For Teachers: Kennan to Lukacs

"The real rewards of the teacher always lie in the developments remote from the present and confused with a host of other origins, but that should not detract from the dignity of the profession or the satisfaction to be gained from it."

George Kennan to John Lukacs, November 18, 1953

I'm currently reading Through the History of the Cold War: The Correspondence of George F. Kennan and John Lukacs, ed. by John Lukacs (2010). The quote above comes from Kennan to Lukacs, as Lukacs, an immigrant to America from Hungary, seeks guidance from Kennan about his career choice. Expect more quotes from this wonderful book to appear in the near future.

Chris Anderson: How web video powers global innovation

This TED talk by curator Chris Anderson that Presentation Zen alerted me about provides a view into what TED hopes to accomplish. The participation by slum dwellers in Kenya (toward to end) shows how innovation through shared information by internet video can improve the lot of people throughout the globe. As a wordy guy, I’m skeptical of some aspects of video. Too often it can merely serve as a toy, a narcissistic tool, but this is true of words as well. An awfully lot of junk now fills the internet, but hidden in the midst of all of the junk, as Anderson points out, are some real diamonds.

Thoughtful Conservatism

Some who follow this blog or who know me might describe me as a liberal. In a broad sense, this is correct. However, I remain very reluctant to limit myself, and I flatter myself that I cannot be easily pigeon-holed politically. Nevertheless, in order to be fair to “conservatives”, I recommend that collective reading list from the great site, FiveBooks. Here they aggregate voting to come up with the 47 (?) best books on conservatism. Unlike the nonsense that we’re hearing out on the stump today, if you read these books, you will receive a very useful education. Hayek, the Federalist, Burke, Toqueville, Garry Wills (a heretic makes the list!), Mancur Olsen, Leo Strauss, and others represent some very serious and worthwhile thinking.

Krugman & Brooks on Great Britain

Here’s a blog post by Krugman referring to a Brooks column. Krugman’s addresses the issue of Great Britain’s relative decline by a reference to a remark by Robert Solow, but the Brooks article considers a more explicit hypothesis. Nothing too special, but for Anglophiles, they raise interesting questions. Also, I’m now listening to Winston’s War: Churchill 1940-1945 by Max Hastings, which addresses Great Britain’s situation as a great power during the war. (This is a really interesting and insightful book, of which I must write more later).

Paul Krugman & Manhattan Transfer

In this blog entry, Paul Krugman provides a reminder of why I really enjoy his blog: here he includes a clip from Manhattan Transfer performing “Boy from New York City”. No particular reason, other than Krugman was in the City for the weekend. In previous posts, he’s included Monty Python clips, clips from “Dr. Strangelove” and this clip from a 70’s pop hit. Now I ask you, what economist can match this sense of humor while remaining our best Cassandra?

A Great Year to Be Spanish!

This NYT article about Rafael Nadal winning the U.S. Open and thereby obtaining a career Grand Slam comments toward the end of the article about the year in sports for Spain. This year includes the World Cup championship, as well as Gausol for the Lakers and Cantatdor in the Tour de France. The article notes that Raffa went straight from Wimbledon to South Africa and was allowed into the Spanish locker room after the championship match, along with members of the Spanish royal family. He even got to bite the trophy! Well, anyway: Que bueno Raffa y Espana! (Or something like that.)

Newt Gingrich, Fox News, Dinesh D’Souza: Shockingly Outrageous

I don't know how I came across this report, but I hope that it's all wrong. I hope that I've fallen into the trap of believing some outrageous stuff from the internet, so outrageous I shouldn't even read it. Please, help me, tell me it ain't so! Gingrich, per this account, says that we understand Obama by understanding that he has a "Kenyan, anti-colonialist outlook". (Newt, the "thinker" and "intellectual" apparently having forgotten the U.S. has a long history of anti-colonialism. Hm, Newt, wonder why? My ancestors (well, some of them) were anti-colonialists, then called "patriots". But of course, all of this has nothing to do with Obama. Really, who buys this kind of slipshod B.S.? BTW, D'Souza is cited as the source of this "insight" in an article published in National Review. Really, can't we have some thoughtful, honest conservatives in this country?

This kind of nonsense, along with anti-Muslim attitudes and other growing attitudes, suggests a new era of McCarthyism? I wish—I hope—that such a thought is too extreme, but some of this stuff is genuinely shameful.

Stephen Walt on Obama’s Failures—Or Are They?

Stephen Walt sounds off in his Foreign Policy blog about the many complaints about Obama that come from various locations on the political spectrum. He argues that many forces are simply beyond Obama's—and implicitly—any president's control. A bloated military, foreign policy inertia, vested interests of elites, client states, and so on, make changing policy very difficult. The electorate wants to change policy and outcomes as quickly as a motor boat wheels around on a large quiet lake, while in reality, changing American policy is more like trying to guide the Titanic through North Atlantic waters—you just can't often make turns quickly enough.

The more I read Walt, the more that I like him. He seems to have his head on straight.

The Culture Code by Clotaire Rapaille

I finished this book recently. I read it on the recommendation of Karl Rove. Karl Rove! Well, yes, in a sense. I attended a seminar for plaintiffs' lawyers recently, and the speaker told how an Atlanta attorney discovered that his beach house neighbor was none other than the prince of darkness. Discussing tradecraft (did Rove know that he was talking to the enemy, a trial lawyer?), Rove revealed his admiration for the work of Rapaille. The trial lawyer looked at Rapaille's work, specifically, The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do
(2007, 224 p.). Rapaille has two main ideas that he works from:

1. The theory of the triune brain developed by Yale neuroscientist Paul Maclean, which postulates that humans have, in effect, three brains. The survival-oriented brain of the reptiles (eat, sleep, fight or flight, and sex); a limbic brain for emotions that we share with other mammals, and the neo-cortex, which provides our distinguishing reason. Rapaille believes that when fear is in the air, the reptile brain, motivated by fear, takes over and guides our actions, reason be damned.
   
2. Rapaille, who trained as an anthropologist and psychiatrist, has done a sophisticated form of group testing to discover deeply held attitudes toward food, sex, doctors, nurses, hospitals, health, cars, the nation, and so on. These are the "culture codes" that he says predominate in a society and that differ from one society to another.
   

The book makes a lot of sense and provides what I believe to be very insightful perspectives on group attitudes here in the U.S. (especially important for jury work), as well as differences between the cultures of different nations. This was a fun and interesting read. If you want to know more about the attitudes of your fellow citizens, as well as obtaining a sense of how we differ from others, I highly recommend this book.

Economist v. Historian

I found an interesting exchange in the Financial Times (London) about the role of economists vs. historians. I dissent from the argument to the extent that I see social science as frozen history. It may have some predictive value, but nature (including us) is always changing, sometimes imperceptively slowly, sometimes with obvious and dizzying speed. So economists can make models and test them against history (the past) and in the future. They are useful tools, but like all tools, limited by our own fallibility. History doesn't repeat itself (in any certain sense) and we can't predict the future (with a high degree of certainty in anything other than the trivial). We have to muddle through.

U.S. Senate Iowa 2010: Conlin vs. Grassley

If you're in doubt about who to support in the U.S. Senate contest in Iowa, you can get a good sense of the candidate's abilities, perspectives, and positions on issues from this joint appearance on Iowa Press. In case you don't' have time to watch it, I'll give you my take: my money (and Iowa Guru's) money and votes are going with great enthusiasm to Conlin. Senator Grassley is showing his age, but its worst manifestation is that he's become more of a right-wing Republican, sacrificing a sometimes pleasantly surprising independence that he used to show in the past (and his past goes back a long way!).

Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order, by Charles Hill

This book has quite a title, and amazingly, it lives up the grandness of its title. Hill, a former Foreign Service officer, now teaches a course at Yale with John Lewis Gaddis and Paul Kennedy entitled "Grand Strategy". Based on this book, and the biography of Hill that I'm currently reading, that would be one heck of a course.

