this may partially reflect the fact that the tactical situation changes continuously; also it intersects with personalities and the specific context.

These are all ways of doing politics by “crowd-sourcing”. But the approaches differ in fundamental ways.

Polls are more “objective”: the sample is scientifically construed (or at least one hopes). The pollster imposes the framework of the question. At the outset, an “expert” configures the questions. He confronts the pollees with a closed and a “top down” view, where there is no room for the unexpected. One should not forget the manipulative character of some of questions asked. The poll framework hardly engages the polled, who just signals “up” or “down”.

The petition system has other characteristics. It is:

• “Bottom-up” – anyone can participate (gone are the days where the party hacks would dominate party meetings);
• “Open-ended” – all suggestions are possible. The system allows for unexpected proposals that are “outside the box”;
• “Voluntary” and hence lacks statistical legitimacy;
• Prone to overt and covert forms of “hijacking”.
• Some articulation of the message is possible. An iterative procedure can refine the petition’s content, or move beyond, or to consequent aspects. Comments enrich it. Petitions merge, or split: it is a living process in real time;
• Provides rough and ready as well as reasonably impartial vetting through the voting system;
• Facilitates “closure” of the debate through unassailable results;
• Moderates the “personality” an “authority” component inherent in personal proposals;
• Depersonalizes and de-professionalizes the debate;
• Yields some degree of involvement but no “non-negotiable” commitment. Professionals often dogmatize political positions, and this may hinder compromises at a later stage.

The greatest effect of the petition system, however, could be in the subtle “decision shaping” and the connected “empowerment” it yields to voters.

I contend that reading and signing petitions subliminally shapes the voter’s opinion. People confronted with a petition tend to consider the merits, unless put under time pressure. Respondents mull over the text, explore the implications and resonances; they will develop mental reservations even when they sign. Respondents slightly alter their views, and often enlarge and nuance them when confronted with the text. Psychological research underscores the transformative effect of even cursory or passing experiences. [1]

Adding one’s signature to a “successful” list may be a transformative experience. The psychological principle of “pluralistic ignorance” describes a situation where individual members of the group disbelieve something, but mistakenly believe everyone else in the group believes it.[2] Bowing to perceived “peer pressure” they remain silent – a “conspiracy of silence” ensues.

Petitions are a way to get around such false perceptions. Put it in a positive way: As long as I’m isolated I may despair about the possibility of change. A petition tells me how widespread the sentiment is. I and others recognize “collective intentionality” in the making (I’ve described this kind of effect in http://wp.me/p81We-zK with regard to the American Revolution).

One proviso: We should not mistake such a transformative experience with manias.  Intent is shared – if imperfectly – when respondents react to a text. It is the hallmark of a mania: the situation excludes all substantive reflection. A mania accrues when people reflexively “follow the leader”.[3] Trusting others is not the same thing as together developing trust.

Take the Iliad. We read the poem as a glorious epic about great heroes: Patroclus, Hector, Achilles, Diomedes, and Odysseus. Each of them has a god for or against him. In the end god’s hand, not the hero’s skill, is decisive in battle. Sometimes gods squabble over the fate of a human, making him a hapless victim. Poseidon wants Odysseus dead, but is not allowed to kill him outright. Athena wants him to reach Ithaca, but can’t move him there. Odysseus must endure this battle of wits and wills among the gods. The lesson is clear. The gods are arbitrary; chance rules life as background to all heroic action.

The Greek fought pitched battles against each other. The rule was “winner take all”. Historians have put forth economic reasons for this peculiar behavior.[1] The Greeks were farmers – HANSON argues – and had no time for protracted warfare: agricultural chores beckoned. The Greeks considered war a distraction and kept it short. I am not sure. Cicero argued strongly that properly propitiating the gods was a prerequisite for a “just” war.[2] In appealing to the gods before going into battle, the pagans were inserting the reality of chance into their decision to fight a war. Let the dice roll: only once and conclusively – on the field of battle.

Sophocles dramas often end with deus ex machina. A god appears on the scene and dictates the outcome to the characters. The author settles the head-on conflict of values – in Antigone it is between her role as sister and that of citizen -, not by argument, but by chance (in the form of the god’s will). We find this resolution most disconcerting. We want to know which side is “right”. The author keeps his counsel on the matter of “truth”.

The Greeks made the point about the role of chance not once, but “squared”. The Moirai – the Fates – were “a power acting in parallel with the gods and ruled over them. Even the gods could not change destiny.”[3] The gods remained themselves subject to chance even as they took on the role of chance.

The gods play dice with human lives, is the message, and there is nothing men can do. Chance rules human lives. Seeking the causal root of outcomes is pointless. This emphasis on chance is not innocent. It limits human responsibility to attitude and inner conviction. Chance – which the Greeks anthropomorphized as the gods – is responsible for the outcome. Consequently, no personal guilt attaches to outcome. The Greek world was “no fault”. Justice could be restorative rather than retributive.[4]

Belief in the overwhelming force of chance makes closure possible and unassailable.  After a battle, the losing side need not blame itself, or seek revenge. Blame the gods, is the message; and get on with the business of living. Recrimination does not help. Rebellion to the new lot is senseless.

There is another dimension to the need for closure in a well-functioning society. Society is partially the product of the past. Does society have responsibilities to the past? A society survives and changes when it is free of its past, i.e. is allowed closure with respect to it. The living must not be bound by contracts with the dead, which they cannot renegotiate or recuse.

The Judeo-Christian tradition too accepts God’s will in this world – but with a striking and novel twist. Now an all-powerful and benevolent God is involved. He shapes the world in accordance to His will. Not only: His revelation makes us workers in His vineyard, and obligates us to fulfill His will – a millennial task. God may be mysterious, but He always acts for the person’s own good, whether she understands it or not. It is his duty to seek “the truth” of God’s will, or the transcendent truth (if one is of the secular persuasion). We have introduced the concept of “truth”; we have evacuated the role of chance. In so doing, we have inadvertently destroyed society’s greatest asset – its capacity for closure. Truth brooks no closure. Truth is eternal. So is the covenant with God. Hell is proof that closure is no longer possible.

The vote is the proxy for the chance of battle in deliberative democracy. It does not establish who is wrong or right. Pragmatically, the vote brings the deliberations, which could go on forever, to a close. It sets the stage for political action. The Roman adage: vox populi, vox dei harks back to the role of the gods, here incarnated in “the people”.

The metaphor is treacherous. After battle winners and losers went their separate ways. The victors were free men, the losers were slaves. In a democracy winners and losers go on living together as free men. The political world divided needs to be “made whole” again. The democratic process requires reconciliation, which is more than closure. An appeal to the “common good” may favor reconciliation, asking the winners to make the political world whole again. Furthermore, the vote is temporary and comes with the restorative expectation of alternance.

Currently, political partisanship in some countries risks undermining the democratic process. Part of the reason is contingent: after the grand “age of choices” the social and economic systems are converging. Political debates mainly mask struggles for power. Power, like truth, brooks no closure – it aims to perpetuate itself as caste.

Part, however, is the obsession with “truth”[5] – an attitude which comes with the Judeo-Christian worldview (and its secular avatar). The vote no longer signals undirected adaptive change. The vote is one stage on the quest for heaven’s “truth”, or drift into hellish “error”. The path is directive and prescriptive. Each side views defeat at the polls as straying from the path toward its truth. Each side views defeat as heresy, calling for retribution rather than restoration.

____________

There was strife among the Pakicetus[1] – 50 million years ago or so. The older generation dreaded a future about to destroy the very population of Pakicetus and its values. Relativism was sundering cherished traditions. Some liked living on land

Others clearly preferred the water

(These images reflect ex post bias of today’s artists)

A conference was called to discuss the future of the species. Everyone attended. “We know we must change”, called out Pakicetus Major, the Prime Minister, “It’s the right moment to consider the future. Let us decide on a strategy and a plan. We may stay true to our hailed origins and continue to roam the land. Alternatively, let’s embark on a vision of change at sea. Or take my way – the third way; details to follow.” In any case – I’ll lead.” Roaring applause (do Pakiceti roar? I have to check).

The Main Hall filled with rhetoric. Rivulets spilled into the working groups established to explore the benefits and costs of the alternatives. Reams of records were assembled – fortunately lost in the shallows of the Thetis Sea which has turned into a windswept desert in Pakistan.

We don’t know what master plan the species drew up for itself, or whether then conference broke up in confusion, with the agreement to meet again in some distant future.

This is what happened in the end

(Carl ZIMMER (1998): :At the water’s edge. Macroevolution and the transformation of life. Free Press, New York.

*

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans

(John LENNON – Phantasy, 1980)

Lev TOLSTOY

Societies evolve. We have no idea of how it happens, but in a short time societies can be transformed.

In the XVI^th century, the Soshone of the Great Plains of North America migrated east in response to climate change. Most turned north, following the bison herds on foot. A bunch of Shoshone migrated south to meet the Ute, the horse, and the gun. Within a few generations, they transformed themselves into fierce Comanche nomads. They established the Comancheria in what is not much of Texas, an empire which lasted until 1875.

Comancheria

Strategically placed between Mexico, French Louisiana and its successor state the US, the Comanche drew primary sustenance from riding buffalo herds to their doom. Barbecued buffalo steaks (and tongue) are fantastic, but the human diet also needs carbohydrates. In response to this dietary constraint the Apache evolved toward semi-settling life by growing their grains along the rivers. Guns, horse, and trade (in slaves) enabled the later arriving Comanche to develop a raiding and trading empire that lived off the surrounding powers.[1] In the process they displaced the Apache from the rolling Plains of Texas. This is nothing unusual: nomads either displace agriculturalists, or they conquer them but become “acculturated” (descendants of northern Nomads ruled the Chinese Empire for half of its duration).

Societies evolve. It is not “whiggish” progress – rather it is “descent through modification”. Contrary to belief of the illuminist philosophers in France, there is nothing inherently benign in societal change. Societies can spiral into self-destructive behavior as well as move along a virtuous trajectory.[2]

We love uplifting tales of virtuous progress. Tales of societal decay come second: they are redolent of decadent “what ifs” and “opportunities missed” and the stuff of romantic narratives of impending tragic doom. We hardly know how societies break out self-destructive behavior.[3]

It may be a matter of circumstance. When Stalin died, the new Politburo faced several tasks. The membership had to unify, after years of fierce rivalry in competition for Stalin’s favor as well as in preparation for the aftermath to his death. It also had to win at least the acquiescence of the Soviet masses. The Party had to deliver more “butter” to make up for the sacrifices of WWII and those of reconstruction. At the funeral the new leadership promised “butter” and let it be known to the US that it was ready to contemplate “peaceful coexistence”.

The ambivalent American response decidedly influenced the jockeying for power and policy inside the Kremlin. Eisenhower saw a strong economy enabling American success – he pleaded for disarmament. Dulles preferred the directive approach of “roll back” of Communism through power – both strong and soft. In the race to consolidate his personal power, Beria brought onto the table the option of Germany’s reunification under the flag of neutrality. The rest of the leadership used this initiative to discredit Beria and kill him.[4].

Terror stopped in the Soviet Union. To be more precise: the style shifted from mass to exemplary and targeted terror. Acquiescence of the masses no longer rested on terror: it was “bought” with butter and economic development. That is how the Soviet Union stopped the self-destructive involution. It is no patent medicine, however. When the Communist leadership grabbed for this strategy anew in 1985 as the Politburo attempted to lift the Soviet Union out of economic and cultural stagnation (another form of terror if you wish), the system collapsed. The Soviet Union did not survive glasnost and perestroika.

This reflection points to a fundamental difference between secular and theocratic totalitarianism. Theocratic totalitarianism does not envisage the option of a Thermidor. Theocracy, that is, does not provide for Paradise on earth.

Do not let blinkered pundits lead you astray. The people’s message is: “Think out of the box”. The electoral vote is a classic case of “unexpected outcome” – the stuff of emergent complex systems – that forces politicians (and pundits as well as pilot fish) to change paradigm.

Here, the main results (in million votes):

The participation rate has shrunk significantly: 1.2 million voters shied away from the ballot box as compared to 2008. If one takes this as a passive form of protest, and adds it to the pro-active form, which is the 5-Star Movement of comic Beppe Grillo, we get 10 out of 50 million Italians expressing their wish for fundamental change.

The overall winner is the 5-star Movement of Beppe Grillo which, in terms of votes garnered, rose from nothing to become the largest party in a field of (mainly) four. Note the disparity between House and Senate: since only over-25 vote for the Senate, it is clear that youth particularly want change.

Predicted to win comfortably by the pundits, the center-left Democratic Party made a poor showing. Berlusconi’s center-right party was able to hold its own – galvanized by Berlusconi’s antics (I would not call it charisma, which implies “sacredness” – many things he may be, but not a religiously or spiritually anointed figure).

The catholic dream of reconstituting a “middle ground” party – the Monti coalition – also fared poorly.

A whimsy of the electoral law (called “Porcellum” – the piggery) has given the Democratic Party a majority in the House. The Democratic Party, however, can only survive in power in the Senate if it joins forces with the 5-Star Movement.

Why not?

I’ve looked into the 5-Star Movement program. It is incomplete (e.g. there is no foreign and security policy, or (surprisingly) taxation, or overhauling the justice system). Certain elements are amateurish – others deal with subordinate detail. But there is enough meat in it to have a coalition. In particular the Movement’s program is a clear road map for destroying Berlusconi’s economic and political power.

There are enough commonalities between the Democratic Party and the 5-Star Movement for them together to launch a resolute joint reform program for Italy. The votes are there: why do we have lamentations in the press, which is mesmerized by Berlusconi unexpected good showing?

