| The War On Terror(ism) And Rosenberg's Three Styles of Adult Reasoning
As previously explained, Piaget was the pioneer in the scientific study of cognitive development, with a primary focus on reasoning about the physical world. One of the ways he did this was by presenting problems involving processes which can demonstrate differing levels of reasoning. Some of these have formal structures that can be directly translated into other domains, such as geopolitical conflict. This is what Shawn Rosenberg did. He administered both sets of tests and showed that people tended to demonstrate the same level of cognitive complexity both in physical science querstions and in international affairs questions.
With this basic finding in mind, we turn to eight results of Rosenberg's research that are important for us. Some of this will be repetitious of the first diary, but it's new material for most people, and I trust it will be more helpful than annoying. I will also present-for reference, but without explanation-a table that organizes how Rosenberg's schema presented in Table K-1.1 in the last diarey applies to international relations.
First, I cannot emphasize enough the associational, non-rational nature of sequential thought. It involves conceptual relations that "are synthetic without being analytic. They join events together but the union forged is not subject to any conceptual dissection." Because it is non-rational, there is nothing rational one can say or do to change it. With the aid of modern mass communications, it is possible to shape the entire consciousness of nation by manipulating sequential association. Indeed, this is what mass advertising does on a daily basis. It is what Hitler strove for so successfully, and what even much more innocuous political campaigns do as well.
In addition, Rosenberg explains, these relationships "are mutable," they can either be extended, based on "share[d] recognized overlapping events" or changed, when the sequence does not play out as expected. Because it is a pre-logical mode of thought, "the relations of sequential thought engender expectations, but do not create subjective standards of normal or necessary relations between events." People who think this way can be quite unbothered by the fact our current enemies-Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, etc.-were once allies against other enemies.
Second, sequential thought is a perfect fit for the most basic and powerful forms of propaganda, which tend to drive out critical thinking in a crisis-precisely when they are needed most. The perpetual repetition of certain sequences of words, images, claims and accusations-particularly when they are strongly charged with emotion-creates a political reality that may have little or no relation to actual reality. By endlessly repeating such associational sequences, an atmosphere can be created in which it is difficult, if not impossible to assert the opposite, no matter how strong the evidence may be . Because communication is intended to communicate, not just reflect the individual's thinking, when the entire culture becomes distorted by such techniques, it becomes increasingly difficult for systematic (or even linear) thinking to assert itself.
This is precisely what happens in the grip of war fever, or in response to an atrocity-such as the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The failure of systemic thought just when it is needed most is precisely what the terrorists were counting on-though of course they would never have put it that way. Nonetheless, it is precisely that failure which Sun Tzu warns against, and which we must do everything possible to avoid.
Third, although systematic thinking represents the highest level in Rosenberg's schema, it has its own shortcomings. In particular, Rosenberg notes, it suffers from dichotomies-frequently generating two different sorts of systematic approach that cannot be reconciled. Rosenberg hypothesized a fourth level of thinking, but considered it too rare and undeveloped to study.
Fourth, as indicated in Table K-1.2, immediately below, the very nature of international conflict-even including the nature of the sides involved-is seen very differently by those at different levels. If we accept that systematic thinking yields a better, more complete view of reality, then its description is the one we should prefer, even knowing that it, too, is imperfect.
Table K-1.2
Rosenberg's 3-Level Typology
With Respect To International Conflict | | Derived from Reason, Ideology and Politics, pp. 185-189.* | | | I. General Structure of Conflict | | | Basic Understanding of Conflict | | 1-Particular event or sequence of events. Leader/country trying to act & being blocked.
2-Opposition between sides pursuing incompatible aims.
3-Understood in context of international relations. | | Sense of Aims | | 1-Little sense of aims of blocking country in relation to first country.
2-Incompatible aims between sides.
3-Multiple and possibly conflicting interests/aims on both sides. | | Nature of Sides | | 1-Clashing leaders/countries with transient involvement of others
2-Two opposing hierarchically-structured alliances
3-Multi-sided conflict. Each side may be alliance of countries, single country and/or interest group within nation. Sides are complexly structured with possible internal conflicts at various levels. | | Sense of Conflict in Scope and Duration | | 1-Little sense of enduring or general qualities
2-Considered long-term, with general and enduring enemies and alliances
3-Not necessarily long-term or general; may exist along one dimension, but not others. | | Role of Third Parties | | 1-Only considered in terms of specific actions
2-Considered as members of alliance, in hierarchical structure
3-Because view is systemic, "third party" concept is poor fit.* | | II. Unfolding Dynamics of Conflict | | Sense of Conflict | | 1-Specific situation of one leader/country wanting something and not getting it.