Simply put, this book tours the world, in time and place, and considers regimes, society, and international relations through the lens of great literature. In the Prologue he considers Cao Zueqin's The Dream of the Red Chamber, Dante's Comedia, and Conrad's The Rescue. From there, Hill takes us through the Classics (Homer, Thucydides, and on to Virgil, among others), and then into medieval, Renaissance, early modern, and Enlightenment authors. Nearer to our own time, he discusses Rushdie, Liu E, Ma Jian, and others. A truly amazing tour. (I throw in the Chinese authors of the benefit of 1HP, as I have only heard of them here.) Each of these works of literature, philosophy, and history reflects and molds the order of the society in which it was written. Hill makes the case for considering these works by relating a tale about Chairman Mao, who kept a copy of The Dream of the Red Chamber (among many other literary works) and claims to have read it five times. As Hill notes, this doesn't make Mao a humanitarian (far from it!), but it shows that he was a student. Hill also worked with long-time American diplomat Paul Nitze, and he reports that Nitze would be found reading Shakespeare on long flights across the Atlantic, where he traveled to negotiate arms control agreements with the Soviets.

Hill discusses these numerous texts, explicating their perspectives on society and statecraft. The scope and depth of his erudition is impressive. However, I'd say that this book isn't just for those interested in international relations. Indeed, I'd argue that relations between nations isn't so different than relations between individuals. (No agency problem—or is there?) In any event, even if you took this book as a reading list, you'd have years of great literature to read.

I'll write more about Hill after I've finished his biography, but if he's representative of the caliber of the men and women of the USFS, the we have some very capable persons there. A highly recommended book for anyone interested in literature or international relations.

Icarus Syndrome Review

An interesting review of Peter Beinert's The Icarus Syndrome, which I enjoyed very much. This is a thoughtful review by Yale political scientist Jim Sleeper. I think that Beinert, despite his youthful exuberance and errors, does the right thing by re-considering his position.

Ian Rankin: Naming the Dead

I finished listening to Ian Rankin's The Naming of the Dead, courtesy of ICPL. This is a one of a series about Edinburgh's police detective John Rebus. It's set during the G-8 summit of 2005 and at the time of the London train bombings, which play in the background. Like any good cop, Rebus is dedicated and hard-working, and like many a (fictional?) cop, tough and hard-drinking. Interestingly, like many a cop portrayed in fiction, for someone who must exude and represent authority ("the Man"), he tends to be very anti-authoritarian when it comes to his superiors. The performance was fine. It benefited especially from the Scottish brogue that the performer used (something that, say, a Steig Larrson book performance would not do well with—it would end up sounding like the Swedish chef on the Muppet Show). If you enjoy police procedurals mixed with a new and unique setting, this would prove an excellent selection. I have the sense that I'll meet up with DCI Rebus again.

John Lewis Gaddis: The Landscape of History

I today finished The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (2003, 183 p.) by John Lewis Gaddis, professor of history at Yale. Gaddis wrote this in the tradition, and very much considering, the precedents of E. H. Carr's What is History?
and Marc Bloch's The Historian's Craft. Gaddis certainly does very well by himself while standing in the shadow of these and other illustrious predecessors. Gaddis updates our understanding of history by using complexity theory to help us appreciate how causes merge and meld into the unfolding of reality. Causes are like tributaries leading to the present, where they pause but for an instant, and then recede into the distance, from which point we try to map their course. Gaddis likens history to mapmaking or painting, which must of necessity attempt to make sense out of a present by abstracting those features that grab our attention and give meaning to us. Gaddis spends a good deal of time contrasting the aims of historians from those of social scientists. Social scientists, he says, hope to isolate variables with the ultimate intention of forecasting the future (something that I expect more and more social scientists have become more wary of attempting). Thus, whereas historians want to consider all of the causes worth noting that lead to an event or situation, social scientists want to isolate and abstract with the hope of obtaining structural knowledge, if not forecasting ability. Another interesting facet of Lewis's work is his consideration of history in comparison with the so-called "hard sciences". Lewis, who quotes and cites Stephen Gould almost as much as any historian, notes that the sciences have become more and more historical in their outlook. Some, like evolutionary biology, must perforce due so; however, this might also prove relevant to physics and chemistry, which do deal with change over time, although it's often on such a scale that it doesn't affect outcomes or actions. Historians, Gaddis argues, can't run lab tests to gauge the accuracy of their theories, but they can provide plausible explanations subject to peer review and criticism. He argues that the lab for historians lies in their minds and imaginations, much like geologists and paleontologists. Of course, both these scientists and historians diligently hunt and weigh the evidence of the past that they can identify, whether fossils or archive documents, but neither can, strictly speaking, re-run the past in order to test the accuracy of their understanding. Thus, replicability is replaced by virtual replicability as the standard of reference. Gaddis writes: "Imagination in history then, as in science, must be tethered to and disciplined by sources: that's what distinguishes it from the arts and all other methods of representing reality." (43).

I hope that the above offers some sense of Gaddis's take on these subjects, although this book is much richer than I can give it credit for in this brief report. In closing, I find that Gaddis seems to track with my thinking (greatly influenced by John Lukacs) that history is the master science in some sense. As Lukacs argues, all knowledge comes from the past. How it got here, like the path of evolution, determines what arrived. Like biological evolution, this path of travel may be so slow that we ignore that it represents change over time, nevertheless, this is how it all happens. Understanding and appreciating the interdependence of variables and complexity (and therefore uncertainty) of our world is a huge challenge; yet, understanding history through this lens will prove very fruitful, and it will continue the quest interminably into the future.

P.S. How does the "interdependency of variables" (the title of one of Gaddis's chapters) fit in with the Buddhist concept of co-origination and the like?

    

Stephen Walt on Jared Diamond & Decline

In his most recent FP post, "What I Learned from Jared Diamond", Stephen Walt considers the elements of decline that Diamond discusses in his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail. Walt gives a succinct account of the factors that Diamond catalogues in his book, and Walt considers current U.S. problems in light of those factors, such as groupthink, tragedy of the commons, failure to anticipate, failure to detect (e.g., climate change amidst fluctuations in the weather), etc. Walt's points are well taken. In summary, both as individuals and as societies, we have to have our crap-detectors on full blast 24-7. (Thanks, Neil Postman.)

David Loy: Money, Sex, War, Karma

I finished David R. Loy's Money, Sex, War, Karma: Notes for a Buddhist Revolution (2008, 152p.). Loy's perspective, which I've remarked upon in an earlier post, issues forth from a few simple but profound tenets of Buddhist thought: the concept of lack and an appreciation of the three poisons (greed, ill will, & delusion) and the need to transform the three poisons by generosity, loving-kindness, and wisdom. Add to this his understanding and explanation of dukka (suffering or dis-ease), annata (not-self), shunyata (emptiness), and other Buddhist concepts, and you have a sense of his range. However, if all of this strikes you as intimidating, don't let it. In fact, Loy's consideration of these topics is easy to follow. He writes about current topics so that his deep understanding of Buddhist concepts becomes well illustrated by current concerns, giving us a better understanding of Buddhist perspectives and contemporary concerns (such as the morality of sex, money, war, and so on). In fact, if someone wanted to explore Buddhism in the context of our contemporary culture and concerns, I can't think of a better book to use for this purpose. Even if one isn't a Buddhist, I think that the consideration of these issues is so profound and insightful, that anyone from any background would benefit from the read. I highly recommend this book.

Thomas Homer-Dixon on Climate Change

Canadian political science Thomas Homer-Dixon wrote yesterday in the NYT about preparing for global climate change in his article "Disaster at the Top of the World". In his most recent two books, Homer-Dixon has ventured forth from the cloister of academia to travel to places where changes and challenges are occurring to report first-hand what he seeing happening  (without, I should note, diminishing the theoretical sophistication of his work). In this article, he's traveling in the Arctic and finding an open sea instead of the vast expanse of ice that used to be there not long ago. Homer-Dixon, like many others, seems to have arrived at the conclusion that we won't do anything about climate change until a very stark, undeniable catastrophe arises (Pakistani & Chinese floods, Russian forest fires, and the like just don't cut it in U.S. politics—ask the U.S. Senate). Homer-Dixon, therefore, argues that we'd better prepare ourselves to respond to catastrophes, such as insufficient water supplies in the American South. He argues that "protective cognition," manipulated by powerful economic interests invested in the status quo, has prevented us from acting so far. However, while I agree with Homer-Dixon that need such catastrophe planning, the same myopic outlook will probably prevent any action in preparation, just as our current myopia has discouraged us from directly addressing the causes of climate change.