Subliminally Italians expect the political caste to linger on until replaced essentially by natural attrition. Like bishops, old politicians are never voted out of office; they just slowly fade away, or die at their parliamentary desk. The real challenge now facing the Democratic Party is to oust its current “caste” – politicians who have long overstayed their welcome. Some are notoriously corrupt, others sound like old foghorns lost in the night; many just seem lost in the mushiness of their own words.

The Democratic Party is blessed in that it has a young politician – the mayor of Florence, Matteo RENZI – who just missed ousting the incumbent leader BERSANI to lead the party in to the election. Had he done so, many opine, the party would have won easily. He is popular throughout the electorate and esteemed as “serious” – if non-ideological. All the Democratic Party’s Old Guard has to do is to admit its responsibilities, and give the new generation a chance.

Berlusconi built his power by manipulating the legislative process and through corruption. It is up to the new legislature to undo the many walls and moats that protect the man. It would have been too easy for the people to cast him out and Parliament to ratify, rather than lead, in the clean-up.

The 5-Star Movement is untried – unlike the Greens in Germany, who had a long apprenticeship period. This is a chance. This new party needs to deliver, and deliver fast, lest it disaggregate and lose its voter appeal. It must show that it can assume responsibility – it cannot be seen to fail.

The mandate is clear. Einstein famously said: Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not.

I laughed out loud.

Ever since DERRIDA argued “’There is nothing outside the text” academia is obsessed with what may be lost in the text and forgets the context.

We take for granted (but no longer believe) the New York Times self-important logo: “All the News That’s Fit to Print“. There are no such things as “news” out there, waiting to be picked up and chosen for printing. “News” is just a story – any story, in fact – we conscious beings “invent” about a physical fact:

“There is no escape: understanding a subject means transforming it, lifting it out of a natural habitat and inserting it into a model or a theory or a poetic account of it. (Pg. 12)[1]

Alternatively “news” are mental states about the social reality in which we swim after having created it. Or it is something we create out of whole cloth when we let our imagination go wild – like poetry. “News” is an “observer-related feature that is ontologically subjective”.[2] “News” is a social fact and reflects someone’s (or collective) intention.

We are full of news all the time – that is why we gossip (http://wp.me/s81We-2107). Of all that has happened in the world, newspapers pick a handful of stories for wider circulation – the rest somehow evaporates. The choice may be innocent – it remains a choice that deprives almost everything that has happening in this world of its voice. Most news is “orphan news”. This is a fact.

So the next good question is: who makes the choices? Ever since the ham-fisted attempt to create a “New World Information Order” (NWIO) at UNESCO in the 1970s[3] the discussion has raged about a “fair” airing of news in the media.

The proponents of the NWIO were certainly right in arguing that the selection process was skewed – I’d even say: badly skewed.[4] Traditionally Western consumers delegated the gathering and vetting of news to the newspaper – the “news maker” – and paid handsomely for this task – the price of each copy or subscription was significant. The selection process was not innocent – it reflected not just “consumer interest”: it shaped a coherent worldview as well – some called it the “party line” or “elite view”. The paper basked in the delegated authority and “made” news as well as shaped the future of the “news”. Its stereotypes and ideologies permeated subtly society and influenced the opinion making process. Around this basic situation whole structures – ways of doing things – emerged. News agencies located near the readership: news stories from the periphery had a difficult time percolating up to the core.

While experts argued back and forth about NWIO technology dissolved the issue. Electronic media eroded the monopoly position of the Western “news maker”. Competitors sprung up and managed to reach sizable audiences. Often alternative versions of “news” go viral. In fact, today just about anyone can make “news” and get an audience. The attentive reader has reclaimed the role of choosing “news”: for a few issues nowadays he is able to obtain alternative interpretations (whether at the end of the day he is wiser is another matter). He surfs for free on the net, but pays for the effort in the currency of time – his greatest resource: he needs to spend time verifying and analyzing the plethora of versions at hand and to contextualize the news.

This surfeit of information creates second order problems. For one, we become sloppy about checking facts – no time, and in any case they become obsolete in no time flat. We go by approximation, rather than precision. Also, in an effort to “conquer abundance”, we continuously “compress” reality to its “essence”. The totality is whittled down to something whose only merit lies in the fact that it is “portable” – it can be used in some “communication” of sorts.[5] The outcome is paradoxical: the more we know the more approximate and superficial our thinking seems to become. And this at the very moment when the “small difference” makes all the difference.

When drumming up support for the European Economic Area (EEA) Agreement, which was up for a referendum in Switzerland in 1992, I became painfully aware that listeners in the audience perceived my qualifying statements as waffling. I could not bring myself, however, to speak in one dimension only – I did not garner many votes, I suspect.

The matter goes much deeper than political oratory. I’m painfully aware of how much disappears in this process of “concentration” – until what’s left is prejudice, or a distorted view. Tragically, these distortions are then labeled as “truth” – and used as dogmas. I’m highlighting a paradox here: the more we know, the less we seem to be able to grasp it and are likely to discard the baby with the dirty water. The hopeless search for “truth” replaces the discussion of “choices” – with a consequent loss of richness in the conversation (more on this in a later blog).

At an even deeper level, I’m painfully aware of how difficult it is for me to step outside my own point of view[6] and the one of the society I have grown up in – indeed experience is transformative and we cannot step out of our own and our cultural past. My very language is weighed down by the words I use: “essence; form; category; quality; quantity; non-contradiction; capacity” – all these terms are steeped in Aristotelian method and impose its framework on what I’m trying to say. I struggle with words that betray my thought.

What about translation? Of course meaning is lost in translation.[7] Let’s face it, however: this is a second order issue.

If you want to be a public intellectual in the US, find the catchy turn of phrase and then beat the chicken-mint peas-mashed potatoes circuit with it, writing op-eds in the NYTimes on week-ends to uplifting effect. The “catchy phrase” best be vague and fuzzy: empty vessels resonate best. Like patent medicine it guarantees cure for all illness and success in the “pursuit of happiness”. (In France, on the other hand, you’d slouch in the Café de Flores and make cryptic or hermetic utterances, hoping that acolytes will spread the word of your intelligence beyond the pale.)

I’ve revisited Joseph S. NYE, Jr: Soft power; recently. I was not impressed when I read it soon after it was published. I’m even less impressed today.

Here is how NYE represents “soft power”

“Hard” is everything that forces a change in behavior from without: a threat or a bribe would be part of “hard” power. Economic inducements – international trade e.g. – would be classified as part of “hard power”. I may add, in passing, that this is not the common understanding of “hard” power: most US politicians would see trade as “soft” – hence one ambiguity of the concept.[1]

In NYE’s view the transition only occur when the “other” (however defined) is coopted – he becomes a willing partner. The change is from within. This is a sleight of hand of notable proportion. “Hard” power relates to everything between the “I and you”. It is “at arm’s length dealing”, while “soft” power presupposes collective intentionality. It is about “us” – sharing values. It is all the difference between a one-night stand and a marriage.

Lord HALSBURY in 1890 defined “empire” as a “convenient state between annexation and mere alliance”[2]. “Soft” power would lead to annexation or its equivalent, while “hard” power would lead to alliances – based on GOETHE’s Alderking’s threat:

Who rides there so late through the night dark and drear?

The father it is, with his infant so dear;

He holdeth the boy tightly clasp’d in his arm

He holdeth him safely, he keepeth him warm.

“My son, wherefore seek’st thou thy face thus to hide?”

“Look, father, the Alder King is close by our side!

Dost see not the Alder King, with crown and with tail?”

“My son, ’tis the mist rising over the plain.”

“Oh, come, thou dear infant! oh come thou with me!

For many a game I will play there with thee;

On my beach, lovely flowers their blossoms unfold,

My mother shall grace thee with garments of gold.”

“My father, my father, and dost thou not hear

The words that the Alder King now breathes in mine ear?”

“Be calm, dearest child, thy fancy deceives;

the wind is sighing through withering leaves.”

“Wilt go, then, dear infant, wilt go with me there?

My daughters shall tend thee with sisterly care

My daughters by night on the dance floor you lead,

They’ll cradle and rock thee, and sing thee to sleep.”

“My father, my father, and dost thou not see,

How the Alder King is showing his daughters to me?”

“My darling, my darling, I see it aright,

‘Tis the aged grey willows deceiving thy sight.”

“I love thee, I’m charm’d by thy beauty, dear boy!

And if thou aren’t willing, then force I’ll employ.”

“My father, my father, he seizes me fast,

For sorely the Alder King has hurt me at last.”

The father now gallops, with terror half wild,

He holds in his arms the shuddering child;

He reaches his farmstead with toil and dread, –

The child in his arms lies motionless, dead.[3]

The problem with NYE’s smooth transition from “hard” to (his) “soft” power is that external inducements and inner conviction do not mix easily. The line of separation is subtle, yet noticeable; it may even be a Rubicon. Here an example:

For years, Switzerland had been trying to find a place to store its radioactive waste…. One location designated as a potential site was the small mountain village of Wolfenschiessen (population 2,100). In 1993, shortly before a referendum on the issue, economists surveyed the residents of the village, asking whether they would vote to accept a nuclear waste repository in their community if the Swiss parliament decided to build it there. Although the facility was widely viewed as an undesirable addition to the neighborhood, a slim majority (51 percent) of residents said they would accept it. Apparently their sense of civic duty outweighed their concern about the risks. Then the economists added a sweetener: suppose parliament proposed building the nuclear waste facility in your community and offered to compensate each resident with an annual monetary payment. Then would you favor it?

The result: support dropped to 25 percent. What’s more, upping the ante didn’t help. When the economists increased the monetary offer, the result was unchanged. The residents stood firm even when offered yearly cash payments as high as $8,700 per person, well in excess of the median monthly income.[4]

NYE is right in speaking of “different currencies” – currencies nevertheless. The very essence of “soft” power, however, it that it is not exhanced (hence it is not monetized) but shared – just as in a family. So “soft” power cannot be a “means to success in world politics” (as the book’s subtitle asserts) but only an end. “Soft” power cannot be wielded (Chapter IV), and even less can it be harnessed to serve American policy (Chapter V), because sharing means relinquishing direction. The explanation is simple – when we move from the “I+you” to the “us” policy is shared, hence no longer national. What you describe, Dr. Nye, is “white man’s burden” in modern garb: let the benighted foreigners see the marvel of American democracy and free markets and they’ll embrace it out of their own free will. Slick advertising won’t change the intent: to control.

But this is just one facet of this ambiguous concept. I’ll deal with the “you” – a government, a population, an elite? – in my next blog entry.

* * *

Just to prove my point about “empty vessels resonating best”: Adam SMITH’s “invisible hand” is trotted out to good effect with the ignorant crowd (pg. 7). The problem is that with his “invisible hand” SMITH is referring to in the emergent properties of markets – say demand meeting supply – not guiding individual behavior. As to the other tired quip about “the Pope’s divisions” – the Pope is the ultimate in command behavior: he argues that he’ll have us burn in eternal hell, unless we abide by his rulings.

In a recent blog she refers to a special Greek notion of time: kairos (καιρός), which can be translated as “the opportune or supreme moment, qualitative in nature” and is opposed to chronos – ordinary or linear time.

In debating future action, we should logically consider: (a) ends, (b) means, and (c) timing. Normally we would follow the sequence from (a) to (c). In practice we may never come to an agreement about the three and we may end up deliberating in a circle: coalitions about ends may dissolve in disagreement about means, and after that, of timing.

Enter kairos – opportune moment. By postulating that “it is the right moment” the discussion over ends and means is foreclosed. The argument becomes only one about timing, and kairos argues for the NOW. Again the discussion is skewed: in fact it is “now or never”. Kairos implies irreversibility.

Kairos is a rhetorical device. Surreptitiously it leads the listener to a preordained conclusion – act NOW – by intimating urgent necessity. It shortcuts both the discovery of the facts and deliberation on strategy and tactics by arguing lack of time. It urges precautionary measures based on incomplete reasoning. The proposed action is usually bold – daring, and often simplistic. It is an exercise in “will to power”, rather than cleverness. The problem is overwhelmed, rather than solved.

The urgency may be mythical – as when a “historical moment” is conjured. It appeals to ancient glory, pride, and historical continuity. It argues that the past is history in the making – as when historical determinism is conjured. Kairos often builds on analogy rather than reasoning: it points to instances where dithering proved fatal, while foreclosing verification. Here it might rely on the availability bias: we remember instances where quick and timely action was liberating (seldom do we remember those who succumbed to precipitate action). Even less are the historical figures praised for biding their time – like the Roman Fabius Maximus Cunctator.

Kairos may be dangerous: lynching[1] is predicated on such rhetoric. Wars of choice are often justified as reflecting kairos. Here some examples: MOLTKE argued for a blow against Russia before the country could fully industrialize[2]. Hitler was 50 when he started WWII: he fatuously thought that waiting would have made him less fit to wage it. Dick CHENEY is alleged to have argued “If there’s a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It’s not about our analysis … It’s about our response”[3] – thus setting a hair-thin trigger for the inevitability of immediate action.

The war in Iraq in 2003 may either have been a war of conquest (oil) or a civilizational war (to bring democracy to the county), or to forestall doomsday (weapons of mass destruction may fall into the wrong hands). A tell-tale sign of “kairos rhetoric” is the surfeit of arguments, all poorly buttressed. Choices are presented under time-constraint.

“Thinking slow” – rational deliberation – in the end has to yield to emotions: this is particularly important when collective action is needed and wills to act need synchronizing. Kairos rhetoric has its uses in such a context.

Using kairos demands deep knowledge of kairos – in other words: it is an art, not a principle.

