Thinking Big-To-Small vs. Thinking Small-To-Big | 34 comments
The fallacy of control (4.00 / 3)
There's an even more fundamental irony at work here, it seems to me. As control technologies and management techniques improve, one would naturally expect that systemic outcomes would be more beneficial, or at least more stable.

That isn't in fact what's happened. Instead, the people who deploy these improved techniques actually begin to believe that they control more than they actually do, and that their very real powers, which can appear almost magical in the right context (shock and awe, anyone?) have somehow allowed them to categorically banish unintended consequences. There's an ancient Greek word for this kind of self-delusion, but virtually none of our current crop of smartfellas can imagine applying it to themselves, even though presumably they've read the same books we have.

When we look ahead another ten years, we see a distinct possibility that the American Empire is headed over a cliff, and that Americans at home could find themselves living in a permanent banana republic. This isn't, I think, because we've been reasoning backwards, from micro to macro, which is what someone like Jack Welch or Henry Kissinger might accuse us of, but rather because we understand the relationship between the two in moral as well as purely utilitarian terms.

It's all very well to use points and lines to illustrate the principal of discontinuity between what individuals perceive as determining their fates, and what actually determines them, but I'd maintain that the macro forces which cause empires to fail are best controlled, not by a few smart folks with an ever more impressive set of tools at their disposal, but by the seeming chaos of a more genuine democracy. Even when hardly anyone who takes part in the process can foresee exactly what the outcome of his own actions is likely to be, I believe the general outcome can scarcely be any worse than what our deluded technocrats have already led us to. I don't think, in other words, that they've made mistakes; I think that in a very profound sense, they are the mistake.

"Shock and awe" (0.00 / 0)
Mr. Timberman has chosen a very peculiar illustration of improved "control technologies and management techniques."

(shock and awe, anyone?)

"Shock and awe" was more like a reversion to pure animal fury than any sort of calculation, technique, or management, and it's still worth remembering that a significant component of "shock and awe" was supposed to be decapitation of the Baath Party by laser-bombing the top 50 party functionaries, including Saddam Hussein.

All 50 laser-bombs missed their targets.

Idiots ran the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the real technicians of social and political reorganization at the State Department and elsewhere were left entirely out of the loop.

Mr. Timberman seems to be promoting a sort of populist know-nothingism... The masses will roil, and somehow social benefits will accrue.

But it may be a mistake to despair of all the works of human intelligence, on the slender evidence of "shock and awe" administered by Dick "Mad Dog" Cheney and an idiot-boy like George W. Bush.

[ Parent | ]
Pace, Jacob (0.00 / 0)
As usual, you've missed the point. A measured dose of what you're calling know-nothingism, administered daily before retiring, would do you a world of good.
[ Parent | ]
The shallow left... (0.00 / 0)
Poor old Timberman assumes that criticism of his ludicrous post can only mean the critic misunderstood him, and "mis-underestimated" his cleverness.

Low- and no-brow left-wing "thinkers" can't comprehend why the Republican Party hasn't been obliterated by their brilliance, which mainly consists of repeating a small set of idées reçues among themselves, and endlessly waiting for applause from the little people whom they claim to represent.

But the little people constantly reject the bogus, self-congratulatory wisdom of the contemporary left in favor of no ideas whatsoever, if that's the choice, and the contemporary left responds by applauding themselves even more furiously than before.

Obama stands in the same relation to Roosevelt as the left-wing blogosphere compared to the deeply engaged leftist criticsm of the Thirties, and it's only safe for Obama to constantly betray the interests of ordinary citizens because he knows that their defenders from the first Great Depression have been replaced by shallow, self-promoting clowns.

[ Parent | ]
Once more -- and only once more -- unto the breach (0.00 / 0)
It's hard to grasp exactly what you're arguing, Jacob. And yes, I often suspect that you're not sure yourself. Is it that

1) the rabble is stupid,

or that

2) these self-appointed leftist intellectuals' identification with the rabble is false and self-serving,

or that

3) William Timberman is uniquely phony and therefore worthy of special condemnation,

or that

4) there's only one smart person, and his name is Jacob Freeze.