One other comment on climate change: we're going to have to change a great deal as a society. I, for one, admit that I'm dependent on my car way too much of the time. However, until we offer alternatives, governed by market pricing, we won' see real change. We don't really pay for the energy we use: we off-load most of the cost into the environment and on to future generations, only "future generations" has come to mean now. Homer-Dixon has thought a great deal about all of this, and he deserves our careful consideration.

Edited & updated 12.03.20 sng

David Brooks on Mental Courage

David Brooks in the NYT today, "A Case of Mental Courage", once again uses contemporary cognitive science, mixed with older ideas of character, to ask us to step away from our tendency to have great faith in our personal opinions. In contemporary terms, he asks us to use "metacognition". Be forewarned, Brooks relates a horrific tale at the beginning of the piece to demonstrate the commitment to truth and honesty held by at least some of our forbearers. His point, properly tempered by reference to what's good in our contemporary culture, is valid, especially in politics (and one might add about any other field of human knowledge). Compare this article, by the way, with my recent cites to Lerner & Thaler. Also, note how his line of thinking melds into virtue ethics (see Haidt "The New Science of Morality", which deserves its own post), as well as Buddhist and ancient Western thought (Stoics, Epicureans, and early Christian ascetics). Some gold there.

Another Cri de Coeur from Stephen Walt

Stephen Walt's "Lessons from the Weimar Republic" is another post occasioned by the debate over Park51 ("the mosque at Ground Zero"), this time noting the extremism in politics that seems to be increasing with little or no resistance from political leaders, politicians and intellectuals, who should be championing religious toleration and reasoned debate. Walt reports that he made the choice for political science over a career in law when he heard Gordon Craig speak on the failure of intellectuals on in the Weimar Republic and how that contributed to its failure. He now discerns a similar problem here. Interesting.

More Movies

C, F & I started talking movies, and I came up with this list of significant films that I missed in my initial list. Here, in no special order, are other films that I really like:

My Father's Glory and My Mother's Castle

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Cinema Paradiso

Mediterraneo

The Three Musketeers (1973) & The Four Musketeers (1974)

Picnic at Hanging Rock

Gallipoli

Breaker Morant

Chariots of Fire

Three Days of the Condor

Saving Private Ryan

 

John Lukacs on George Kennan

I just posted a three-way celebration of Kennan, Lukacs, and Jacques Barzun; however, I want to devote a bit more to Lukac's George Kennan: A Study in Character (2004, 277 p.). Lukacs's admiration of Kennan (although not entirely uncritical) is manifest. While this is not a full-fledged biography of Kennan (one remains to be written; apparently John Lewis Gaddis has received "official biographer designation), Lukacs's work covers all 101 years of Kennan's life.

Rather than go on further with details from the book, let me offer some quotes that will provide a better insight into Kennan and give us some reason to consider in light of some present issues before our nation:

Lukacs quotes from a speech that Kennan delivered at the University of Notre Dame in 1953:

    There are forces at large in our society today. . . . The all march, in one way or another, under the banner of an alarmed and exercised anti-communism. . . . I have the deepest misgivings about the direction and effects of their efforts. . . . They impel us—in the name of our salvation from the dangers of communism—to many of the habits of the thought and action [of our Soviet adversaries]. . . . I tremble when I see this attempt to make a semi-religious cult our of emotional-political currents of the moment . . . designed to appeal only to men's capacity for hatred and fear, never to their capacity for forgiveness and charity and understanding. . . . Remember that the ultimate judgments of the good and evil are not ours to make: that the wrath of man against his fellow man must always be tempered by the recollection of his weakness and fallibility and by the example of forgiveness and redemption which is the essence of his Christian heritage.

p. 130 (Lukacs appends the entire speech at the end of the book).

This quote, still important to consider today, should give you a good sense of the man and his sensibilities.

Joshua Lerner & Richard Thaler on Leadership Characteristics

Joshua Lerner published this intriguing article recently in the Wall Street Journal that suggested that leaders change once they assume the highest rungs of power. Someone scholar ought to check out whether the social scientists' tests (of undergraduates?) mesh with political history. It seems plausible that this is the course of event most often—the hubris of power. An interesting article in the NYT by Richard Thaler, "The Overconfidence Problem in Forecasting" tells of business leaders who vastly overestimate their ability to make successful economics forecasts, and this serves as a stark reminder about the foibles of prediction. More interestingly, it tacks with Lerner's article on leadership hubris. Thaler concludes with an apropos quote from Mark Twain: "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." Oh, and one other thing, this overconfidence factor isn't limited to leaders—it applies to all of us. Think the Lake Wobegon effect.

Three Wise Men: Kennan, Barzun, & Lukacs

I just re-read John Lukacs's George Kennan: A Study in Character. More about this particular work in a later post. In re-reading this book, I reflected on these two men, who were friends and correspondents for over fifty years, and how they both intrigue me. I add to them the person of Jacques Barzun to complete a trio for my pantheon. What do they share and why do I find them so worthy of attention and admiration?

The three men share some surface attributes. Each is (or was) long-lived: Kennan, who died in 2003, lived to 101 years of age; Barzun is now 102, and Lukacs, the kid among the three, is now 86, and still writing. Kennan remained an active writer and traveler up to his 100^th year. Barzun published a tome on Western Civ well into his nineties. (I don't know about his current state of health). Lukacs, in the mean time, is still actively publishing; in fact, I just learned that he's published his correspondence with Kennan (Through the History of the Cold War: The Correspondence of George F. Kennan and John Lukacs (2010) (this moved up immediately to the top of my buy list). In addition, each of these individuals is an American; however, Kennan is the only native-born American, having grown up in Wisconsin and having gone to college at Princeton. Barzun and Lukacs, on the other hand, grew-up in France and Hungary, respectively, and emigrated to the U.S. as young men. So while all three are Americans, they are also quite cosmopolitan (and multi-lingual). All three are historians; Barzun and Lukacs as academics, while Kennan became a historian after a distinguished career as a U.S. Foreign Service officer. Each brings a wide-ranging and very literate sensibility to history. Barzun, in addition to writing on cultural history, also published on the topics of mysteries, baseball, musicology, writing style, research, and education, and he worked with Lionel Trilling on literary projects. Lukacs describes himself as a "writer" as much as a historian. His vignettes in A Thread of Years show the eye and ear of a novelist, while his style in almost all of his writings carries a distinctive mastery of his adopted tongue. Kennan, meanwhile, gained his fame as the author of the Long Telegram of 1946 and his Foreign Policy article "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" (1947) signed as "X" (an attempt to shield his identity given his State Department rank). After leaving the Foreign Service, Kennan moved the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton where he published histories of diplomacy and foreign relations, as well as commentary on current events. How well did he write? Lukacs praises his writing, which I consider an extremely high compliment.

The final attribute that I would attribute to the three wise men arises from the difficulty one would have attempting to pigeonhole any of them politically. Kennan receives credit for launching the Cold War strategy of containment, but he came to resist the militarization of U.S. foreign policy, over reliance on nuclear weapons, the U.S. war in Viet Nam, among other positions that could alienate partisans in American politics. Lukacs and Barzun, while not writing much on contemporary U.S. politics, certainly provide historical and cultural perspectives that challenge facile distinctions of liberals and conservatives. Lukacs, especially, emphasizes the distinction between patriotism and nationalism.

The more I read by and about these three individuals, the more I appreciate them. Flawless? No, of course not, but in the face of difficult issues and popular sentiments, these men stake out positions that demand our consideration and respect, and quite often, our emulation. Finally, for individuals who are growing older (like me), they represent a model of engaged and engaging thinkers who refused to go gently into that goodnight.

Stephen Walt on the “Ground Zero Mosque”*

Stephen Walt, Harvard IR professor and regular blogger @ Foreign Policy provides a trenchant analysis and critique of the positions taken over the so-called "ground zero mosque". Those who oppose it go against the grain of religious freedom and toleration that we should cherish, but many of those who don't oppose it show a degree of excessive—and disheartening—political expediency.

* I use the term "ground zero mosque" or "mosque at ground zero" even though, as Walt points out, it is neither a mosque nor is at ground zero. We have here a prime example of how a label can define reality, instead of reality requiring the label.