An impressive success for the treaty system

The WTO treaty system is all about reducing barriers to trade – intended and unintended. Over the last 50 years the record of liberalization has been impressive. The system has also proven resilient: we have gone through possibly the gravest economic crisis of the last 70 years and the surge in trade restrictions has been contained[1] (admittedly, currency manipulation has been used increasingly to alter trade flows).

Not only has WTO’s membership increased from 35 to 159: trade barriers in over 5000 sectors (and one has to add services to this number) have dropped drastically. Disputes are settled within WTO framework – and the system works, albeit slowly.

While one may always aim for improvements, one might be allowed to point to the solid achievements that have been obtained. I’d call it one of the great success stories of the post-WWII years. The platform that constitutes the WTO treaty system is a solid one. Sure backsliding is always possible, but compared to the excesses of the ‘30s such an implosion is implausible.

The Doha Round is stalled

The WTO treaty system is based on negotiating rounds lasting several years. The last successful one was completed in 1994. Launched in 2001, the Doha Round[2] appears stalled.

There are infinite reasons for the stalemate. Let me pick a few.

The treaty system in “state-driven” – it depends on the will of the parties. Not only has the world become multi-polar, but the relative “weight” of the major countries is shifting rapidly. China has become the “producer of last resort” – and China was a country that in 1978 produced little of value for international market. Yet China is to shed 80 million low-paying jobs soon as it shifts from export to internal consumption to fuel its continued growth. BRII(C)s are fast on the heels – and Africa is advancing. Add to this monetary and financial turbulences linked to the overbearing preponderance of the financial sector. Under the circumstances steadfast leadership is more difficult to obtain.

Among the major outstanding issues of the Doha negotiations one might further flag the scope and duration of “special and differential treatment” to be granted to emergent economies and borne by developed economies.

Additionally, the sheer complexity of the consensus-based negotiating process adds to the confusion. When so many countries negotiate on so many sectors – and all the deals have to be on a “most favored nation” basis, we get gridlock easily. The “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” rule adds oil to the fire: just too many possible combinations and permutations. “Formulas” have been introduced, but these abstract solutions lower transparency and may yield unintended effects. Politicians are wary of such solutions, which seem akin to cutting the Gordian knot and are difficult to sell nationally.

More fundamentally, globalization finally has transformed what were once bilateral trade flows into complex trading structures poorly reflected in trade statistics[3]. Trade flows have become opaque, making policy prescriptions increasingly difficult. Add to this the likely impact of UNFCCC on trade flows, as well as increased volatility in raw materials’ prices. Seeing the forest for the trees has become more difficult.

Unsurprisingly, “clubs of the willing” – Regional and Preferential Trade Agreements – have proliferated. As countries solve their most pressing trade issues in this way, the incentive to go for multilateral solutions is reduced.

Looking ahead: globalization as emergent complex system

To quote WTO DG LAMY: “the world is multi-polarizing at an unprecedented scale and speed. Production and trade value chains are multi-lateralizing.” This is undoubtedly true, but it fails to highlight the qualitative change accompanying the multi-lateralization process.

Trade globalization dissolves national boundaries and creates an emergent complex trading system in which every country has a stake, but it cannot shape to suit its own interests. When firms have cut their national moorings and float free in the fluctuating world of world trade, when firms no longer are “national champions”, then the national interest is primarily in the good functioning of the system as a whole, rather than in bringing home a sectorial advantage (and in fact this approach my turn out being ephemeral or even counterproductive). The perspective needs to be changed – to use a cliché – a new paradigm is needed.

No longer is a “balance of interests” the sole or primary criterion for the negotiating outcome; rather it is the perception of a stable and resilient system that serves all “well enough” and on which all countries can intervene constructively to strengthen it against vicissitudes and “black swans.”

This implies a change in mindset from “talionic cultures” where national autonomy and payback is the sole criterion for action[4] to one of shared responsibility. This will not happen overnight, not through a revolution, but by many small steps that familiarize us with the ever surprising reality.

To put it another way: freedom is not protected by a vacuum of power, but by sharing a common project for which we share collective responsibility. That’s why democratic constitutions protect free markets, and society has to secure an protect the rights of participants.

This implies that beyond trade liberalization – which sooner or later will be obtained (but for exceptions or back-sliding events) – a world-wide structure is needed in which trade can flow to the advantage of all. Such a structure needs an institution to anchor it, and this is what WTO is bound to become eventually. As we near the primary goal of trade liberalization states need to look beyond and be aware of the ensuing task of identifying and confronting the inevitable novel challenges that may surprise the world of trade.

Farewell Ye Rounds

The “rounds” approach dates back 50 years and relies on “batch-processing” of trade issues. Is it still useful in a complex trading world that moves on continuously, and fast? The cycles last too long, and one justification – to prevent back-sliding while negotiating is in process – would seem dodgy.

What could come after – or in place of Doha? Her some proposals.

A biennial “state of international trade” ministerial review based on an impartial Trade Development Index may be fruitful, particularly if it leads to quick adaptive solutions for critical “nodal hot spots” that have been identified and targeted for immediate action. Many small steps would replace the overlong strides of yore. This approach might allow a more differentiated view of trade expansion, and a better appreciation of trade flow structures than a “flat earth” multilateral approach.

In such a paradigm it would be natural for the WTO Secretariat to provide the impartial overview and identify the “hot spots” – this even more as trade issues tend to spill out over more than one sector or bilateral setting.

Trading System Governance

Existing functions of the trading system need strengthening. One mentions regular trade policy reviews. Standard dispute settlement will be reinforced. There might be room for innovation here: just as in commercial transactions arbitration – a quick and fast solution to a dispute, but without binding precedent effect – might be considered. The WTO Secretariat might create an independent unit to assist in this “fast-track solution”.

When WTO-DG LAMY says: “The thickness of borders today costs two to five times more than import tariffs, depending on whether you look at macro or micro economic impact studies”[5] one would be inclined to put good governance of the trading system by all parties on the front burner. Trade facilitation is on the Doha agenda. The outcome should evolve in an ongoing process aimed at changing the “customs cultures” and bring about convergence worldwide. Nationally minded authorities too often fail to perceive import/export simply as part of doing business.

There is however what one could call a further “pillar” to the WTO system: it is a deep and timely understanding of the trading system and beyond that of the globalization process. There is more to globalization that tariff reduction. Beyond what is being done (and this a lot already) innovative research and statistical analysis of trade flows, of value chains, and more, should aim to obtain a multi-dimensional “state of international trade”.

Reconcile Regional and Preferential Free Trade Agreements

The multilateral side or trade policy has viewed R/PTA with misgiving – the term “spaghetti bowl” is cliché. R/PRA are notified, but a review under WTO rules has been neglected.

These agreements are a fact of life. Rather than worry about conformity with WTO rules a more useful approach may be a concerted and constructive effort to reduce discrepancies with multilateral rules. Their perception as “blocks” might be replaced by one of components of a structured international trading system. A first are would be the streamlining of preferential origin rules.

Involve private sector

Under the main heading “WTO and you” the organization’s website recognizes journalists, students, Parliamentarians, and NGOs. It is slightly puzzling that those who are directly affected by the international trading system – firms that in one way or another trade over the border – have no dedicated portal in the organization or specified and institutional role to play. Of course contacts take place, but what is needed is a definition of the private sector’s role in managing the trading system.

The current situation reflects the traditional approach where the state was the sole representative of the national interest. In a complex trading system, where many firms have become “transnational”, the role of the country of origin loses focus. At least in the problem-defining and the solution-shaping phase (i.e. in setting the agenda, the objectives, and a list of desirable outcomes) the voice of the private sector should be recognized directly and in a structured manner. Firms should have a choice of channel in which to voice their concerns. This would be the best way to secure their support for the process. Involving the private sector in a multilateral structure might collaterally lead to more nuanced national positions and may become a stabilizing factor (not to speak of chances of getting agreements through Parliament).

Climate change challenge

If trade and development can, in some ways, be seen as complementary in their effects, particularly in the area of climate change compromises between trade and environmental protection may be necessary. At the moment the two processes coast along in parallel. One might consider creating docking stations between the two processes to resolve conflicts achieve synergies.

A strong WTO Secretariat

If the underlying theme is accepted – that the international trading system is a complex structure with emergent solutions – the role of the WTO Secretariat changes fundamentally. No longer it is simply the “servant” of the “member states”, but it is foremost their “eyes, ears, and analytical body”, where emergent realities are quickly spotted and set in a framework for action by the WTO Council.

As WTO becomes the locus where collective management of the international trading system occurs the Secretariat might take on a more pro-active stance. Its active role is to look beyond the equilibrium of particular interests to the functioning and resilience of the system as a whole, and to identify weaknesses in the system needing attention.

No eutopia

Complex systems are realities. We encounter them everywhere, and we use them unthinkingly. We understand them poorly. What we know, however, is that they yield more – and different outcomes – than just a balance of opposite interests. Adam Smith dimly perceived the “invisible hand”. Globalization is confronting us with such a complex system and an “invisible hand” of its own. Only if governments move from “looking out for oneself” to creating common and fair rules will the system become stable and resilient. This is a creative and learning process[6]. This is the long-term challenge ahead.

With the knowledge of what happened it is easy to imagine after the fact how things could have turned out differently. But what if, before the event was to take place, someone had forcefully and cogently argued a different direction and – after the fact – we might regret that “road not taken”? There are deep lessons to be drawn here, if we can project ourselves into the decision-making process at the time.

I’ve recently come across such an instance – and it has mesmerized my greying cells. Most history is crisscrossing of path-dependent outcomes. Rare are the moments when actors are allowed more than opportunistic adaptation. But such moments, where “the sky is the limit” do exist, and one such moment was in 1943.

Remember: 7/12/1941 – Pearl Harbor. Japan attacks the US and transforms what was a regional war in the West into a global affair. The empires of France, Holland, and most of Britain in the Far East collapse, and India is threatened. 7/6/1942 the battle of Midway is fought: with the Japanese Navy crippled, the outcome in the Far East is no longer in doubt – though it will be a long onslaught. 4/11/1942: Battle of El Alamein, and 2/2/1943: Battle of Stalingrad. In the West too, the outcome is now clear.

The war is being fought in the spirit of the Atlantic Charter[2], which had been issued in August 1941 and transformed on 1/1/1942 into the Declaration of the United Nations. Its principles are clear – and idealistic.

WWII ended in 1945: the German onslaught was rolled back, and German allies in the East (Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia) were occupied by the Soviet Union in the course of fighting (Poland, well, it suffered its usual fate). The Japanese Co-prosperity sphere, on the other hand, collapsed like a pricked balloon. Japanese troops were left scattered all over Asia. At Yalta the Japanese empire was divided up into spheres of “influence”. The British forces were to take control of all Japanese-held territories in the West and up to the 16° parallel in Vietnam in trust for the Dutch and the French. Chang Kai-shek was to have control of China and northern Vietnam, after conceding to Soviet territorial demands. The Soviet Union obtained the colonial territories it had lost to Japan in 1904 – and more. Korea was divided at the 38° parallel. The US got the Pacific.

This unseemly (and chaotic) scramble[3] to recreate lost empires and build new ones conflicted with nationalism in most states: Aung San in Burma, Sukarno in Indonesia, Ho Chi-minh in Hanoi. Korea, who had been annexed by Japan in 1910, was torn asunder: coal and electricity were in the north, rice and light industry in the south.

Defeated Japanese forces and US weapons were used to repress insurrections (their involvement in China lasted until 1948). Asia was treated to the spectacle of the US cossetting hated Hirohito. Nehru commented that the US was “underwriting the British Empire”. The disillusionment with US policy was profound, and the effects lasting. One might conjecture that “non-alignment” emerged in Bandung in 1955 from these experiences, even though it was formalized in Belgrade in 1961.

What if… the US has lived up to the principles of the Atlantic Charter? It could have done so, rather than orchestrate and fund the mad scramble to reconstruct Western empires, and allowing the Soviet Union to become preponderant on the mainland. What if it had thrown in Stalin’s face the Soviet Government’s note of 27 October 1920: “The Government of the USSR (…) renounces all the annexations of Chinese territory, all the concessions in China, and returns to China free of charge and forever all that was ravenously taken from her by the Czar’s government and by the Russian bourgeoisie.”

In the end it was all for naught: soon enough most countries of the empires gained independence and sovereignty (China) – if necessary through wars (Vietnam!). Only divided Korea lives on, monument to the perceived “security needs” of the great powers.

Would the perceived “security interests” of the US have been better protected, had it graciously bowed to the emergent nationalisms at the end of WWII, or even supported them with a “Marshall Plan Asia”? What would the people of Asia made of Soviet communism, had it been the only pig at the troth? The enfolding attraction of socialism was also a reaction to the failure of the US to lead with democracy and independence when it had the means to do so. And had the US not blatantly sustained the corrupt regime of Chang Kai-shek, China may not have been lost.

What if… one person asked this question in 1946, and I’ve just come across his book[4]. Harold R. ISAACS is an “internationalist” – who calls for the “universal will of the people for a better future” (pg. 284). But his insight that had the US led Asia to freedom the continent would have gravitated to peace, rather than struggle through so much violence for 30 years or so, is worth pondering: “Whatever the unsettling effects of such a radical change, it would still offer more real security than a restoration of the status quo ante or the acceptance of a long drawn out contest in which the ruling powers would seek to preserve the essence while yielding some of the form of their sovereignty. (…) The reconstruction, in southern Asia as well as in China, would be immensely profitable to American economy, ensuring full American employment and production, and it would be stable and fruitful because built on a new foundation of political equality.” (pg. 234-235)

It is the tragedy of the United States that, having joined the fray of WWII on high principle, it betrayed it in the end, thereby defeating its original purpose – and losing sight of its own long-term interests. Peace did not ensue in Asia, as ISAACS predicted. It took Asia a generation and untold million dead from war, progroms, and famines, to redress this failure to imagine a world without “spheres of colonial influence.”