2-Clear sense of cause-one or both sides pursuing its ends without regard for the other.
3a-Accidental perturbation of integrated international order.
3b-Exchange between national systems involving both foreign and domestic concerns. | | Who Produces Conflict | | 1- Without sense of cause, this is vague or arbitrary.*
2- Individual sides, who are held accountable. Usually, one seen as victim, the other as offender.
3a- Systemic imbalance.
3b- Exchange between national systems, involving internal as well as external factors. | | How Conflict Develops | | 1. One event simply follows on the next.
2- Specific actions happen for explicable reasons (see Explanation of Actions).
3- Systemic process. * | | Explanation of Actions | | 1- None.
2- One side's explained in terms of inherent nature, other side's in terms of response.
3a- Each side's actions result from systemic disturbance.
3b- Each side's actions are both initiatives toward the other and expressions of internal affairs. | | III. Resolution of Conflict | | Concept of conflict resolution. | | 1-Does not think of conflict resolution per se. Resolution is simply what happens
2-Resolution when both sides are satisfied.
3- Conflict resolution consists of establishing a cooperative and orderly exchange between the conflicting parties. | | Possibility of conflict resolution | | 1- Not considered. (See above).
2- Not likely: Given conception of conflict as exchange between opposed sides with incompatible aims, joint satisfaction is unlikely.
3. Here's How: Cooperative and orderly exchange is achieved by altering the conditions of exchange and/or by establishing mutual understanding of aims and methods. | | Further thoughts on conflict resolution | | 1- None.
2- Usually, resolution depends on the final domination (and subsequent incorporation) of one party by the other.
3- Altered conditions of exchange achieved by imposing new regulation (e.g. international law). Mutual understanding achieved by education. | | Bottom Line: | | 1- Que Sera Sera.*
2- Might makes right.* Since joint satisfaction is unlikely, the strong shall prevail.
3- Justice. Mutual accommodation offers only lasting solution, Domination seen as illegitimate by victim, therefore inherently unstable. | | | Key: 1-Sequential reasoning. 2-Linear reasoning. 3-Systemic reasoning. | | | * Asterisks mark statements based on a gloss of the text. All other statements are quotes, condensations or paraphrases of specific passages. |
Fifth, again referring to Table K-1.2, we see that the Bush Administration draws on a combination of linear and sequential thinking in formulating its "war on terror." At the most basic level, when the world was told that they must choose sides in the "war on terror," this seemed to indicate a linear level of thinking across all the categories under "General Structure of Conflict."
However, as we look more closely we discover distinct indications of sequential thinking in every one of the categories. Consider: - The Bush Administration inattention to terrorism before 9/11 strongly indicates that the basic nature of the conflict was not perceived so cleanly or clearly, but was a matter of a "particular event or sequence of events. Leader/country trying to act & being blocked."
- There was certainly "little sense of aims of blocking country (or in this case, Al Qaeda) in relation to first country"-as seen in Bush's statement that the attacks came from those who "hate our freedom," ignoring and denying the existence of legitimate grievances which the terrorists exploit. From the very befinning, the Administration gave free reign to supporters who bashed attempts to understand such grievances. Indeed, the Vice-President's wife, Second Lady Lynne Cheney was intimately connected with the most ambitious attack on such understanding that was launched within weeks of 9/11.
- Clearly, Bush wanted the "war on terror" to involve "two opposing hierarchically-structured alliances," a resurrection of his father's alliance in the Gulf War versus the "axis of evil." But as all major allies except Tony Blair objected, Bush was quite willing to make this personal, attacking Saddam Hussein's Iraq (a secular nationalist regime, the arch-enemy of al Qaeda) and finishing the job his father left undone. This fits perfectly into "clashing leaders/countries with transient involvement of others."
- With talk of a conflict lasting generations, and justifying a return to Cold War-levels of military spending, the "war on terror" certainly appeared to be "considered long-term, with general and enduring enemies [the 'axis of evil'] and alliances." Yet, the "axis of evil" had no known connection to al Qaeda or each other-indeed Iran and Iraq were still sworn enemies, just as al Qaeda was an enemy of both. Thus, the very foundations of Bush's concept of the enemy involved sequential conceptual relations that "are synthetic without being analytic. They join events together but the union forged is not subject to any conceptual dissection."
- Finally, the Bush Administration clearly wanted third parties to line up under its leadership, or else be cast as part of the "axis of evil." However, the willingness to contemplate war with Iraq without any Arab or meaningful European support indicated a decidedly ad-hoc approach to third parties and alliances.