Peter Beinart on the Democrats & the “Ground Zero Mosque”

Peter Beinart criticizes Democrats and New Yorkers on the principles involved in this controversy. He provides all concerned with some serious reflection.

Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon

I recently finished reading The Maltese Falcon, having decided to go back and read some of the classics of the mystery and detective genre. I like the sparse, clean prose. In some ways, Hammett reads like Hemingway. Someone suggested the 1941 John Huston film production starring Bogie, Peter Lorie, and Sydney Greenstreet simply changed the margins in the novel to create the screenplay. An exaggeration certainly, but they do seem to track quite closely. One can't help imagining Bogie and the others as one reads it. Now I have to go back and watch the flick. Entertaining reading. An American classic.

Niall Ferguson on Decline and Fall

In the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs Niall Ferguson writes about the decline and fall of empires. What makes his perspective worth noting arises from his use of complexity theory as a guide to civilizations, as opposed to the more leisurely, cyclical view of older historians from Vico to Spengler to Toynbee. Ferguson, citing the work of the Santa Fe Institute and Nicholas Taleb, argues that complex entities, such as governments, societies, and economies, can change quite rapidly and unexpectedly. As examples, we can find the fall of the Bourbons in France (leading to the French Revolution), the fall of the Soviet Union (that few predicted), or the great economic crashes of 1929 or 2008 (which some, but only a few, predicted). Another example is the failure of bond markets to predict the outbreak of the Great War (this isn't mentioned in the article, but Taleb mentions Ferguson in The Black Swan on this point). After the fact, Ferguson notes, citing Taleb, we usually fall into the "narrative fallacy"; that is, the idea that the course of events as they unfolded makes perfect sense. But in fact, as the future, the course of events was essentially unpredictable. This view of history, I think, holds a great deal of merit. To borrow a phrase, hindsight is always 20-20. However, we don't live life backwards (although history is intriguing); we live life forward and must see as into a glass darkly.

Ferguson concludes his article with the suggestion that financial collapse is often connected with sudden changes in governments or political regimes, and that the U.S. public debt could provide such a trigger. Maybe. For the moment, interest rates remain low, and Krugman's argument that we need stimulus seems right. We are, nonetheless, in a bad way, and we as a nation—and as individuals—need to make sure that we have the necessary resiliency to withstand the shocks that might await us.

Nick Morgan’s Four Steps to Charismatic Communication

Morgan provides a short video explaining his four points:

1. Openness
   
2. Connection
   
3. Passion
   
4. Listening
   

Four easy steps to anything might seem inherently untrustworthy, but in a few short minutes, I think that Morgan is on to something. I subscribe to his blog because he offers a lot of short but pithy guidance about public speaking.

More Imaginative Literature Picks

Back here, I posted a list of favorite imaginative literature. Since then, some major omissions have haunted me, so I will post them now. How did I forget them: I can only blame it on old age!

1. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig. This is a great book. It's a "literary chautauqua" that is truly unique. It's the story of a man and his son taking a motorcycle trip from western Minnesota to Oregon. It's the story of a man on the edge of mental collapse. It's reflection on motorcycles. It's a reflection o the Western intellectual tradition. And so I could go on. Entertaining and enlightening, it's as interesting an American work as I can think of in the last 40 years (although I'm no expert).
   
2. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. A detective thriller set in the Middle Ages? Yes, and more. I loved this book, and (like Zen above), I've re-read it. Eco uses his extensive knowledge of the Middle Ages to tell a great story with intriguing ideas behind it. A great fun read.
   
3. A River Runs Through It, by Norman Mclean. I suppose that this book struck me because of the Presbyterian father who loved fishing, two marks of my father. The story is elegiac. Maclean, in a relatively few pages, captures a sense of his youth in Montana and the enigma of a brother. In the mean time, he reflects on the beauty of fly-fishing.
   
4. Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder. I must admit that this is a sentimental pick because I think that it's that last work that I read aloud to 1HP. And, of course, one finds it in the "YA" section of the bookstore. On the other hand, it's for the YA at heart. Only fools would scoff at a good story and instructive lesson rolled into one, and this book does it: combination mystery and history of philosophy. I think we both had fun with it.
   

I can't think of more right now, but if I do, I'll post. Someday I might get around to posting favorite read- alouds to kids. I could generate a very long list of those! Happy reading!

Peter Beinart on the “Ground Zero Mosque”

In The Daily Beast today Beinart provides a lament over the resistance to the Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero. His fear about our losing our tradition of religious pluralism and tolerance is one that I share. Beinart notes the loss of perspective toward Islam that the Bush administration promoted. I also understand that Mayor Bloomberg gave a strong statement in favor of religious toleration, but I haven't read it yet.

Nassim Taleb Interview with Christopher Leyden

 

 

Taleb on BP, the Iceland volcano, and other Black Swans: an interview by Christopher Leyden. The unexpected, the high impact, and the contrived narrative of explanation are aspects of the Black Swan. Fragility, and the fact that we're error prone are discussed. This is a extended explication of Taleb's ideas. My notes: The Net increases unpredictability. Too much debt. Unpredictability and debt are not friends. Government has transformed private debt into public debt. Governments can't go bankrupt. The government has bailed those who took the risks and placed the burden on our grandchildren. We are now more dependent on expert mistakes. Distrust of predictions. Debt is a spreading cancer. It's more than an issue of economic swings. I know Keynes well, and he understood uncertainty well. Keynes lived in a different environment. What worked in the Great Depression won't work so well now. We need to clean up the system now. Instead, we just Paul Krugman doesn't understand extreme events; his models don't work into the world today. If Krugman is wrong, the costs are monstrous. Given predictions have been wrong in the past, why would we trust them now. The stimulus packages are bets. Unfortunately, we've run chronic deficits, so we don't have the cushion to risk stimulus. We can get into a Madoff-like Ponzi scheme.

Black Swans can be very consequential. 5-20 novels make up the bulk of sales of novels in English. Black Swans involves surprise. Someone is a turkey. 2^nd, after the fact you think that you've figured out what really happened. 20-20 hindsight.

Black Swans started with agricultural and the increasing complexity of society. Who saw the magnitude and effect of the Great War? The internet now takes things global, such as the universality of the Harry Potter phenomena. The internet causes scaling on a new level. Taleb's greatest fear is now on the natural level, not the economic level.

Networks should be more stable, but not if there is a dominant mode. Networks often increase vulnerability. The global economy is such a complex network, it's difficult to determine where trends come from or what effect they will have.

News makes us stupid. The media skews. Taleb prefers face-to-face contact. He doesn't spend too much time on the web because the net can take a life on its own. Taleb likes to meet people and speak with them.

Taleb likes history as it consists of facts and take emphasis away from theory. But history comes to us as a backwards narrative. It can also provide an overly deterministic view, that is was bound to happen the way it did. History lacks counter-factuals. This is learning too narrowly from history. History and newspapers tend to focus on the last cause, the anecdote, rather than the complex system. Aristotle realized the difference between causes. Learn the facts, avoid theoretical history. Newspapers offer theories and explanations, which we like, but which can deceive us.

We are now in an age of fragility. The island effect in biology: more species per area on an island. We no longer have the island effect of culture. Where will we hide from the next antibiotic resistant germs? The whole planet will be affected about that which travels by plane than by foot. We are more mollified by air conditioning, lack of hunger, and therefore weaker, more vulnerable. Leyden talks about the problem of monoculture in agriculture. For instance, Taleb found the same apple where ever he goes around the world. Example: the Irish dependent on potatoes.

So must we disconnect? Taleb likes city-states > nation-states. Nature is very connected, but nothing is too great in its system. Taleb doubts regulators because they hide weakness. Taleb says protect the small guy by not protecting the big guy.

Two lungs aren't "efficient", but they are redundant. But because of this, we're safer. We need this redundancy to counter-act fragility. The four quadrants involve two environments: Mediocrastan and Extremistan. In the former the Black Swan is inconsequential, in the latter, it's consequential. Then he measures exposure the Black Swan.

Roubini Interview

Nouriel Roubini giving an interview to The Economist. A succinct consideration of current macro-economic issues, such as the damned if we do, damned if we don't issue of austerity and stimulus. Also, an assessment of China's economic prospects.