Game theory emerged after WWII: it found ready use in dealing with the menace of nuclear weapons in a Cold War (that is bilateral) context. It is credited with creating language that made the “balance of terror” acceptable to both sides. Meanwhile we speak less about the “balance of terror”. For one, nuclear weapons look increasingly obsolete – too much of everything[2]. In any case the “freeze moment” did not last long – direct and head-on confrontation was replaced by proxy-wars. As an alternative, soft power was injected into the stalemate, undermining legitimacy of the warriors. Both sides upgraded their conventional defenses in order not to be obliged to resort to nuclear weapons (see my http://wp.me/p81We-xu ). New technologies (star wars) have made mutual destruction less assured. Destabilizing asymmetries have emerged: rogue states and terrorist groups can credibly threaten suicidal policies – and get away with it.

© Dimitra Stasinopoulou

One begins to wonder whether game-theoretic models would seem to have a good fit with context as it evolves. Why? For one, games presuppose definite beginning and end. This is seldom the case in reality. True, a negotiation may have a beginning, but there are real and invented antecedents to it entering the negotiation as carry-on “baggage” (no limit to size or content). Questions like: “Who started the fight? Who was here first?” float about – even if their presence may be denied. In fact, getting the parties to define their negotiating stance – and to talk to each other – may be the most difficult part. While an agreement may be signed, this is not the end; in a sense it is just the beginning, for the agreed text is necessarily (and often intentionally) vague. As the context changes the outcome is revisited, adapted, or altered.

Also, diplomacy never ends – it just evolves into a different setting. To imagine it as a game, or even as a reiteration of the same game, is too coarse an approximation. A good example is the evolution of international relations at the very end of WWII: as Germany and Japan were defeated, the partnership among the Allies in defeating the Axis yielded confusedly to competitive visions of the post-war settlement. An unseemly scramble for preponderance ensued. The Soviet Union’s past contribution to victory counted little against the security needs of the country which was the strongest[3]. Goerge Kennan suggested containment in dealing with the Soviet Union. To his dismay political containment hardened into military confrontation, and even rollback of borders.

Let’s move on: the state as “unitary actor”? Does such an entity exist, or is it sheer “reification” of a complex institution? Questions like: “To appease? To confront? How to play to domestic politics?” will be debated among decision makers, and more often than not the issues are left undecided, or muddled. In the end their will be judgments, rather than rational or coherent decisions. Furthermore, policies are expressed through personalities, who often work at cross-purposes: the imperiousness of Douglas MacArthur, the superficial assertiveness of Harry Truman, the introversions of James F. Byrnes all contributed to the foreign policy disarray of the US after the great guns of war fell silent[4].

Payoffs? Nothing more uncertain than payoffs in international relations. What was the payoff for the US as it surreptitiously opposed the Soviet Union in Afghanistan after 1980? The collapse of the Soviet Union – which happened? The emergence of the Taliban and al Qaeda – which happened after that? The current destabilization of nuclear Pakistan? Such unintended consequences have been called: “blowback”[5] and occur all the time – some of them may even yield agreeable surprises.

More fundamentally: game theory assumes the players have unchanging attitudes. Humans however – and the institutions they build even more – act highly contextually. We harbor mixed, confused, and contradictory feelings; we are influenced both by others and the context. Game theory does not capture such subtleties, and is therefore likely to lead us astray. Rather than provide a new and scientific framework for an understanding international relations, game theory may degenerate into conventional narrative on stilts.

Where does game theory come in useful then? It turns out, not when applied to an individual, or a single event, but in studying evolving strategies of populations, game theory provides deep insights. “Evolutionary game theory differs from classical game theory by focusing more on the dynamics of strategy change as influenced not solely by the quality of the various competing strategies, but by the effect of the frequency with which those various competing strategies are found in the population. Evolutionary game theory has proven itself to be invaluable in helping to explain many complex and challenging aspects of biology. It has been particularly helpful in establishing the basis of altruistic behavior within the context of Darwinian process.”[6]

I dimly perceive a future for game theory in diplomacy – as a way better to understand adaptive behavior of people – and how such behaviors influence policies, or assist in implementing them. One of the areas least studied in diplomacy is how the legitimacy of the “unitary actor” emerges and is sustained. Though rooted in the individual, legitimacy is a complex emergent property – not just an extrapolation from individual attitude[7]. Game theory may yield insights.

It’s a dark and stormy night; the rain pours so hard, the car lights reflect the rain and you concentrate fully just to negotiate the turns and twists of the road. Suddenly, under a roadside shed you see three people signaling frantically.

You stop: an old lady needs desperately to be taken to the next hospital, you are told. You recognize your friend John, who saved your life once and desperately needs to go to the airport. And then – you behold the person you’d love to have as partner (there are not enough women diplomats, so formulate the conundrum in PC terms, lest male-chauvinist stigma creep in).

Alas, you drive a Smart – a two-seater car. You can only pick up one person (the story one can put seven people in a Mini is urban lore – I know, I drove one). What do you do? You only have seconds to decide.

You get out of the car; hand over the keys to John, who drives the old lady to the hospital, and will leave the car in the airport parking lot. The night is young for you to get to know your dream-person while huddling together under a scanty roof.

(Alright! It feels stale and tastes a bit like a press-communique after a long night in a “green room” – but such is the fate of retelling suspense).

1.        a coherent group of tested general propositions, commonly regarded as correct, that can be used as principles of explanation and prediction for a class of phenomena: Einstein’s theory of relativity. Synonyms: principle, law, doctrine.

2.        a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural and subject to experimentation, in contrast to well-established propositions that are regarded as reporting matters of actual fact. Synonyms: idea, notion hypothesis, postulate.

I’ve put what I see as contradictory in italics: the same word is supposed to signify what has been tested and what is conjectural. It looks like sleight of hand to me, the conjecture trying to masquerade as verified “truth” – and I shan’t spread salt onto the wound by arguing that in practice many conjectures in the social sciences are not prodromal to a resolution through experimentation – simply put, they can never be tested. But then: I’m just a superannuated scientist, and a contrarian to boot.

I’ve come recently across a definition of “diplomatic theory”[2]: “diplomatic theory is reflective in character, permanently indebted to historical reasoning, and unfailingly ethical in inspiration”. (pg. 2) It would appear that this “theory” belongs to definition under (2).

The same source indicates: “Diplomacy turns chiefly on regular and regularized negotiation (…) that can produce the advantages obtainable from the cooperative pursuit of common interests; and it is only this activity than can prevent violence from being employed to settle remaining arguments over conflicting ones”. (pg. 1)

This definition divides the “world of diplomacy” into two halves. One half deals with issues that can be resolved by cooperation; presumably cooperation is based on common values and interests (win-win). On the remaining issues the only possible agreement is to prevent violence: here equilibrium of terror prevails (avoid loss-loss).

This binary view has been formalized in game theory: “Game theory assumes each state is a unitary actor concerned about promoting its national interests, and rationally calculates the payoffs associated with various options (moves); the payoff from a given move will depend on the move taken by the other player(s).”[3]

The author blithely comments: “Although these assumptions may oversimplify real-world international relations, they provide a handy tool for thinking about state interaction.” Game theory then is not a “theory in any sense, but a heuristic: “a simple procedure that helps find adequate, though often imperfect, answers to difficult questions”[4]. Contrary to theories, heuristics are just useful – rather than “true”.[5]

Using historical reasoning I shall discuss the putative usefulness of game theory in further blog entries. I’ll limit myself here to quote the ending of FRIEDMAN’s article: “Progress in positive economics will require not only the testing and elaboration of existing hypotheses but also the construction of new hypotheses. On this problem there is little to say on a formal level. The construction of hypotheses is a creative act of inspiration, intuition, invention; its essence is the vision of something new in familiar material. The process must be discussed in psychological, not logical, categories; studied in autobiographies, not treatises on scientific method; and promoted by maxim and example, not syllogism or theorem.” (pg 43)

According to FRIEDMAN we are confronted with two-fold process. The first is the testing and elaboration of existing hypotheses; the other is the construction of new hypotheses. Their elaboration works according to different paradigms. I’ll maintain that going for the new – raising the horizon of the conceivable – is far more important in diplomacy than trying to solve heuristics that have been shrunk to fit our logical strictures.

In the binary world of the aforementioned definition one exhausts the possible scope of negotiations sooner or later. Stasis ensues as we are left to contemplate the impossible. Yet, true diplomacy is the art of going beyond the impossible. Diplomacy is where there are no rules – if there are, well, it’s just administration.

How to survive? My survival tactic was to slide single pages of poetry – haikus, sonnets, anything short and powerful – amidst the folders I’d place on the desk. I’d lean back in my chair – so the colleague could not see the tell-tale layout of the text – and read the lines intently. I called it “turbo-poetry”. It worked wonders, just like “turbo-sleep” at a rest place off the highway.

Everyone nowadays brings his PC into a meeting. So there is an alternative to poetry, for those who have enough of words. Here it is: stroll among citizens of the world – Ethiopia, India, Bhutan, Burma, Romania…

You can see the rest of these photos and more at http://dimitrastasinopoulou.smugmug.com/

Or this one, if you prefer…

I’m sure the word “humankind” rolls easily off our diplomatic tongues – but what lives behind the plain vanilla abstraction? Leafing through hundreds of Dimitra’s photos from everywhere one begins to understand – and experience – the diversity which is all of us.

Dimitra hails from Greece – the country where abstraction was born. It is to her credit that her eyes (and lens) meet diversity head on and – a novel Herodotus – records it through well-constructed and vivid narrative images. Theoria, θεωρία, meant “a looking at, viewing, beholding”. The Orphics used the word “theory” to mean “passionate sympathetic contemplation” – I prefer a slightly different etymology: “to go about” – and pay attention.

Traditionally, history has been the fearless quest for the sufficient cause of past events – Ranke put it concisely when he spoke of “wie es eigentlich gewesen”[1] – be it the prime moving fact, or the prime mover Himself, or Hegel’s and Marx’s teleology[2]. I’d call it a straight and simple quest for “begats” – be they kings or facts. Upon closer inspection, I’d venture, one finds himself adrift on a perilous sea of infinite necessary factors – and the serene shore of Sufficient Cause turns out to be a fata morgana.

Deep undercurrents of change

In America as much as in the rest of the world the period leading up to the 1776 was one of profoundly change[3]. Population was expanding rapidly, people moved about in search of land and trades, transnational production systems were being established[4], international trade flourished. These changers reinforced each other in intricate and bewildering ways with no inevitable direction. We can plumb even greater depths – so the emergence of internationally traded consumer goods like sugar, molasses (rum!), tea, cocoa, coffee, which opened up for non-elites a new and expanding world of consumption. It was luxury for the masses, in a way, and a far cry from (medieval) subsistence[5]. We should not ignore the deep impact of such mood-changing products on our brains[6], as they came to replace socially sanctioned psychotropic mechanisms like liturgies, ceremonies and spectacles[7]. The “pursuit of happiness” had become a very personal and physical affair.

The material world was being transformed, but few recognized, let alone understood, the import at the time. Elites had neither the awareness nor the means to shape such change in a way to preserve the social structures which underpinned their authority. Increasingly they were perceived as corrupt and tyrannical – even when using physiocratic principles (or because of such “progressive” policies).

Transformative experiences

Buffeted by these forces, people reacted and tried to make sense of their experiences. Often they felt anger and passion[8], which were cast in terms devilish conspiracies and prophecies of impending doom. People needed words to express their emotions: they resorted to trusted analogies – ready-made stories that easily resonated. Religion[9] – a central and everyday experience in a community – and its language of truth, absolutes and destiny provided a popular fit. Others found inspiration elsewhere among the classics, which were rapidly becoming available. It was just all part of a “massive, seemingly random eclecticism”[10]. It was often rather superficial and hodge-podge, nay undigested. They vented these emotions as best they could, sharing these experiences through emerging systems of communication (newspapers were becoming popular).

Yet “these long popular, though hitherto inconclusive ideas about the world and America’s place in it were fused into a comprehensive view, unique in its moral and intellectual appeal.” (pg. 22) What happened? All these “inconclusive ideas” were poured into the crucible of popular experience, and were transformed by it. As a concrete example of the transformative effect of experience let’s look at the central role of Committees of Observation. The First Continental Congress created them to enforce the boycott of English goods. They did so, in very effective fashion: imports dropped by 90% or so. Flush with success these local network of committees moved on to pursue ideological crimes – the root cause of non-compliance. The behavior of these Committees was religiously tinged, which gave them grassroots legitimacy. They sought “confessions”, “remorse”, “new political birth”, and coerced “reconciliation” by “shaming” and the threat of  “civil excommunication”, while eschewing physical punishment. These local structures channeled the anger into procedures, and became “schools of revolution”.

Meanwhile a new elite began to emerge – the Band of Brothers, which moved to shape these forces into a more coherent whole. It would be grievous error, however, to view the Committees – micro-history as it were – as subaltern to the macro-history played out at the national level. The impulse for the boycott policy came from the Suffolk Resolves of one such local entity, and micro-history was just as much in the lead as the macro-history – in fact there was a steady tension between these two realms.

The solitons of chance

A soliton is a “self-reinforcing solitary wave that maintains its shape while it travels at constant speed” and I use it here as a metaphor for the unexpected and violent effect of sheer chance.