All of the above? None of the above? Something else entirely? In any event, there's no need to play the junkyard dog. Nothing said here, by me or anyone else, should cause a master of the wisdom of the ages to lose his self-possession. Polemic is one thing; intellectual rabies another, don't you think?

[ Parent | ]
Wouldn't it be lovely if... (0.00 / 0)
Wouldn't it be lovely if everything anyone writes could be reduced one-line clichés?

Then Mr. Timberman would already understand everything, and his banal permutations of a few buzz-words would be dignified by something like inevitability.

"There are only 52 ideas, each of them expressible in one line, so why not just shuffle the deck."

This axiomatic approach to political philosophy would probably enchant Paul Rosenberg, who has obviously enjoyed a respectable mathematical education, and his presentation of Dedekind's development of the real numbers was so nearly irreproachable that I was finally reduced to picking on the small fry way down in the comments.

Harharharhar!!!

But even Mr. Timberman can read and comprehend simple prose, if he takes the trouble to try, and it really isn't additional evidence of his intellectual shortcomings so much as a carelessness which he probably intended to be insulting that he mistakenly substitutes identification for representation in one of his cliché-renderings of what I might think.

2) these self-appointed leftist intellectuals' identification with the rabble is false and self-serving...

Left-wing intellectuals don't "identify" with anything like the little people, sincerely or otherwise, and it's one of the grand advantages of the Republican Party that at least a few of its functionaries actually believe they are serving the interests of "people like us."

This attitude isn't really unusual among Republican staffers on Capitol Hill, especially for short-term Representatives, but after a couple of cycles most of them wake up to the fact that their bosses aren't "people like us" any more, if they ever were...

[ Parent | ]
Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! #4 We Have A Winner! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! (0.00 / 0)
4) there's only one smart person, and his name is Jacob Freeze.

Was there really ever any doubt?

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

[ Parent | ]
I was trying to be polite (0.00 / 0)
Not trying very hard, I admit, and not really succeeding. Mea culpa. I won't do it again. Letting Jacob be Jacob may wilt all the flowers in the neighborhood, but on balance, it seems the Christian thing to do.
[ Parent | ]
Idiocy Is Overdetermined (4.00 / 2)
The folks running any given empire always see things from a unique point of view, while folks like us see them as just the latest in a long line of imperial idiots.

The belief that this time it's different is an essential component of all empires.  The standard reasoning is that this time it's different because God's on our side.

The belief that this time it's different because of our omnipotent control technologies reflects the impact of the Industrial Revolution on elite theology.

You:

I don't think, in other words, that they've made mistakes; I think that in a very profound sense, they are the mistake.

Tacitus:

To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.


"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"
[ Parent | ]
Golden oldies redux (4.00 / 1)
Yeah, what I'm saying isn't new, and better minds have wrestled with the same conundrum over the centuries. What's new is the scale of the devastation which all our shiny technological toys place at the disposal of the usual suspects. Caesar may have slaughtered his hundreds of thousands, and Hitler his millions, but melting Greenland, or stopping photosynthesis in the oceans is like, serious, dude.
[ Parent | ]
Old And New (4.00 / 1)
I wasn't so much saying Tacitus got there before you.  I thought it made a nice pairing is all.

And, yes, indeedy!  They think that their new technology gods make them unique, and they're right... but not in the way that they think.

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

[ Parent | ]
on an aside (4.00 / 1)
henry kissinger had good seats at wimbledon.  I saw him on TV.  None of the (British) commentators mentioned his role in, say, killing tons of people or destabilising several countries.  

On the other hand, hundreds of thousands (millions)? of people aer in American jails for such horrible offesnses as selling weed or small scale fraud or having a lawyer that didn't tell them they were ordered deported.  Some of them will likely be killed.

Take from that what you will.

[ Parent | ]
Thinking Big-To-Small vs. Thinking Small-To-Big | 34 comments
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