Dave R. Loy: A Buddhist History of the West

Today I finished Dave R. Loy's A Buddhist History of the West: Studies in Lack (2002, 228p). I purchased this book when 1HP & I visited The Ark, a book and gift store, in Santa Fe during our visit last month. The purchase proved itself quite worthwhile. Loy now teaches at Xavier University in Cincinnati, but he received much of his education and spent much of his early career in Japan and other parts of Asia. He brings a Western mind to Buddhism, and his efforts are quite fruitful. This was quite an—dare I say it?—enlightening book.

Loy argues that much of the cultural-religious heritage in the Christian West comes from a sense of "lack". Although I don't think he says so directly, I think we can posit that in Western mythology, this sense of lack arises from the expulsion from the Garden of Eden and the subsequent development of the concept of original sin. (Loy, however, does spend time on the Classical Greeks, who developed their own mythology accounting for this sense of lack.) Loy discusses other turning points in Western culture in light of how they dealt with their sense of lack. His discussion of the great changes of medieval church after 1000 A.D. is quite interesting. Loy writes about the effect of the separation of Church and State in the High Middle Ages, and to this separation and its cultural effects he attributes the development of the Western legal system and a new concept of time. He writes:

The dynamism of the West and the authority of its law may both be traced back to the Papal reformation that occurred in Europe in the late eleventh century. This was not a reformation but a true revolution, in fact, arguably the most important revolution the West ever experienced. Significantly, it was not primarily a secular revolution, as we might expect, but a spiritual one: not only in the sense that it transformed the Papacy, and from there the whole structure of medieval society, but even more because it involved a radically new understanding of our human condition and its salvation. It was based upon a new theological doctrine about what sin is and show we can be redeemed—in other words, a new explanation of our human lack and how that is to be resolved. Berman concludes his massive study of the legal revolution that accompanied this change by claiming, "Without the fear of Purgatory and the hope of the Last Judgment, the Western legal tradition could not have come into being" (558). Even that extraordinary claim is still too modest. This spiritual revolution led to a bifurcation of the world into the scared and the secular spheres, whose disengagement led to "a release of energy and creativity analogous to the process of nuclear fission" (Berman 88).

Loy, A Buddhist History of the West: Studies in Lack, 42.

Loy also then directs his discussion to the unique sense of time that developed in the West, something that I might note Lewis Mumford identified many years ago as a unique historical development.

However, Loy's discussion of the onset of modernity is equally intriguing. He draws extensively on the work of Christopher Hill about the English Puritans, who attempted to deal with issues of sin and guilt in the midst of the Scientific Revolution. Loy then examines the Enlightenment, and he concludes is historical survey by examining modernity through a consideration of perspectives of Max Weber and Gerog Simmel, among others.

I really learned a lot about early modern thinking by reading this book, an area where my knowledge is sorely deficient. The 17^th century saw the likes of Hobbes, Locke, the English Revolution, the Puritans, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Newton, among others. It also marked the beginning of the nation-state system. Loy's discussion of this era really gave me some new insights, and his conceit about culture as addressing a sense of lack helped shape a coherent perspective for his book.

Loy also discusses contemporary market economics, and he makes an interesting point by considering market economics as a religious phenomena, with values of its own, a theology (written by market economists), and with critics (like Karl Polyani & R.H. Tawney). This perspective, with its critique of market economics, draws in large measure from Daly and Cobb's For the Common Good (1994). Loy raises interesting points. I have come to think of market economics more and more as a genie that we've loosed from a bottle. The genie has provided us with unimaginable riches, but can we control the genie, or does the genie control us? Loy argues, with some justification, that we're first and foremost consumers who suffer an imperative to "grow" the economy and produce more and more. In the Buddhist perspective, this seems to reflect desire, one of the three poisons, along with hatred and delusion.

Loy doesn't speak much in this book about Buddhist doctrine, of which he's written a great deal elsewhere, but his use of the three poisons (greed, aversion, and delusion) as a guide to culture and thought, and as keys to dealing with our sense of lack in the Buddhist tradition, makes this a very compelling book.

Favorite Movies

C & I were talking about favorite movies, and so I had to come up with a list. But before getting into the list (and a long one it is), three movies deserve a shout-out as precursors to later viewing preferences. These three movies I remember seeing at the "old" Page Theatre, before it so spectacularly burned down. These are:
South Pacific (1958). I remember my mother taking me to see this. It combines WWII and the musical. While I'm not at C's level as a musical lover, nonetheless, I am a life-long fan. And, of course, WWII has been an interest that I've kept my whole life. Maybe trying to understand that phenomena is what got my so interested in history. Or maybe I was just googly-eyed for Mitzi Gaynor.
Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959).This starred James Mason, whose brooding presence has always intrigued me. Also, this is my first cinematic encounter with SF and fantasy. (I don't remember seeing the Disney films at this age.). Now, the special effects look crude and the script cheesy, but I loved it.
Sink the Bismarck!. (1960).This was such a treat to see. Not only seeing the film, but my parents bought me a copy of the 45 rpm record of Johnny Horton's "Sink the Bismarck". The movie, in black and white, stars Kenneth Moore and the lovely Dana Wynter, who was very pretty in my seven year-old eyes. Part of the story is told from the headquarters of the Royal Navy where they tracked the Bismarck and then battle footage. A very cool movie—well to my seven-year old mind.
Okay, now the real list. I will put them in no special order of preference, although perhaps some very favorites and earliest seen toward the top.

1. Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). I saw this in high school on television, and the image of Slim Pickens riding the Bomb down, waving his cowboy hat, struck me right away: this movie is out there. The craziness and relevance of it? 1HP was assigned to watch it as a part of her international relations class about 30 years after I first saw it.
2. Fail- Safe (1964). This movie came out around the same time as Strangelove, but Fail-Safe was grittier, grimmer film. Henry Fonda, of course, makes an excellent president. A chilling film—I think that I went into shock when I heard the high whistle the first time that I saw it, and it still gives me a chill on seeing it again. Directed by Sidney Lumet.
3. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). What can you say about this, except Newman & Redford are so good in this, plus I like Katherine Ross, too. Redford's drollness is too good, and Newman provides the perfect foil.
4. Dr. Zhivago. This is the only "epic" film on my list, but I have a certain sentimental rationale here. C & I went to see it in March 1970, on what I believe was our third date. She flattered me by asking questions about the personages and events of the Russian Revolution. What a great start for us! David Lean directed and Robert Bold (A Man for All Seasons) wrote the screenplay.
5. The Graduate (1967). C & I went to this in Hamburg, Iowa (yes, you read that correctly) after our freshman year in college. The film arrived in Hamburg a bit later than in other venues, it seems; however, I was ripe for seeing it. I think that I've seen it more times than any other movie. As social satire and commentary goes, it's hard to beat. Dustin Hoffman is great. Again, the lovely Katherine Ross, plus other great character actors. Directed by Mike Nichols.
6. Star Wars: A New Hope (1977) and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980). You may ask why Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi is not on the list, and I must say that it seems to me not quite as compelling as the first two. However, the difference may lie with the company I kept for the first two. For Star Wars, as it was first known, I took my young nephew Andy as an excuse to go; for The Empire Strikes Back, my nephews Eron & Jake came along with C & R to the movie theatre in the Quad Cities to see it. This company enhanced the viewing experience; however, who could not fall for the combination of Saturday matinee serial thriller with hero myth, romance, and an American tough-guy character?
7. The Third Man (1949). A shout-out here to the Bijou Theatre at the University of Iowa. Before VHS and CDs, if you wanted to see an older movie, other than the potluck of television, you went to the Bijou. At was at the Bijou that I saw The Third Man for the first time, a great film directed by Carol Reed and starring Joseph Cotton and Orson Wells. The screenplay is by Graham Greene. The chase scene through the sewers of Vienna—great stuff. Also, a wonderful soundtrack based on the zither. (Very popular in the Amana Colonies!) A compelling story and a very well made film. If you like this, try the Greene-Reed collaboration in "A Fallen Idol".
8. Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior (1980). While living in Champagne and before the birth of 1HP, Con and I took a chance on this movie, and we were blown away. The action, the colors, the staging, the story—this film seemed to us a masterpiece, and our first introduction to the great Akira Kurasowa.
9. Sanjuro. I am embarrassed to say that while in college, and even after C and I discovered foreign flicks, I shied away from the Japanese films. I'd seen Rodan and Godzilla—no thanks. How foolish I was! Kurasowa's chopstick westerns are a real treat. I picked this film over the more well-known and highly acclaimed Seven Samurai and almost equally well-known Roshomon, both great films. I picked this one because is combines a whimsical mirth and the action film.
10. North by Northwest (1959 ). First impressions can so deceive us. My earliest encounter with Hitchcock was to get up the courage to watch Psycho. Then The Birds on network TV, but I think that I had to wait to see this one. Gary Grant and Hitchcock (and James Mason!) and others make this a great film, I think my favorite among Hitchcock films (and he made many great ones).
11. Death in Venice (1971). This film by Italian Luchino Visconti was gorgeous: gorgeous filming and gorgeous music (Mahler's 5^th Symphony adagio movement). Dirk Bogarde plays the lead in this terrific adaptation of Thomas Mann's short novel.
12. The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003). I think that this will be the only documentary on my list, but we can almost view it as a tragedy. Errol Morris's documentary on Robert McNamara, including extensive interview footage of McNamara, displays to me an almost tragic sense of the man. He was not evil, he wanted to do well for his country, his family, and himself, yet Viet Nam, and all that it entailed, dragged him down. The film, I think, treats these issues fairly.
13. Henry V (1989). This is my favorite Shakespeare on film. One reason, perhaps, is that I borrowed my nephews Eron and Jake to come with me to Omaha to watch it with me. (Thanks, fellas, as you may have thought me nuts to drag you out to such a movie.) Branagh's version was just right, with a great supporting cast, including Emma Thompson as the French princess. Their scene together at the end was just right. I'd seen Olivier's version before seeing Branagh's, and it's certainly wonderful, but Branagh's young king comes closer to getting it right. For fun, compare Olivier's and Branagh's St. Crispin Day speeches—so different!
14. The Philadelphia Story (1940 ). It's a Cary Grant movie. It's a Kathryn Hepburn movie. It's a Jimmy Stewart movie. It's all three in one! Quick, witty, insightful. It's just a great movie. George Cukor directed.
15. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979) and Smiley's People (1982). Okay, C already complained that these are not movies. True, they were made for TV; however, because of the quality of the script, acting, and production design, I have to treat them as films. These are to me what the Godfather films are to C. I'm not sure that I can quote as well as her from the script (a frightening ability that she possesses when she quotes Vito or Michael to me), but still, if you want more, I'll give you an earful. Alec Guinness is superb as Smiley. The supporting cast consists of great actors.
16. The Shop Around the Corner (1940). This is a late discovery for C & I, but it's a gem. It stars Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan in what served a prototype of the more recent You've Got Mail, which is good, but not as charming as the original. Also, great character actors support the two stars.
17. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). The first of some trial movies, this is one that I can't imagine everyone wouldn't find a favorite. What more can be said about this film?
18. Anatomy of a Murder (1959). This film is a grittier look at the world of criminal trials, and with Jimmy Stewart in the first chair, we get a pretty good account. The trial scenes are realistic enough to please me, but punchy enough for a general audience. One of the best trial movies.
19. The Winslow Boy (1999). This is another late find by C & I, and it's a gem. Directed by David Mamet (whose other films are quite good) and based on an older play, Mamet brings to life a delicate situation involving a young man accused of theft in Edwardian Britain, a barrister, and the boy's sister. The sexual tension and repartee between the barrister played by Jeremy Northam and the sister played by Rebecca Pidgeon works very well. A delightful film.
20. Twelve Angry Men (1957). Sidney Lumet puts Henry Fonda and eleven other outstanding actors in a small jury room, and he comes out with a truly compelling drama about a jury deciding a criminal case. Not having been privy to the inside of a jury deliberation, but having sought a lot of reports about what goes on, this strikes me as pretty realistic, as well as providing an outstanding drama. You have to really appreciate that the director and the actors could make such a confined space work in a movie.
21. The Black Stallion (1979). Thank goodness for your own children and my nephews because they give you an excuse to see some great flicks. This one is beautiful. It's a boy and his horse movie, very well done. A fine film score as well.
22. Into the West (1992). Our whole family saw this at the local mall. What a great blend of current Ireland, Irish mythology, and a nod the American Western. A fine soundtrack, too.
23. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Early SF film, but really fine. It sticks with you. Michael Rennie and his robot friend lay down the smack to planet earth. Not to be missed, and don't forget the crucial words!
24. The Matrix (1999). SF taken up a notch. Great actions and XF, plus a compelling and fascinating story.
25. Love and Death (1975). Woody Allen had to get on my list, of course, but which one? While most would say Annie Hall, I have to go with this one as my sentimental favorite. From nods to Russian literature to slapstick, this has it all. "You must be Don Francisco's sister!"
26. Ferris Beuller's Day Off (1986). This is a family favorite. Pure fun.
27. The Shooting Party (1985). This is a little known film starring James Mason as the host at a hunting party at an English estate in 1913, before the outbreak of the Great War. It evokes England and Europe as it was on the eve of the cataclysm, with its class structure, petty concerns, and sense of foreboding. Mason's brief scene with John Gielgud is worth any price of admission. Also with Edward Fox and Gordon Jackson.
28. Joyeux Noel (2005). This is one of the most recent films on the list. It's the story of the spontaneous truce on the front in WWI. It provides a glimpse into the horror of the Great War and the humanity that continued to exist despite it. Beautifully done.
29. Paths of Glory (1957). Stanley Kubrick directs Kirk Douglas in this indictment of injustice set during the Great War. It's a war movie and a trial movie. Its trial scenes are among the best. It's a really compelling drama, which, like Joyeux Noel, finds some hope amongst all of the barbarity.
30. The Awful Truth (1937). The screwball comedy with Gary Grant and Irene Dunn is a favorite in this genre, and it's a great genre. Irene Dunn is a treat to watch.
31. The Thin Man (1934). This film, and the sequels, are great with William Powell and Myrna Loy—and of course, Asta! Pure enjoyment.
32. Chinatown (1974). This is at the opposite of The Thin Man in the detective/mystery category. It's noir done in color, with a great script and compelling performances by Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and John Huston.
33. It's a Wonderful Life (1946). One can't get too much Jimmy Stewart, and we need to have some Capra-corn for our viewing menu. This is classic, classic.
34. Harvey (1950). This play turned movie is great because of Elwood P. Dowd and his friend, the pooka, Harvey. If you want some laughs, this is a great choice. Of course, Elwood wouldn't be Elwood if Jimmy Stewart hadn't played him.
35. Waking Ned Devine
    (1998). The best of Irish blarney with veteran actors Ian Bannen and David Kelly giving hilarious and touching performances.
    
36. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
    (1980). This Ang Lee film goes where no martial arts film had gone before it: a sophisticated plot and characterization, beautiful cinematography, and—oh yes—great martial arts scenes. It was a "wow!" when C and Berna and I first saw it on a volleyball trip in the Chicago burbs, and it still is today.
    
37. Hero
    (2002). I couldn't leave it at Crouching Tiger, and Hero, by director Zhang Yimou, is a great piece of work. Jet Li and Zhang Ziyi star in this beautiful martial arts epic. The Tan Dun soundtrack is quite fine, also.
    
38. Last of the Mohicans (1992). Thinking of epics, and noting that I don't have any Westerns down, I do especially like this version of the great American novel. One wouldn't think a British actor (Daniel Day-Lewis) could pass for an American Indian, but he does. A well-done tale of the frontier.

I'm going to stop now, although I know that I'll think of more. Your comments invited. Thanks to all of those who went with me (most named herein)—many of my memories associate with whom I was with. And to borrow from Roger Ebert: see you at the movies!

John Gray Reviews Matt Ridley’s Rational Optimist

John Gray puts his finger on many of the misgivings I had about Ridley's book, The Rational Optimist (upon which I commented earlier). Gray's review in the New Statesman makes an interesting point about distinguishing evolution, progress, and actual human history. In addition, Gray points out that Ridley was chairman of Northern Rock, a major failed British bank. One would think that he would not be such a Pollyanna after that experience. Ridley seems to be indifferent to the risks of climate change, while not exactly becoming a climate skeptic. "We'll get used to it" seems to be his answer. I fear Mother Nature, and I don't suggest that we're wise to poke her unnecessarily. While I recommend Ridley's book because he does have an interesting and well-argued perspective, in the end, I come down much closer to Gray's analysis.