In September 1774 a rumor flew across the Americas that General Gage had destroyed Boston. People everywhere – figures of up to 50’000 have been mentioned – rose in arms, converging on Massachusetts. The rumor was soon dispelled, but not before Americans had seen each other in arms – it was a serendipitous plebiscite of wills – and one that forever raised the horizon of the possible. The First Congress scuttled plans to compromise with Britain and endorsed the Suffolk Resolves.

As context dissolves agency

History teaches everything including the future.

Lamartine

History has long been imagined as a list of personal or impersonal forces creating inevitabilities. Historians have relegated infinite necessities to introductory background in the process of enucleating the sufficient cause(s). Chance was a distraction best hidden under sweeping generalizations.

If modern historiography teaches us anything it is that between the polar views of history as “begats” and the view of history as “a series of accumulated imaginative inventions” (Voltaire) there lies a world of complexity, where everything from biology to ideology interacts in profound but understandable if not predictable ways. Within this complexity of infinite combinations and possibilities it is the transforming experiences that create path-dependent outcomes – a creative, not an ineluctable process.

Observing the complexity of the context dissolves the dream of the human will mastering the future. Knowledge of the social and material context, however, allows us to adapt and to exploit opportunities, in a trial and error fashion. This may be the best we can do – but may be just “good enough”.

In January-February 1945, acting against General Yamashita’s express orders (then commanding the Japanese Army forces in the Philippines) 15’000 Japanese mainly Navy troops holed up within Manila to fight the American advance to the last. Obliteration of civilians and buildings in the town was comparable to that of Stalingrad or Leningrad. Throughout the Philippines, furthermore, instances of unspeakable war crimes were documented.

General MacArthur put General Yamashita on trial for these war crimes, and had him hanged. A recent book[1] masterly details the events, the trial, and the final legal battle before the US Supreme Court; it then discusses the evolving standard of “command accountability” since Yamashita. This book I’d recommend to diplomats dealing with issues of war crimes and human rights.

The Yamashita trial was a sham – victor’s revenge (or hint of MacArthur’s guilty subconscious for abandoning the Philippines three years earlier) – and two judges of the US Supreme Court, as they reviewed the trial, said so clearly in their dissenting opinions: “it deprived the proceeding of any resemblance of trial as we know that institution”.(pg. 292).

It was the first time “due process of law” was upheld by a US supreme Court judge as a fundamental human right: “The immutable rights of the individual, including those secured by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, belong not alone to the members of those nations that excel on the battlefield or that subscribe to the democratic ideology. They belong to every person in the world, victor or vanquished, whatever may be his race, color, or belief. (…) If we are ever to develop an orderly international community based upon a recognition of human dignity it is of the utmost importance that the necessary punishment of those guilty of atrocities be as free as possible from the ugly stigma or revenge and vindictiveness. Justice must be tempered by compassion rather than by vengeance.” (pg. 287)

Beyond this, the trial set a “Yamashita standard” for command responsibility. In the eyes of the US military commission it did not matter that Yamashita never ordered, never condoned, and never even knew (or could have known) of the atrocities. The factual link – he was the commanding officer – was deemed sufficient to doom him. He was judged for what he was, rather than what he did (or failed to do). By this standard anyone within a chain of command – from the political leadership down to the immediate superior – is as criminally responsible for war crimes as the perpetrator.

This standard was unprecedented in the law of war and in no way supported by text or custom. It was used only in the Yamashita case. Later international trials for war crimes lowered the standard and demanded positive proof of culpability or at least evidence of gross negligence. As for the US, in its internal proceedings, the author blithely concludes: “The United States devised the Yamashita precedent, but it has never lifted the chalice to its own lips.” (pg. 341)

Behind the events lies the man, and to me Yamashita is a fascinating personality, and worth a closer look. As Allan RYAN has forsaken this for dwelling into the legal aspects of the case – after all he is a lawyer – I’ll venture some conjectures, hoping more qualified persons may further explore Yamashita’s psychology. I rely on Yamashita’s Last Message to the Japanese People[2], which he dictated one hour before his death.

After apologizing for the deaths of Japanese soldiers under his command, he explained why he did not commit suicide: “In fact, I once decided to do so when I attended the surrender ceremonies at Kiangan and Baguio, at which General Percival, whom I had defeated [in Singapore], was also present. What prevented me from committing such an egocentric act was the presence of my soldiers, who did not yet know that the war was over at that time. By refusing to take my own life, I was able to set my men free from meaningless deaths, as those stationed around Kiangan were ready to commit suicide. I really felt pain from the shame of remaining alive, in violation of the samurai’s code of ‘dying at the appropriate time in an appropriate place.’[3] I therefore can imagine how much more difficult it is for people like you to remain alive and rebuild Japan rather than being executed as a war criminal. If I were not a war criminal, I would still have chosen a difficult path, bearing shame to stay alive and atone for my sins until natural death comes, no matter how you all might despise me.” (emphasis mine)

He went on – as a Japanese citizen – to blame the political leadership for initiating and losing the war: “But even while being a military man, I also have a relatively strong sense as a Japanese citizen. There is no resurrection any longer for the ruined nation and the dead. From ancient times, war has always been a matter for exceptional prudence by wise rulers and sensible soldiers. It was entirely due to our military authorities’ arbitrary decisions, which were made by just a handful of people, that a large number of our people died and the rest of the nation was dragged into its present unbearable suffering.” (emphasis mine)

He went on to urge Japan to embrace defeat (which they did[4]) and become a peace-loving country: “Weeds have a strong life force, and grow again when spring comes, no matter how hard they are trodden underfoot. I am confident that, with strong determination for development, you will rebuild our nation now completely destroyed, and make it a highly cultured one like Denmark. Denmark lost its fertile land in Schleswig-Holstein as the result of the German-Denmark War in 1863, but gave up rearming themselves and made their infertile areas into one of the most cultured of European nations. As a ruined people, we repent having done wrong. I will pray for Japan’s restoration from a grave in a foreign country.”

His strategy was based on three prongs: (1) Japanese should learn to think for themselves, rather than yield to authority: “Duty has to be fulfilled as a result of self-regulating and naturally motivated action. (…) In a free society, you should nurture your own ability to make moral judgments in order to carry out your duties. Duties can only be carried out correctly by a socially mature person with an independent mind and with culture and dignity”; (2) promote education in science: “to use the knowledge as the foundation to rebuild a glorious and peaceful country. However, the science that I mean is not science that leads mankind to destruction. It is science that will develop natural resources still to be tapped, that will make human life rich, and will be used for peaceful purposes to free human beings from misery and poverty”; (3) foster education of women – in fact the longest and most emotional part of his message is devoted to the future role of women. I suspect he was aware that with so many men dead, it would be women who’d rebuild the country[5]. Here some of his words: “The highest virtues for Japanese women used to be ‘obedience’ and ‘fidelity’. That was no different from ‘obedient allegiance’ in the military. A person who respects such castrated and slave-like virtues has been called a ‘chaste woman’ or praised as a ‘loyal and brave soldier.’ ” (emphasis mine), and he concludes that women should educate their children: “to be able to live independently, cope with various circumstances, love peace, appreciate cooperation with others and have a strong desire to contribute to humanity when they grow up.”

There remains an issue: at no point did Yamashita express himself on the atrocities. In the aftermath of the verdict the judges explained the harshness of their sentence with the fact that “neither Yamashita nor his staff ever evidenced any horror at all the testimony produced.” (pg. 255) Had they taken moral responsibility “the commission stated that they doubted if any one of them would have voted for the death sentence.”

Yamashita did express himself, but characteristically in his private will: there he sincerely apologized to all the people of the Philippines for the atrocities that his troops had perpetrated.

I suspect here an inner conflict between the various strands of the bushido code[6], to which Yamashita subscribed. Buddhist, Shinto, and Confucian strands mix in bushido, and Buddhism is the personal strand. As a person on could show compassion, but as a general he was bound to giri (Right Reason) – “the sense of duty which public opinion expects an incumbent to fulfill.” (pg. 25) As a general to admit to atrocities would have cast a shadow on the Emperor, whom MacArthur was busy whitewashing[7].

When pleading before the US Supreme Court the defense brief summed up the implicit predicament of General Yamashita: “…a besieged and helpless human being caught in the net of overwhelming state power, whom it was the impulse of the Bill of Rights to protect.” (pg. 276)

Taken as a time line, stock market sales are akin to Brownian motion. One stock goes slightly up, another goes down, and so for thousands of stocks. Pundits tell plausible commentaries about what’s going on – these stories are usually devoid of any truth content[1]. Sure, we love them on account of our deep-seated need for “retrospective coherence”[2] – boiling down a complex process to a single, plausible causality and story-line of clear necessity rather than mysterious contingence. Thus are heuristics[3] born, established, and hardened into myth.

In the world of events the story is in the contingent detail, not in the time line[4]. If one switches one’s attention from the time line to the circumstances of the sale and studies these events, looking not for sequence, but for size and dynamics and their details and differences, a whole world of infinite intricacy opens up. High frequency traders study these events and make a killing by using the information they have gathered in order to manipulate sales to their advantage. By being there at the instant of the sale they are able to cream off a portion of the profit from the transaction[5].

I’ve been mulling this lesson while recently reading American history. And I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a deep truth in Prof. O’HARA’s insight. We have all studied the American Revolution – a narrative that favors e.g. “ideology”[6] and a few “great men” asserting “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” But is it true, or just a convenient heuristic?

Rather than focusing on the “time line” historians of the American Revolution are focusing increasingly on the contingencies and circumstances of the event. And when they do wondrous things come to the surface. Exploring the months and years leading up to the Declaration of Independence Timothy H. BREEN[7] sees a groundswell that moved people from spontaneous rage to resistance, insurgency and eventually a viable movement for colonial liberation. Far from being a whiggish tale of vision and ambition by a “Band of Brothers”[8] who sapiently led the American people to independence, it was the people who took the initiative – it was a complex and emergent affair in which passions, rather than ideas, dominated[9].

How passions arose, how they spread, how they were contained by emergent institutions and channeled to the “fabrication of a new political consciousness” (pg. 17) are more important for a student of politics today than the particulars of ideologies shared among the elite who was to benefit from the Revolution.

The spontaneous emergence of institutions would seem to me to warrant study in light of current events – like the Arab Spring. These local entities – committees of safety or observation – created “a sense of mutual trust upon which organized resistance ultimately depends” (pg. 18). How did they come about? What ideas and worldviews allowed them to emerge? Their role in formulating as well as controlling the “revolutionary spirit” subsequently allowed elites to harness it to an overarching ideology. In the case of the American Revolution it was a constructive one. But is this always so?

Building on BREEN’s insight: revolutions just don’t emerge – like Athena’s birth – from the mind of “superior people” or follow a preordained and predictable path. As a corollary, no revolution is like another and detailed comparative study of such events will bring much understanding of the causes but also of the path-dependent outcomes that lead to success or failure. Far from being subordinate to the main narrative, the detail is the essence of the event.

In the spirit of my http://bit.ly/YOub9R let me “dream” about historians resorting to computer models to simulate the American revolutionary process in ways that may parallel (ever so imperfectly) our increasing understanding of complex ecosystems and how they move from current equilibrium to another[10]. Such studies may allow us better to judge current revolutionary phenomena.

In a later blog I’ll revert to the subject of the circumstance of historical and political change: the break-up of the Allied coalition after the defeat of Germany and Japan – and the subsequent emergence of the Cold War – encompass cautionary tales about “retrospective coherence”, mono-causalities, necessities and “theories” that base themselves on such simplifications. Diplomats better focus on the lessons from the detail – after all, international relations is all about enfolding detail…

What to do with mysteries – criminal situations where it is inherently impossible to establish criminal cause-effect relationships? Though justice “knows” – yet somehow this knowledge does not empower it to mete out justice[1].

This is the case where a “mentality” underpins the specific criminal activities. We may be able to identify the finger that pulled the trigger but not the mind that inspired it. For the crime is “in the air”; it results not from an order but a shared and silent intentionality where everyone plays his well-assigned role, even when everyone is improvising.

I’ve come across this situation with regard to major criminal events that have shaken Italy to the core and transformed the country[2]. It is plausible to argue that the country’s last twenty years are steeped in such criminal events.

For reasons beyond the scope of this blog-entry the Italian State (irrespective of the regime) has had a long history of “containment” of the mafia – criminal organizations in areas of the South, which ran in many ways parallel structures to that of the State. This policy of containment was reaffirmed during the Allied invasion of Italy[3] and underpinned Italy’s anti-communist stance. The mafia delivered the votes, and obtained immunity from prosecution in return.

This containment policy became frayed as the communist danger receded. Mafia bosses were put on trial and – for the first time – found guilty. At this point a convergence of interests and intent appears to have emerged among Mafia clans, “deviated” Masonic lodges, secret service fringe clusters, ultra-conservative religiously tinged groups and others to reaffirm the “containment” compact between State and mafia. This would be achieved by liquidating the “old” political caste and replacing it by a new one, which would secure the subordination of the legislative, the executive, and the judicial arm of the state under a non-ideological and populist leadership.

These groups acted in parallel, intersecting at times, breaking apart again. There seems to be little evidence of explicit collusion, though there may have been go-between. Yet they shared an unspoken matrix: “In seeking to explain individual, corporate and societal accomplishments there is no need to invoke deliberate intention, conscious choice and purposeful intervention. Collective success need not be attributable to the pre-existence to a deliberate planned strategy.”[4] At the end of this fluid process, however, Forza Italia and Berlusconi emerged as the “new” force – which proved beneficial to all these parties.