There is more mixture from this perspective than there is through the lens of another developmental perspective I've also explored on my own-but didn't want to include here for reasons of managability-but the end result is much the same: in the end, the lowest level of cognition tends to dominate. The points above demonstrate that sequential thinking drives the underlying policy, while linear thinking constructs a "plausible" façade. But it is really plausible only if effective outside criticism is paralyzed by a climate of conformity, fear and intimidation, as indeed it has been, virtually uninterruted for over six years now, with potentially disastrous results for the long-term future of our country. We also see what's missing entirely-systematic thinking-which brings us to our next point.
Sixth, we can see that the Bush "war on terror" clearly misses significant insights from a systematic viewpoint. Perhaps most significantly: (1) Both sides have "multiple and possibly conflicting interests/aims." (2) Conflict is multi-sided, with sides "complexly structured with possible internal conflicts at various levels." (3) Conflict is "not necessarily long-term or general," it "may exist along one dimension, but not others." Failure to recognize such complexities is precisely what lead us to create our current enemies in our fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan-a fight we found enormously satisfying after our experience in Vietnam, but which has now backfired even more disastrously than the Vietnam War did.
Seventh--very importantly for our current situation-Rosenberg found that systemic thinkers could be remarkably prophetic. One topic he specifically explored was terrorism and the Middle East. The experiments were done in the 1980s, when Osama bin Laden was a little-noticed US ally. The adversary was Moamar Gaddafi, whose name is barely mentioned anymore. Yet, in response to the question of whether US bombing of Libya would stop the terrorism, one subject systemic thinker replied:
No, I expect it will simply exacerbate the situation. If the support of terrorism is critical to Gaddafi's political position, he will continue to support it unless he is convinced Reagan might respond with a full scale invasion. Even then, he may continue his support, if somewhat more discreetly. In any case, the terrorism will go on without Gaddafi. (Emphasis added.)
Prompted with the question, "Why is that?" the subject continued:
There is a real impasse here. There is a conflict over territory, over Israel and the American position on that issue. I don't think we understand their view of the problem well at all. And we will have to if any meaningful rapprochement is to take place.
Obviously, we have not been acting at this level of insight.
Eighth, all the above is based on regarding Bush's "war on terror" as a response to terrorism. But of course, there is very good reason to regard it as something else entirely-as some combination of the unfolding of the neocon's plan for unilateral world domination, and the Christian Zionists plan for precipitating Armageddon, with a healthy dose of neoliberal disaster capitalism thrown into the mix. While both the neocon and the Christian zionist theocon views play a role, they are also clearly incompatible with one another. The neocons want to assure American dominance for the next century. The Christian Zionists want to destroy the world. These two outlooks can only co-exist in a framework of sequential thinking, where neither consistency nor logical contradiction matters. Thus, whether we take Bush's "war on terror" seriously on its own terms, or see it as a cover for other agendas, the same level of thinking dominates.
One final thought about Rosenberg's schema. If we apply it to the terrorist attacks of September 11, we would expect sequential thinkers to retaliate against similar-looking perceived threats. Invading Iraq makes perfect sense to this sort of mindest, regardless of any other considerations. We would expect linear thinkers to retaliate against Al Qaeda itself-the logical, linear cause of the attacks. Invading Iraq is a distraction from the war on terrorism to this mindset, made worse by the fact that it complicates our relationships with our Arab allies. Finally, we would expect systematic thinkers to be primarily concerned with altering the conditions that allowed Al Qaeda (and other terrorists) to flourish in the first place. Rebuilding Afghanistan would have been a top short-term priority toward this long-term goal. Getting serious about Palestinian statehood would have been another top priority. (And would have lead to an immediate, very serious response to the fall 2002 announcement of an Arab League proposal to recognize Israel's right to exist as part of a global settlement-a proposal that's been marginally in the news again over the last month or two, but that has generally been ignored, because it's so wildly at odds with anything the Bush Administration is actually interested in.0 These are not idealistic, humanitarian priorities. They are straightforward pragmatic necessities, blindingly obvious from a systematic perspective.
Two Other Brief Examples: The "War on Drugs" and Abortion
I'd like to supplement the above exhaustive look at a single example with a few other observations about other examples, which I would like to deal with thematically, using a single example in each case to stand in for a number of other different examples.