Garry Wills: Dinner with Obama & Afghanistan

Garry Wills ends his silence about the dinner that he and other well known American historians held with President Obama near the beginning of Obama's term. Wills reports that about one-half of the historians present expressed their concern about Afghanistan as a trap for the administration. Wills certainly shares this concern. This venture, which seemed so right to begin with, now presents us with a major problem. The crucial question: when will we know (if ever) that we have accomplished our mission?

Bamboo

Our back yard has abundant bamboo. Or, to state it more accurately, our backyard is nearly overrun with bamboo. However, this post from a great site, Presentation Zen, uses bamboo as a metaphor for seven important traits. So, maybe I'll now have more appreciation for all our bamboo.

Reading NYT Today: Sunday July 25, 2010

Several interesting pieces in the paper today, so for a bit of a pourpouri (and you thought only Jepordy! Used that word), here goes:

1. A fun but worthwhile piece by UC economist Richard Thaler comparing soccer officiating to financial regulation. A fine demonstration of the use of economic logic and thinking that applies well to two completely different fields.
   
2. Pankraj Mishra, whose book on the Buddha, Buddhism, and his own life provides an outstanding read, reviews two new books on the history of yoga. For yogi readers, the review is a must, and the books look promising as well.
   
3. Also for yogis, a very interesting article in the NYT Magazine profiling yoga practitioner John Friend, the developer of Anusara yoga. For our crew in Santa Fe, who attended two Anusara classes, it should prove especially interesting. I really enjoyed the yoga, so I looked forward to the article. I found the article well written and informative. The issue that always arises with yoga, and most any religion (not to say that yoga, as practiced by most, is a religion!), is whether the practice should remain pure and connected to its roots (the traditionalists) or whether it should adopt to new times and cultures (the adaptationists). In fact, I'd argue that the adaptationists always win. Christianity, whenever we say it began (with Jesus? with Paul?) has been repeatedly altered through the centuries, first and foremost by Greek philosophy, to mention only one example. Buddhism came to China and immediately changed, and then it moved to Japan, where one manifestation became Zen Buddhism. Going back to the question of yoga, it's hard to say in a prima facie way what is a bastardization and what is an adaptation. Certainly, yoga is intended, or we may say allows, more than just exercise. In the end, like most things, it's what we want and make of it. Friend's enterprise seems genuine and not too carried away with guru worship, which he apparently eschews. Anyway, worth a read. (I wish they'd said more about he altered his predecessors, such as Iyengar, but that's probably too technical.)
   
4. Psychologist Daniel Gilbert reviews Kathryn Schulz's Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error (2010). The book looks promising, and I include it because of professional interests (either my client or the other party was somehow "wrong"). The issue arises everywhere, so it certainly must address the issue of human foibles, which provides an endlessly fascinating subject.
   
5. Tom Friedman writes today that Senate Democrats are dropping any effort to pass a climate and energy bill this session. I agree with Friedman: foolish and disheartening, if not downright depressing. However, beyond that, he wrote about China, and I'll quote what he wrote:
   

   Just as the U.S. Senate was abandoning plans for a U.S. cap-and-trade system, this article ran in The China Daily: "BEIJING — The country is set to begin domestic carbon trading programs during its 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015) to help it meet its 2020 carbon intensity target. The decision was made at a closed-door meeting chaired by Xie Zhenhua, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission ... Putting a price on carbon is a crucial step for the country to employ the market to reduce its carbon emissions and genuinely shift to a low-carbon economy, industry analysts said."
   

    Here we have China, hell bent on development and a "communist" country, out in front of us on using the market to control carbon emissions and showing some recognition of the need to limit carbon output. Now, I understand that there may be a yawning chasm between the word and the deed; but still, how can this be? It certainly makes the U.S. political system seem further out of sync with current realities.

1. I haven't read the front page yet, but the cover story appears to be that the Roberts court is very conservative. Duh. I thought that this was a newspaper!
   
2. On the online edition that I've just read headlines suggesting that the war in Afghanistan isn't going as well as officially portrayed. Perhaps a hint of the Pentagon Papers for the Afghanistan war? As one who has listened to original tapes of Lyndon Johnson speaking about the war to his advisors and friends, as well as having seen The Fog of War, none of this comes at a surprise. Perhaps paragraph 4 above could provide us some insights. Bummer.

Matt Ridley: Rational—or Irrational?--Optimist

I normally like to wait until I've completed a book before writing a review of it; however, in this case, I feel compelled to make an exception. The book, Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (2010 448p.) is at once convincing and irritating. On the convincing side, Ridley provides a convincing summary of the gains of humankind over the centuries, a tale of economic progress when we view humanity as a whole. His premise is relatively simple: that exchange, of goods and ideas has benefited humans over the millennia. Indeed, ideas, intangible but crucial knowledge about how things work or can be done, are like the flame of a candle: they can be shared without diminishing the value held by the original holder. (Ridley, however, does talk about patents and licensing of ideas, so take that last statement with a great big asterisk.) Nonetheless, in his cute term, "ideas have sex"; that is, the interchange of ideas, mixing and matching, much like the pool of genes in sexual reproduction, generates new and novel outcomes. Ingenuity and innovation become the drivers of progress. In all of this, I find Ridley's examples persuasive and well taken. I agree with him, and he provides a sound summary. But then he goes too far.

The aspect of Ridley's book that I find disconcerting comes from those portions of the book where he thinks like a turkey. Not any turkey mind you, a Nassim Taleb turkey (and before him, Bertrand Russell's chicken). While Taleb is most readily identified with the Black Swan, the intriguing fowl and metaphor, he's also written extensively and with great persuasion about turkeys. Taleb writes about the turkey that grows up in the habit of receiving food each day from the kind man, believing that this routine will continue without end—until the day before Thanksgiving. The turkey surrendered to the fallacy of induction.

Ridley writes a great deal about pessimists who have doubted the human future—how wrong they've been. And within certain parameters, he's right; many a prediction of woe and disaster has come and gone, and nothing happened. Thus, Ridley ridicules (with only a minor nod to the contrary) those who predict problems in the human future. "We've been fed and watered by the nice man every day so far, so certainly it will continue tomorrow", he seems to be saying. Well, maybe. We haven't suffered a nuclear holocaust; we haven't seen starvation for lack of adequate food supplies (worldwide); we haven't seen the polar ice melt, and so on. But if you're like me, to take the last example as a point of consideration, how do we know that we won't soon see the melting of the polar ice caps? How do we know that we can feed another couple of billion people, the current population projection even considering the continuing drop in human fertility rates? How can we be sure, even given the end of the Cold War, that we won't see some type of nuclear exchange in the future? In fact, we don't know, and we'd be wise indeed to take affirmative steps to avoid such catastrophes.

What Ridley fails to distinguish is the difference between prophecy and prediction. Predictions are often wrong. As Yogi said, "the future just ain't what it used to be". The farther out we try to look in the crystal ball, the hazier it all becomes. This is true for predictions of utopia as well as predictions of doom. Ridley provides numerous examples of predictions of gloom and pessimism that have not born out; he curiously ignores the batting average of predictions of utopia. Contrary to some predictions, we are not living the lives of the Jetsons. (Sorry, younger readers, ask your parents or Google it.) As opposed to prediction, prophecy includes an implicit "if . . . then" clause. If we do not change our ways, then something bad will happen. Although I cannot speak with certainty, I think that this was the mode of the Old Testament prophets: "if you don't shape-up Israel, then you will suffer bad consequences". (Israel seemed to have regularly ignored these warnings.) Prophecies, in my definition, don't try to predict a deus ex machina (Black Swan) for good or ill, but they do follow the path straight into the future. Thus, when warnings of chlorofluorocarbons did not continue to burn a whole in the Earth's ozone layer, should we say that such predictions were mistaken, or should we say more accurately that we heeded the prophecy? I think the latter. The same goes for limiting the possibility of a nuclear exchange: were such predictions mere doom and gloom, or were we lucky in part and wise in part. As someone who witnessed the Cuban missile crisis (from my grandmother and her television) and has since read and seen a good deal about it, I think we were lucky and wise, and with a little less of either, we might not be here now. Prophecies of gloom have an important role to play if they move us toward repentance or a change of course. Ridley really undervalues this, almost ridicules it, and I think that he really misses some subtle but crucial distinctions.