Between the view of conspiracies leading the world by its unsuspecting nose (behind the veil of obfuscation an elite is at work), and the naïve view of history as a series of disjoined events there lies the world of “silent collective intentionalities” where such intentionalities are grounded in habits rather than deliberation. This comes down to a “mentality” and a (possibly tactical) conjunction of material interests as well as partisan worldviews. DAWKINS[5] would speak of “memes” – evil memes in this instance – acting to replicate themselves irrespective of individual wills.

Justice, I’d argue, today can deal rather effectively with an individual’s deliberate crime. Forensic analysis has made enormous strides (gone are the days where the only things the cops had up their sleeve were fingerprints): pity the lone artisanal criminal. Justice – if given prosecuting omnipotence – is also in a position to deal with organized conspiracies.

We know more nowadays. We know that often criminality is not so much the sum of individual acts or the work of an organization as the result of “mentalities” and indirect action. The law may get the individual actor, but as long as the mentality remains, criminality will recur. In fact, the most heinous collective crimes – from white-collar crime to political offenses – most likely are the result of such intangible “mentalities”. How do we break up noxious mentalities (provided we can agree on what “noxious” is[6])?

Justice seems to remain inherently impotent against such unspoken and un-coordinated “collective intentionalities” – where we no longer deal with covert collusion. Even less it is able to grasp cases of “unintended consequences”. The author of the book on Italy – a former prosecutor – explains it in sadness: he “knows”, but he will never be able to prove anything. Criminalizing “fellow traveller” did not stand up in court – particularly if the accused was a powerful person. The only evidence left is a bunch of coincidences, sequences, and oddities. How to grasp an “evil meme”?

The current haphazard trend seems to be “profiling” – mostly through data mining. Trawling nets are crude instruments that catch a lot of unwanted fish. “Virtual” nets leave the sorting to machines in accordance to secret (and mostly untestable[7]) algorithms.

I don’t have a solution to these issues. One hundred years ago “mentality” was little more than sociological anecdote – and plausible speculation. We know more nowadays. Better ways of dealing with the issues do not automatically (or necessarily) come with the heightened understanding, however. On the contrary – the major result may be to highlight our own fallibility, tendency to delusion, and in the end powerlessness. I’m tempted to mutter under my breath: “Who ever said that ‘truth shall set you free’”?

We love to anchor history to events – kings and battles or revolutions. Savvy historians tell us that this reflects our need for retrospective coherence – and not reality (which is mostly chaotic). History, they (rightly) argue, has no beginning[1] – we emerged somehow from hominins – and slowly moved to what we are today. “Events” vanish when set in BRAUDEL’s longue durée. So how should we structure history? Here an alternative.

History might be usefully looked at through the lens of evolutionary theory[2] – the points of similarity between these two kinds of processes are numerous (but so are differences). On the whole biological evolution follows a gradualist paradigm – small changes along the line of time. Yet between long periods of humdrum stability sudden accelerations may occur: this unsteady pageant is called “punctuated equilibrium”[3] – new species may then “suddenly” emerge and they may even evolve into new families or even orders. As in biological evolution, in history we seem to observe sudden accelerations. At the end of this burst, everything has changed. What may cause them?

New technologies have been heralded as the cause of change in the pace of history (e.g. the development of writing[4]); philosophical or religious ideas may be the source (the Axial Age[5]). My favorite development is the subtle and imperceptible “change in mentality” – changes in the habits of thought that in time enable peoples to advance swiftly[6] in transforming their environment. When these changes in mentality occur, they tend to sweep history on a broad front: somehow and suddenly we look at reality with wholly “new eyes” – or from a new angle – and everything looks differently.

It may be (my) fairy tale, but I see at least two such “changes in mentality” in the (Western) past. Both have to do with measuring reality – and it is a trend away from qualitative (and unverifiable because subjective) judgment. Put it another way: it is a renewed commitment to attentiveness of our surroundings.

The first such change in mentality took place when the Greeks discovered what I might call “analogical thinking” – roughly 500 BC. Geometry and trigonometry emerged – based on analogies. Distances, surfaces, and volumes were measured – practical metrology emerged. In philosophy, syllogisms (which are close to analogies) were codified. It was the first full-fledged stab at rationality.

The second change in mentality began around 1250 AD[7] and might be seen as having reached it acme 200 years later – I’d call it a transition to the “numerical”. Let me cite here the author who brought to me the idea of “change in mentality”: “The West’s distinctive intellectual accomplishment was to bring mathematics and measurement together and to hold them to the task of making sense of a sensorially perceivable reality, which Westerners, in a flying leap of faith, assumed was temporally and spatially uniform and therefore susceptible to examination” (pg. 17).

This new mentality measured mechanical causes and effects and introduced a logical order, from time and space (perspective in particular) to planets and stars. In my view the crowning achievement (and the harbinger of more to come) was double-entry booking. Here for the first time ever there was a “social reality”[8] – the firm – dissected, measured, and revealed. “Double-entry bookkeeping was and is a means of soaking up and holding in suspension and then arranging and making sense out of masses of data that previously had been spilled and lost.” (pg. 220)

The first and second “change in mentality” relied on certainties: these were mono-causal relations between cause and effect. They share their faith in “reductionism – the belief that a whole can be understood completely if you understand its parts and the nature of their ‘sum’”[9]. Teleology ruled: the outcome was inherent in the premises. The scope was the inanimate world – the world of reactions; the intent was directive – it was homo faber at work.

The outcome of the first change in mentality was the brilliance of classical Greece; the second was the Renaissance, and then the industrial revolution(s). In this world the individual – human or planet – was the actor.

A third “change of mentality” is in the making right now. We are in the middle of it and we have yet to grasp its import. We don’t even have a coherent language to describe it. I grope for a descriptive of this emergent historical period. Tentatively I employ the label “measuring complexity”. This term signifies vaguely the broadening of human attention from the inanimate and mechanical to the complex and living, and from the reactive to the interactive; our concern is shifting from the individual to the social group and we move from individual humanism to “social humanism” – which is “we are in it together” writ intellectually.

In this world the “laws” are different – better, they are replaced by “propensities”. Actions are mere “enablers” that allow many outcomes. When large numbers interact we get surprising results: small causes may have large effects; macro-outcomes emerge unexpectedly from micro-behavior (“blowback”). We no longer are in a position to direct such interactive and living processes; we may be able to adapt to them and even influence such processes as whole, but not the individual outcome. Uncertainty and unknowns are the rule.

The analytical methods underpinning this novel attention are different. We need statistical methods to tease out probabilities rather than certainties; chaos theory and dynamical systems theory[10] are some of our new analytical guides. If in the mechanical world the detail could be ignored as “noise” now essential truths may be found in the richness of the detail. We are also helped in this by our newly acquired ability to “freeze” time: we record now and analyze what were once fleeting sensory perceptions. To do so we crunch enormous amounts of data which we fit into ever more complex models.

This new way of “measuring reality” is spreading like wildfire – spanning areas from economics and finance to distributed or undirected as well as social networks and crowd behavior. I’m not ignoring areas like consciousness as well as all aspects of “social reality” through which we organize for “collective intentionality”. Here teleology no longer applies, and is replaced by creativity.

I see no end to its transformative drive – and it might be our novel and adaptive way of tackling global issues like climate change and ways better to live together. This comes at a price: the individual is no longer autonomous from the group, or the environment. For the first time the strength of the “crowd” is pitted against that of the (heroic) “individual” and the outcome of these opposing worldviews is much in the balance.

From Adam and Eve “having dominion” over the universe we are moving toward recognizing and understanding humanity as part of the living whole – and this transition is moving forth right NOW. How exciting.

Qianlong’s problems may have been of his own making and grounded in a vacillating character. “Upon ascending the throne, he swore to seek a middle way between the rule of his grandfather, which he characterized as having been too lenient, and that of his own father, which he saw as too harsh. Such a middle ground he did attain, but in an odd way; he vacillated between extremes of leniency and harshness, so that his “middle way” was really not a constant but an average. His vermilion jottings drip pique and petulance.”[3]

Looking at the Qianlong’s personality from a distance, we might see the effect of “anchoring” at work (see my http://bit.ly/XgkFQZ). Having chosen his predecessors’ policies as reference points, his own policies were maladapted to the context of his own times and failed to explore the full scope or even to try and look behind the “horizon of the possible”. As the name implies, anchoring is immobility all the while the boat repositions itself in the wind. That’s why epigones fail.

Qianlong problems, however, may have been structural as well. The first has to do with his origins – and specific to his times. I’ll treat it presently. The second has to do with the essence of power, and is universal. I’ll treat it in a subsequent blog.

Qianlong was a Manchu – an alien, i.e. Mongolian ethnic group – which had conquered China in 1644. Any foreign minority trying to rule a sullenly resigned majority faces a fundamental problem. Sustained rule is predicated on co-opting local elites – this is best (nay only) done through assimilation. The ensuing loss of separate identity erodes the cohesiveness of the minority or even puts its members – and even more the Dynasty – at the mercy of the now reinvigorated rebelling majority. Where to draw the (defensive) line?

Underlying this conundrum was the fact that the martial minority often is (or feels) culturally inferior to the autochthonous population. The nomadic tribes of the steppes were weary of the rich and cultured lower Yangtze provinces – decadent, refractory, clique-ridden, and mendacious. To rule implied losing one’s own values and adopt those of the majority – time led to the dissipation of the Manchu legacy.

The Manchu hit on a symbolic way of asserting their “difference” and supremacy: they forced all Han to wear a braided queue and shave the forehead. Adopting the Manchu headdress was intended to signify surrender. Among the Han on the other hand there was a strong connection between hairstyle and self-respect, because shaving the head had been reserved for slaves and convicts.

The queue had become the tell-tale sign of Manchu power – and tampering with the queue was not just a routine but a political crime signifying a threat to the dynasty and treated as treason. The stage was set for the political drama squaring off the Emperor against the bureaucracy.

In the 1930 Nicolaas TINBERGEN, Konrad LORENZ; and Karl von FRISCH created a new science – ethology: the study of animal behavior. Their progress warranted then a Nobel Prize… in medicine.

Three hundred years before DESCARTES had argued that not only animals lacked “soul” (whatever that may be), but they had no feelings, and just driven by “instinct”. In short, animals are automatons.

An a superannuated agronomist I’ve maintained an objective interest in animals. I delight in seeing similarities and common descent. Of course we are different, but we should be humble about it: the distance is not that great.

To prove my point a sequel of family photos from the bear pit[1]

“Social facts” – according to John SEARLE who has spent most of his life studying them – “are only facts by common agreement”[1].

As a “brute fact” a stamp is an insignificant-looking little square, often fancily decorated. By “common consent” the stamp is a convenient means of paying for transporting a letter half-way around the world. Try and imagine the complexity of this endeavor. The letter, once so marked, goes through many hands. It boards planes. It gets distributed at the other end. An infinitesimally small amount of money complements this trip: each handler gets its share. At the end of the month, everyone who was involved in moving mail gets her salary. This is the power of a “social fact”[2]

Now try and identify other “social facts”. Money comes to mind, and this is a humongous world. Language is an infinitely complex “social fact” translating sounds into meaning. Division of labor is a “social fact”: workers have agreed among themselves in very complicated ways to participate in the creation of a product. Each of us relies – by common agreement – to do his bit. In the end, presto, the product is taken to market. Each product embodies an infinite amount of further “social facts”. The fact that shoes are sold in a shoe-shop is a “social fact” – otherwise we would have to race through hundreds of shops to find the pair that fits and pleases us. A “social fact” creates a real world, without ever being a real fact in itself – it remains an abstraction.

“Social facts” are mere conventions between people. There are infinite such conventions. We hardly notice them. We just learn of them, and use them. Such conventions can change over time. In the beginning letters were paid for by the addressee. What made postal service boom was the change in convention that the sender paid for the postage.

Laws are “social facts”, and so are institutions. Majority vote is such a convention – and it took a long time coming to an agreement over it. First it was tied to class, then property. We still hear grumbles that elites should have a larger say. Values are “social facts”. A good example is the 5^th commandment (Exodus 20, 13). There are two versions of it: “Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou shalt not murder”. In clear: You may smite aliens, but not murder your own. Here the rather tortured theological argument: “The imperative is against unlawful killing resulting in bloodguilt. The Hebrew Bible contains numerous prohibitions against unlawful killing, but also allows for justified killing in the context of warfare, capital punishment, and self-defense.” This dissonance highlights the conventional character of this Commandment – by God’s command Joshua smote enemies, women and children, and sometimes even livestock.

“Social facts” exist by common consent. Two problems arise. The first is how to change them. We have created “meta-social-facts”: procedures in order to do so (originally Constitutions were such procedures). Procedures create order in time[3] (and path-dependent outcomes). We are loath to change procedures even more than values, hence the hurdles to changing the Constitution. In the past forgetting was the main tool. Now that everything is written down, we are left with constructive re-interpretation of the written word. We then celebrate the “resurrection” of the (written) word into a new living meaning.

The second question is compliance – the “free-rider” problem. Of course, “common consent” in principle demands 100 % compliance on the part of the group. Depending on the kind of “social fact”, we accept some degree of tolerance. There is no tolerance for murder. We are relatively tolerant with regard to traffic rules – in fact the traffic is so complex that without constructive interpretation of traffic rules we would probably get gridlock. The police do not blindly enforce every rule – it aims for “good enough” solutions, which may even be “optimal”, in the sense that it gets everyone home on time even though rules are not strictly followed.

Some social facts have a shelf life. Over the last 50 years sexual harassment or stereotyping of people is emerging as strict “social fact” – this transition is disparaged as “politically correct”. The inverse process is also ongoing. Divorce has become acceptable, and so has co-habitation: sexuality no longer is considered a “social fact” as long as it takes place between consenting adults.