First of all, a common movement conservative practice is to divide the world up into good and evil, and declare war on evil in a fashion that has no clear foundation in even a single simple causal explanation that one would find in linear thinking. The foundation of such an approach in Lakoff's Strict Father morality is fairly straightforward, but Lakoff's argument is largely separable from the argument here. (Lakoff does argue that there is a set of logical entailments involved, and I don't dispute this. But these entailments act primarily to structure the issue landscape, which is a different subject entirely from what I am discussing here, which is how arguments are presented within that landscape. )
Here my focus is simply on the fact that a good-vs-evil framework drives the argumentative assumptions, so that logic can be dispensed with almost entirely. A "war on drugs" means that we need not ask about why people might want to take drugs in the first place. Nor do we need to ask if the war on drugs might cause more problems than it solves. Nor do we need to ask if there might be other high-priority problems we ought to pay more attention to. These are all examples of systematic thinking that might lead us to question the "war on drugs" project-much less, of course, the obvious racism involved. But we don't even have to go there to see enormous problems with the "war on drugs" if we engage in systematic thinking as a matter of course.
When liberals-or even just reality-based professionals, such as criminologists, public health experts, etc.-try to raise such systematic concerns, they sequential response is simply to label them as "soft on crime," as "pro-drug," as lacking "family values," or something similar. It is simply inconceivable from within the sequential thinking framework that someone might agree with the assessment "drugs are destructive" and yet want to take a significantly different approach to dealing with them. It is even more inconceivable that someone might agree on the wisdom of reducing and controlling drug use without thinking that drugs are inherently evil, but only that they are inherently risky, and that the risk alone is reason enough to take prudential action.
The example of abortion follows a related logic. Abortion is particularly similar in light of the fact that there is really no such thing as "pro-abortion activists." The same activists interested in preserving the right to abortion are even more interested in the more basic issue of reproductive rights and empowering women to effectively exercise those rights. And the most effective way to do this is not to get pregnant in the first place unless and until one wants to have a child. Thus, the reproductive rights position is inherently structured by the logic of systematic thinking-even though an individual supporting reproductive rights may not have worked through all of this. (This is not to deny that abortions sometimes become necessary even though the woman wants to have a child. But, hey, this is a brief example. We can discuss it all you want in the comments.)
Of course, such activists can and have identified areas in which they logically should be able to work with anti-abortion activists-such as preventive measures that can help reduce the need for abortions. But these efforts have generally born little fruit, in large measure because the other side tends not to think systemicatically, and because they aren't really interested in abortion per se, but rather with forced childbirth. What's more, they have a deep investment in their activism as a moral crusade-hence the comparisons to the Holocaust-which, of course, means they can't possibly cooperate with the other side.
Gay Marriage And Kegan's Schema
The issue of gay rights is particularly useful for considering as a way of illuminating the power of Kegan's schema. The Level 3/Level 4 divide is all about making the transition from accepting the socially-defined rules, roles and relationships as fundamentally unquestionable life-defining facts to regarding them as a set of suggestiuons, about which one is free to make up one's own mind. The notion that a gay couple getting married on the other side of the state somehow threatens my marriage seems absurd to me on its face-but that's because I'm not a Level 3 thinker. I don't subconsciously define myself in terms of the roles, relationships and social expectations of the society in which I live. Like all Level 4 or Level 5 thinkers, these things are all objects for me, not self-defining subject.
But, of course, as Kegan notes, there is nothing new about the breakdown of traditional society in the West. It's been going on for hundreds of years. And, indeed, our capacity to create new forms as old ones come under stress is one of our most important adaptive mechanisms. Rather than destroying families, the capacity to create families in new forms is one of our most important conservative capacities, if by "conservative" we mean preserving continuity, connectedness with past, future, and present community, and stabilizing and bringing order to the flux of social relations.
Indeed, this is precisely the point of Level 4-it is not about wantonly destroying the orderly constructs of Level 3 life. It is about creating new forms, or improvising with existing ones, to meet the crush of contingencies that incerimental cultural change is simply too slow to handle. And as such, gays and lesbians function very much as pioneers who have a good deal to teach the rest of us, since they have been forced to take the lead in such improvisation and creation.
This is very much the point of Judith Stacey's book, In the Name of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in the Postmodern Age, published 11 years ago. From this perspective, supporting gay rights is not just something moral for us straight folks to do-it is a matter of supporting those who are on the forefront of creating new ways of being in the world that already are, and increasingly will be enormously beneficial for all people.
And don't look now, but with their incredibly high divorce rates, the folks in red states like Oklahoma could use all the help they can get on this count from their gay brothers and sisters.
Conclusion
Obviously, there is much, much more that could be said, but I think the point has been established-to a very significant extent, movement conservative ideas are simply incapable of working in the real world because they are simply too primative. Furthermore, the primative nature of these ideas gets in the way of realizing that there is a substantially higher degree of agreement between liberals and conservatives. When liberals say or do things that conservatives find threatening or offensive, it is often because they are not hearing what the core intention of liberals is. This, in turn, suggests that liberals could be doing a lot better job of communicating to conservatives. And, as the next diary in this series will argue, that ain't the half of it.... |