I also must comment that Babylonians, Jews, Athenians, Romans, Mayans, Incas, Aztecs, Chinese (in the past), and on and on and on, have experienced catastrophic decline. Humanity has progressed over the ages, but not all persons in all places and in all times. Ridley is correct in singing the praises of the improvements in the world since the advent of the Industrial Revolution. He is right in describing even the "dark Satanic mills" as a better life than rural poverty and destitution. I make no bones about the fact that I was born at a time and place and into a family that gave me a life that billions of humans before me would have envied beyond their wildest dreams, and I'm nothing special in my cohort. However, it can all go to hell in a hand basket, quickly. Caboose's article citing the perils of a solar electrical storm is a threat that I've never heard of before, while on the other hand, global climate change or economic disaster (too much debt or too much austerity) are well known threats. We cannot, as Ridley seems to suggest, simply innovate our way out of every problem. If we're so great at innovation, why did we allow millions of gallons of oil spew into the Gulf this summer, causing untold damage? No, we are in some ways smart creatures, but we're not living in an Indiana Jones universe where every peril is resolved by the hero's pluck and ingenuity. We'd do better to avoid as many perils as possible, and to this end, a prudent and considered caution—not fatalistic pessimism—should govern.

I'd like to suggest two works by Canadian political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon to you and Matt Ridley: First, The Ingenuity Gap: Facing the Economic, Environmental, and Other Challenges of an Increasingly Complex and Unpredictably Future (2002). I think that the long title gives you a pretty good sense of the author's take. Complexity, especially, allows small changes of input into a system to create unpredictable and quite variable outcomes. We live in a world that is more complex, like the weather, and less predictable, as opposed the linear world of a car engine. The other Homer-Dixon book to consult is The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization (2008). Again, the title tells you a lot; Homer-Dixon isn't a wild-eyed Cassandra, but an MIT-trained political scientist who carefully considers the many possibilities and challenges. Finally, I recommend Taleb's The Black Swan, about how collapse can come suddenly and unexpectedly—the negative Black Swan.

I recommend this book because it contains a lot that is good and accurate, and even where I find it irritating, at least it's quite thought provoking.

Austerity vs. Stimulus: Another Round

Well, a great weekend for economic debate:

1. In an almost head-to-head matchup, both Paul Krugman and Niall Ferguson appeared on Fareed Zakaria's Global GPS (the best public affairs show on TV for my money). They appeared separately, but Zakaria is a capable questioner and understands the issues, so I think that the issues were well joined. I haven't seen it to the end, so I don't know where Zakaria comes down between the two (and perhaps it really is between them).
   
2. Dave Brooks weighed in today, and Paul Krugman promptly blogged a response (he's quick with that blog!). It seems to me that all of Brooks' doubts could be laid on the austerity folks, so his uncertainty about theories on one side (the demand side/Keynesians) applies equally, if not more so, to the austerity crowd. Brooks quotes Keynes, but I find that a bit ironic, for the Demand Side theorists (as he refers to the Krugman crowd) are really looking to Keynes and the problem of a liquidity trap that monetary policy can't address. By the end, Brooks does make some concessions, such as unemployment benefits and the need for the states to receive some help in providing basic services.
   
3. Robert Frank weighed in yesterday in the NYT with his usual good sense, recommending targeted fiscal policies to stimulate the economy. We don't want something like WWII, which helped pull us out of the Depression, and long-term debt is a bad thing, but Frank recognizes the need for further stimulus, which if wisely appropriated, will provide many benefits, including long-term debt reduction. Of course, the likelihood of Congress acting appropriately is slim. Here's what Frank writes:
   

   [A]s the nation struggles to emerge from the most severe downturn since the Great Depression, such cuts are the last thing we need. There is no conflict — absolutely none — between our twin goals of putting the economy back on its feet and reducing long-term deficits. On the contrary, government could take many steps that would serve both goals simultaneously.
   

4. Someone out to be shouting off the rooftops, screaming bloody murder, about cuts to education. My personal connections with many educators aside, isn't it as clear as the hand in front of your face we need to spend more money on education?. Why are we laying off teachers? Because we don't have enough money? No! We don't want to spend the money. It's a choice; it's not something forced upon us. It's shameful and stupid.

For the Fourth: Beinart’s The Icarus Syndrome

It's my custom to read a work of American history in celebration of Independence Day. Normally, I pick up a classic work or something relating directly to the founding of the Republic. However, this year I chose a recent publication, Peter Beinart's The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris (2010, 465p.). I normally wait to write about a book until after I've completed it, but I'm enthusiastic about this book, and I have a lot to share already, so I'll set aside precedent for this occasion. In this book Beinart, smarting from his early support of the Iraq War, meditates on three occasions on the 20^th century where he finds that American policy makers reached too far based upon hubris. The first occasion comes from Woodrow Wilson's actions in taking the U.S. into the First World War. Beinart doesn't argue that the U.S. shouldn't have joined the effort on the side of the Allies, only that Wilson provided the wrong motives for prosecuting the war and the wrong principles for establishing a post-war peace. Henry Cabot Lodge and Theodore Roosevelt (who died before the armistice) provided a realist, balance-of-power rationale for American involvement, and Lodge, in the Senate, offered terms of the League of Nations that would have represented a more realist basis for that institution, and thereby, American membership. Another interesting aspect of this conflict came from the effect that it had on the American intellectual elite. John Dewey, Charles Beard, and Walter Lippmann began as supporters of the war, but by the end, and even as WWII approached, they became pacifist, isolationist, and realist, respectively. Randolph Bourne saw the tragedies that the war would bring the American polity, but he died young and rejected by the end of the war.

Beinart continues his narrative through the interwar years, including discussions of diplomatic history (France, much more that Germany, was seen as a belligerent power in the 1920's). He also keeps abreast of foreign policy thinking, for instance, he notes the rise of Reinhold Niebuhr as a critic (not always fairly so) of Dewey's approach, which still posited some degree of human perfectibility. Of course, Wilson comes into contrast with FDR, who, while using some Wilsonian rhetoric, nevertheless maintained a quiet realpolitik perspective on the postwar world.

After the WWII, American policy makers faced new threats. In dealing with this era, Beinart discusses the work and perspective of George Kennan, among others. Beinart provides an informative and insightful introduction to Kennan the man, a mixed bag of knowledge, insight, hypochondria, and prickliness, as well as Kennan's influential work at the beginning of the Cold War. Beinart relates a history of Kennan's work and influence that I find similar to the perspective provided by Garry Wills in Bomb Power earlier this year. Kennan, perhaps wanting a bit too much to curry favor with his patron, James Forrestal, failed to adequately define and limit his idea of containment in his famous "X" article in Foreign Affairs, thereby creating a military monster when in fact Kennan intended a much more political, diplomatic, and economic perspective for the concept. Kennan, when he tried to get the genie back into the bottle, was marginalized and quickly shunted aside. After Wilson's the "hubris of reason", the U.S. moved into the "hubris of toughness". Ike kept a lid on this through his low key style (shall we say "no drama Ike"?), but with the election of JFK, the cult of toughness hit full stride—and marched us right into Viet Nam.

This is as far as I've gotten in the book, but I think you get the gist of Beinart's thesis. To give a bit away, part three, which addresses the Iraq War, becomes the "hubris of dominance". Beinart is writing history in the manner of Garry Wills' Bomb Power and the works of John Patrick Diggins: as a reflection and assessment through which we can view the present. It's not original historiography, but a historical essay from which we can greatly benefit.

For those of you who might like a fuller review, George Packer has provided a very useful and well-considered review in the New Yorker. You can also get a sense of Beinart's work in a part of the book that I haven't gotten to yet: an essay on Ronald Reagan in Foreign Policy. In this essay (adopted from the book), Beinart takes a position on Reagan very similar the description that I received from reading Jack Matlock's Superpower Illusions, with its extensive discussion of the end of the Cold War under Reagan. Both authors provide an account of Reagan that differs from both conservative and liberal myths of the man. Finally, Leslie Gelb reviewed the book in the NYT. (Packer's review, however, is the more useful.)