And then there are “common aspirations”. Aspirations refer to a – fuzzily shared – desirable state of society. Health is a good example. We’d like everyone to live a healthy life. For his/her own good. For the good of society, for we have undertaken to share health care costs. We recoil, however, from making compliance compulsory. What to do?

A new method is emerging that squarely confronts this conundrum: it is called “nudging”[4]. These are measures that aim to “make it easy” for people to align their behavior on “common aspirations”. The aim is not full, but “good enough” compliance. It moves a large portion of society in the right direction and so e.g. brings social costs down to a more comfortable level. It is based on the principle that not all of us are deliberate and obdurate free-riders – just lazy, ignorant of the issue, or both. And we can live with it: we do not punish people for not sharing our aspirations.

Two examples: upon enrolment workers maybe automatically enrolled in a pension plan, unless they decide to opt out. There is no cost to opting out – just the slight bother of having to do so. Most will enroll: this small rule exploits our natural indolence while fostering the “common aspiration”. Setting up recycling bins at street corners is a nudge – recycling rates of say 80% (as here in Switzerland) are “good enough” to get a hold on waste disposal.

The age of prohibitions – where the state secured “negative liberties” – is being followed (not superseded!) by the age of common aspirations – where we agree to “positive liberties” – common shaping of the “good life”. The agreement is fuzzy, and so are the means to move in that direction. What counts is not individual behavior, but the people on the whole moving in the right direction.

With “social facts” emerges a “social reality”, the complex agglutination of all these “facts by common agreement”. “Social reality” is more than just their sum – it is an emergent property we vaguely describe as “society”. And if you think that material reality is infinitely wondrous – think again. For each of God’s many beetles there are infinite “social facts” relating to the same function (each family e.g. is in a sense a “social reality” – witness the misunderstandings between in-laws).

What I find fascinating is the current denial, in some Western thought, that “social facts” or “socially constructive reality” exist at all. John SEARLE spends the last two chapters of his book defending the idea that socially constructed reality exists independently of individuals. A “social fact” would be disembodied, and this can’t be, is the argument, or they are subordinate. What else are past religions – we now call them paganism – or discarded social structures – like the institution of slavery (not its horrible reality)?

The denial is not innocent. It underpins the claim to individual autonomy and the person’s primacy over the social, nay of the rights of the individual being antecedent to social reality[5]. This, however, is another story, or another blog.

In theory this may be right. As Yogi Berra famously said, “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.” So moving from China’s history to a fully functioning democratic system may look awkward to Chinese authorities.

To understand this point, let’s look at the history of T’an-ch’eng County over a 50 year period in the XVIIth century[1]. This county lies in Shantung Province, close to the Yellow River. It did not have much in the way of anything – few resources, middling to poor agricultural land.

In 1620 the county had about 200’000 souls, which tended 3.75 million acres of land. By 1670 the number had dwindled to 60’000, cultivating as best they could 1.75 million acres.

Here a few calamities that befell this county: 1622: White Lotus uprising; 1630: banditry; 1640 locust plague; 1641: devastation by bandits; 1643: Manchu raid; 1644: Manchu take-over and pillaging; 1648: banditry; 1649: flooding by the River I; 1650: banditry; 1651: flooding and bandits; 1652: flooding; 1659: flooding; 1665: famine; 1668: severe earthquake.

What strikes in this litany of disasters is the recurrence of banditry. We are not talking here of highway robbers[2]: these outlaws pillaged towns and villages and laid siege to the capital in 1841. They were repulsed in the end, but the wasting of the county must have been horrendous. One of China’s beloved classics is about bandits of the marshes[3].

Chinese history is replete with rebellions mostly of popular origin. Several dynasties have their roots in such revolts: the Ming e.g. emerged from the White Lotus Buddhist sect as well as the Red Turban Manichaeism. The Taiping Rebellion[4] too had foreign – “Christian” – ideological roots.

Traditionally China was a centralized bureaucratic autocracy. The center’s hold on the vast countryside of 250 million, however, was thin. “The 1400 men serving as magistrates at any one time in the counties in XVII^th century China were in a difficult position, for though they had enormous power over their jurisdiction, (…), they were also the junior members of a complex chain of command that reached above them to the prefects, past the prefects to the provincial governors, and through them to the ministries in Peking and the emperor himself. Furthermore, a finely codified body of administrative law dictated their daily behavior, attempting to systematize all known kinds of criminal or deviant acts among the population.” (pg. xiii) Add to this a fast system of rotation – lest the mandarins “go native”. The system was poorly equipped to deal with the diversity on the ground. Local gentry and money-lenders had long experience in abusing it. Oppressive and unresponsive, this system survived on threat of collective punishment, reciprocal informing, and capillary violence. Taxes and compulsory labor-service fell disproportionately on the weakest parts of society. No wonder banditry was endemic.

Past history remains in our minds as “ghost stories”. They mayno longer have relevance, yet they linger and sway our thoughts. The West’s nightmare is religious strife, going back to the Wars of Religion, hence our uneasiness with religion in the public sphere. China’s is probably insurrection. Just as I don’t condone current oppression, though, I have some understanding for the CCP’s caution in spearheading political and economics reforms. It took the West 150 years to evolve into full-fledged democracies – and ours were smaller and more compact cultures. Against our own measure China’s progress is quite remarkable. So far.

According to this study, research on perceptions is not concerned with the study of “facts as such” as with the question of how facts are observed, constructed, and understood – here specifically the media, public opinion, and opinion leaders. Studying the social reality underpinning relationships between countries or regions seems to me a promising undertaking as these relationships deepen (or made to deepen) over time.

In the context of Europe-Asia relations the first question is then whether “Asia” is a “fact as such” which people may observe and understand.

The geographical boundaries of Asia have never been defined on the ground – nor will they ever be[3]. Different cultures and ethnic groups have lived side by side in separate regions within “Asia”. Exchanges have taken place, so far without acculturation or integration. On the ground we are then very far from a “single-entity” concept of any kind which could yield meaningful content to the concept of “Asia”.

In fact, the term “Asia” may be close to a “floating signifier” which, according to Claude Lévy-Strauss is an “undetermined quantity of signification, in itself void of meaning and thus apt to receive any meaning”. In everyday situations such “floating signifiers” are very useful, I’d conjecture even essential. They yield an “impression” – good enough for collective action. Our mind is geared to work with approximations and ambiguities, even (or particularly) signifiers without referents, or implying contradictions or suspensions of disbelief. One is tempted, somewhat cynically, to mutter that such “floating signifiers” are what makes the social world go round[4].

ASEM is politically a very useful instrument (though it has now inflated to include 49 countries, which may defeat its original purposes). Its originators established a “situation” which facilitated meetings between political heads, getting acquainted with each other, learning about respective ambitions, and concerns. It is political “grooming” (see http://bit.ly/S4kROe for my discussion of this term) with elements of potlatch, and may be seen as precursor to establishing closer, if not collective political intentionalities. In itself, however, it does not bestow substance or meaning to the floating signifier.

Is “Asia” at least an emergent fact? The question is justified. “Europe” may have once been a floating signifier. Over time political and economic processes have emerged to give content to it. Europe moved from being a bunch of warring states to a politically integrating region. As the warring states came to grips with their destructive ways they created institutions to deal with them. Asia today is functionally integrating – but is it about to move beyond it to some form of political integration, i.e. toward collective intentionality enshrined in common or at least joint institutions? Are “Asian region-building processes” at work?

Better to answer this question by analogy we might throw a glance as to Europe’s path-dependent institutionalized outcome. My hunch is that the paths to integration are not comparable.

At no stage in history did Europe’s drawn-out process of state formation yield a stable equilibrium. Two world wars ensued, and Russia’s ambition to create a neighborhood (rather than an overseas) empire ended in failure. Asia does not have such a history of chronic warfare or an obvious need to structure itself to avoid it[5].

Present day political contingencies are also different. After WWII the US (and by reflection the USSR) imposed regional institutions on Europe, and made them possible as they emerged[6]. Both powers are now involved in Asia. Neither seems keen at the moment to push for regionalization in Asia. On the contrary, the US policy is rather one of “containment” of China with the assistance of its neighbors – i.e. it works against “regionalisation”. The roles of these two external powers count, particularly as new institutions may be struggling to emerge.

The economic and cultural structures making up “Europe” and “Asia” are interconnecting in ever more complex ways[7]. At the bilateral level much is being done. The study concludes: “This image of Asia is argued to have important practical implications at the policy-making level as it underlines the weight given to bilateral ties and country-specific strategies – at the expense of policies that incorporate broader regional perspectives. Europe’s policy-making will find it difficult to adjust to Asia’s increasingly regional dynamics. Yet, the more effective Asian regional co-operation and integration becomes and the more Asian regional institutions’ problem-solving capacity increases, the more important it will be for the EU and its member states to reach out to it.” (pg. 23).

Asia’s regional dynamics is undisputed. The question is whether state involvement will transcend functionality and move toward Western-style institutional solutions to which Western-style institutional structures may dock. This, in my view, is an open question. My conjecture is that Asian countries may find institutional structures to be strictures on their dynamics, and by-pass them, or use them for subordinate purposes[8]. “Europe” – and here I mean mostly the EU – may approach the new dynamics in the Asian region with the mindset (or mental map) of Prof. Henry Higgins:

Why can’t a woman be more like a man?
Men are so honest, so thoroughly square;
Eternally noble, historically fair.
Who, when you win, will always give your back a pat.
Why can’t a woman be like that?

Why does everyone do what the others do?
Can’t a woman learn to use her head?
Why do they do everything their mothers do?
Why don’t they grow up, well, like their father instead?

Why can’t a woman take after a man?
Men are so pleasant, so easy to please.
Whenever you’re with them, you’re always at ease.[9]

There is a limit to the time one can spend on grooming – this limit caps the size of ape bands to about 50 animals. Humans needed bigger numbers to survive. Language – gossip as mental grooming – may have evolved as replacement for physical grooming: it allowed bands to swell to 150 or so, when the size of the neo-cortex kicks in to limit group size.

Most of our intercourse is casual (and tediously trivial) gossip[2] – witter – but some it might be useful in different ways. One of the hypotheses is that gossip may have evolved as “a mechanism for controlling the activities of free-riders. By exchanging information on their activities, humans are able to use language both to gain advanced warning of social cheats and to shame them into conforming to accepted social standards when they do misbehave. This is a powerful mechanism for deterring cheats, and researchers were able to show mathematically that free riders would be less successful in a community of gossiping co-operators. Perhaps language evolved not so much to keep track of your friends and acquaintances as to keep track of free-riders and coerce them into conforming. There is, in fact, some experimental evidence to support this suggestion.”[3]

Twitter may be seen as the virtual avatar of gossip – and this seems to be borne out by its humdrum content. Just as gossip, Twitter may also be used to out “social cheats and to shame them into conforming to accepted social standards when they do misbehave.” Recent experience seems to bear out this possible function.

There is one problem with gossip – it is “cold”. Unlike grooming it does not stimulate endogenous opiates. This applies even more to Twitter, where the gossip is “at a distance”.

Smiling and laughter have a property few people know about: they are both particularly good at stimulating the production of endogenous opiates all round. “So the best recipe for happiness in life is to smile as much as possible – thanks to the surge of opiates flooding through your veins, it makes you feel warm and contented.” (Kindle Locations 2942-2943).

It is smiling and laughter that does the bonding – not the words. This makes even more sense when we consider that “as much as two-thirds of the meaning in the sentences we utter is in fact conveyed in the nonverbal signals that accompany speech.” (Kindle Locations 2862-2863). Adding smiles and emoticons is poor replacement for a living smile – I don’t know whether studies have already determined how much endogenous opiates a well-chosen emoticon releases.

All this is of course just a plausible story – whose main purpose is to amuse. Yet it may help in understanding the strengths and limits of Twitter. If bonding occurs, it emerges not from the text itself, but from the “network effect” of the text being retransmitted. Content matters little. On the other hand it serves the purpose of “outing” misbehavior admirably. But it is a negative force – I’d compared it in my earlier blog 164 (http://bit.ly/PZdolc) to a graffiti.

Here a fleeting commentary. Of course we are more than apes: culture has entered the fray next to nature in ways we cannot fathom, let alone untangle. The “scars of evolution” are with us, however. We may think that we have invented something utterly unprecedented, when we have just created the virtual version of an age-old behavior. Such scars have a “mind of their own” and we may be enchanted or angered by their surprising evolution.

Just laugh – it yields pleasing endogenous opiates…

By the lights of the report, Facebook, Twitter & Co. will not so much shape as complicate or disrupt diplomatic work. So the report is defensive about “Real time diplomacy” (pg. 8 ff.). The author takes the Arab Spring Movement as an example and concludes: “even this slight delay probably dented the United States’ wider reputation in the region as a champion of democracy.”

As they say – blame the messenger – here the instant messenger.

Ben Ali, Mubarak, Assad – one should not build a foreign policy on the unspoken premise that such persons will live forever, or that their succession is all in place and ready to go. Oaks seldom let other trees grow in their shade. Obama reacted to the emergent Arab Spring end of January 2011 by calling Pres. Mubarak to tell him “orderly transition must be meaningful, it must be peaceful and it must begin now”. He should have said so to his face after the speech in Cairo in July 2009.

In other words, it was not the “slight delay” as the US reset their policies that dented US reputation in the region, but its siding with “stability” long after it had degenerated into oppressive stasis. The US policy in the Middle East has favored the status quo at any price. Banking on enduring disconnect between one’s words and acts no longer works in a world of Twitter and Facebook.

A policy of unending stability is predicated on a “mechanistic” or reductivist view of the world. According to Newton’s first law: “Any object not subject to an external force moves with unchanging speed.” Hence the policy prescription: isolate the object from external forces, and everything will be all right.

The problem with this policy prescription is that forces of change are not external but internal to the object. The “object” in in fact a “living system”, within which there are “positive feedbacks”. Such dynamics is called “chaotic”. It would be better to call them “complex” or “emergent complex”: “unlike colloquial chaos, there turns out to be substantial order in mathematical chaos in the form of so-called universal features that are common to a wide range of chaotic systems.”[2] One calls these features “singularities” or “bifurcations”. One may not know when such unique events take place, or their eventual form – but that they’ll occur is certain[3].

Electronic communications have shortened the reaction times as they amplify positive feedbacks. Social systems have become volatile. The task is not how somehow to manage volatility once one is in the middle of the media-storm, but how to avoid being caught in it to begin with. Complacency and inertia – the old bromide of “steady, as she goes” no longer are the answer. Nor are belated large-scale interventions that destabilize the system further eventuating “blowback”.[4]

One place to start may be to reflect whether the old and true systems of large and permanent alliances are still viable, or whether some form of “circuit breakers” should be introduced. The current escalation of claims and counterclaims between Japan and China over the Senkaku or Diaoyu Islands is a case in point. Born out of internal political considerations in Japan, but played out against China, this conflict is pulling the US, as ally of Japan, into a situation where its degrees of freedom may be curtailed against its will. Will the Japanese tail wag the American dog?

What I regret is the enormous time invested in “managing” the “breaking event” – the viral phenomenon of electronic communications – rather than focusing on the root causes. But then, we do tend to blame the messenger – don’t we all?

As a bemedalled general might have muttered: “The question is not why I was caught with my pants down, but why I had them down in the first place…”

There are a few interesting lessons to glean from this short statement.

The most important one in my view is that it provided immediate “incentives” for users. Life is about constantly and consistently adapting to change, and even one-cellular molds are very intelligent this way[1]. We can’t help ourselves dealing with an incentive (contrary to molds, survival is not our only aim, so an incentive will remain a propensity, not a necessity).  The stronger the incentive – here material change – the greater is the likely effect. The reaction is not linear: we may have a threshold effect. Awareness-rising may not be enough, for it is not confirmed by a concrete and transformative response.

The second lesson is that the incentives better be limited and circumscribed – simple and immediately tangible. The diplomats did not want to change the attitude of Palestinians and Israeli Arabs toward the US in one swell swoop. They just wanted to do something economically useful and constructive at the local level. This is akin to the wound-healing process[2]: it is a local affair (the conscious brain is not involved, it would only mess up things) of “building bridges” with bits of collagen, and then making new cells thrive, one at a time. After a month the wound has healed.

My analogy is apt in another way. Just as the wound-healing process is structured, with cells taking on different tasks in appropriate sequence, the US incentive grafted itself in the self-organizing structures of Palestinian society. It touched not just the “autonomous” individual, but the whole social context within which she was embedded. Such structures run very deep, and persist even under the most trying conditions – as we saw in Germany after the WWII[3]. Humans are flexible in ways biological life is not: it was women who brought Germany back of the brink, as millions of men had died in battle or been taken prisoner. I would not be surprised if similar reactions were present in the West Bank.

An incentive, in other words, “resonates”. Others in same situation may imitate. Complementarities emerge, as the businessperson who takes up an incentive distributes its effects to suppliers, helpers, workers. Looking beyond the “target” and establishing the strength and pitch of the resonance would provide guidance in increasing effectiveness. “Resonance”, by the way, is a Confucian view which underpins China’s current search for “harmony”.

Unfortunately the statement I received does not yield numbers, so one is left wondering whether this local process, successful as it might have been, made a difference in the end on Palestinian society.

The imbalance between micro-incentive and macro-effect need not be a drawback, if it is cleverly used to test the effectiveness of the incentive. Plausibility underpins many an incentive program, yet it is often a poor policy guide. One is well advised to establish statistical tests to verify the validity of the claims. This is done by comparing statistically equivalent groups, one “with” and one “without” the incentive, after controlling for other factors. By its very nature a pilot program is selective, so we may use this feature to test the underlying hypothesis. Testing in the context of social reality is far from easy, and diplomats who want to obtain verified evidence better get proper advice – before the fact.

“Evidence-based evaluation” may be constrictive, rather than constructive. Quality is lost, when we take quantity as proxy. Given our tendency to fabulate in search for self-affirmation, however, measuring is better than plain (i.e. self-serving) comment. One should always remember that incentives yield only propensities, not necessities[4]. Andno incentive will empower. The old adage “one can take the horse to water, but not make him drink” may confound all testing.

My friend also mentioned collateral benefits from the Facebook program. It was transparent – also for the Israeli authorities. Heightened transparency may in the end be the most important – if collateral effect.

But is it the whole story – or the most important part of the story, for the matter?

Everything the human mind touches or creates involves multiple intentionalities. We bestow on the “brute object” one, or many meanings. We can’t help doing so. Some of these intentionalities cling to the object long after the creator has gone – think of buildings as palimpsests of architects, masons, owners. Some may be intended, others inadvertent, none are innocent. The human mind subliminally perceives many of them, and reacts, adjusts, and adapts.

Meeting-wise organizers will use the tags to convey their favored intentionalities, like authority. Others may be surprised that the meeting did not succeed as intended (Jovan found the meeting disappointing – the tag’s fault?). Mostly we’ll never know how it all panned out, for the intentionalities from the tag may interact with those embedded in the buildings, in the schedule, the weather, the food… whatever. Only by statistical analysis might we tease out some of these effects (if we have enough of a data base, that is). All such attempts are inherently arbitrary anyway – we may be missing major signifiers, or bestow significance on flukes.

Just for fun, let’s go through some aspects of the tag.

The tag establishes membership in a group, or “super-clan” of say 1’000 people – the rest of the world becomes hoi polloi. Inside it, role, rank as well as solidarity are affirmed. At the same time the tag may signify the wearer’s membership in one of the clans of which the “super-clan” consists – in Jovan’s case “Civil society” – and bestow separate (if possibly equal) role on the participant. The tag thus affirms implicitly divisions, rankings, prejudices. Stereotyping, as we know, subtly changes behavior[1].

The organizing institution(s) are identified by logo or script: the relative size of the emblem compared to the name may signify authority and order – the larger the logo, the stronger the message. Color of the tag, of the ribbon holding it up – I could ramble on for ever about their surreptitious significance.

Paranoia? Yes and no: it all depends on what’s the expected function of these “hidden persuaders”. Though they target the individual, what the manipulator is interested in is not so much individual compliance as nudging of the group in the right direction. While they may not be effective in changing this or that individual behavior, they may change that of the group significantly – that is “just enough” to affect the outcome in some way. Blowbacks abound at this stage, but as we learn to read them and measure their effects we may become more adept at tweaking signifiers. Retailers have been manipulating consumers in vain  in this way for over 50 years.

All social species – from bats to primates – rely on subliminal signifiers to manage living in a group[2]. Group-living has its advantages but also creates stress. Signifiers help manage stress. Speech – gossip for short – may be the crowing “stress-manager”. And twitter its virtual avatar – but that’s another story.

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One view is that: “Western Europeans evolved a new way, more purely visual and quantitative than the old, of perceiving time, space, and material environment” (pg. 227)[1]. (I’ve mentioned this in my 42 http://bit.ly/WLCA2A ). Another view holds that it was the emergence of the “scientific method”[2] which did the trick[3]. Whatever the merits of these arguments, they agree on the fact that the way we presented and argued our thoughts and insights was paramount in bringing about change.

I’ve been preparing for the Malta conference on Innovation in Diplomacy – a memorable event which will take place in two weeks’ time. I have a rough idea of what I want to say, but I’m forced by circumstances to change my style of presentation – in my view in a way that might add to a “change in mentality”.

Ten years ago, I’d have taken to the pen and written down a 10-15 page text. I’d read it out, my voice droning away above the public’s heads. The presentation’s structure would have been close to the “recursive argument method[4]” first developed in the Middle Ages, and ponderous to a fault. It involves a fictitious dialogue between me and an imaginary “opponent”, with my arguments (of course) gaining the upper hand over objections. It is a sort of “intellectual ordeal”[5] with the public as judge.

Five years ago, I’d have put bits of my speech on slides in a PowerPoint presentation. It is akin to climbing a steep mountain face with hammer, ropes and nails: the salient points are anchored; the rest is free-style. Adverse arguments have no place in my exposition. (Fictitious) dialogue has been replaced by a self-assured monologue.

Jovan has asked me to prepare myself for a TED-style presentation[6]. “Good storytelling, an art which is as old as humanity” – Jovan argues, and he is right. But this is how it feels to me. (Whether in the end my subject matter can dispense with PowerPoint slides or whether I can master in one swell swoop the overhangs of speaking freely is subordinate matter. If I were a politician I’d have teleprompter).

Writing a (speech) text is akin to laying siege to a fortress the way it was done in the XVII^th century. The place was cut off; trenches were dug at salient points; sorties were repelled; tunnels were tunneled under the walls; mines were laid and ignited. It was predictable to the week when the slog would finish: dependable workmanship, but no thrill, no twist, and no surprises, unless the opponent’s field army came to the rescue from afar – it seldom did.

A PowerPoint presentation is an effort in convincing and converting. Counter-arguments are suppressed: one holds them in reserve, if needed. More than a siege – it is an intellectual raid, where the public is taken prisoner.

A TED presentation is closest to entertainment. It has to be a “good” story – that’s critical. TED talks are rated unabashedly subjectively: “inspiring, jaw-dropping, persuasive, funny…” Truthful –maybe. Oral stories are linear. (Only Homer can have oral recursive stories, and then one needs a whole night to tell it. And in any case these recursive stories were repeats, where listeners knew the component bits by heart beforehand). TED is novelty, and novelties must be simply, short, and striking.

I don’t know whether I’ll ever be good at TED-style presentations. But I like the “change in mentality” that comes with it: The ruthless linearization involved forces one to think deep – to dig into the unspoken assumptions until one finds that one sentence that tells it all – the jingle that jangles…

Ruthlessly “seeking a deeper understanding of the world” may save us in the end. Don’t believe me? Here an example.

We all have read about the “crash of the subprime market” in the US – which contributed mightily to the current economic doldrums. In 2001 Josh ROSNER published a long paper highlighting the dangers of the then current policy of easing credit standards to put more people into their own homes[7]. The title of his paper sums up his analysis perfectly: “A home without equity is just a rental with debt.” His conclusion was: “Owning a home has, historically, served an important place in America. A Housing and Urban Development report states that, “Through homeownership a family…invests in an asset that can grow in value and generate financial security…. enables people to have greater control and exercise more responsibility over their living environment…. helps stabilize neighborhoods and strengthen communities…and helps generate jobs and stimulate economic growth”. While these assertions, intuitively, seem correct, even the HUD author admits that “the validity of some of these assertions is so widely accepted that economists and social scientists have seldom tested them”. More to the point is the unasked question: ‘is it homeownership or home-equity which conveys these benefits’.[8] Had regulators understood the import of this little sentence – which could have been the core of a TED presentation – we might have been spared the worst. Funnily enough, a 91-year old professor did – subsequently contacting ROSNER. His name was Charles KINDLEBERGER, whose titles included: Manias, panics, and crashes. A history of financial crises.

Liminary remark first: Things have changed. For one, deterrence has become a “three (main) body object” – a far more unstable condition than it was when nuclear arms were first introduced.

In his Nobel Lecture Prof. SCHELLING made a remarkable point. The overall arms race between Cold War participants included both conventional and nuclear weapons. The West privileged nuclear weapons at first – creating a dangerous unbalance, which might have forced the US to resort to their use in the event of a conventional attack. As of 1960 both sides strengthened the conventional capability, making such a conventional war credible. Nuclear weapons were no longer a strategic necessity, but an option. Prof. SCHELLING sums it up this way: “Arms control is often identified with the limitations on the possession or deployment of weapons that it is often overlooked that this reciprocated investment in non-nuclear capability was a remarkable instance of unacknowledged but reciprocated arms-control.”

Secondly, it was a tank numbers game then – and all sides had hands-on experience with that kind of conventional warfare. The generals could assess the “chances of war”. Conventional warfare meanwhile has gone “smart” (star-war, cyber-war, toy-war, information dominance). How smart is anyone’s guess, but this novel qualitative aspect makes military planners uneasy. By comparison nuclear weapons look dependably destructive, and welcome as a “safe” backstop – just the role they had before 1960. Iit is counter-intuitive, but“going smart” may not be a smart idea after all.

Thirdly, focusing on reducing nuke numbers can be an exercise in strategic blindness. Here an example. At the Washington Conference in 1921 states agreed to limit the overall tonnage of their capital ships. The Treaty was hailed as a milestone toward peace: no guns, no war was the all too easy topos. Few people read the fine print: the US had promised Japan NOT to strengthen its defenses in Guam and Manila leaving its Western Pacific possessions vulnerable to Japanese attack. When Japan occupied them in 1941 it was able to complete a ring of outlaying defenses around Japan – an impregnable position. One may argue that the US concession in 1921 enabled the war between the US and Japan[1] by strengthening Japan’s strategic position. Context matters.

The road to nuclear disarmament is not a four-lane highway to eutopia, where distance from the goal is marked on road-side panels in terms of weapons destroyed. It is a crooked (and highly path –dependent) trail weaving its way past many dangers.

Non-nuclear states may well take the initiative in proposing nuclear disarmament. They’ll get side-lined rapidly by the onslaught of complexities derived from devising the actual path; they may soon be relegated to role of hapless (possibly clueless) spectators or Monday-night quarterbacks